A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OR CHARACTER Of the Religion and Manners of the fanatics In General.  
Scil.  

ANABAPTISTS,  
INDEPENDENTS,  
BROWNISTS,  
ENTHUSIASTS,  
LEVELLERS,  
QUAKERS,  
SEEKERS,  
FIFT-MONARCHY-MEN, &  
DIPPERS.   
Showing and Refuting their Absurdities by due Application, Reflecting much also on Sir john Praecisian and other Novelists.  — Non Seria Semper— 
London Printed, and are to be sold by most Stationers; 1660.   

The Description of the fanatics In General.  

fanatics in general are fanciful men whose tongues are tipped with Sanctity, and the name of the Spirit is this, that they know not indeed what spirit they are of as to profession. They are a people much given to dreams and to take fancies for revelations and eary presumtions for serious examination of truth.  
Their Religion consists much in extern modes and fashions, in adhering to some party or Faction, in popular and specious insinuations and pretensions, in admiration of some men's persons, gifts, piety, and supposed Zeal, in prevalencies of power, in Worldly successes, in verbal assurances, in lose confidencies of being elected and predestinated to happiness, of being called Saints, Prohets, preachers in a new extraordinary way, in great Zealotries for some new form or way of constituting discipline, in boldness to affirm or deny or do any thing, presuming themselves able to do whatsoever they fancy.  
Own nothing for religion in any man or any Church which appears not just after that colour, figure and notion which they are taken withal. Many have little in them, they can fancy or call Religion, but only a fierceness for that side which they take, a consoriousnesse to all they count not theirs, brand all they like not with the mark of Antichrist; some of them make every thing a sin and error, to which they are not inclined; Others count nothing a sin to which they have an impulse and are free to, as they call it. Some dote much on select and covenanting congregations; others are only for private illuminations, solitary seekings, raptures, prophetic accomplishments, etc. blown up with their own breath and other men's applauses, set off all that is done in their way with Epithets of rare, holy, Spiritual, divine saintlike etc. they have such self conceits of their extraordinary gifts and abilities that they call their presumtions inspirations, their darkness light, their dessolute licentiousness, Christian liberty, their fierceness Zeals, self confidence a divine call, novelties rarities, their opinions perfections, distractions, raptures, their ravenings, reasons, their dreams oracles; such specious and gilded idols Teraphims of their own imagination their fancy forgeth in the shallow plasnes and fowl puddles of their own invention, where their confused thoughts are oftentimes sooner out of their mouths than in their minds.  
They are mere slovens in their devotions, have no decent peculiar places set a part for holy uses, would have no heads bare in the Church but what in reverence to their Enthusiastic Spirit, imitate the unmannerly Hugonots in France, and preach with their hats on, are content to have their religion hatched under the wings and seathers of any unclean birds, magnify what is most dishonest and uncomely in their foolish ringleaders even their ignorance set off merely with impudence. Wise men find much of these men's religion deformed with minicall affectations of words, with studied tones, antic gestures, apish tricks and grimasses scurrilous expresions, much in them is sulsome brutish tumultuary confusedness in their duties, all their Zeal tending merely to profaneness, supinesse, fordidnesse and slovenliness.  
Nothing pleaseth their clogged stomaches that is old, though never so true nothing comes amiss if it be dressed up with novelty, they think even religion itself is never well unless it be set forth in some new mode and fashion, or unwounted expressions, silly delusions and babilike novelties delighting more in things gay and new, then good and old; fansiing all reformed, which is but changed though much to the worse, even old Christianity set on the new block of faction inplumed with the feathers of popular and passionate fancies, seek to divide and destroy all ancient forms of Churches that they may new model them to their popular way of calling, to advance such opinions and practices as no holy men of old ever knew, acted or owned for Religious, as if no duties, ceremonies or Sacraments were heretofore holy, primitively or universally owned, before these new coiners had set up their mints to print their Idol of new dressed Spirituality and sanctity, would seem wiser, more perfect in their words and fancies, than either pious antiquity, tradition or scripture; as if the private fancies, solitary dreams and single imaginations of  men and women were now more holy than Oracles.  
Believe no Church or religion is sufficiently reform till they are most diametrically contrary to every use and custom of the Roman, abhorring many things as Popish Superstitions, Antichrist because used by Papists, affecting singularities and choosing rather to fall by standing alone in Separation of opinion and government than to seem to have any support by the assosiation with any former Assemblies. You may sooner convert a Jew than make a Phanatique yield to arguments that cross him: their fancy is the God they worship, faction is their Heaven, peace their hell, and the Papist, the Devil, they hate; for all that help them not, they hold Popish. To be plain, so much bran, filth and Dross of pride, popularity, chisme, malapertness, and contempt of all men, differing in opinion from them, do hitherto generally appear in the face, and manners of many of those who more affect the name of gifted men and Prophets than ever the Pharisees did the title of Rabbi. They will hardly ever make such loves as will be sit for shew-bred the corn being ground in such a new beaten mill, proves full of grit and gravel.  
These Histrionick players, and vaporing preachers, in many places, seek to fill the world with mere noise and clamours, crying down all ancient Religion as Antichristian, turning all into spiritual and new prophetic gifts, (to which they highly pretend) like as those cheats & wanderers do, who swear they have found out & can sell you the true Elixir, the Philosopher's Stone which will turn base metals into gold, while yet (poor men) their rags sords and beggary sufficiently confutes their rare skill proclaiming to all, they more need others charity than they are any ways able to relieve any man necessities.  
Like the Gnostics, they pretend to be as perfect as the Apostles, Like Comets Exalting themselves in high notions above the ordinary reach of reason, in spiritual manifestations beyond plain and ordinary Christians, that they are not easily calculated by common accounts. Covet to be called spiritual who walk after the flesh, study to cover their follies and hipocrisies with the Shows of the spirit of God, as if it were not enough to sin against its manifest rules and examples in Scripture observed by the Church; unless they impute also unto it their simplicities, fondnesses, impudencies, filthy dreams, extravagancies and confusions, counting it no shame to ascribe those unreasonable absurd motions to Gods most wise holy Spirit, which any man of right reason, common ingenuity and modesty would be ashamed to own. It had it been better for such not to have known the way of the Spirit in Scripture, far mor evenial to err for want of the Spirits guidance and light, than to shut our eyes against it; and to impute it to our errors, dreams, darknesses and hipocrisies. It's better to have the heart wholly barren then to lay our adulterous bastards to the Spirits charge; when indeed they are issued of nothing but pride joined to ignorance, forgeries and glistering novelties set off with insolence, since neither the temper of their Spirits, nor their works or words are like the rules, marks or fruits of the holy Spirit of Christ.  
They challenge the spirit of Christ in such a plenary measure and power to themselves, that they justify their want of ordinary abilities and endowments by their needing none Excusing their not studing or preparing for what they utter by their being specially inspired, colouring over their well known idleness, illiterateness, ignorance and emptiness, by the Shows of special illuminations, sudden inspirations and spiritual inablements. You must not ask them where are their Miracles? where their Empire over Devils, where their gift of languages? where their Prophecies? these questions though just to be put where extraordinary Inspirations are pretended, are too hard for them, be they never so godly, if you put them one pin above their pitch, they either crack, or sound like strings overstrained, harshly, and out of tune.  
In their pretended Liberty and Levelling Principles, they justify the flagitiousnesse of their Villainies, as if the zeal they had for Religion provoked them to such Outrages; then the most crying Injustice must be thought the highest justice the most partial Toleration must be voiced for Christian Liberty; the grossest Anarchies good Government, and the most Novel and unjust Cause that ever was, must needs be cried up for the Good Old Cause. The better to set off their Opinions and Practices, their Retreat is (as Foxes when eagerly hunted) to earth themselves in This, the Spirit hath taught and dictated those things unto them, or interpreted or revealed the Scripture to them in this manner, or impulsed and driven them upon such and such ways as are uncomely and unwonted. This is done with the same Falsity and Confidence as Mahomet persuaded the credulous vulgar, that his fits of Falling-sickness, and the device of his Pigeon coming to his ear, where he had accustomed to feed it, were Monitions and Inspirations he had from God by his Blessed Spirit.  
A vacuity with safety may be concluded in their Heads, whose bodies and Discourse are filled with too much affectation and vain glory, who like Atoms Volatle and unsettled, justle & whirl up & down without incorporating any thing but Air. Their Holiness is mere titular and verbal, like Montanists, Catharists, & Gnostics of old, or the later cruel and rude fanatics in Germany who cried Holy, Holy, Holy, to their parties and factions, as if there were holy seditions, holy ambitions, holy sacrileges, holy cruelties, holy ignorances', holy confusions, holy errors, holy Schisms, holy Hypocrisies in the hearts and spirits of spiritual men. Under these disguises of extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, Architophel, and jehu, and judas, and Simon Magus, and the Sons of Sheva and Demus, and the self made Prophetess jezabel, and Diotrophes, all false Prophets (and Ministers of Satan) studied to appear.  
If any prays publicly in matter, words, or method, approved by the practice & tradition of the Church, it is (they say) but a form and stinting of the Spirit, if they preach with exactness and Preparation, it is not the Spirit but Study and Learning: If they read holy Books, 'tis but a dead Letter, and Lip-labour if they celebrate the Sacraments with Reverence and Decency, they quarrel at the Place, or Time, or Gesture or company, or Ceremonies used of old. If they use the ancient Doxology giving Glory to the Trinity as the Greeks' and Latin Churches ever did, their Socinian and Arrian Ears are so offended, as if Christians should ask them leave to own the Blessed Trinity, if any explicateth the Rudiments for Instruction, the Principles of Christian Religion, continuing summaries of things to be Believed, practised and Prayed for, as the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and Pater Noster, these men fancy them as the Recitation of some Charms, and look upon the Priest as some Exorcist confined to these Articles of stinted Spells and Forms. If they name any Apostle, Evangelist or other Christian of undoubted Sanctity with the Epithet of Saint, they are so scared with the Pope's Canonising Saints, that they start at the very name so used, as if it were an unsanctified Title not to be applied to the memory of the Blessed, but only arrogated to some persons living, who ambitiously call themselves and their party Saints.  
If any of these Gloriosoes and New-Illuminates have any competent gifts of knowledge, as to something of Religion; yet they have commonly something monstrous odd, extravagant, either vain or Morose, defective or Superfluous, light or Tetrical, rude or proud, popular or affectated, and after all, the cry and noise, and glorying of these men's Inspiring, at the best, all amounts to no more than but a little Ordinary Knowledge, new glossed and painted over; whose Ignorance, Weakness, and Confusions, will only serve to betray and destroy Religion and State, but never to defend it, being more offensive than defensive; fit for seduction then reduction, to infect then cure. Their New-Nursery of gifted Brethren and Prophets, are so AEsopick and deformed, rather fit to scare men from, then to instruct them in Holiness or Piety, and by their mere Formalities, extemporary Prating, and Contempt, to make wide Gaps and easy Inroads for Superstition and Atheism.  
These Pharaohs Dream of none but lean Cattle in the Field of the Church; the less wool and flesh they have on their backs, the more spiritual they must needs be; fed by threadbare hunger-starved Teachers, necessitious & whining pieces of impudent ignorance, crouch and fawn on every plausible Error, on every powerful Novelty, on every proud fancy and high imagination, prone to adorn by their gifts some odd opinion, and set it forth as a Divine Truth: Like Arelius a Painter in julius Caesar's time, who when he was to paint any Goddess, corrupted his art by always making them like some of his Mistresses. They lick the Sores of any men's Conscience, or the Pollutions of any men's hands, (as they did of oliver's and the Rumps) labour to turn all solidity of Truth into nothing but Fantastical Whimsies, empty Notions, and sublimity of Nonsense. Their Affections like the poor woman's Wort, is often hot in the point of Zeal, when it is very small in point of judgement, and apt to run out into much disorder and consusion in rustical impertinencies, and pitiful Rhapsodies of confused stuff, spitting out their Poison like the Racovian Catechism, and such like Primers of the Devil, against all Christian Duties, extern Decency, and distinction of Order or Office; against all Holiness, Morality, and Modesty in men's Lives.  
None of these Rabbis can content themselves with Restraints of Humane or Divine Laws, or Principles embraced by their Ancestors, they must ever have some new fangle of Opinion and Practice to make themselves Remarkable; for these so cried up gifted men and Saints, if they should use the learned helps of other men's Labours, and add nothing of the Rawness of their own Invention, or may not seem to say something of themselves (being so full of the Spirit) like Bladders, would be forced to burst for want of vent. We finding now a brighter Light, a warmer Heat, a sweeter Influence from these New Parelij, as Rivals in brightness to our old 
* Id est Seeming and mock suns, sometime appearing with the true sun, as in Eng. 1640.  sun, and threatening now to eclipse it, and uttely expel it out of its ancient Orb and Sphere. O how should we emulate their blessedness? How should we be ready as Saint john to fall at their feet? To kiss their Footsteps, to attend their directions, imitate their Examples, participate of tehir Raptures, to pry into the third Heaven in Apocalyptick Revelations, to all which in word and fancy they pretend; imagining perhaps (as some say Turks do) of Blind and Madmen, that they have special Visions because they want their Eyes, and extraordinary Revelations, because they are destitute of common reason.   

Of their Disciples.  
Their Proselytes are rather perverted then converted, made theirs by a factious adherence, by a fiduciary obedience, or fallacious pretensions of the Spirits Special Motions; whose silliness makes them gentle Spectators, and obsequious Admirers of any thing that is new to them or above them, easily admire what they hardliest understand, and who rather may be said to be Spectators than Hearers of these men's affected gesticulations.  
These Brazen Orators venture to entertain their Leaden Auditors, their Circumcised Proselytes and silly Disciples, (who like Callow Birds gape wide, and are greedy to swallow any thing which is brought to them) with stuff of their own proper invention, impreparation, and discomposure. Nothing is commonly more weak & flashy (like Whites of Eggs without Salt) nothing more lose, spongy, and unsubstantial, than what ariseth from no higher Source than their own Brain, their sudden and shallow Fancies which (like Rheum easily swims out of their Mouths, Lips,) pestilently erroneous, nnd fanatically confused, most unwholesome and unsavoury Medleys of filthy Fashoods, desperate Doctrines tempered as the Ratsbane of Old Heretics (which Tertullian tells us of) was wont with some mixtures of Scripture Texts, some light Inspersions of truth to make them appetitious, passable, and toothsome, with their at first, may be, squeamish Disciples, who by little and little (as Mithridates) wonting themselves to nibble and sip of Poisons, come to that confidence that they venture to quaff up any Draughts, who by these great Doses of Mercury, occasion rather Palsies then any Steadiness in the Understanding, by rendering it more bold than Rational. And the only Antidote these wretched Hearers have against those or the like poisons of Souls, is no other, but their Custom of drinking of such horrid and abominable Liquors, whose Venom hath so stupefied their Consciences, that they are passed all feeling and sense, either of sin, shame, or sorrow.  
The large Phylacteries of pretended preaching Gifts, of high Expressions of Zeal, which these men so Pharisaically set forth to the vulgar view, by which these cunning Quakers seek to lose the eyes of their Spectators in clouds of Obscurities and Uncertainties, and the Vulgar once dazzled with the glistering flashes of Pretended Inspirations, Enthusiasms, and Seraphic Dictates; once in this maze in the wood of these strange Speculations, those unwonted Notions, those pretty Legerdemaines in Religion (which Fanatic jugglers study more than solid- Piety) are not able to know where they are as to Religion, nor find out Truth to lead them out of that Fool's Paradise. Poor people being dosed with Novelties, (as Larks with dazzling Glasses) picking up Curiosities, or gazing at Sublimities, or dubious in uncertainties, or entangled with Subtleties, (as Dear in acorn time, forget their food,) grow lean and fall into divers Snares and Temptations, into many Lusts and Passions; many as leaves from Trees in Autumn, every day drop away and die in their Mazes and Labyrinths of Religion, wearying themselves in intricate Difficulties, as some vain and Lunatic Christians, who busy themselves more how to interpret the Revealation, then to understand the clear Precepts of the Gospel, advancing no more in Religion than Birds in a Cage, or blind Horses in a Mill. Thus weak Proselytes being easily deluded and gulled, biased and swerved with fair words, specious pretences, and partial Interests; especially if their Novel Paedagogues have any show, smack, or tincture of more than ordinary godliness. The most serious endeavours of these serious men being to captivate the Ignorant beholders. So trade in nothing but Apes and Peacocks, Pageants of new opinions, like Pedlars of Religion vend their Toys, Ribbons, and Phanatique Rattles, till the Country gaping be a little over, and the gloss of Novelty faded away.   

Of their Calling and Ordination.  
They pretend and fancy to be stamped with the mark of Popular Ordination, obtrude themselves in crowds, in illiterate heaps, without a Call from God or man, but rather from the Countreymans' Whistle, or armed man's Trumpet; think it all one power enables them to make a Minister or Priest, which makes a Mayor, Bailiff, or Constable. They take the liberty to separate themselves from the Clergy, and by a mutual Call of one another to jugge themselves like Partridges into small Coveys, which they call Bodies or Churches, even before they have any Minister, whom they resolve to have out of their own choosing and ordaining, that they may be sure to have him after their own humour. They may be as well their own Preachers and Baptizers one after another, as ordain of themselves any one to be, and exercise that power which they presume to give to another; which they cannot do, if they have not the power themselves. What sorry choice do you think they make? How weakly do they examine Sufficiencies? how wildly ordain him? what sad and slovenly hands do they impose upon them? what crooked blocks do they hue to be their Mercuries? what I dolls do they set up to be their Shepherds, who can neither see nor hear, or rightly understand any Mysteries of Religion?  
They are a People rather taken with a familiar rusticity in a Minister, than with the learned Abilities; prefer a Mechanic before a Divine; judge not what is worthiest, but what is fittest to their fancies) receiving more willingly one that comes in his own name as gifted, or in their name as chosen and ordained by them, than if he come in Christ's Name, sent by his Vicegerents.  
Such tumors and inflamed swell they have of their abilities and selfconceited sufficiencies, that they think themselves at the first instant fitted for every work of the Sanctuary: their gifts, knowledge, and utterance are qualifications sufficient for them to challenge the right of ordination or public Ministry, they need no other patent or Commission. So they will be ploughing and sowing when they are not apted to break the clods, and harrow the seed, and this self-sowing comes like to that which springs on the house top, whereof the mower shall never fill his hand, nor he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom. Like Apes in the Fable, fancy they can build as brave houses, Cities, or Churches, as the ablest men; but when they come to the Wood, they have not so much as Saws or Axes, or any tools to begin the work withal.  
Alas those poor, but proudly gifted men, these serious people (as they term themselves) who spread so large sails, hang out such fair streamers; and seek to make so good a show to the vulgar simplicity, as if they were strong built, well rigged, and richly loaden Vessels, fit to endure those rough Seas and storms to which truth is frequently exposed; are easily judged by all wise and learned Christians to be but light keels and flat bottomed boats, by their floating so loftily, by their running so boldly over any shelves and rocks of opinion; which shows they have not the due Ballast, weighty Knowledge, and sound Judgement, the want of which makes them so foolhardy, apt to be tossed to and fro with every wind of Doctrine,; so prone to grow leaky, either letting in under water secretly corrupt and brackish opinions, or shipping in above deck openly and boldly whole Seas of any finister and worldly interests that are abroad the storms, and waves and confusions of civil affairs. And so by popular precipitances and licentious extravagancies, are the likeliest to overthrow and bring all Christianity, by Catholic and Mahometan Methods, in Atheism, illiterature, confusion and barbarity: for as they have the least skill, so have they the most passion and unbridled violence, and least able to distinguish between the Use and Abuse of things. Whence I gather that saying of a wise man to be most true, That it is better in Churches, as well as in places of Civil Power, to prefer corrupt men, than weak and foolish men; the one is as a thief in a Vineyard, who will only take ripe Grapes till he is satisfied; the other is as an Ass, eats ripe and green, crops the Vines, treads down much with his heels, and when his belly is full tumbles amongst them.  
To Civil Affairs its likely their spirit prompts them as much to be meddling: but there they know how to keep their spirit in better order, being overawed with evident danger attending tumultuary motions. None of those fiery Zealots are powerfully enough moved to usurp any place in the Privie-Council, to arrogate the Office or Authority of an Agent or Ambassador, or set himself in the Seat of Justice uncommissioned; or to intrude into any place Military or Civil, without warrant from other than their own spirits: though their pride and ambition may whisper them in the ear, they better dispatch businesses, do exacter Justice and speedier, than any in Authority; yet the danger of penalty of intrusion cows their Zeal, curbs their heady spirits, and cuts their combs: nor are they often so valiant as to act by their pretended impulses in any way but where they think there may be safety.   

Of their Learning.  
To speak of their Learning, or rather ignorance, I am ashamed to shame them so much, if I should show the world their emptiness, shallowness, penury, nothingness, as to Reason, Religion, Learning, or common Sense: how gross, confused, flat, insipid, affected they are in speaking or writing? how dark in Doctrine? how disorderly in Disputes? how impatient in reproof? what perfect Battologists they are, what circles they make, and rounds they dance in prayings and sermoning, strong only in railing, cavilling, and calumniating. How do their pamphlets cheat the buyers with the decoy of some very specious and spiritual Title, and amuse the Readers with shows of rare notions, as all were Manna and Aaron's Rod in their Ark, when there is nothing but Mice and emrod's, spurious, hypocritical, and damnable dogmata, strangely mutilating and deforming ancient Theology in its Morals, Mysteries, and Speculations.  
Not a dumb spirit, but a silly, prating, illiterate one possesses them. They would be counted Apostolical, yet are so far from the gift of tongues, miracles, knowledge, etc. that they are scarce masters of their own mother Tongue, neither knowing for the most part what they say, nor whereof they affirm, nor able with modesty, charity, gravity and humility, to bridle or use their tongues. They cry out against all humane Learning and Studies, all Liberal Arts and Sciences, against all Books but the Bible, against the Schools and Universities, as heathenish and Antichristian, marks of the Beast, as deformities and impertinencies (where we have Scripture-light) prejudicial to that immediate Divine teaching to which they pretend, and by which they learn and teach all true Religion, which needs not any of those rags and additional tatters of humane learning.  
These witless Lack-Latine Zealots, tell their Proselytes and silly Auditors, that Latin and Greek are the Languages of the Beast, persuade Christians to burn all Books, that they better understand the Bible, and the Bible too, that they may better understand the mind of God; which is all one as if the Israelites should have been persuaded to have rid themselves of the cumber of their Swords, Spears and Shields, that so they better defend themselves.  
Christ did not disdain to converse with the Learned Doctors and Rabbis of his time, amongst whom he was found after his parents had sought him sorrowing: yet our wanderers and seekers are loath to seek him, afraid to find him, disdain to own him among the Learned, lest in so doing, they should seem to confess they had lost Christ and true Religion in their illiterate Conventicles and ignorant presumptions.  
These great sticklers against Learning confute their own Principles, their folly falls on themselves, for their despair of learning, makes them despise it in others; Lucifer-like they pretend light and intent darkness; cry up the spirit, which is easily done, that they may cry down learning, which is hardlier attained. But O how do they seriously triumph and rejoice when any man that is but a smatterer of Learning, and smells a little of the pen and inkhorn, seems to adhere and lean to them, and stickles for their party and faction, deceived with their shows of godliness and inspirations. O how do they prick up their ears, and march then with greater courage (as the Hares did when they had got a Fox to lead them, in whom they thought was more strength and cunning than their own fearful feebleness could be guilty of:) even so these bunglers in reason, wresters of Scripture, and hucksters of Religion, do find fault with those tools which they have no skill to use, and like coward's quarrel with those Weapons as unlawful, which they most fear and least resist. As Apes, who knowing their own uncomely want of tails, would be glad if they could bring it in fashion for all Beasts to have none, or persuade them to cut off (as burdens and deformities) those postern ornaments of the body wherewith nature hath furnished the nobler, comelier, and stronger creatures.  
What would these illiterate furies give to have indeed such an Illumination as might in one night make them as learned and able in all points as the Scotists, Thomists, Sorbonists, and other learned men are, who detect these Mountebancks, discover these deceitful workers, and set these cheats in the Pillory of public infamy, to lose their ears, at tandem male audiunt qui male dicunt & agunt, paring their under nails, and muzling the bolder jaws of this ferine faction of these desperate and degenerate Christians, who like Balaams' beast, or as horse and Mule being without understanding, are ready to fall upon those that are fit to be their Masters and rulers both in Church and State. Who instead of sound learning, have confident ignorance, or fraudulent and flattering errors or factious semblances of truth to usher in damnable and Heterodox Doctrines, and in lieu of excellent literature, have only the three distempers at height which Sir Francis Bacon (in his advancement of learning) observed to be in most men fantastickness, contention and curiosity, by imagination, altercation, and affectation.  
First, Comparing themselves with themselves, they fancy they grow holier, as they grow bolder in their opinions and actions: hence they are easily flattered into high imaginations, and cheated with strong presumptions, as if some common gifts of knowledge, some sceptical quickness, some volubility of utterance, some scriptural expressions which they have attained beyond their former selves or equals, were rare, immediate, and special gifts of the spirit. Then because they should seem no body if they carry their small wares in an old pack, they invent some new fashion of Religion, or model of Churchway they fancy most. Then follow those quick Emotions and stir upon their spirits (which have the quickening only of self in them) these are presently cried up for motions, manifestations, excitations, and impulses of God's Spirit on them. Then they are moved to extraordinary heats, and irregular vehemencies, and illegal irregularities, as counterfeit possessed are. These fond conceits of their improvements and perfections, makes them, like careless children, forsake the lap of their mother before they can stand by themselves, and think themselves Sophies before they arrive to be Sophisters; or fit Pilots to steer the Ship of the Church, when they are very mean Skippers and Skullers.  
The variety of their conceits, mixtures and inventions, first kindle with modest sparks, as if they would enlighten, warm, and refine Religion; but after they have got to them vulgar fuel, they arise to such dreadful flames and conflagrations, as threaten to consume all that was ever built before them. Poor men, thus once puffed up with their timpanies and self-conceptions, having once over-looked their first errors, they never after have leisure, patience or humility, to discern the gross yet secret distempers which are in their spirits, the many distinctions, disguises and wind, by which worldly passions and interests slily creep in, and concealedly work in their hearts, even than most secretly (and so most dangerously) when under this blind of God's Spirit, when the Lord shall be entitled to their whole plot and project of their follies and furies.   

Doct.  
Trace them a little farther in their Doctrine, and you will find them to tread much awry. They are a People taught to be tumultuary against you, and imperious upon you. Teach that evil of sin may be done, that public good may come thereby.  
They permit divorces in sleight causes, affect parity and reject Tithes as superstitious and judaical; they admit private men to administer the Sacraments; and in some places commit the power of the keys to women; in preaching they will not be tied to any Text, nor in praying to any Form; in communicating they sit at Table, or have no Table at all; and because they would not seem too superstitious in the time of administration, they are covered. They love not the old names of Churches (which they slightly call Steeple-houses,) of the days of the week, of the months of the year, of Christmas, Michaelmas, Candlemas, etc. in their Almanacs all Saints days must be obliterated, alias their pious (but mendacious Prognosticator) William Lilly had not so long kept sanctity with them.  
They are afraid to meddle with any thing that ever passed the Pope's fingers, except only the Lands and Revenues of the Clergy; leave nothing to maintain Religion or its Ministry, but the scraps of arbitrary and grudging Contributions: Like Don Quixots and Knights-Errant, have so many Romances, forms, and idaeas of Religion in their heads, which makes them admirable but not imitable; have such ferocious spirits like pampered horses whom no ground will hold, neighing after novelties, and give way to longwinded extemporary specious nonsense above the common capacity. If any wise man comes to hear them, he soon finds them as dark and dusky as if they had been begotten in the eclipse of the Sun, and born in the last quarter of the Moon. The heat of these Rotomontadoes by their overcharged and ill-discharged zeal, usually breaks itself in sunder in its abettors, assistants and spectators, with such enchanting Opinions that they make God the Patronizer of their Villainies, Murders, Tyrannies and Treasons, and boast how clearly it might appear God owned their Cause and disowned their Adversaries, urging Gods permissions against his Precepts and Institutions, as though God's toleration of evil, heresies, schisms, disorders, etc. did justify them against his Word and Church that forbids them. Pretend the Spirit to be Patron of their most extravagant fancies, the deviser of their most incredible opinions, and dictator of their most indemonstrable dreams and new revelations.   

They like no humble, sober, and exact ties of conscience, and duties of true Religion, by which holy men in all ages have given diligence to make sure their calling and election, to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, by repenting, fasting, watching, prayer, by judging and condemning their sinful self, by mortification and self-denial, coming to the Cross of Christ, taking it up, and bearing it to all patiented sufferings. These are harder disciplines, rougher severities, stricter Doctrines of piety, than our delicate Novelists, our gentle Enthusiasts, our triumphing Libertines, our softer Saints, can endure, who contrary to the examples of good old Christians and Martyrs, glory not in crosses but in Crowns, not in buffets but in raptures, not in being counted sinners, but Saints, not in self-denyings, but in self-interesses, not crucified to the world, but crucifiers of the world, not suffering from the world, but triumphing in the world.  
They are in fancy as the Argonautae bringers of the golden Fleece, the Riches of Righteousness of Christ, the Treasures of Heaven, the true Gold of Ophir, pretending that God is their Father, that they are Saints and spiritual inspired Prophets, sent of God to call the world to repentance, to reign with Christ, etc. in such conceited confidencies, proud hypocrisies, soft fallacies, rotten sensualities, libidinous excrescencies, like Estrike birds, set forth their soft and gay feathers (having but little bodies but less brains) by wand'ring from their nests, their Shops and Looms, Thimbles and Bodkins (the stations wherein most of them have been bred up) and from which they have no sufficient rule from God or man to move them, having at the best but very moderate gifts, not tried or approved by any wise men, but only blown up by the pitiful applauses of some silly men and women, with levity, gapings, swell, hollowness, crookedness, and weakness.  
These curious Speculatists recite may be by rote some raw and fejume Notions and disorderly Meditations (which weak men call prophesying) with much error, froth, and vanity, incident to these self-ostentations of Gifts, which have more of the tongue than heart or head, and oft times resemble more the Player than the Preacher. Narcissus-like, they are so deluded with the flattering echoes of their silly admirers, and so taken with their own fashion in such false glasses, that they are like to dote till they die, and starve themselves as to all real sufficiencies, by the fond imaginations of how great they have, and their ignorance of how much indeed they want.  
Much of these men's temper and opinion, and after the same riotous fashion, was that ignorant and abominable rabble of the Circumcelliones (a subsection of the Donatists) who were wont to ramble idly up and down like squibs with fire and force, till after great ostentations of piety and devotion, and zeal for martyrdom, calling themselves deuces Sanctorum, Captains of the Saints, and Contenders for the Faith: they fell at length to pilfering, then to plundering and wasting whole Countries, opposing in an hostile manner the Vicegerents of the Emperor Honorius; at length were by him destroyed.  
Religion, Perjury, innocent bloodshed and Sacrilege, are drawn on by them like straight and pinching shoes at first, with the shooing-horn of Religion and Reformation, with antipathies against Idolatry and abhorrencies of Superstition: and the better to set off their skill, they make, as Herod, most artificial Speeches, mixed with preaching and praying; and sprinkling of Scripture, and God's Cause; or as Mountebanks, make large haranges, specious and popular Orations, as gilded bitter pills to give the better Gusto. In this wise these Hucksters and Cheats of Religion (as the Magicians of Egypt) sometimes so enchant and delude poor credulous souls, that they believe all that comes from them to be miraculous; abusing or changing glow-worms for Stars, counterfeit with cropped opinions, and round-headed Tenants with full weight of Christian Doctrine, still cogging with religious dice, and cheating with plausible Fallacies (seemingly brought out of Scripture) until poor Believers, like the bewitched Galatians, 
Gal. 3.  have lost all or most of their true faith and belief. Yea some of these Impostors do not leave poor Christians whom they have cozened with fair shows of the Spirits revelations and new Gospels, so much true faith as to believe the Articles of Christian Doctrine. And for the better colour, some of them pretend to set up (as john of Leyden did) the Kingdom of righteousness, the Throne and Sceptre of King jesus: Yet this is but a decoy to entrap the vulgar; for who will not seem willing to submit to Christ's Kingdom? But we are better taught than to expect his Kingdom to be of this world. 
Joh. 18.16. — But afterwards when their fanatic power comes to be Paramount, you will find no such lenities and gentle salves, then in popular Proposals and levelling Principles with Goliabs of uncircumcised enormities, they are much for a new Paracelsian practice, unexperienced Applications, and Chemical Extractions; then with the Sword of blood they can be merry in people's miseries, with, Populus vult decipi decipiatur, like Muncer and Knipperdoling, Hacket and Arthington.  
These presumptuous Phaeton's never think they enlighten the Church enough, unless they set Kingdoms and States on fire. Accoring to the method of those rare cures they sometimes wrought in Germany about the year 1530. by the slaughter of an hundred thousand people, in the Anabaptist and phanatique ways of mutiny and rebellion. To be short, in the first broaching, and after drawings forth of their new Doctrine, projects and inventions, the Authors of them more look upon men than God, how it may suit with secular aims and interests, than the practice of Antiquity. Like the Hantons of the Swiss become willing upon the least apprehension of advantage to plant the same Engines and weapons against the wrong side as the right. And their late minted Doctrinals verminly bred out of the putrefactions of men's brains, and the corruptions of the times, serve in some sort to scratch itching ears to some tune of liberty, pleasures, profit or preferment; while they clamour like Demetrius and his Complices, in his panic fears for his silver and Diana, where he considered more his gain than his Goddess.  
Some, though fiery, yet are orderly and patiented in Government; though they excel in gifts, yet are not swelled with tumors; but these are as unsavoury salt, that is good for nothing, unless it be new boiled in an Independent or levelling Cauldron, over a Socinian furnace with a popular fire: they are proud, forward and presumptuous, like the Giant who presumed of his vast limbs and extraordinary number of his fingers and toes, sc. 24. have such extraordinary excrescencies, which exceed men's noses, or blind their eyes; sometimes swelling bigger than their heads. Being drunk with their own fancies, sometimes reel and stumble upon notions metaphysical, which vainly puff them up, while they are still Wells without Water, deep, but dark and dry in their profound follies and profane niceties. Or clouds without moist exhalations, carried with the tempests of passion and high presumptions, above the plain and practical way of true Christians, and indeed above the proportion and sphere of their Gifts and Parts.  
A little goes a great way with these illiterates in their supposed inspirations, and where they cannot go far on, they go round in circling tautologies, snarled repetitions, intricate confusions, which are still the same skains of thread which other men have handsomely spun and wound up in better method and order, which these men have neither skill nor patience to unfold, but pull out here a thread and there an end, which they break off abrubtly, to the confounding of all method, order, and proportion, Divine or Moral.  
In their new Models of Independent, levelling, quaking, and anabaptistick scabious Congregations, they fold up the curtains of the true Church so short and narrow, to such small figures, and obsure Conventicles and Paucities, that they will scarce allow the whole company of true Christians in the world to be so great as would fill one jewish Synagogue; being (as Pygmalion with his Image) enamoured with their corpusculoes, the little Flock and new Bodies of their Churches, or rather meeting-places, shutting themselves up into some blind corners, and confining Christian Religion to obscure Cells and silly Assemblies where in stead of the Sun's fair light of true Reason, good Learning, and sound Religion, men should like Owls and Bats, and Moles, only howl, chatter, and foratch one another in the dark. They are the kind of Animals which curse the day, cannot abide the light, because their eyes are weak, their works are dark, and both minds and manners are depraved.  
Having presented them to you in gross, I will now give you them in their Anatomy. They are a fond and fraudulent, pusillanimous and frothy Generation of vaperers; Plagiaries who infect the common air of Christian Charity, Order and Peace; bring forth out of the rude mould of their own invention, nothing but disorder: they are the left Band of Babel's Builders, fit Instruments to divide, confound, and destroy, but never to plant and cultivate; whose lips never yet dropped like Hermon so much as a dew of sweet and wholesome knowledge on any place. They are a riotous, promiscuous and incomposed rabble, a swarm of ignorant Quacks, preaching Mountebanks of the rude and vulgar, of no value, Mahometan Jugglers, religious Monopolizers, pious Impostors, devout Devils, angelized Satan's, sanctified Demons, Bells and Dragons of phanatique Divinity, as the cheating Pontiffs of the heathen gods and Oracles, sit still in their lazy and unlearned ignorance, expecting miraculous illuminations and assistancies, like seiled Pigeons, the less they see, the higher they soar in airy, light, and highflying fancies, as moon-eyed horses, whose light follows the flux of reflux of the mad Planet, blanche and start more by day than night.  
There are (saith Plato in Timaeo) two diseases of the soul, Madness and Ignorance: madness is from the abounding with pride and passion; ignorance, from the want of knowledge and instruction; those men are infected with both distempers. For they are a People given over to dementation and astonishment, blindness and madness, to seek after and trust in lying vanities and desperate hypocrisies, to rest in the flattery of vulgar successes; who think every one that prospers a Saint or good Angel, and every one that is unfortunate a Devil or great Offender, as the Barbarians did S. Paul when the Viper seized upon his hand and he shook it off unhurt. They judge of Spiritual Gifts by bare and barren forms, by soft insinuations and expressions, by melancholy sourness, pharisaical frowns, bold assertions, audacious adventures, and successful insolences. Fly to their enchantments, by using much Scripture expression, by following popular sermoning, hasty assurances, uncharitable despisings, by affecting an odd kind of canting way of writing and speaking: Pretending to Sanctity, thorough Reformation, and advancing the Kingdom of Jesus Christ; to Raptures, Enthusiasms, holy Convulsions, and Revelations, and such like quaking and quacking tricks: conjuring up strange hopes, fears and jealousies, like so many Ghosts and Goblins to scare and amaze the common people.  
Like Ambulatory Arabs and wand'ring Scythians, they must every week or month change their quarters, to vend their transcendent and damnable Doctrines, transferring diseases like the running gout from one part to another, more dangerous than the plague or epidemical malady, breathing out nothing but ashes and cinders, like Visuvius and Aetna, whose eruptions are vastutions to all near them. They are fit to be followers of Goths and Vandals, or listed with jack Cade or Watt Tyler, or Subjects to john Bowled a Tailor of Leyden, who assumed the Title of Rex justitiae hujus mundi, King of Justice of this world. Or to john Williams the last King of Zion and of this mad tribe, who had at once twenty wives; and wore by his side the great gideon's Sword sent him from Heaven, as he gave out: who exhorted his Subjects and Brethren the Phanatique Anabaptists to look upon all other Nations and Religions, as the Israelites did upon the Cananeans and others of the Land of Promise: but at length he was burnt at Clavae, Anno 1580.  
You may find these modern Knipperdolings amongst the Hierarchy of handycraftsmen, in the Kingdom of the fifth Monarchy men, at the meeting-places of james Naylor the late Separatist, amongst the Rumps mourners, or the scattered separate bodies of the late decimo sexto edition, or in the Court of Justice they lately erected in Ireland, from whence they have driven the Gentry and Nobility, and extirpated the Natives. They were a Phanatique livery composed of selfconfidence, intolerable boastings, of sequaciousness, of feminine softness, of lying Prophecies, of violent Zealotries, of swelling excrescencies, and loud clamours and empty noises of reformation. They have a head composed of the threads of Faction, and wear a long sword of destruction; you may easily know them by the goggle of their eye, by their pale and wan looks, by the quaint device of their groaning devotion, by the counterfeit current of their sanctified tears, by their godly way and zeal, which lately made them aspire to the Pulpit, and renounce the awl and the anvil, and set up a new Exchange for Religion at the charges of the honest party. To conclude my Anatomy, I will epitomise them in a line or two more.  
They are mothy and moungril Predicants, Centaurs in the Church, half Clericks and half Laics, the by-blows of the Clergy, gifted hypocrites, severe Momasses, a whining people, tribolary Christians, new dwindling Divines, the prophetical Pigmies of this age; unordained, unblessed, untried, unclean spirits, whose calling, commission, and tenure depends on popularity, flattery and beggary; their excellency consists in tautologising, in praying ex tempore, that is, out of all time, without order or method; being eminent in nothing above the Plebeian pitch and vulgar proportion. They spin out their Sermons at their wheels, or wove them up at their looms, or dig them out with their spades, weigh or measure them in their shops, or stitch and cobble them with their Thimble and Lasts; or thrash them out with their Flails, and afterward preach them in some Barn to their dusty disciples; who the better to set off the oddness of their silly Teachers, fancy themselves into some imaginary persecution, as if they were thus driven into dens and caves, and woods. Their holy and learned Academies, where they first conned this chemical new Divinity, and are since come to so great proficiency, were Munster's Revelations, Geneva's Calvinism, Amsterdams' Toleration, and New-englands' Preciseness.  
Their Plantation sprung first from the putrified part of john Calvin, who being branded with Heresy and Sodomy in his own Country of Picardy, retired to Angolesme, where he went by the name of Deparcan; there he copied his Institutions, stealing the greatest part out of the Works of Melancton and Hiperius Sarcerius; or as Westphally the Lutheran saith, he stole all from Oeclampadius. Thence he went to Germany, and came at length as in regression to Geneva. Where this our headless (yet fanciful) Monster by Sir john was begotten on an Elders Maid, and afterwards imped upon the stocking of Schism by Knox and Buchanan, and brought up after the reformed fashion of the Scotch Kirk, for propagation of the Gospel and better reformation, creeping into this Nation, and thus multiplied and increased by the phanatique lechery of the lascivious Rump-Parliament and oliver's Redcoats.  
They are crafty enough to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge or honesty; they have hands active enough, but corrupt and base ends; secular interests wrapped up under specious pretensions of piety. Like Watermens, while they look one way they row another. They abuse Learning to abett Errors; and Religion, to colour hypocrisy; and the name of the Spirit, to indulge the flesh; and Heaven, to carry on earthly designs. They mistake anger for zeal, dreams for revelations, memory for conscience, Enthusiasms for Prophecies; to wave flattery they fall into incivility; and to avoid pride, into baseness. They are worthy of themselves, and wiser men's pity. If they have truth enough to save any man, they have uncharitableness enough to damn any Angels.  
These Lines perfectly describing all or most of our Fantastics in general, I remit their particular opinions to more particular Remonstrances, this very Relation being a sufficient Confutation.   
FINIS.