A very comprehensive term, denoting the manners, ceremonies, and fashions of a people, which having turned into habit, and passed into use, obtain the force of laws. Custom and habit are often confounded. By custom, we mean a frequent reiteration of the same act; and by habit, the effect that custom has on the mind or the body.
See HABIT. "Viewing man, " says Lord Kames, "as a sensitive being, and perceiving the influence of novelty upon him, would one suspect that custom has an equal influence? and yet our nature is equally susceptible of both; not only in different objects, but frequently in the same. When an object is new, it is enchanting; familiarity renders it indifferent; and custom, after a longer familiarity, makes it again desirable. Human nature, diversified with many and various springs of action, is wonderful, and indulging the expression, intricately constructed. Custom hath such influence upon many of our feelings, by warping and varying them, that we must attend to its operations, if we would be acquainted with human nature. A walk upon the quarter-deck, though intolerably confined, becomes, however, so agreeable by custom, that a sailor, in his walk on shore, confines himself commonly within the same bounds. I knew a man who had relinquished the sea for a country life: in the corner of his garden he reared an artificial mount, with a level summit, resembling, most accurately, a quarter-deck, not only in shape, but in size; and here was his choice walk." Such we find is often the power of custom.
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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