Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	church_n	company_n	true_a	3,508	5	6.4665	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77424	A Breife description or character of the religion and manners of the phanatiques in generall. Scil. [brace] Anabaptists, Independents, Brovvnists, Enthusiasts, Levellers, Quakers, Seekers, Fift-Monarchy-Men, & Dippers. Shewing and refuting theur absurdities by due application, reflecting much also on Sir Iohn Præcisian and other novelists. Non seria semper.		1660 (1660)	Wing B4573; Thomason E1765_1; ESTC R209656	17,102	54

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 Iewish 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 Suns faire light of true Reason good Learning and sound Religion men should like Owls and Bats and Moles onely 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 Babels 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 wholsome 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 Juglers religious Monopolizers pious Impostors devout Devils angelized Satans sanctified Demons Bells and Dragons of phanatique Divinity as the cheating Pontifs of the heathen gods and Oracles sit still in their lazie and unlearned ignorance expecting miraculous illuminations and assistancies like seiled Pigeons the less they see the higher they soar in airy light and high-flying fancies as moon-ey'd horses whose light follows the flux of reflux of the mad Planet blaunch 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 sowreness pharisaical frowns bold assertions audacious adventures and successefull insolencies Fly to their enchantments by using much Scripture expression by following popular sermonings hasty assurances uncharitable despisings by affecting an odde kinde of canting way of writing and speaking Pretending to Sanctity thorow Reformation and advancing the Kingdom of Jesus Christ to Raptures Enthusiasmes 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 wandring 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 Iack Cade or Watt Tyler or Subjects to Iohn Bowld a Tayler of Leyden who assumed the Title of Rex justitiae hujus mundi King of Justice of this world Or to Iohn Williams the last King of Sion and of this mad tribe who had at once twenty wives and wore by his side the great Gideons 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 Clave Anno 1580. You may finde these modern Knipperdolings amongst the Hierarchy of handycraftsmen in the Kingdome of the fifth Monarchy men at the meeting-places of Iames 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 self-confidence intolerable boastings of sequaciousness of feminine softnesse 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 gogle of their eye by their pale and wan looks by the queint 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 awle and the anvill 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 Centaures in the Church half Clericks and half Laicks the by-blows of the Clergie gifted hypocrites severe Momasses a whineing people tribolary Christians new dwindling Divines the prophetical Pigmies of this age unordained unblest untried unclean spirits whose calling commission and tenure depends on popularity flattery and beggery 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 weave 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 Flayles 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 chymical new Divinity and are since come to so great proficiency were Munsters Revelations Geneva's Calvinism Amsterdams Toleration and New-Englands Precisenesse Their Plantation sprung first from the putrified part of Iohn Calvin who being branded with Heresie and Sodomy in his own Countrey 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 fancifull Monster by Sir Iohn was begotten on an Elders Maid and afterwards impt upon the stocken of Schisme 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 Olivers 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 Water-men while they look one way they row another They abuse Learning to abett Errors and Religion to colour hypocrisie 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 Prophesies to wave flattery they fall into incivility and to avoid pride into baseness They are worthy of themselves and wiser mens pity If they have truth enough to save any man they have uncharitableness enough to damne any Angels These Lines perfectly describing all or most of our Fantasticks in general I remit their particular opinions to more particular Remonstrances this very Relation being a sufficient Confutation FINIS

A BREIFE DESCRIPTION OR CHARACTER Of the Religion and Manners of the PHANATIQUES In Generall Scil. ANABAPTISTS INDEPENDENTS BROVVNISTS ENTHUSIASTS LEVELLERS QUAKERS SEEKERS FIFT-MONARCHY-MEN DIPPERS Shewing and Refuting their Absurdities by due Application Reflecting much also on Sir Iohn Praecisian and other Novelists Non Seria Semper London Printed and are to be sold by most Stationers 1660. The Description of the PHANATIQUES In Generall PHanatiques in generall are fancifull 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 dreames and to take fancies for revelations and eary presumtions for serious examination of truth Their Religion consists much in externe modes and fashions in adhering to some party or Faction in popular and specious insinuations and pretensions in admiration of some mens persons gifts piety and supposed Zeale in prevalencies of power in Worldly successes in verball assurances in loose confidencies of being elected and predestinated to happinesse of being called Saints Prohets preachers in a new extraordinary way in great Zealotries for some new forme or way of constituting discipline in boldness to affirme or deny or doe any thing presuming themselves able to doe whatsoever they fancy Owne nothing for religion in any man or any Church which appeares 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 onely a fiercenesse for that side which they take a consoriousnesse to all they count not theirs brand all they like not with the marke of Antichrist some of them make every thing a sin and errour 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 onely for private illuminations solitary seekings raptures prophetick accomplishments c. blown up with their own breath and other mens applauses set off all that is done in their way with Epithets of rare holy Spiritual divine saint-like c. they have such self conceits of their extraordinary gifts and abilityes that they call their presumtions inspirations their darknesse light their dessolute licentiousnesse Christian liberty their fiercenesse Zeals selfe confidence a divine cal novelties rarities their opinions perfections distractions raptures their ravenings reasons their dreames oracles such specious and gilded idoles Teraphims of their owne imagination their fancy forgeth in the shallow plasnes and fowl puddles of their owne invention where their confused thoughts are oftentimes sooner out of their mouthes than in their minds They are meer 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 Enthusiastick 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 uncleane birds magnify what is most dishonest and uncomely in their foolish ringleaders even their ignorance set off meerly with impudence Wise men find much of these mens religion deformed with minicall affectations of words with studied tones antick gestures apish tricks and grimasses scurrulous expresions much in them is sulsome brutish tumultuary confusednesse in their duties all their Zeale tending meerly to profaness supinesse fordidnesse and slovenlynesse Nothing pleaseth their clogged stomacks that is old though never so true nothing comes amisse if it be dressed up with novelty they think even religion it selfe is never well unlesse 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 formes of Churches that they may new modell them to their popular way of calling to advance such opinions and practises 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 own'd before these new coyners 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 dreames and single imaginations of filly men and women were now more holy than Oracles Believe no Church or religion is sufficiently reformed till they are most diametrically contrary to every use and custome 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 yeild to arguments that cross him their fancy is the God they worship faction is their Heaven peace their hell and the Papist the Divill they hate for all that helpe them not they hold Popish To be plaine so much bran filth and Drosse of pride popularity chisme malapertnesse and contempt of all men differing in opinion from them doe hitherto generally appeare 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 Rabby They will hardly ever make such loves as will be sit for shew-bred the corne being ground in such a new beaten mill proves full of grit and gravel These Histrionick players and vaporing preachers in many places seeke to fill the world with meer noise and clamours crying down all ancient Religion as Antichristian turning all into spiritual and new prophetick gifts to which they highly pretend like as those cheats wanderers do who swear they have found out can sell you the true Elixar the Philosophers Stone which will turn baser mettalls into gold while yet poor men their rags sords and beggery sufficiently confutes their rare skill proclaming to all they more need others charity then they are any wayes able to releive any man necessities Like the Gnosticks they pretend to be as perfect as the Apostles Like Comets Exalting themselves in high notions above the ordinary reach of reason in spirituall manifestations beyond plain and ordinary Christians that they are not easily calculated by common accounts Covet to be called spirituall who walk after the flesh study to cover their follies and hipocrisies with the Shewes of the spirit of God as if it were not enough to sinne against its manifest rules and examples in Scripture observed by the Church unlesse they impute also unto it their simplicities fondnesses impudencies filthy dreames 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 owne It had it been better for such not to have known the way of the Spirit in Scripture far mor evenial to erre for want of the Spirits guidance and light than to shut our eyes against it and to impute it to our errors dreames darknesses and hipocrisies It s better to have the heart wholy barren then to lay our adulterous bastards to the Spirits charge when indeed they are issued of nothing but pride joyned to ignorance forgeries and glistring novelties set off with insolence since neither the temper of their Spirits nor their workes or words are like the rules markes or fruites of the holy Spirit of Christ They challinge the spirit of Christ in such a plenary measure and power to themselves that they justifie their want of ordinary abilites 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 Shews of special illuminations sudden inspirations and spiritual inablements You must not ask them where are their Miracles where their Empire over Devills where their gift of languages where their Prophesies 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 justifie the flagitiousnesse of their Villanies as if the zeale they had for Religion provoked them to such Outrages then the most crying Injustice must be thought the highest Iustice the most partiall Tolleration must be voiced for Christian Liberty the grossest Anarchies good Government and the most Novel and unjust Cause that ever was must needs be cryed up for the Good Old Cause The better to set off their Opinions and Practises 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 waies as are uncomely and unwonted This is done with the same Falsity and Confidence as Mahomet perswaded the credulous vulgar that his fits of Falling-sicknesse 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 Atomes Volatle and unsetled justle whirle up down without incorporating any thing but Air. Their Holinesse is meer titular and verball like Montanists Catharists Gnosticks of old or the later cruel and rude Phanatiques in Germany who cryed Holy Holy Holy to their parties and factions as if there were holy seditions holy ambitions holy sacriledges holy cruelties holy ignorances holy confusions holy errors holy Schismes holy Hypocrisies in the hearts and spirits of spirituall men Under these disguises of extraordinary gifts of the Spirit Architophel and Iehu and Iudas and Symon Magus and the Sons of Sheva and Demus and the selfe made Prophetesse Iezabel and Diotrophes all false Prophets and Ministers of Satan studied to appear If any praies publickly in matter words or method approved by the practise tradition of the Church it is they say but a forme 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 Bookes t is 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 Greekes and Latine Churches ever did their Socinian and Arrian Eares 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 Commandements and Pater Noster these men fancy them as the Recitation of some Charmes and looke upon the Priest as some Exorcist confined to these Articles of stinted Spells and Formes If they name any Apostle Evangelist or other Christian of undoubted Sanctity with the Epithet of Saint they are so scared with the Popes Canonizing Saints that they start at the very name so used as if it were an unsanctified Title not to be applyed 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 vaine or Morose defective or Superfluous light or Tetricall rude or proud popular or affectated and after all the cry and noise and glorying of these mens Inspirings at the best all amounts to no more then but a little Ordinary Knowledge new glossed and painted over whose Ignorance Weaknesse and Confusions will only serve to betray and destroy Religion and State but never to defend it being more offensive then defensive fitter 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 Holinesse or Pyety and by their meer Formalities extemporary Pratings and Contempt to make wide Gaps and easie Inroads for Superstition and Atheisme These Pharaohs Dreame of none but lean Cattle in the Field of the Church the lesse wooll and flesh they have on their backs the more spiritual they must needs be fed by thredbare hunger-starv'd Teachers necessitious whining peices of impudent ignorance crowch and fawne on every plausible Errour on every powerfull Novelty on every proud fancy and high imagination prone to adorne by their gifts some odd opinion and set it forth as a Divine Truth Like Arelius a Painter in Iulius Caesars time who when he was to paint any Goddesse corrupted his art by alwaies making them like some of his Mistresses They lick the Sores of any mens Conscience or the Pollutions of any mens hands as they did of Olivers and the Rumps labour to turne all solidity of Truth into nothing but Fantasticall Whimsies empty Notions and sublimity of Non-sence Their Affections like the poor womans Wort is often hot in the point of Zeale when it is very small in point of judgement and apt to run out into much disorder and consusion in rusticall impertinencies and pittifull Rhapsodies of

bunglers in reason wresters of Scripture and hucksters of Religion do finde fault with those tools which they have no skill to use and like cowards quarrel with those Weapons as unlawfull which they most fear and least resist As Apes who knowing their own uncomely want of tailes would be glad if they could bring it in fashion for all Beasts to have none or perswade them to cut off as burthens 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 publick infamy to lose their ears at tandem male audiunt qui male dicunt agunt paring their under nails and muzling the bolder jawes 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 onely 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 flatered 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 Church-way they fancy most Then follow those quick Emotions and stirrings upon their spirits which have the quickning only of self in them these are presently cried up for motions manifestations excitations and impulses of Gods 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 varity 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 fewel they arise to such dreadfull 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 windings by which worldly passions and interests slily creep in and concealedly work in their hearts even then most secretly and so most dangerously when under this blind of Gods Spirit when the Lord shall be intitled to their whole plot and project of their follies and furies Doct. Trace them a little farther in their Doctrine and you will finde 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 publick 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 sleightly call Steeple-houses of the daies of the week of the moneths of the year of Christmas Michaelmas Candlemas c. in their Almanacks all Saints daies must be obliterated alias their pious but mendacious Prognosticator William Lilly had not so long kept sanctity with them They are affraid to meddle with any thing that ever passed the Popes fingers except onely the Lands and Revenues of the Clergie 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 idaea's 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 long-winded 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 over-charged and ill-discharged zeal usually breaks it self in sunder in its abettors assistants and spectators with such inchanting Opinions that they make God the Patronizer of their Villanies 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 Gods toleration of evil heresies schisms disorders c. did justifie 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 sinfull self by mortification and self-denial coming to the Cross of Christ taking it up and bearing it to all patient 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