Prophecies concerning the return of popery into England, Scotland and IrelandProphecys concerning the return of popery into England, Scotland and Ireland

Nor do these willy Romanists exercise their malice against this Reformed Church, only with their own strength and dexterity, but they have other oblique Policies and sinister Practices by which they set on work the hot heads and pragmatic hands of all other Sects, who pretend the greatest Antipathies to popery, and yet most promote its interests by their Factions and fanatic Practises, by their heedless and, heedless their boundless and endless Agitations, which blast all true Reformation, and bring nothing but Division and Confusion.

Nor do these wilely Romanists exercise their malice against this Reformed Church, onely with their own strength and dexterity, but they have other oblique Policies and sinister Practices by which they set on work the hot heads and pragmatick hands of all other Sects, who pretend the greatest Antipathies to popery, and yet most promote its interests by their Factions and fanatick Practises, by their heedlesse and, hedlesse their boundlesse and endlesse Agitations, which blast all true Reformation, and bring nothing but Division and Confusion.

For among these there are a sort of people who affect Supremacy in Church and state too, a spiritual and temporal Dominion, no less than doth the Pope of Rome: there among them many petty Popes, who would fain be the great and only Dictators of Religion, whose opinionative pride and projects are as yet of a less volume and blinder print, but they every day mediate and agitate new Editions of their power, and larger additions to their parties and designs; being as infallible in their own conceits, as imperious in their spirits, and magisterial in their censures, as the proudest Popes of Rome; not doubting to condemn and excommunicate any private Christians and Ministers, yea whole Christian Churches, yea and the best Reformed in the world (such as England was), if they be not just of their form and fashion, or if they will not patiently submit to their multiform and deformed Reformations, by which they daily with-draw true Reformation to such a small thread, that losing its strength and integrity, it must ⟨p. 25⟩needs snap in pieces and become useless: the strange fires of blind, popular, preposterous and sacrilegious Zeal so over-boiling true Religion and sober Reformation, till they are utterly confounded and quenched with such sordid and shameful deformities, as must needs follow their Divisions, Distractions and Despiciencies, as to all Church-order, Christian unity and Ministerial authority. Thus many heady and giddy Professors have been so eager to come out of Babylon, that they are almost run out of their wits, and far beyond the bounds of good consciences; so jealous of Superstition, that they are Panders for Confusion; so scared with the name of Rome, that they are afraid of all right Reason and sober Religion; so fearful of being over-righteous by following vain traditions of men, that they fear not to be over-wicked, by over-throwing the good foundations of Order, Honour, Peace and Charity, which Christ and his Apostles have laid in his Church: fierce enemies indeed against the Idolatry of Antichrist, but fast friends to Belial and Mammon, to Schism and Sacrilege; which having no fellowship with God and Christ, must needs belong to the party of Antichrist, which contains a circle of Errors, while Christ is the centre of Truth: