SECT. This Latin Word has the same Signification as the Greek Word Hæresis, tho’ the Sound be not so odious. Among the Jews were known four several Sects, which were distinguish’d by the Singularity of their Practices and Opinions, and yet continued united in Communion with each other, and with the Body of their Nation. These Sects are those of the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Essenians, and the Herodians, of which we have already spoke under their several Articles. At the Beginning of Christianity they would have had the Religion of Jesus Christ to pass as a new Sect of Judaism. Tertullus the Advocate for Act. xxiv. 5.the Jews, accusing St. Paul before Fœlix, says, that he was Chief of the seditious Sect of the Nazarenes; and the Jews of Rome said to St. Paul, when he arrived in this Act.xxviii. 22. 2 Pet. ii. 1—10.City, that as to this Sect, it was every where spoke against. St. Peter in his second Epistle, foretels to the Faithful, that false Teachers should arise among them, who privily shall bring in damnable Heresies (or Sects) even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift Destruction. He adds, that these People being great Lovers of themselves, blaspheme sound Doctrine, and are not afraid to introduce new Sects; but here the Word Sect is taken in the same Sense as Heresy.
1 Cor. i. 12. iii. 22, &c.What probably gave Birth to the different Sects among the Jews, was what they observed to obtain among the Greeks, whose Philosophers were divided into different Sects. For Example, the Academicks, the Stoicks, the Peripateticks, the Cynicks, the Epicureans, &c. The Jews, in Imitation of the Greeks, began to divide themselves into several Sects, about the Time of the Maccabees. It seems as if the Corinthians had a mind to introduce something like this into Christianity, when they boasted, I am a Disciple of Peter, I of Paul, I of Apollos. Which Abuse St. Paul with great Vehemence corrects in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. Even at this Day, in the Christian and Catholick Church, we labour under a kind of Sects in Philosophy, and even in Divinity, in respect of some Questions that the Church has not decided, and which it leaves to the Liberty of the Schools. Thus we see in Philosophy Peripateticks, Scotists, Nominals, Cartesians, Gassendists, &c. and in Divinity Thomists, Augustinians, Scotists, Molinists, Congruists.