or HIGH PRIEST, a person who has the superintendence and direction of divine worship, as the offering of sacrifices and other religious solemnities. The Roman had a college of pontiffs, and over these a sovereign pontiff, instituted by Numa, whose function it was to prescribe the ceremonies each god was to be worshipped withal, compose the rituals, direct the vestals, and for a good while to perform the business of augury, till, on some superstitious occasion, he was prohibited intermeddling therewith. The Jews, too, had their pontiff; and among the Romanists the pope is styled the sovereign pontiff.
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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