They were very diligent, plain, and serious, strong in Scripture, and bold in profession, bearing much reproach, and contradiction: but that which others fell by, proved their hurt. For worldly power spoiled them too; who had enough of it to try them, what they would do if they had more; and they rested also too much upon their watery dispensation, instead of passing on more fully to the fire and Holy Ghost, which was his baptism, who came with a “fan in his hand that he might thoroughly (and not in part only) purge his floor,” and take away the dross and the tin of his people, and make a man finer than gold. Withal, they grew high, rough, and self-righteous, opposing further attainment; too much forgetting the day of their infancy and littleness, which gave them something of a real beauty; insomuch that many left them, and all visible churches and societies, and wandered up and down, as sheep without a shepherd, and as doves without their mates; seeking their beloved, but could not find Him (as their souls desired to know him) whom their souls loved above their chiefest joy. These people were called Seekers by some, and the Family of Love by others; because, as they came to the knowledge of one another, they sometimes met together, not formally to pray or preach, at appointed times or places, in their own wills, as in times past they were accustomed to do; but waited together in silence, and as anything rose in any one of their minds that they thought savoured of a divine spring, so they sometimes spoke. But so it was, that some of them not keeping in humility, and in the fear of God, after the abundance of revelation, were exalted above measure; and for want of staying their minds in an humble dependence upon Him that opened their understandings to see great things in his law, they ran out in their own imaginations, and mixing them with those divine openings, brought forth a monstrous birth, to the scandal of those that feared God, and waited daily in the temple not made with hands, for the consolation of Israel; the Jew inward, and circumcision in spirit.