e for abrogation of Property and Magistracy to smooth the way for
the Fifth Monarchy, then one must remember Jude's precept as to the
mode of dealing with the errors of good men. "Of some have
compassion," Jude had said, "making a difference; others save with
fear, pulling them out of the fire."[1]

[Footnote 1: Hearne's _Ductor Historicus_, 1714 (for the old
doctrine of the Four Monarchies); Thomason Pamphlets; Carlyle's
Cromwell, III. 24-27.--The Fifth Monarchy notion was by no means an
upstart oddity of thought among the English Puritans of the
seventeenth century. It was a tradition of the most scholarly thought
of mediaeval theologians as to the duration and final collapse of the
existing Cosmos; and it may be traced in the older imaginative
literature of various European nations. Thus the Scottish Sir David
Lindsay's long poem entitled _Monarchy, or Ane Dialogue betwix
Experience and one Courtier of the Miserable Estate of the World_,
the date of which is 1553, is a moralized sketch of the whole
previous history of the world, according to the then accepted
doctrine of the Four past Secular Monarchies, with a glance around at
the Europe of Lindsay's own time as already certainly in the dregs of
"The Latter Days," and an anticipation, as if with assured personal
belief, of a glorious Fifth Monarchy, or miraculous reconstitution of
the whole Universe into a new Heaven and Earth, to begin probably
about the year 2000.]

RANTERS:--"These made it their business," says Baxter, "to set up the
Light of Nature under the name of _Christ in Man_, and to
dishonour and cry down the Church, the Scripture, and the present
Ministry, and our worship and ordinances; and called men to hearken
to Christ within them. But withal they conjoined a cursed doctrine
of Libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of
life. They taught, as the FAMILISTS, (see Vol. III. p. 152), that God
regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart, and
that to the pure all things are pure ... I have seen myself letters
written from Abington, where among both soldiers and people this
contagion did then prevail, full of horrid oaths and curses and
blasphemy, not fit to be repeated by the tongue or pen of man; and
this all uttered as the effect of knowledge and a part of their
Religion, in a fanatic strain, and fathered on the Spirit of God."
The Ranters, in fact, seem to have been ANTINOMIANS (see Vol. III.
151-152) run mad,