Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.
Thomas Hobbes (1840). “The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Dialogue between a philosopher and a student of the common laws in England. Behemoth: The history of the causes of the civil wars of England. The whole art of rhetoric. The art of rhetoric, plainly set forth. The art of sophistry”, p.174
