An established custom or law; a precept, maxim, or principle. Institutions may be considered as positive, moral, and human.
1. Those are called positive institutions or precepts which are not founded upon any reasons known to those to whom they are given, or discoverable by them, but which are observed merely because some superior has commanded them.
2. Moral are those, the reasons of which we see, and the duties of which arise out of the nature of the case itself, prior to external command.
3. Human, are generally applied to those inventions of men, or means of honouring God, which are not appointed by him, and which are numerous in the church of Rome, and too many of them in Protestant churches.
Butler's Analogy, p. 214; Doddridge's Lec. lect. 158; Robinson's Claude, 217, vol. 1: and 258, vol. ii; Burrough's Two Dis. on Positive Institutions; Bp. Hoadley's Plain Account, p. 3.