Adams sends the reader here from the Mendai; Hierax was an Egyptian philosopher and magician whose sect read Christ as bringing a stricter law than Moses, and forbade what the Mosaic dispensation had allowed.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
Hieracites, a denomination in the third century, so called from their leader Hierax, a philosopher and magician of Egypt, who maintained that the principal object of Christ’s ministry was the promulgation of a new law, more severe and perfect than that of Moses. Hence he concluded that the use of flesh, wine, and wedlock, permitted under the Mosaic dispensation, was absolutely prohibited by Christ.
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions (Boston, 1817), entry “Hieracites.”