The Elcesaites are the baptist milieu the archive follows from the Essenes toward Mani, and Adams’s own entry ties the Ossenians straight back to them.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
OSSENIANS, or Ossens.
See Helcesaites.
*Pagans, heathens, and particularly those who worship idols. The term came into use after the establishment of Christianity; the cities and great towns affording the fii’st converts, the heathens were called Pagans, (from Pagus, a Village,) because they were then found chiefly in remote country places; but we use the term commonly for all who do not receive the Jewish, Christian, or Mahometan religions. The Pagans may be divided into the following classes— I. The Greeks and Romans, and others who admit their refined system of mythology. II. The more ancient nations, as the Chaldeans, Phenicians, Sabians, &c.
III. The Chinese, Hindoos, Japanese, &c.
IV. The Barbarians, as the Indians of North and South America, aiid the Negroes of Africa.
The objects of worship among the Pagans are various and diverse, as 1. The heavenly bodies, and particularly the Sun and Moon. 2. Imaginary beings, as Demons, Genii, &c. 3. The spirits of departed princes, heroes, and philosophers: or, lastly, almost every object of the animate and inanimate creation. The more refined, indeed considered animals or P images as only the representations of their gods, who were supposed to reside in them; or as the medium of their worship. But the vulgar, the multitude, looked no farther than the material images: ** and it must be remarked, that however high they might look, if not to the great Supreme, they were equally idolaters, whether they worshipped the sun, or Apollo, or a departed ghost; or an ox, a tree, or a stone.” The rites of Paganism wrere as various as the objects of their worship. In general they had some idea of the necessity of an atonement for their sins, and that** without shedding of blood there is no remissionin many cases, and on all emergencies, they were apprehensive that the sacrifice must be of equal dignity with the sinner; and hence among many nations both ancient and modern, from the worshippers of Moloch, to the South-sea Islanders, the practice (sometimes carried to great enormity) of human sacrifices, which have stained the altars of almost all the nations upon the earth.
The peculiarities of many nations have been already noticed in these pages, and others are to follow. See the articles Celts, Chinese, Druids, Gaurs, Grecians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Japanese, Indians, Magians, Negroes, Sabians, Samans, or Schamans, &c. &c.
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, 4th ed. (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), entry “Ossenians” (pp. 212–214).