Here might I set error before you in its rant, and give you a taste of the high-flown strains of it. Montanus, as vile as he was, had the confidence to call himself ‘the comforter.’ Novatus and his brother would be no less than Moses and Aaron. The Gnostics called themselves the _Illuminati_. The Swinkfieldians assumed the title of the Confessors of the glory of Christ. The Family of Love had their _Evangelium regni_, the gospel of the kingdom. The _Fratricelli_ distinguished themselves from others by the term spiritual. Muntser asserted, that all of his opinion were God’s elect, and that all the children of their religion were to be called the children of God, and that all others were ungodly and designed to damnation. H. Nicholas affirms, that there was no knowledge of Christ nor Scripture, but in his family. To this purpose most of them speak that forsake the ways of truth; and though these swellings are but wind and vapour, yet those heights are very serviceable to the devil’s purposes: who by this means confirms those whom he hath already conquered, and then fits them out with the greater confidence to allure others; and men are apt enough to be drawn by fair shows and confident boastings. But I proceed. (3.) The third stratagem of Satan for promoting error, is to _astonish men with strange language and affected expressions_. It was an old device of Satan to coin an unintelligible gibberish as the proper vehicle of strange enthusiastics’ doctrine, and this he artificially suits to his pretended mysteries. Without this, his rare discoveries would be too flat and dull to gain upon any man of competent understanding. For if these dotages were clothed in plain words, they would either appear to be direct nonsense, or ridiculous folly. It concerns him when he hath any feats of delusion in hand, to set them off with a canting speech, as jugglers use their hard words of _Ailif_, _casyl_, _zaze_, _presto_, _millat_, &c., to put their ignorant admirers into a belief of some unknown power by which they do their wonders. And this is in some sort necessary. Extraordinary matters are above expression, and such wild expressions put men into an expectation of things sublime. This knack Satan hath constantly used. Montanus had his strange speeches; and all along, downward to our times, we may observe that error hath had this gaudy dress. The Familists especially abound with it. You may read whole books full of such a kind of speaking, as the book called _Theologia Germanica_, or German divinity,[243] the books of Jacob Behmen, ‘The Bright Morning Star,’ &c. Neither are the papists free; one of late hath taken the pains to shew them this and other follies.[244] Among them you may find such talk as this: of being ‘beclosed in the midhead of God, and in his meek-head; of being substantially united to God, of being one’d to God; as also of the abstractedness of life, of passive unions, of the deiform fund of the soul; of a state of introversion;