old (as Irenaeus tells us:) they never boasted of raptures, revelations, new lights, visions, inspirations, special missions and secret impulses from Gods Spirit, beyond or contrary to Gods Word, and the good or∣der of his Church, thereby to exercise their supposed liberties and presumptuous abilities; that is, indeed, to satisfie their lusts, disor∣ders and extravagances in things civil and sacred, to discover their immodesties and impudicities, like the Cainites, Ophites, Judaites and Adamites, to gratifie their luxuries and injuries, their sacriled∣ges and oppressions, their cruelties against man, and blasphemies against God, their separations, divisions and desolations intended a∣gainst this Church.
The godly Pastors and people of Christs flock never professed any such impudent piety, or pious impudence, because they were evi∣dently contrary to sound Doctrine and holy Discipline, beyond and against the sacred precepts and excellent patterns of true Ministers, sincere Saints, and upright Christians, whose everlasting limits are the holy Scriptures, sufficient to make the man of God and Minister of Christ perfect to salvation. They were not (like children) taken with any of these odde maskings and mummeries of the Devil, who is an old master of these arts, in false Prophets and false Apostles, with their followers; whose craft ever sought to advance their credits against the Orthodox Bishops, Presbyters, and professors of true Religion, by such ostentations of novelties and unheard of curiosities in Religion, which never, of old or late, made any man more honest, holy, humble, or heavenly: they never advanced Christians comforts, solitary or sociall, living or dying; but kept both their Masters and Disciples in perpetual inquietudes, perplexities and presumptions, which usually ended in villanies, outrages and despairs. Nor will these new Masters late discoveries prove much better (whereof they boast with so insolent and loud an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) for all their rarities are but dead carkases, which are become mummy by being long dried in the sands, or wrapped up in searcloths; they are not less dead, though they seem less putrified, to those whose simplicity or curiosity tempts them thus to rake into the skulls and sepulchres of old Here∣ticks & idle Ecstaticks, such as the very primitive times were infinite∣ly pestred withal: but, blessed be God, they were all long ago either extinct of themselves, and gone down to the pit, or crucified, dead, buried, and descended into hell, by the just censures, Anathemaes and condemnations passed against them by the godly Bishops and Mini∣sters of the Church in those ages. Nor have these Spectres ever much appeared in this Church of England till these later years, in which, by the ruines and rendings of this Church, they have gained a rotten kind of resurrection; not to their glory, but to their renewed shame and eternall infamy, I trust, in Gods due time, when once the honour of the true Christian and Reformed Religion (once hap∣pily setled and professed in the Church of England) shall be again worthily asserted and re-established by your piety and prudence (my noble and religious Countrey-men) who have been, and I hope ever