To make up, however, for this removal of so many of the old Sectaries from all practical interest in the question on their own account, there were new religious denominations of such strange ways and tendencies, such unknown relations to anything hitherto recognised as Orthodoxy or as Heresy, that the poor Civil Magistrate, or even the coolest Abstract Tolerationist, in contemplating them, might well be puzzled.

The following is a list of the chief of these new Sects that had sprung up since 1644:-- FIFTH-MONARCHY MEN:--At first sight this does not appear a new sect, but merely a continuation of the old MILLENARIES or CHILIASTS (Vol.
III, pp.

152-153), who believed that the Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years was approaching.

The change of name, however, indicates greater precision in the belief, and also greater intensity.

According to the wild system of Universal Chronology then in vogue, the past History of the World, on this side of the Flood, had consisted of four great successive Empires or Monarchies--the Assyrian, which ended B.C.