A RANTER

Is a fanatic Hector that has found out, by a very strange way of new light, how to transform all the devils into angels of light; for he believes all religion consists in looseness, and that sin and vice is the whole duty of man.  He puts off the old man, but puts it on again upon the new one, and makes his pagan vices serve to preserve his Christian virtues from wearing out, for if he should use his piety and devotion always it would hold out but a little while.  He is loth that iniquity and vice should be thrown away as long as there may be good use for it; for if that which is wickedly gotten may be disposed to pious uses, why should not wickedness itself as well?  He believes himself shot-free against all the attempts of the devil, the world, and the flesh, and therefore is not afraid to attack them in their own quarters and encounter them at their own weapons.  For as strong bodies may freely venture to do and suffer that, without any hurt to themselves, which would destroy those that are feeble, so a saint that is strong in grace may boldly engage himself in those great sins and iniquities that would easily damn a weak brother, and yet come off never the worse.  He believes deeds of darkness to be only those sins that are committed in private, not those that are acted openly and owned.  He is but a hypocrite turned the wrong side outward; for, as the one wears his vices within and the other without, so when they are counterchanged the ranter becomes a hypocrite, and the hypocrite an able ranter.  His church is the devil’s chapel, for it agrees exactly both in doctrine and discipline with the best reformed bawdy-houses.  He is a monster produced by the madness of this latter age; but if it had been his fate to have been whelped in old Rome he had passed for a prodigy, and been received among raining of stones and the speaking of bulls, and would have put a stop to all public affairs until he had been expiated.  Nero clothed Christians in the skins of wild beasts, but he wraps wild beasts in the skins of Christians.

AN AMORIST

Is an artificer or maker of love, a sworn servant to all ladies, like an officer in a corporation.  Though no one in particular will own any title to him, yet he never fails upon all occasions to offer his services, and they as seldom to turn it back again untouched.  He commits nothing with them but himself to their good graces; and they recommend him back again to his own, where he finds so kind a reception that he wonders how he does fail of it everywhere else.  His passion is as easily set on fire as a fart, and as soon out again.  He is charged and primed with love-powder like a gun, and the least sparkle of an eye gives fire to him and off he goes, but seldom or never hits the mark.  He has commonplaces, and precedents of repartees, and letters for all occasions, and falls as readily into his method of making love