We may name, in addition, four eccentric, if not crazy, individuals, called founders of sects, who in their strangeness really represented only themselves. The first was John Robins, who pretended to work miracles, to ride on the winds, and to exhibit angels and other supernatural sights--proclaiming himself to be an incarnation of the Deity; the second was John Tawney, the high priest of this Robins, and who joined with him in a commission to lead a company of followers to Jerusalem; and the third and fourth, men equally hare-brained, were named Reeve and Muggleton, who called themselves the witnesses predicted in Revelation, and who said they were able by fire to devour their adversaries. These fanatics cursed everybody who did not agree with them. It is useless to pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to prove that the number of sects under the Commonwealth has been enormously exaggerated; that various opinions were held then, as now, without forming distinct ecclesiastical communions; and that the greatest absurdities were little more than the hallucinations of individual minds.[396] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. As in the histories of the English nation, so in histories of the English Church, the individual, domestic, and social condition of the people has been too much overlooked; public ecclesiastical affairs have been allowed almost completely to overshadow private religious customs and habits. Yet if we would fully understand what our ancestors were, and truly estimate their character under its moral aspect, and in its spiritual relations, we must enter as far as we can within the circle of their inner Church life and their home retirements. Happily, materials exist for the illustration of this important part of the ecclesiastical history of England during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth. [Sidenote: _Baptism._] I. Episcopalians were deprived of the privilege of baptism according to their own cherished formularies. Had the law only prohibited the open celebration of that service, the hardship would have been less than it was; inasmuch as christenings in the house had become common in the Stuart period, and the display made on such occasions had been often made the subject of complaint and rebuke. The ordinance of 1645 prohibited the use of Episcopal Church services in private as well as in public. But notwithstanding this circumstance, many a clergyman ran the risk of still wearing a surplice, of still making the sign of the cross, and of still repeating those words which had become dearer to him than ever, from the very fact of the peril which was now connected with their employment.