Beloved brethren, Since that great apostacy hath been, which the holy apostles did in their day fore-tell of, which hath spread over nations and kingdoms, so that the very names of things in scripture hath been (and in many things yet are) wrongly applied and generally believed to be that which they are not; and those false customs which this great apostacy hath brought in hath been received (and yet are in many things) for truths; but God hath in these latter ages raised up such lights in the world at several times as hath discovered much of the great mystery of iniquity; but they have always been accounted (at their first appearing) as deceivers and seducers and the like, by the dark world in general, and met with great opposition from the powers of this world, even from the powers of darkness; but the God with whom all power is hath so borne them up, through their faith, that the gates of hell were not able to withstand them, nor all the powers of darkness able to gainsay them, so that Satan hath been forced to fit up a new form of pretended holiness to deceive the world with, at several times, yea, even at every such appearance of the light of the gospel; for so often as the Lord hath been pleased to reveal unto his Church the life and light of the gospel, by shining into the hearts of his children, so often hath there been a falling away, and that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world, hath at such times endeavored to work in the hearts of governors and great men of the earth to set up that which they imagine to be the worship of God, and to maintain the same, and this hath ever been a snare and net whereby God’s children have been ensnared and hypocrites set up; for the true worship of God is in righteousness and true holiness in the inner man, and none can thus worship God till he sets them free from the Egypt of sin, and works this righteousness in their own hearts by his own Spirit; and such as these cannot conform to any prescribed form set up by the powers of darkness of this world, without procuring the great displeasure of God; for they are to be God’s witnesses of that worship which God hath set up in the hearts of his own children, who alone can worship God in spirit and in truth, and none else; and these are the light of the world, and yet are but strangers and pilgrims in the world; for their kingdom is not of this world. But those that fall away from the spirit of truth into the spirit of the world are the false prophets and antichrists, and these are they whom the world doth follow and close with, according to scripture testimony; for saith the scripture, They are of the world, and the world heareth them; he that is not of God heareth not us; by this we know, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Here is a plain description laid down for us to know the false prophets by, to wit, “for the world