The Eclectic method, selecting from every sect what came nearest the truth, is the prisca theologia in miniature, and the eighteenth century read the Alexandrian eclectics of Ammonius as its ancient carrier.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
Eclectics, a name given to certain ancient philosophers, who endeavoured to form a system of opinions by selecting from every sect those doctrines which seemed to approach nearest to the truth. Hence their denomination, derived from a Greek word signifying to select.
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions (Boston, 1817), entry “Eclectics.”