ARISTOTELIANS The followers of Aristotle. They believed in the eternity of the world, and represented the Deity as somewhat similar to a principle of power giving motion to a machine; and as happy in the contemplation of himself, but regardless of human affairs. They were uncertain as to the immortality of the soul.--As this was rather a philosophical than religious sect, we shall not enlarge on it.

MYSTICS A sect distinguished by their professing pure, sublime, and perfect devotion, with an entire disinterested love of God, free from all selfish considerations.--The authors of this mystic science, which sprung up towards the close of the third century, are not known; but the principles from which it was formed are manifest. Its first promoters proceeded from the known doctrine of the Platonic school, which was also adopted by Origen and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or that the faculty of reason, from which proceed the health and vigour of the mind, was an emanation from God into the human soul, and comprehended in it the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine. They denied that…

MATERIALISTS A sect in the ancient church, composed of persons, who, being prepossessed with that maxim in philosophy, "ex nihilo mihil fit," out of nothing nothing can arise, had recourse to an eternal matter, on which they supposed God wrought in the creation, instead of admitting Him alone as the sole cause of the existence of all things. Tertulian vigoriously opposed them in his treatise against Hermogenes, who was one of their number. Materialists are also those who maintain that the soul of man is material, or that the principle of perception and thought is not a substance distinct from the body, but the result of corporeal organization. There are others called by this name, who have maintained that there is nothing but matter in…

DEISTS A class of people whose distinguishing character it is, not to profess any particular form or system of religion; but only to acknowledge the existence of a God, and to follow the light and law of Nature, rejecting revelation and opposing Christianity. The name of deists seems to have been first assumed, as the denomination of a party, about the middle of the 16th century, by some gentlemen in France and Italy, who were desirous of thus disguising their opposition to Christianity by a more honourable appellation than that of atheists. Viret, an eminent reformer, mentions certain persons in his epistle dedicatory, prefixed to the second volume of his Instruction Chretienne, published in 1653, who called themselves by a new name, that of deists.…