thearchy

plural thearchies

1. countableuncountableA government ruled by God or a god; a theocracy.

   There ends Monarchy as a Thearchie, or divine dynastie.

   1643, Subject of Supremacie, section 42

   2 more examples

   Thearchie, or Gods Government in Families, a Nation, and all Nations.

   1643, Maximes Unfolded, section 8

   It seemed to human reasoning impossible to convert the Jew from his grand and simple creed, to modify or to explain it, to add to it, or to take away from it, in the slightest degree to alter his belief in that direct thearchy, to which he was bound by the ties of gratitude, of tradition, of national isolation and characteristic pride of race.

   1863, G[eorge] J[ohn] Whyte-Melville, “A Veiled Heart”, in The Gladiators: A Tale of Rome and Judæa. […], volume I (Eros), London: Longman, Green, Longmans, Roberts, & Green, →OCLC, page 254

2. countableuncountableA system or ordering of deities. (Compare pantheon.)

   Pan was one of the younger gods in the Hellenic thearchy.

   1876, W[illiam] E[wart] Gladstone, “On the Egyptian and Foreign Knowledge of Homer”, in Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry into the Time and Place of Homer, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, part II, page 245

   2 more examples

   From rank to rank in Thearchy divine, We angel raylets gladden in thy sight.

   1839, [Philip James Bailey], chapter XI, in Festus: A Poem, London: William Pickering, →OCLC

   When Jesus entered upon his ministry, the Olympian thearchy […] was already tottering to its fall.

   1899 December 1, Literary Guide, 178 1