St. Paul was thought by Festus to be mad with too much learning, but the fanatics of our times are mad with too little.  He chooses himself one of the elect, and packs a committee of his own party to judge the twelve tribes of Israel.  The apostles in the primitive Church worked miracles to confirm and propagate their doctrine, but he thinks to confirm his by working at his trade.  He assumes a privilege to impress what text of Scripture he pleases for his own use, and leaves those that make against him for the use of the wicked.  His religion, that tends only to faction and sedition, is neither fit for peace nor war, but times of a condition between both, like the sails of a ship that will not endure a storm and are of no use at all in a calm.  He believes it has enough of the primitive Christian if it be but persecuted as that was, no matter for the piety or doctrine of it, as if there were nothing required to prove the truth of a religion but the punishment of the professors of it, like the old mathematicians that were never believed to be profoundly knowing in their profession until they had run through all punishments and just escaped the fork.  He is all for suffering for religion, but nothing for acting; for he accounts good works no better than encroachments upon the merits of free believing, and a good life the most troublesome and unthrifty way to heaven.  He canonises himself a saint in his own lifetime, as the more sure and certain way, and less troublesome to others.  He outgrows ordinances, as an apprentice that has served out his time does his indentures, and being a freeman, supposes himself at liberty to set up what religion he pleases.  He calls his own supposed abilities gifts, and disposes of himself like a foundation designed to pious uses, although, like others of the same kind, they are always diverted to other purposes.  He owes all his gifts to his ignorance, as beggars do the alms they receive to their poverty.  They are such as the fairies are said to drop in men’s shoes, and when they are discovered to give them over and confer no more; for when his gifts are discovered they vanish and come to nothing.  He is but a puppet saint that moves he knows not how, and his ignorance is the dull, leaden weight that puts all his parts in motion.  His outward man is a saint and his inward man a reprobate, for he carries his vices in his heart and his religion in his face.

A PROSELYTE.

A priest stole him out of the cradle, like the fairies, and left a fool and changeling in his place.  He new dyes his religion, and commonly into a sadder and darker colour than it was before.  He gives his opinion the somersault and turns the wrong side of it outwards.  He does not mend his manners, but botch them with patches of another stuff and colour.  Change of religion, being for the most part used by those who understand not why one religion is better than another, is like changing of money two sixpences