no comments of fathers, no councils, but such as their own fantastical spirits dictate, or recta ratio, as Socinians, by which spirit misled, many times they broach as prodigious paradoxes as papists themselves.  Some of them turn prophets, have secret revelations, will be of privy council with God himself, and know all his secrets, [6585]_ Per capillos spiritum sanctum tenent, et omnia sciunt cum sint asini omnium obstinatissimi_, a company of giddy heads will take upon them to define how many shall be saved and who damned in a parish, where they shall sit in heaven, interpret Apocalypses, (Commentatores praecipites et vertiginosos, one calls them, as well he might) and those hidden mysteries to private persons, times, places, as their own spirit informs them, private revelations shall suggest, and precisely set down when the world shall come to an end, what year, what month, what day.  Some of them again have such strong faith, so presumptuous, they will go into infected houses, expel devils, and fast forty days, as Christ himself did; some call God and his attributes into question, as Vorstius and Socinus; some princes, civil magistrates, and their authorities, as Anabaptists, will do all their own private spirit dictates, and nothing else.  Brownists, Barrowists, Familists, and those Amsterdamian sects and sectaries, are led all by so many private spirits.  It is a wonder to reveal what passages Sleidan relates in his Commentaries, of Cretinck, Knipperdoling, and their associates, those madmen of Munster in Germany; what strange enthusiasms, sottish revelations they had, how absurdly they carried themselves, deluded others; and as profane Machiavel in his political disputations holds of Christian religion, in general it doth enervate, debilitate, take away men’s spirits and courage from them, simpliciores reddit homines, breeds nothing so courageous soldiers as that Roman:  we may say of these peculiar sects, their religion takes away not spirits only, but wit and judgment, and deprives them of their understanding; for some of them are so far gone with their private enthusiasms and revelations, that they are quite mad, out of their wits.  What greater madness can there be, than for a man to take upon him to be a God, as some do? to be the Holy Ghost, Elias, and what not?  In [6586]Poland, 1518, in the reign of King Sigismund, one said he was Christ, and got him twelve apostles, came to judge the world, and strangely deluded the commons. [6587]One David George, an illiterate painter, not many years since, did as much in Holland, took upon him to be the Messiah, and had many followers.  Benedictus Victorinus Faventinus, consil. 15, writes as much of one Honorius, that thought he was not only inspired as a prophet, but that he was a God himself, and had [6588]familiar conference with God and his angels.  Lavat. de spect. c. 2. part. 8. hath a story of one John Sartorious, that thought he was the prophet Elias, and cap. 7.