St. Paul was thought by Festus to be mad with too much learning, but the
fanatics of our times are mad with too little. He chooses himself one of
the elect, and packs a committee of his own party to judge the twelve
tribes of Israel. The apostles in the primitive Church worked miracles
to confirm and propagate their doctrine, but he thinks to confirm his by
working at his trade. He assumes a privilege to impress what text of
Scripture he pleases for his own use, and leaves those that make against
him for the use of the wicked. His religion, that tends only to faction
and sedition, is neither fit for peace nor war, but times of a condition
between both, like the sails of a ship that will not endure a storm and
are of no use at all in a calm. He believes it has enough of the
primitive Christian if it be but persecuted as that was, no matter for
the piety or doctrine of it, as if there were nothing required to prove
the truth of a religion but the punishment of the professors of it, like
the old mathematicians that were never believed to be profoundly knowing
in their profession until they had run through all punishments and just
escaped the fork. He is all for suffering for religion, but nothing for
acting; for he accounts good works no better than encroachments upon the
merits of free believing, and a good life the most troublesome and
unthrifty way to heaven. He canonises himself a saint in his own
lifetime, as the more sure and certain way, and less troublesome to
others. He outgrows ordinances, as an apprentice that has served out his
time does his indentures, and being a freeman, supposes himself at
liberty to set up what religion he pleases. He calls his own supposed
abilities gifts, and disposes of himself like a foundation designed to
pious uses, although, like others of the same kind, they are always
diverted to other purposes. He owes all his gifts to his ignorance, as
beggars do the alms they receive to their poverty. They are such as the
fairies are said to drop in men's shoes, and when they are discovered to
give them over and confer no more; for when his gifts are discovered
they vanish and come to nothing. He is but a puppet saint that moves he
knows not how, and his ignorance is the dull, leaden weight that puts
all his parts in motion. His outward man is a saint and his inward man a
reprobate, for he carries his vices in his heart and his religion in
his face.