nt on 1 Tim. xvi. 20, and
Alphonsus _de castro lib. 1. adversus haereses_, gives two more eminent
notes or probable conjectures to know such men by, (they might have taken
themselves by the noses when they said it) [6566]"First they affect
novelties and toys, and prefer falsehood before truth; [6567]secondly, they
care not what they say, that which rashness and folly hath brought out,
pride afterward, peevishness and contumacy shall maintain to the last
gasp." Peculiar symptoms are prodigious paradoxes, new doctrines, vain
phantasms, which are many and diverse as they themselves. [6568]Nicholaites
of old, would have wives in common: Montanists will not marry at all, nor
Tatians, forbidding all flesh, Severians wine; Adamians go naked,
[6569]because Adam did so in Paradise; and some [6570]barefoot all their
lives, because God, Exod. iii. and Joshua v. bid Moses so to do; and Isaiah
xx. was bid put off his shoes; Manichees hold that Pythagorean
transmigration of souls from men to beasts; [6571]"the Circumcellions in
Africa, with a mad cruelty made away themselves, some by fire, water,
breaking their necks, and seduced others to do the like, threatening some
if they did not," with a thousand such; as you may read in [6572]Austin
(for there were fourscore and eleven heresies in his times, besides schisms
and smaller factions) Epiphanius, Alphonsus _de Castro, Danaeus, Gab,
Prateolus_, &c. Of prophets, enthusiasts and impostors, our Ecclesiastical
stories afford many examples; of Elias and Christs, as our [6573]Eudo _de
stellis_, a Briton in King Stephen's time, that went invisible, translated
himself from one to another in a moment, fed thousands with good cheer in
the wilderness, and many such; nothing so common as miracles, visions,
revelations, prophecies. Now what these brain-sick heretics once broach,
and impostors set on foot, be it never so absurd, false, and prodigious,
the common people will follow and believe. It will run along like murrain
in cattle, scab in sheep. _Nulla scabies_, as [6574]he said, _superstitione
scabiosior_; as he that is bitten with a mad dog bites others, and all in
the end become mad; either out of affection of novelty, simplicity, blind
zeal, hope and fear, the giddy-headed multitude will embrace it, and
without further examination approve it.

_Sed vetera querimur_, these are old, _haec prius fuere._ In our days we
have a new scene of superstitious impostors and heretics. A new company of
a