ERBERY. 189' ministers in a church in Lombard-street. Erbery then declared, that the wisest ministers and purest churches were at that time befooled, confounded, and defiled by learning. He said, AlsoOhat the ministers were monsters, beasis, asSes, greedy dogs,, and false prophets ; that they are the beast with seven heads and tenhorns ; that Babylon is the church in her ministers; and that the great Whore is the church in her worship. So that with him," lie adds, "there was an end of ministers, and churches, and ordinances together. While these things were babbled to and fro, the multitude being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to cry out, and immediately there was a tumult, wherein the women bore away the bell, but some of them lost their kerchiefs. And the dispute was so hot, that there was more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry.". It is observed of Mr. Erbery, by one who appears to have been well acquainted with him, that the four principal things upon which he chiefly dwelt in his ministry, were the following : " That there was a measure of a pure appear- ance of spirit and truth in the days of the apostles.-That about the latter end of their days, or soon after, the spirit of the Lord withdrew itself; and men substituted an external and carnal worship in its stead.-That this apostacy was not yet removed from the enerality ofprofessing christians, notwithstanding their pretence of deliverance ; but that they still lay under it, and were likely so to do for some time.-That when the appointed season came, the apostacy should be removed, and the new Jerusalem come down from God, of which some glimpse might now appear in particular saints; yet the full viewand accomplishment thereof seemed tobe at some distance Mr. Baxter denominates him 66 one of the chief of the anabaptists, and Mr. Neal calls him " a turbulent anti- nomian ;"f whereas he was neither the, one nor the other. Primitive baptism, he thought, consisted in going into the water ankle-deep, and not in a total immersion ; but judged that none have now any right to administer that ordinance without a fresh commission from heaven. In his views of the trinity be was of the Sabellion cast ; and it appears from the .general strain.of his writings, that he drunk very deep, in the spirit of mysticism. He was an admirer of the 4. Athena Oxon. vol. ii. p. 104, Erbery's Testimony, Pref. t Neal's Puritans, vol.' ill. p. 597.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=