I am reading through John Owen’s Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, and I ran across what I thought was an odd usage of the word superstition. I looked it up in the 1828 edition of Webster’s dictionary, and I was very fascinated by the primary definition listed there:

SUPERSTI’TION, n. [L. superstitio, supersto; super and sto, to stand.]

1. Excessive exactness or rigor in religious opinions or practice; extreme and unnecessary scruples in the observance of religious rites not commanded, or of points of minor importance; excess or extravagance in religion; the doing of things not required by God, or abstaining from things not forbidden; or the belief of what is absurd, or belief without evidence.

In other words, what we would today term legalism.