almost in the Threshold caused him to have dashed his foot to the stumbling and undoing of his hopes for by this you may plainly perceive him a designed Temporizer who for his gain could have become a downright Legalist as well as a high flown Notionist and in few words to give you the print of his foot by which you may imagine his stature Gain was his Godliness his Religion it was his God his whole aym and he resolved which by his leaving his small place in the Custom-house you may perceive to obtain it per fas aut nefas holding that Heterodoxal Maxim for his first point of Doctrine dulcis odor lucri ex re qualibet this enforced him to leave Bredwardine awhile and go with M. H. to Webley where by his means having insinuated into the acquaintance of Mrs. K. one nearly related to that Family at Bredwardine then living at a place about two miles from Webley who out of her tender affection to good imagining by his carriage and demeanour some superlative knowledge of Gods wayes at least some eminent sanctity in himself gave him countenance and you may see here he first makes practise with women and widdows where fishing with the bait of Socinianism and perceiving it taking prosecuted his fortune eagerly making use of all advantages for leading of some Captive with his Tenents and absurdities and imagining his interest did much consist in the getting into favor with the old Gentlewoman at Bredwardine because there was the best quarters it being the nature of such deceivers much to mind their bellies For what they naturally know as bruit beasts in those things they corrupt themselves Iude 10. and are the black spots in the feasts of charity and because of the eminency of the place and Family which by the means of these his forementioned acquaintance he with some labor at last to his content atchieved causing in some an admiration of his Doctrine which he now holds forth I dare not say an approbation of it I know it is Satans Master-peice to lay stumbling blocks before the feet of the Saints and if it be possible to cause such as have been renowned for their profession in the strictest wayes of Godliness to be the Antesignani and chiefest abettors of Heresie and error to make such whose light should be set as it were on an hill who should by their lives and conversations be the flaming Beacons of Good works before men that they seeing them may glorifie our Father that is in Heaven to cause them in a more especial manner to be the greedy examples of falling and sucking in those damnable positions of Christian Lethargy Here now this ungodly man having crept in unawares spends his time betwixt the two Families instructing them with his depraved principles and all such as came unto them either out of humanity as to visits or out of the instigation of an itching ear to hear novelties of which last sort more especially then others some were caught and did embrace Doctrines of the Devil Tenents that now stink in the Nosethrils of some of his admirers worse then his breath doth to such as approach him he laboured to seduce some of which I shall now give you a sight of though I know that errors like oaths in telling stories better concealed then repeated yet because he goe's on still making practise with deceits deceiving and being deceived aspiring to eminent places there to make shipwrack of Faith and a good conscience not only in himself but to others insulting over the Ministers who are laborious and painful intermedling in civil affairs in which he is nothing concerned despising powers and authorities and all this and much more under the cloak of Religion and conscience this is therefore to undeceive such who by his fair perswasions may be drawn into the deceit of believing his lyes for having as in a draught or picture seen his carriages and life they may with little straining their Logick believe that out of such an impure polluted puddle cannot proceed the limpid-living streams of the water of Life that whilest himself is the very Epitome of Hypocrisie and Herefie and the abstract of baseness and leudness he can in the mean time preach to others by his example the Doctrine of Truth holyness and sincerity That which he now buckled himself unto when he was received into favor at Bredwardine was that common maxim which all Impostors use to despise Dominions and speak evil of dignities to decry all those that may by any means be a remora in his proceedings either by authority Doctrine or disputes and to that end he declaims against the Ministry in general as if the sins and faylings of particulars were annexed as inseparable companions to the calling even so because some have received poyson in their meat it were necessary or reasonable we should wholly desist from the use of it Here begins a loud invective against them for many crimes which they are guilty of and among the rest scorning them for their receiving Tithes though since he hath received them and threatned trouble to those that did not conform and perswades his Disciples to avoid the disgrace and foyls which else he and they were subject to in disputes that what he said could not be understood be any but such who were under the the same dispensation as he was truly I think so too and in imition of their Master you should have ignorant silly women tell men both learned and knowing That they could not understand those high mysteries because of their carnality and further tells them that what was nonsence to all people out of his way was the very sense of the Spirit to him by which he seemed to anticipate and confute all controversies that might arise and which was a very succinct method of satisfying all questions and doubts and further that what he delivered though it were seemingly contradictory to the received truth and though he could not prove it out of the written Word of God yet it was to be received as the immediate dictate of the Spirit He slighted and scorned at duties as performed by such who were in a lower form and should in time have greater light And upon that place Rev. 3.20 Behold I stand at the door and knock if any man hear my voice and open the door c. he held forth that the Ordinances of God were the door that they do keep Christ at a distance from the Soul and keep him in darkness or dark to us was not this a notable ingredient for his mass of errors not valuing the Spirits injunctions of praying continually and rejoycing alwayes exhorting rebuking c. in season and out of season Tells us that the Scriptures were but the mind of the Spirit in several administrations and that there were several dispensations of God Of Adam Of Noah or Abraham Of Moses Here is strange stuff Of John the Baptist Of Christ Of fire burning up
melancholly Frier or Brother of the Teutonick order and smelt extreamly of the ingredients of Sulphur and Rhenish wine whose name I have forgot who was in great veneration among them so were also Mr. Colliers works and truly with Randalphs discreet translations such opinionists might have been furnished with a small library of such Books whose very names would have troubled you more then the wooden horse did the Trojans but that you may not be troubled with the reading of them you shall have them epitomized in two words They were profound non-sense yet our Impostor would have had ready an answer for you and so had his Disciples also They were non sence to you because you cannot understand them and what they could not express themselves in the interpretation that they did admire hoping sometime or other they should with waiting have it revealed unto them and they could conceive something more a great deal then they could utter but the women they understood it as fast as could be and their admirations were at their own understanding even so do the Turks admire Ideots thinking they have something extraordinary of God in them because they understand them not This jigg that our Impostor used was not the armor of good lives but only the canva-painted-stalking horse of delusion One Sabbath day he urged from these words in Ecclesiastes For to him that is joyned to all the living there is hope Eccles 9.4 for a living dog is better then a dead Lyon Where only naming the latter part of the verse without looking or considering the first either through wilfulness or negligence he declared and insisted upon it that the living dog was Christ Jesus and the dead Lyon were Believers and how sweetly this indign exposition may serve for his notional frenzy let any one judge but this I have been assured that when he had finished his half hours folly being reproved for such an interpretation or application this reproof being before the most and chiefest of his Auditors with a request to him to read the foregoing verses and the precedent part of that verse by which he might plainly have seen his mistake the wise King speaking there of life and death he made this publick replication first by an interrogation whether his reprover did hear him give that interpretation of it to which having received a positive affirmation because he had wrote it after him he then made this reply that his reprover did not hear with spiritual ears that though that interpretation were false to his reprover yet it was true to him and so being netled and in passion flung out of the room which answer and carriage was somewhat disrelished by some of his Auditors and excused by mans frailty But what he meant by the two contrarieties of Truth and falshood you may plainly-see by another passage that was uttered by him much about that time for having paced the ground-work of the ruined Castle of Snowdle in the gilden valley and making a draught of the ground-lines upon a piece of paper seigning a small scale to it for the dimension which how unlike a Mathematicians work it was I will not now declare though if he had had any ingenuity he might have had a little more insight in the Mathematicks from his Father who had some skill in them he superscribed the Scale with these words Scala passium and being before some of his admirers reproved for false Latine he replyed that though it was false Latine to his reprover yet it was true to himself by which you may perceive the Blades opinion of true and false but to his Doctrine the Scripture saith otherwise of ambiguities That there is but one Faith 2 Pet. 1. Eph. 4. one Baptism one Truth one Way and one Lord Jesus and that no Scripture is of a private interpretation whereas he saith it may be false to one and true to another this is rare but real Upon an extraordinary convention of friends at Bredwardine in the presence of Colonel Taylor Mr. Tombes Captain Taylor Mr. Bedwell Mr. Swayn and others he made shift in his arguing which was carried on by him with such an elated arrogance and impudent scornfulness of the Ministers that were there to pronounce in plain words without welt or guard That himself was God Replic God is essentially God are you essentially God Delamain answered I am God as God is God Replic If you are God then we must worship you Which he presently went about to confirm with Scripture unreasonably wresting and applying to himself that text and saying it is written Esa 49.23 Kings shall be thy nursing Fathers and Queens your nursing Mothers they shall bow down unto thee with their face towards the earth Yet at the same time declared himself to be a beast and that God did oftentimes speak through such beasts which they granted for to strengthen his position it was there acknowledged that God had spake through Balaams Ass What is there wanting now to the Completion of the Characters of Deceivers Doth he not deny the only Lord and our Lord Jesus Christ Doth he not bring in damnable Heresies Even denying the Lord that bought us bringing upon himself swist desstruction Is he not Antichristian in exalting himself above all that is called God 2 Thes 2.4 or that is worshipped as God sitting in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God Is not this man fit now to be entrusted with double Benefices and the care of Souls being such a blasphemous novice wresting the Scriptures unto the destruction of himself and of those that hear him and follow him despising learning and learned men because such are able to fathom and unvail his setches and yet forsooth himself would be thought a Scholar owning himself of the University of Oxford and being demanded by Mr. S. a Gentleman of Worcestershire of what Colledge he was he answered him of Emanuel Colledge oportet mendacem esse memorem here his friend the Devil did not readily assist him but left him to shift for himself which how poorly he did I need not tell you for though Emanuel be applicatory to his notions yet I understand not how Oxford is At Wyebridge house in Hereford being discipling his auditors to a very great height of whimsy he pointing to a silver Beer-Bowl standing on the Table said that that was God to him I believe he spake truth before he was aware of it yet his baseness was great in comparing the great Creator of Heaven and Earth to vile contemptible and corruptible things as silver and Gold These blasphemies are not the tenth nor the hundredth part of what he hath practised his profane mouth withall yet enough to startle any one from having either belief or confidence in him or in his Doctrine still he proceeds gaping after filthy lucre and plots now to get into some publike place because he knew all people would in a short time grow weary of him for
Impostor Magnus OR The Legerdemain of Richard Delamain NOW Preacher in the City of Hereford BEING A Narrative of his life and Doctrine since his first coming into that County Faithfully collected and published by one that will assert the Truth of each particular YAY Jude verse 11. and 2 Pet. 2.15 Wo unto them for they have gone in the way of Cain and run greedily after the error of Balaam the Son of Bosor who loved the the wages of unrighteousness for reward and perished in the gainsaying of Core LONDON Printed in the year 1654. To the Reader IF thou takest no more pleasure in the reading of this Tract then I did in the writing of it I le assure thee thou shalt never be inebriated with any delight that it can afford thee and perhaps you may wonder at this so large a collection of passages perpetrated in the space of four or five years but your admiration will cease when you find that you never met before this with such a designed piece of imposture as this is the whole transaction of his scarce quinquennial labor being nothing but a continued series and close reiterated concatenation of deceits so that what thou hast here is not a tithe of his actings which might have been gleaned up nor the moiety of what I have heard and know but what thou hast is upon sound grounds and not surmises This Treatise is an Historical application and partly explication of the Epistle written by Saint Jude those characters of Apostates being his choice rules by which he ordered himself both in life and Doctrine Here is not a confutation but only a relation of his errors and succinct annotations upon them which the ingenuous candid Reader may inlarge with his own observations for if confutation had been intended the necessary conclusions probations and responses which would have followed and must have been taken in would have swelled this Book far by much beyond the intentional bulk of it And truly it had been no prudence to have alledged Scripture to him that did deny the authority of it our arguments must have risen from the same Basis as the Fathers and Antients used to Heathens to perswade them first of a God c. what therefore is here exhibited by way of animadversion Courteous Reader is for thy use if it should make any impression upon the heart of him that is the subject of our present and subsequent discourse I shall be joyful to hear of it and joy Angelically at his conversion from a blasphemous Saul to a preaching Paul God being able to command that these stones be made bread but if he after all these should continue resolute and refractory in his wayes of evil he will not miss of a second reproof in the mean time Reader hold fast the Faith once delivered and be not carried about with divers and strange Doctrines Heb. 13.9 for it is a good thing that the heart be established Farewell Impostor Magnus I Have by search endeavored to find somewhat for matter of sublimity to run parallel to this History that I am now about to write but find that what Ebion Photinus Samosatenus Sabellicus Servetus and others the antient Captains and Ring-leaders of this sort of loose Hereticks did embrace nay what Socinus the Monopolist of all the former with the additional fermentations of his own brain comes far short of those dangerous positions which our Impostor hath divulged and practised for as if to collect the signs and notes which the Spirit of God in the Scriptures hath given us to know and by them to distinguish deluders from others were the rules and Gnomon to direct him to shape his opinions and practise by and the end and scope he endeavored at and pressed unto it could scarce be otherwise that he should so point blank in himself accomplish those characters of Apostacy and Errors which are so flatly repugnant to the rule of life and Doctrine And in the prosecution of this discovery I shall be so sparing of wresting things beyond their intended weight and allowance that I ingenuously confess and assure you it is the highest Acme my desires have aspired unto that there might have been a possibility of sparing the whole by some one the smallest sign and token of repentance and alteration which being undiscerned and finding of how great use and concernment to a publike and private good the unvailing of knavery is especially in such who by their callings should be ensamples of good to others I could not still or quiet those motions and susurra's I had within me till I had yielded to those importunities and sent this abroad for the benefit of the poor distressed and over-ridden County of Hereford and all others that may find themselves concerned in this discovery whether it be for matter of establishment or prevention it being the second volumn or Treatise of Machiavillian piety and contains in it a Scheam or representation of the manners preachment and speeches of that Grand Impostor Richard Delamain who with inticing words gilding over his bitter pills of blasphemy and error hath done much mischief in the neighbouring Counties and if in this Tract the Reader should be molested with the want of method I beg his excuse for that I hope he will be pleased to conceive it no easie matter or task to methodize Accidents so much disjoyned in reference to place persons times and matter as these ensuing are He was the wicked Son of a good Father from a Publican turned a Pharisec from one that sate at the receipt of Customs to one that by a more indirect course accustomed himself to the receipt of gain he used his apparel supermodish powdering his long hair but that the sweet Gentleman was much beholding to him that brought him down for his friendly advice of cutting it shorter though in this short cut it reached his shoulders He was perswaded into the County of Hereford and brought thither by Mr. M. H. of Webley one that hath been a dogmatical Camaelion ever since the many coloured and monstrous headed Hydra of errors have been in fashion upon his first coming which was in the year 1648. he was for a new light though sheltered in a dark lanthorn brought to Mrs. V. a Gentlewoman of good family and respect then living at Bredwardine in that Tract where of the minister of the Parish leave being obtained for this our Hyperbolical Angel of Light to hold forth his gifts he preached a Legal Sermon full sraughted with the greatest Terrors of punishments and damnation which was highly disliked by the chiefest who leaned very much to an Antinomian plausibility for in those times this Country had not many baits to busie themselves about and were ignorant of those profound Soloecisms called new Notions Independency Presbyterie and Antinomianism in the lesser volumn not to the shaking off of duties were the greatest divertisements then in practise and truly the ill management of that mistaken Sermon had