[1.] First, When he hath a design of common or prevailing delusion, he mainly endeavours _to corrupt some person of a more strict, serious, and religious carriage, to be the captain and ringleader_; such men were Pelagius, Arius, Socinus, &c. He mainly endeavours to have fit instruments. If he be upon that design of blemishing religion, and to bring truth into a disesteem, then, as one observes,[249] he persuades such into the ministry as he foresees are likely to be idle, careless, profane, and scandalous; or doth endeavour to promote such ministers into more conspicuous places, and provokes them to miscarriage, that so their example may be an objection against truth, while in the meantime he is willing that the opposers of truth should continue their smooth carriage; and then he puts a two-edged sword into the hands of the unstable: Can that be truth where there is so much wickedness? and can this be error where there is so much holiness? [2.] Secondly, In prosecution of this design he usually puts men upon some more than _ordinary strictness, that the pretence of holiness may be the more augmented_. In this case a course of ordinary sanctity is not enough, they must be above the common practice; some singular additions of severity and exactness above what is written, are commonly affected to make them the more remarkable. Christ notes this in the Pharisees, concerning all their devotions, and the ways of expressing them; their phylacteries spoken of, Mat. xxiii. 5, as some think,[250] were not intended by that text of Deut. vi. 8, but only that they should remember the law, and endeavour not to forget it, as they do that tie a thread or such like thing about their finger for a remembrancer; according to Prov. iii. 3, ‘Bind them about thy neck, write them upon the table of thine heart.’ However, if they were literally enjoined, they would have them, as Christ tells them, broader than others, as an evidence of their greater care. The _Cathari_ boasted of sanctity and good works, and rejected second marriages; the _Apostolici_ were so called from a pretended stricter imitation of the singular holiness of the apostles. The _Valesians_ made themselves eunuchs, according to the letter, ‘for the kingdom of God.’ The _Donatists_ accounted that no true church where any spot or infirmity was found. The _Messalians_, or _Euchytæ_, were for constant praying, the _Nudipedales_ for going barefoot, &c. The papists urge canonical hours, whippings, penances, pilgrimages, voluntary poverty, abstinence from meats and marriage in their priests and votaries. In a word, all noted sects have something of special singularity, whereby they would difference themselves from others, as a peculiar character of their greater strictness; and for want of better stuff they sometimes take up affected gestures, devotional looks, and outward garbs; all which have this note, that what they most stand upon, God hath least, or not at