[1.] First, In any grand design of error, he endeavours _to lay the foundation of it as near to truth as he can_; but yet so that, in the tendency of it, it may go as far from it as may be, as some rivers, whose first fountains are contiguous, have notwithstanding a direct contrary course in their streams. For instance, in those errors that tend to overthrow the doctrine of the gospel concerning Christ and ordinances—and these are things which the devil hath a great spite at—he begins his work with plausible pretences of love and admiration of Christ and grace; he proceeds from thence to the pretence of purer enjoyments; from thence to a dislike of such preachers and preaching as threaten sin and speak out the wrath of God against iniquity, and these are presently called legal preachers, and the doctrine of duty a legal covenant. Having them once at this point, they easily come to immediate assistances and special gifts, which they pretend to have above others. Being thus set up, they are for free grace and the enjoyment of God in spirit. From thence they come to Christian liberty, and by degrees duties are unnecessary. There is no Christ but within them; and being freed from the law, whatever they do is no transgression. This is a path that Satan hath trodden of old, though now and then he may vary in some circumstances, and be forced to stop before he come to the utmost of his journey. You may observe this method in the late errors of New England,[236] in the Familists of Germany, and in those of Old England; in all which at the long-run men are led as far from Scripture as darkness is from light. Now this is not only to be seen in a progressive multiplication of errors, but often may we perceive the same subtlety of Satan in a simple error, as when he takes up part of a truth which should stand in conjunction with another, and sets it up alone against its own companion, where we shall have the name and pretence kept up, but the thing quite destroyed. God requires services of men, and prescribes to their use prayer, hearing, sacraments; but because in these God is dishonoured when men only draw near with their lips, he further tell us, ‘that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is of the flesh,’ &c., [Rom. ii. 28.] This part are some men so fixed upon, that they think they are discharged of the other, and in practice go quite from these duties; and yet still they profess they are for ordinances and the worship of God. Just so are some men for Christ, but then it is but the name, not the thing; they own Christ, they say, but then it is Christ in them, and Christ come in their flesh, but not that Christ that died at Jerusalem as a sacrifice for the sins of men.