tes; seeking their beloved, but
could not find him, as their souls desired to know him, whom their souls
loved above their chiefest joy.

These people were called Seekers by some, and the Family of Love by
others; because, as they came to the knowledge of one another, they
sometimes met together, not formally to pray or preach at appointed times
or places, in their own wills, as in times past they were accustomed to
do, but waited together in silence; and as anything rose in any one of
their minds, that they thought savoured of a divine spring, they
sometimes spoke. But so it was, that some of them not keeping in
humility, and in the fear of God, after the abundance of revelation, were
exalted above measure; and for want of staying their minds in an humble
dependance upon him that opened their understandings, to see great things
in his law, they ran out in their own imaginations, and mixing them with
those divine openings, brought forth a monstrous birth, to the scandal of
those that feared God, and waited daily in the temple not made with
hands, for the consolation of Israel; the Jew inward, and circumcision in
spirit.

This people obtained the name of Ranters, from their extravagant
discourses and practices. For they interpreted Christ's fulfilling of
the law for us, to be a discharging of us from any obligation and duty
the law required of us, instead of the condemnation of the law for sins
past, upon faith and repentance: and that now it was no sin to do that
which before it was a sin to commit; the slavish fear of the law being
taken off by Christ, and all things good that man did, if he did but do
them with the mind and persuasion that it was so. Insomuch that divers
fell into gross and enormous practices; pretending in excuse thereof,
that they could, without evil, commit the same act which was sin in
another to do: thereby distinguishing between the action and the evil of
it, by the direction of the mind, and intention in the doing of it.
Which was to make sin super-abound by the aboundings of grace, and to
turn from the grace of God into wantonness; a securer way of sinning than
before: as if Christ came not to save us from our sins, but in our sins;
not to take away sin, but that we might sin more freely at his cost, and
with less danger to ourselves. I say, this ensnared divers, and brought
them to an utter and lamentable loss as to their eternal state; and they
grew very troublesome to the better sort o