he
souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire,
another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits,
schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride,
singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in
an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new
divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one
kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother,
father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the
disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates. How
did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent? Those
Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume. How
many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite
alienated from Christ! Lucian's Alexander Simon Magus, whose statue was to
be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justin Martyr, _Simoni deo sancto_, &c.,
after his decease. [6431]Apollonius Tianeus, Cynops, Eumo, who by
counterfeiting some new ceremonies and juggling tricks of that Dea Syria,
by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of 40,000 men, and did
much harm: with _Eudo de stellis_, of whom Nubrigensis speaks, _lib. 1.
cap. 19._ that in King Stephen's days imitated most of Christ's miracles,
fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the
air, &c., to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls. In Franconia, 1476,
a base illiterate fellow took upon him to be a prophet, and preach, John
Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30,000 persons, and
was taken by the commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven. [6432]
"Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaffs, servants ran from their
masters, children from their parents, scholars left their tutors, all to
hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the
Bishop of Wartzburg, and so he and his heresy vanished together." How many
such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign? what
chronicles will not afford such examples? that as so many _ignes fatui_,
have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt
to be carried about by the blast of every wind, a rude inconstant
multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are
cluttered together like so many pebbles in a tide. What