Wild enthusiasts, visionary persons, who pretend to revelation and inspiration. The ancients called those fanatici who passed their times in temples (fana;) and being often seized with a kind of enthusiasm, as if inspired by the Divinity, showed wild and antic gestures, cutting and slashing their arms with knives, shaking the head, &c. Hence the word was applied among us to the Anabaptists, Quakers, &c. at their first rise, and is now an epithet given to modern prophets, enthusiasts, &c.; and we believe unjustly to those who possess a considerable degree of zeal and fervency of devotion.
Despite a stated reliance on the plain meaning of the Bible and the dictates of common sense, Buck's Theological Dictionary, first published in London in 1802, seeks to provide a textual basis for the evangelical community. By combining brief essays on orthodox belief and practice with historical entries on various denominations, Buck provided an interpretive lens that allowed antebellum Protestants to see Christianity's almost two millennia as their own history.Wikipedia
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