A89503:13
A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude
A practical commentary, or An exposition with notes on the Epistle of Jude. Delivered (for the most part) in sundry weekly lectures at Stoke-Newington in Middlesex. By Thomas Manton, B.D. and minister of Covent-Garden.
London: printed by J.M. for Luke Fawn, 1658
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The Epistle to the READER.
Good Reader,
The people of God have ever been exercised with two sorts of Enemies, Persecutors and Sectaries: 'tis hard to say which is worst; when the Christian Church began first to look forth in the world, there were adverse powers without ready to crush it, and Libertines who (like worms bred within the body) sought to devour the entrails and eat out the very bowels of it: the first Ring-leader was Simon Magus, and there followed Menander Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatianus, Valentinus, and many others, who being once turned aside from the truth and the fellowship of the faithful, lost all awe of God, and were given up to a sottish judgment to believe all kind of fables and fancies. The monsters of Africa came from the unnatural commixtures of the beasts running wild in the deserts; so when men had once broken through the hedge, mingling their own fancies with the Word of God by an unnatural production, they brought forth such monstrous and absurd Opinions.
THe people of God have ever been exercised with two sorts of Enemies, Persecutors and Sectaries: 'tis hard to say which is worst; when the Christian Church began first to look forth in the world, there were adverse powers without ready to crush it, and Libertines who (like worms bred within the body) sought to devour the entrails and eat out the very bowels of it: the first Ring-leader was Simon Magus, and there followed Menander Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatianus, Valentinus, and many others, who being once turned aside from the truth and the fellowship of the faithfull, lost all awe of God, and were given up to a sottish judgment to believe all kinde of fables and fancies. The monsters of Africa came from the unnatural commixtures of the beasts running wild in the desarts; so when men had once broken through the hedg, mingling their own fancies with the Word of God by an unnatural production, they brought forth such monstrous and absurd Opinions.