es at
all, no fasting days, no cross in baptism, kneeling at communion, no church
music, &c., no bishops' courts, no church government, rail at all our
church discipline, will not hold their tongues, and all for the peace of
thee, O Sion! No, not so much as degrees some of them will tolerate, or
universities, all human learning, ('tis _cloaca diaboli_) hoods, habits,
cap and surplice, such as are things indifferent in themselves, and wholly
for ornament, decency, or distinction's sake, they abhor, hate, and snuff
at, as a stone-horse when he meets a bear: they make matters of conscience
of them, and will rather forsake their livings than subscribe to them. They
will admit of no holidays, or honest recreations, as of hawking, hunting,
&c., no churches, no bells some of them, because papists use them; no
discipline, no ceremonies but what they invent themselves; no
interpretations of 'scriptures, no comments of fathers, no councils, but
such as their own fantastical spirits dictate, or _recta ratio_, as
Socinians, by which spirit misled, many times they broach as prodigious
paradoxes as papists themselves. Some of them turn prophets, have secret
revelations, will be of privy council with God himself, and know all his
secrets, [6585]_ Per capillos spiritum sanctum tenent, et omnia sciunt cum
sint asini omnium obstinatissimi_, a company of giddy heads will take upon
them to define how many shall be saved and who damned in a parish, where
they shall sit in heaven, interpret Apocalypses, (_Commentatores
praecipites et vertiginosos_, one calls them, as well he might) and those
hidden mysteries to private persons, times, places, as their own spirit
informs them, private revelations shall suggest, and precisely set down
when the world shall come to an end, what year, what month, what day. Some
of them again have such strong faith, so presumptuous, they will go into
infected houses, expel devils, and fast forty days, as Christ himself did;
some call God and his attributes into question, as Vorstius and Socinus;
some princes, civil magistrates, and their authorities, as Anabaptists,
will do all their own private spirit dictates, and nothing else. Brownists,
Barrowists, Familists, and those Amsterdamian sects and sectaries, are led
all by so many private spirits. It is a wonder to reveal what passages
Sleidan relates in his Commentaries, of Cretinck, Knipperdoling, and their
associates, those madmen of Munster in Germany; what strange