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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86191	The key of Scripture-prophecies: or, A glass of some new discoveries. Being an answer to a book published by Mr John Elmestone. Wherein is resolved, 1. Whether a true constituted church, with true office and visible membership, together with the ordinances proper to such a Gospel-stating, continued true by a line of succession from the primitive time downward to our times: or whether it were not interrupted by the apostacie. 2. If they did there intermit, when they return again to their first glory, whether now, or hereafter; and what is the dispensation now approved by the Spirit. / By Simon Henden.	Henden, Simon.	1652 (1652)	Wing H1430; Thomason E668_11; ESTC R202520	120,810	124

which in Paul's time was the greatest cause of rents then was the primitive Church in her highest stature being as the sun in its full Meridian then were all things here spoken of fulfilled then and but till then was a growing rising time and after that was a gradual declining from that time Heresies and Errors the renters of union crouded in apace Euseb lib. 3. chap. 29. In little time after the three highest spheres of the Ministerial Office were wholly resolved and expired and that remaining of Pastors and Teachers grew in every succession more corrupt and so increased in pride and usurpation till at length the Angel totally apostated from heaven to earth lost the true key of Office and instead thereof had the key of the bottomless pit which brought a gloomy night on all Object 2. Your second Scripture is 1 Tim. 6.13 14 where say you is a strait charge laid upon Timothy to keep that course of discipline prescribed to him in that Epistle Answ This solemn command of the Apostle doth not comprehend the whole Epistle but onely that immediately going before which is to fight the good fight of faith in following after righteousness godliness love patience meekness and avoiding covetousness thereby to obtain eternal life and this is doctrinal and to be observed till the last coming of Christ Now that it is thus is clear from the text for the Spirit faith not Th●s but this as pointing at that immediately preceding nor commandments in the plural as respecting all the several precepts of the whole book but commandment in the singular number as respecting one The Apostle in this Epistle gives other charges by the particle these in the plural number as Chap. 4.11 These things charge and command and Chap. 5.21 having before given rules about discipline enjoyns him to do these things without partiality and lay on hands suddenly on no man The phrase of abiding is not at all annexed to these former charges they containing many things that failed but onely to this later singled out by it self which it well reviewed will further clear up our assertion and by a direct diameter contradict the sence which you would force it to To your fourth Objection from Matth. 28.19 20 we shall reply to in the conclusion of this Paragraph Section 2. Our second is that Ministery Prayer c. being perpetuated in the Word have always the life and power of the same Word in some measure accompanying them whereby to preserve their vital being Rev. 11.1.3 But the later wanting the same Word to uphold their abiding had the winde of the Spirit with-held from them whereby they became as a carcase without a soul Rev. 7.1 We are to observe that the outward matter of Ordinances are in themselves either barren empty elements or at most external formalities a meer carcase or void cask 't is the Name and power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit sent from him that is their internal and essential form when the same Spirit of life deserts them they then remain as a dead body is when the soul is severed from it or as an empty cabinet out of which the Jewel is taken Now the former of these answerable to the Prophecies are experimentally found to have some degree of their vital faculty subsisting There is the same light power and vertue in Ministery Prayer and Praisings that was in the primitive age though not in the same degree likewise for Baptism the badge of the Covenant there was some secret vertue in the Covenant to beget and preserve a sealed company amongst the Israelites which there was not amongst Turks and Heathens quat●nus sic also the Communion received upon the ground of our spiritual union with all the godly may confer some influence of comfort and refreshing flowing from the death of Christ For as there was a mystical relation of the scattered Saints which knit them to Christ the head and one to another by a spiritual bond so was there a mystical communion and feeding together with respect to the same inseparable union But for the later that are proper to a Church stated and invested with full power though in the first Gospel-day they held forth the glory and face of Jesus Christ yet afterwards when the external Government was taken from Christ's shoulders and placed upon Antichrist as it was generally in the hands of Popes Patriarchs and Archbishops thorowout the world according to what was prophesied that it should be given to the nations Rev. 11.2 then was the winde of the Spirit withheld from breathing in them then was the glory of God departed from them since which time they have been but as an empty shell out of which the kernel of their ancient truth was taken since then the lively efficacie and power of Christ is not found to accompany them wherever used Consider them as they are in the Romish Church who alone in all our Horizon can claim a succession from the primitive and where because your Office is derived from thence you are inevitably driven to hold their true being to remain What tender hearted Protestant who holds the Pope to be Antichrist can cordially embrace that his Holiness or his Clergie by laying on of hands can confer a true spiritual gift or that Christ accompanies their hand with so much glory as to make it the prime key on earth to beget the truth of Membership and Office Who would not blush to imagine that the Popes Excommunications or Bulls deliver over to Satan and by consequence that the Church of Rome ●nto which by these keys and doors they are entered and out of which they are shut is such a Church as may be named a kingdom of heaven or that what she bindes on earth is bound in heaven or that what she looses on earth is loosed in heaven or that she can forgive and retain sins All which powers she must have if the really possess the keys of the Kingdom For these can no more be severed from the keys while abiding true then the soul from the body while a living organ But if Rome be fundamentally a false Church as she is held to be by the Protestant party and stript naked of that primitive excellencie in her external government then what may be thought of you who deduce your interest from her by descent Experience hath taught the Saints that there was as little efficacy of the true Spirit if not as much of that Antichristian spirit of Cruelty Partiality Covetousness Enmity against the power of godliness in the Bishops Courts as was before in Rome And what the Presbytery hath been in Scotland where they had the full and uncontroulable command we leave to such to determine who have felt the rod. If it be true that Effectus sequitur virtutem causae The effect follows the vertue of its cause then surely no good fruit is like to spring from an Antichristian root The lifelesness formality contentions divisions c. that

wilderness Chap. 12.6 14 and in the streets of the great city where their bodies lay when slain and on which earth they stood for some space after the Spirit of life re-entered vers 8 11 and in this terrene station they prophesied before or in the presence of earthly Hierarchies who sate in the temple or rather the court without as God The most of these Witnesses were in the Romish Church who cried against the known corruptions and administred spiritual food to the elect scattered in that confusion Object It hath been frequently objected by others that these are Candlesticks which never denote visible Churches Answ Candlesticks are not always in Scripture figures of Churches but sometimes do signifie the vessels holding forth the light of Ministery in this sence is it understood Matth. 5.15 Mark 4.21 Luke 8.16 Chap. 11.33 where the light is the Ministery the Candlestick the organ or man containing that gift the house with those truely entering therein the Church And that it is so taken here will plainly appear by an exquisite view of the text For 1. The Church is in this place delineated by another figure viz. the Temple vers 1 and not by the Candlesticks and that house is also an invisible temple shut up from the outward court vers 2. 2. When Candlesticks do resemble Churches they are ●ver set first in figure Zech. 4.2 Rev. 1.12 but here they are placed last 3. They must here belong to Ministery because the Prophets themselves who prophesie are said to be Candlesticks whereas when the Candlesticks denote Churches the Ministers are pictured by another distinct figure to wit by stars Chap. 1.16 20. 4. These are placed after the olive-trees as drawing the oil therefrom and the first relates to their qualifications the last to their dispensation The Prophets are called olive-trees and Candlesticks as they are the instruments that bear hold and dispense the grace and gift of prophecie Object There were say you Saints so manifesting themselves so discovered by the Beast and whore by their opposition which they made to their wayes against whom the beast made war overcame them and were drunken in their bloods Answ The Saints for many hundred yeers in the West even since the Apostacie were not at all visibly distinguished from the Romish Church but lived there without any open persecution Indeed within these later Centuries God raised up more valiant champions who upon some discovery more manfully testified against the great Beast of Rome then before who was then onely extant known to be so and disclosed further the corrupt doctrine of that grand-mother-whore against whom that beast at last raged and prevailed by open persecution But the most of these also were here and there a man living and dying visibly in that Church witness the Martyrs here in England which you may read in M. Fox his book of Martyrs If some were at last distinguished from that great Whore tell us what distinction of Office they had descending from the primitive Order or upon what ground they were stated in Church-discipline Surely they living within the compass of the 1260 yeers must be clothed with sackcloth and stand outwardly in that earthly confusion or wilderness and some of late in the secret chambers The saving and incorrupt truths by them professed were chiefly in point of doctrine They unmasked onely the Beast and Whore of Rome but were blinded in daughter-harlots arising then and after and the Lord in times of ignorance over-looks the weakness of his sincere servants If the Lord had designed a continued chain of true visible stated Churches as you insinuate through every age of this defection severed and apart from Rome then without doubt he would have reserved a succession of office pure amongst the said Churches nay if there had been true official Ministers all along in those Churches then no question but such a lineal descent is extant whence the outward function of the Ministery should be deduced without being beholding to the key of Rome But we know not of any investment coming from Christ and his Apostles with us but what is derived from the Popish Clergy and you in effect confess as much in the 30 Page of your book that Luther and your choicest men had their external calling thence and so much must you grant of your own unless you renounce your genealogy Now if the key pit and smoke in Rome became bottomless as it did Rev. 9. then no off-spring issuing from her can be grounded in the truth of order Therefore were there the like beasts in the Churches you plead for who persecuted the godly by sword banishment imprisonment blood when they were anatomized as the Pope their forefather did before We now come further to expostulate about the temple and the outward court Rev. 11.1 2. Master Elmestone holds the temple to be a true visible stated Church and the Court without to symbolize such a false Church state which never was bottomed in the truth On the other side we maintaine the temple to decipher the mystical union of the one hundred and fourty four thousand sealed or elect ones whereby they are built up a spiritual house and the Court without to be the externality of Ecclesiastical order which was established by Christ in the primitive times and true but after being corrupted by Antichrist was rejected by the Spirit and false Object You alledge That the temple is the visible because measured Answ This measurement was not in the visibility of Church-order but only in the inward work of true grace and worship thence arising as will appear by these reasons 1. Because when the visible Church is measured it hath alwayes degrees of outward demensions and distances specified in the measuring as of the new Jerusalem the city was found by the golden rod to be ten thousand furlongs the wals one hundred fourty four cubits Revel 21.15 16 17. also Ezekiels temple and City from Chap. 40. to the end of the book whereas this hath no such demensions specified in the meting 2. Because the outward court which we have proved in the Cessation to be the externality of Church-order was excluded and forbidden by the spirit to be measured which must infer that nothing was here comprehended but the inward roomes of the hidden man with worship c. flowing from those intimate springs of grace 3. Because only the sealed elect number remained Rev. 7.3 c. Chap. 9.4 Chap. 14.1 Chap. 13.8 Mat. 24.24 Object Those sealed ones were as you truly say elect saved ones but in all ages many more have made profession then the elect and so during the Apostacy many beside the sealed ones did help to make up a visible Church Answ In a true stated Church hypocrites may be circumscribed within the compass of a true external stand and so may have an outward measurement but when the exteriour order is excluded and the measurement only internal to the elect who are visible in false stands

Matth. 16.19 And as the natural windes bring a sweet influence of fertility to the earth and of purification both to sea and air by their breathing in this lower Region the restraint whereof causeth things to putrifie so this spiritual winde blowing here below on the Israelites earth sea and trees caused the spices thereof to flow out and purified all Cant. 4.16 but after it was withheld then ensued a common infection Chap. 8. Chap. 9. Chap. 13. Chap. 11. Chap. 17. which poysoned all except the sealed ones who properly had some secret inhalations from the Angel of the East These Angels we conceive to be evil spirits working by their principal ministers the four capital Patriarchs of the Christian world to wit the Bishop of Alexandria for the South of Antioch for the East of Constantinople for the North and Rome for the West who usurping and in a manner ingrossing all Ecclesiastical Government into their hands and tugging amongst themselves for Primacie did by contention pride avarice and heresie gradually detain the four windes from breathing in the external Regiment till at the last the Headship fell into Rome where it became another And this restraint was not properly in them as if any creature had power over the holy Ghost but by accident in the same sence that the infection of Nature is said to resist and quench the Spirit Acts 7 51. and 1 Thess 5.19 Now because the Israelites here spoken of are thought by some to be the natural seed of Abraham I shall for their satisfaction evidence by some arguments that they must be the Christian nations or Gentile Israelites proved by these following Reasons 1. This Book of the Revelations was not sent to the Jews but to the Gentiles as principally belonging unto them and in various types pourtrays the several changes that should befall them from the days of John to the final consummation 2. The main body of this Vision was after the days of John as you may gather by Chap. 4.1 and for time begins when the open breathing of the Spirit was withheld when the trumpets that brought in the apostacie were sounded when the outward court was cast out even when the Jews were almost utterly fallen away from any profession of Christ from whom onely comes salvation and could not then have one hundred and fourty four thousand sealed ones amongst their tribes 3. The four Angels stand upon all quarters of the earth and the with-holding is universal The four windes and the hurt thereby to all the unsealed Israelites which cannot agree with any one Nation 4. This hurt was chiefly introduced by the locust Chap. 9.4 and by the Beast which can in no sence be applied to the Jews but to the Christian nations who were thus undermined by Antichrist 5. By comparing this text with Chap. 11.2 we may clearly perceive that the nations possessed the court without the temple which was the stand of the common Israelites The common Israelites stand in the court without the nations stand in the court without the nations then must be these common Israelites especially considering that all the visions of this book are not proper but allegorical 6. The number sealed from amongst them was the same not hurt by the Locusts Chap. 9.4 nor utterly deceived by the Beast Chap. 13.8 Matth. 24.24 the same standing on mount Sion Chap. 14.1 which duely pondered with all the circumstances can be reduced to no time or condition but that of the Elect in Babylon If the Romish and Antichristian defection be not deciphered by these figures and but the Jews onely then is it altogether omitted in this Book then must all from thence to the end of the Revelation be peculiar to the Jews neither of which can any man of wisdom assent to embrace The Spirit hath so interlaced this Chapter from vers 1. to vers 9 with all the after-types expressing the state of the time of the tribulation and from vers 9. to the end with the next revolution and condition of the harpers as may sufficiently remove such trifling conjectures from the mindes of all who will observe the order of this Prophecie Thus we shall leave the second Section and proceed to the third Section 3. Our third ground why the visibility of Church-constitution and the keys thereof comprising the later sort of Ordinances did sail was Because the Lord deserting them when made void of their primitive truth and purity the dragon had full power therein and gave to the fallen star another key even the key of the bottomless pit Rev. 9.1 2 3 4 c. Chap. 13. Object Against this you alleadge that the Pope got into his hands all the other Ordinances as well as these as Prayer Ministery Baptism and yet for substance they remained true why then may not the later as Ordination c. Answ Because you here require us we will give our Reasons together though most have been elsewhere written why the former continued and not the later Our Grounds why the former abode shall be first in general then in particular The Reasons in general are these two 1. The former being promised in the Word to remain the Lord so sustained them by his Word as no creature could abolish them 2. Because as Christ fore-declared that there should be a sealed number to make up a mystical Church in Babylon so he upheld the former as being more necessary to maintain the being of grace some means of salvation and the badge of the Covenant Now a few words for the former Ordinances with faith and profession in particular Those of Ministery Prayer and Praisings arise from a grace in the soul faith in the heart and a gift dispensed from Christ alone even then when the outward government was rejected now his Spirit could never be radically touched as it works in the soul Thus the desires of grace in the minde aspiring and fuming up to the Father of spirits in the Ordinances of Prayer and Praisings could not be restrained much less razed by the great Antichrist Likewise the gift of the Witnesses prophecie wrought in the inward man with the administration thereof breathing out teaching is so given inspired and sustained by Jesus Christ as the Beast could never take it into his full possession it this had been possible he would not have suffered them to turn his waters into blood ministerially and smite his earth with plagues and that not so oft as the Beast but as they listed vers 6. The Bishops with us in England when they had full command and jurisdiction in Ecclesiastical regiment could by no means wholly withhold or corrupt the desires and prayers of the Saints nor so take this inward gift into their custody but that in despight of their malice it brake forth in one corner or other of the Land to testifie the truth in some measure and disclose nay cry down the corruptions of the times Also faith in the heart and the effects thereof shining forth