This hath been Satan’s method in all ages. And indeed policy itself could not contrive anything that would more certainly obstruct reformation than this. When the apostles, who in these last days were first sent forth, were employed to reform the world, to throw down the ceremonies of the Old Testament and heathen worship, Satan had presently raised up men of corrupt minds to hinder their progress. What work these made for Paul at Corinth, and with the Galatians, the epistles to those churches do testify. The business of these men was to draw disciples after them from the simplicity of the gospel, nay, to another gospel; and this they could not do but by setting up themselves, boasting of the Spirit, carrying themselves as the apostles of Christ, and contemning those that were really so, insinuating thereby into the affections of the seduced, as if they zealously affected them, and that Paul was but ‘weak and contemptible,’ nay, their very ‘enemy, for telling them the truth,’ [Gal. iv. 16.] What unspeakable hindrance must this be to Paul! What grief of heart, what fear and jealousy must this produce! He professeth he was afraid lest he had ‘bestowed upon them labour in vain,’ Gal. iv. 11; and that he did no less than ‘travail of them in birth the second time,’ ver. 19. If one Alexander could do Paul so much evil by ‘withstanding his words,’ that he complains of him, and cautions Timothy against him, 2 Tim. iv. 24; if one Diotrephes, by ‘prating against John with malicious words,’ prevailed with the church, that they ‘received him not, nor the brethren,’ 3 John 10, what hurt might a multitude of such be able to do! In the primitive times of the church, after the apostles’ days, when those worthies were to contest with the heathen world, the serpent ‘cast out of his mouth water, as a flood, after the woman,’—which most interpret to be a deluge of heresies, and some particularly understand it of the Arian heresy,—that he might hinder the progress of the gospel; which design of his did so take, that many complaints there were of hindering the conversion of the heathens, by the errors that were among Christians. Epiphanius tells us that pagans refused to come near the Christians, and would not so much as hear them speak, being affrighted by the wicked practices and ways of the Priscillianists. Austin complains to the same purpose, that loose and lascivious heretics administered matter of blaspheming to the idolatrous heathens.