a religious sect which sprung up amongst the Protestants of Germany, being a kind of mean between the Quakers of England and the Quietists of the Catholic church. They despised all sorts of ecclesiastical polity, all scholastic divinity, and all forms and ceremonies, and gave themselves up to contemplation and a mystic theology. Many gross errors are charged on the Pietists, in a book entitled Manipulus Observationum Antipietistae; but these have much of the air of polemical exaggeration, and are certainly not at all just. Indeed there are Pietists of various kinds; some running into gross illusions, and carrying their errors to the overturning of the greater part of Christian doctrine, whilst others are only visionaries, and a few are very honest and good, though perhaps misguided people. Having become disgusted with the coldness and formality of other churches, they were charmed with the fervent piety of the Pietists, and attached to their party, without giving in to the grossest of their errors.