him for with the Lord there is great Mercy and plentious Redemption who also is just in all his Ways and equal in all his Doings and righteous in all his Judgments and he will not be mocked by any such as People sow such must they â—â—ap and the wages of Sin is Death Oh how many have been the Warâ—ings of the Lord to the People of this Nation Time after Time Year after Year Line upon Line Precept upon Precept but how few have ponderously weighed them received them and laid them to Heart And how hath the Lord in part executed his righteous Judgments in and upon this poor Nation and how few have learned Righteousness thereby but the greatest part of thy Inhabitants oh England are still daily adding Sin unto Sin and heaping of Iniquity upon Iniquity and so fitting themselves for a day of Slaughter And instead of being truly humbled under the hand of God and to mourn in Sack-cloath and Ashâ—s many are sporting themselves in Musick and Dancing in ringing of Bells Camping and Wrestling and many other Games and Vanities as Bull-baiting and Bare-baiting by which the Creatures are oppressed to make them Sport also their wiâ—ked Stage-playes and Games which are abomination to the Lord and ashame to a Nation-professing Christianity O! how doth Swearing and Drunkenness abound and many take pleasure to overcome one another in the Sin of Drunkenness which is abomination to the Lord. And you that are Tavern and Ale-House-keepers put not your Guests upon spending the good Creatures of God upon their Lust for your own Gain and Interest sake but rather restrain them lest you become guilty with them of their Sins and so partake with them of their Plagues And all your observable Days and Times in which you take liberty to sport your selves in Games and Vanity ought to be left off for your Customs are vain you that observe a Time as you pretend in honour of Christ which you spend in excess of Eating and Drinking Musick and Dancing Gaming and Revelling in these things you dishonour Christ and not honour him but grieve his holy Spirit and add Sin unto Sin and the greater will be the condemnation of such except they Repent and truly a great and sore Plague is come upon many People evâ—n hardness hardness of Heart So that indeed neither the Warnings nor Wâ—ings Mercies nor Judgments of the Lord will take impression on them to move them to Repentance and in the sence of this my Heart is grieved and my Soul mourneth in secret because of the hardness of their Hearts which doth signifie theâ— to be as Vessels of wrath fitted for Destruction Oh how doth all manner of Wickedness abound and Ungodliness appear with open Face and blush not at rebuke oh how doth Pride super-abound and Peoples Hearts so puffed up therewith that many scarcâ— know what to eat drink or put on oh the â—ields are even white for the Harvest Sinners grown ripe for Vengance Iniquity is coming to its-full height the Fat 's overflow with Wickedness oh how are the Proud counted happy and the Workers of Iniquity set up but the Meek of the Earth are despised and the humble and contrite Ones are killed all the day long and counted as Sheep for the Slaughter and they that reprove Sin in the Gate are Hated and Persecuted and he that departeth from Iniquity and learns Righteousness maketh himself a Prey Oh the Lord hath seen it and it displeaseth and grieveth him because of the multitudes of the Transgressions and Abominations of the Sons of men and Violeâ—ce and Cruelty that filleth the Earth but the Lord will arise as a man of War and ease himself of his Enemies and avengâ— himself of his Adversaries for because Judgment is not speedily executed against an Evil work therefore the Heartâ— of the Sons and Daughters of men are set in them to do wickedly but what will be the end thereof Oh England oh England how ofâ—â—n would the Lord in mercy have gathered thy Inhabitants unto himself as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under â—eâ— Wings but thou wouldest not therefore hath the Lord in Judgment partly made thee desolate Oh thy great City thy great City whose Abominations reached Heaven and her Sins came up before the Most High how hath the Lord God mighty in Power and righteous in Judgment layed her Glory in the Dust covered her Dignity with Ashes and marr'd her Beauty with Burning Oh how hath he made of a City an Heap of a defenced City a Ruin of a Palace of Strangers to become a ruinous Heap And oh how few of thy Inhabitants oh England have weightily laid it to Heart or have seriously and diligently taken notice of the cause of the Destruction thereof the Lord Could have destroyed the People with their Habitations but the Lord in Mercy spared them that his Mercy might move them to Repentance Oh England how hath Judgment after Judgment been executed upon thine Inhabitants how hath the Lord visited thee with Plague Fire and Sword yet their Hearts are still stout against the Lord and his People their minds haughty and they will not bow their Hearts to the Lord nor break off from their evil doings and wicked wayes therefore is his Hand stretched forth still and they that will not take Warning and Repent must feel his heavy stroke Oh say not any of you in your Hearts Tush the Lord hath done his worst oh the Lord he hath begun and he can make a full end and who amongst you can stay his Hand or escape his stroke when he smites or where can you hide your selves from the Lord therefore bow fear and tremble before him and submit your selves and meet him by True and Unfeigned Repentance and that is the way for you to escape the Stroke of his Fury The Lord is a God full of long-suffering and full of patience and forbearance and long woeth Sinners and waiteth day after day to be Gracious even to the Rebellious but his patient forbearing will come to an end towards those that will by no means repent and be reclaimed from the evil of their wayes and against such his Anger and Wrath will break forth as Fire and they like Stubble ready dry will be consumed therein Therefore you that have not yet wholy sinned out the day of your Visitation prize prize that littletime you have and make good use thereof in diligently minding and seeking after those things that concern your eternal Peace before you go hence and be no more Oh dear People every where my love is to you and pity and tender compassion is in my Heart for you and your good and welfare eternally I desire especially you unto whom I am known in the Feâ—â— even you my Neighbours and Countrymen whose resident is in Kirtly Peakfield Layestouff and those parts Oh my Soul tenders your eternal happiness and desires the Salvation of your Souls yea love and good will is in my Heart towards you and
remember that in which God first appeared viz. the measure of Gods Gift or Grace in their Hearts there to stay their Minds often mentioning the command of God to Jacob who after many Tryals Travels and Exercises and after God had given him great encrease of Riches as Flocks and Herds VVives and Children which he devided into three Bands in order to meet his Brother Esau admiring the goodness of the God of his Fathers who had given him all that Riches who only with his Staff did some time before travelled over Jordan yet after all this God commanded him to go to Bethel the place where the Lord at first appeared to him when he fled from his Brother Esau there to dwell and erect an Alter and call upon his Name He often had it upon him to put Friends in mind of speaking the true Language to say thee or thou to a single Person without respect of Persons the contrary being false and so out of the Truth it was likewise much upon him to exhort Friends to feel the concern of Truth upon their Spirits that in the true sence thereof they might feel the drawing of the Love of God to Meet and Assemble themselves together in his Name and Fear and that they might truly know and understand the end of their meeting and what God therein requires of them that they might not go to Meetings as many People go to their Church as they call it to be a little serious while they are there and when they are gone thence let their minds out as if they had left their God behind them such a coming to meetings would not stand any one in stead in a time of Exercise or a day of Tryal much might be writ as to the good Exhortations Admonitions Advice and good-Counsel which oftentimes opened in his Heart in the Meetings and Assembles of Friends but I must refer my friendly Reader to the persual of his Cordial and Soul refreshing Epistles as in the Life they are Read by which they were given forth for his or her further satisfaction only I cannot pass by as not to mention his frequent wrestlings in Prayer with the Lord for the good of all but more especially for those of the Houshold of Faith not forgetting the Sufferers of all sorts whether in Body or in Mind particularly such as suffer Imprisonment for the Testimony of a good Conscience he often prayed that God would be pleased to make the Prison as a Pallace to them through the incomes of his heavenly Life and blessed Presence in and to their Souls and such as lay upon a Bed of Sickness that God would be their Comfort such as travelled by Sea or Land in the Work or Service of the Lord that he would be their Support and by his living Power and Presence them accompany that their Service might be effectual they enabled with cheerfulness to undergo what it should please God to permit or suffer to befal them for their Testimony sake he often interceeded with God for his very Enemies having learned that Lesson to love Enemies that it would please the Lord to turn their Hearts and to open their Eyes that they may see against whom they are striving and against whom they are setting themselves in battle aray as Bayers Thorns against consuming Fire that they might behold him whom with their Sins they had Pierced whom in his Members they had Persecuted that they might mourn over him and if it were the will of God Repent Return be Converted and Healed he oft remembred this the Land of his Nativity in his Suplications to God that it would please him if so it seemed good in his sight to prevent those impending Judgments that hang over it ready like a dreadful Tempest to break and fall upon it by its speedy Repenting and breaking off from those great Sins and Evils that abound and superabound in it which in Nature seem to Equal if not Exceed the Sins of Sodom and that it would please God if that it seemed good in his sight to frustrate confound and bring to nought the devices contrivances and consultations of that wicked Spirit and those wicked Instruments that device contrive and consult its Overthrow and Destruction Thus did the Love of God flow from the Heart of this Servant of his not only to Friends but to Enemies having so learned of his Master Christ Jesus whom he faithfully served in his Generation and with whom he forever resteth Now Friends having hinted something of the Testimony this good man bore for God in Life and Conversation and also in Word and Doctrine having a dispensation of the Word of Life committed to him to declare to others he being an able Minister of the same now it remains to speak something of his Testimony he bore for God in Suffering it was not only given him to Believe but to Suffer for the Name of Christ in which by the permission of God he had a large share especially by Imprisonment which many times was long and tedious had he not been supported by the Power of God for whose Cause he Suffered and in whose Will he was truly contented to undergo what wicked men were permitted to inflict upon him for his Conscience sake towards God eying the Will of God in all in which was his Peace and true lasting Satisfaction the principal places of his Imprisonment were at Yarâ—oth Norwich-Castle Blibro Melton Ipswich and Edmonds-Bury in the last of which he remained a close Prisoner scarce setting his Foot over the Threshold in five Years time he was several times a Prisoner in Melton Goal as likewise in the County Goal at Ipswich where he breathed his last Breath in which two places latterward my self with several of our Friends in and about Woodbridg were Prisoners with him as particularly in this Persecution which began five Years since by Edmond Brume Priest of Woodbridg but committed by Justice Bacon and Justice Bohon for refusing to take an Oath where he remained Prisoner about half a Year but after some breathing space our old Persecuting Adversary Priest Brume began afresh to breath out his Threatnings like the Persecutors of old and getting a Justice for his turn began to stir up the Town Officers and disturb our Meeting who of themselves might be unwilling and upon the 12th day of the 6th month 1683 there came to our Meeting the aforesaid Officers wherâ— our dear Friend William Bennit was upon his Knees in Prayer to God from which he was violently haled away by one Robert Chapman a Constable being put forward thereto by John Firman Church warden and with several others of us taken out of our peaceable Meeting at Woodbridg and carried before Edmond Jenny of Bredfeild Justice who committed us to Melton Goal for being at a Quaker-Meeting which is contrary to Law as saith the Mittimas at which this innocent man greatly rejoyced that the Lord see it meet for him to bear his Testimony in
help even to those that could not speak a vvord in season to them but have daubed them up vvith untempered Morter and have endeavored to heal their vvound deceitfully and have preached Peace to that vvhich is for judgment and so thereby they have gotten some kind of satisfaction for a time until the Lord vvounded them again with the Sword of his Righteous Judgments then their seeming rest fled away as smack before the wind and sorrow trouble took hold on them again as pain on a Woman in travel and then they have run again unto that which could not remove the very cause of their trouble and sorrow they have run to the Scriptures of Truth and therein have found a promise and this they have applied to themselves for to get peace and rest thereby when alas poor hearts they have not been in that state and condition which that promise which they applied to themselves was unto and so not for them and then they have read what the Saints once did and performed and they set themselves to do the like and to imitate them and so hereby for a time they have gotten some satisfaction some kind of rest and peace until the Lord God did thunder again with Dread and uttered his Voice with Terror which caused the Earth to tremble and their habitation to fall and then dissolation came upon them again and their Fig-leave garment came to be rent and their wound greater then ever it was before and thus they have run from Mountain to Hill from one Physitian to another for healing but they were unto them as Physitians of no value for none of them could rightly heal their wounds until at last they said in their hearts We will seek no more unto man for vain is the help of man But we will return unto the Lord God who hath wounded us and he will heal us who hath broken us in peices and he will bind us up and so returning to the light of Christ Jesus in their own hearts with which the Lord hath wounded them for their sins and brought trouble and sorrow upon them for their iniquities waiting therein in patience upon the Lord God in the way of his Righteous Judgments which was set up in their hearts they came to feel through their believing in the Light and loving the Light by which they were wounded for sin the cause of their sorrow and trouble and wounds taken away by the Blood of Jesus which is his life which they came to feel iâ— them cleansing of them from their sins and washing of them away and so the very cause of their wound being taken away and the corruption purged out then he the tender pitiful compassionate God of Mercy that in mercy towards them had wounded them healed them with the sweet Oyl of joy peace and gladness and now these that vvere mourners do rejoyce and they that vvere heavy hearted are made glad and beauty is given them for ashes and the oyl of joy for mourning the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness and are become Trees of Righteousness the Lords own planting bringing forth fruit to his glory and praise vvho hath thus set them free from their sorrovv and trouble These can say Good it is to wait upon the Lord God in the Isa 26. 8. 2â— 9. way of his Judgments Lo this is the Lord whom we have waited for this is our God we have waited for him come let us rejoyce in his Salvation wherewith he hath saved us he hath redeemed us out of the horrible Pit out of the miry clay hath he brought us and set our feet upon a Rock and doth establish our goings who filleth our Souls with the fatness of his house and causeth us to drink of the River of his Pleasure and to suck and be satisfied with the Consolation of the Brest and to milk out and be delighted in the abnundance of the sweetness of its vertue Oh what what shall we render unto the Lord unto the Lord our God for his benefits oh what shall we render unto him for his Mercies what shall we render unto him for his loving kindness Oh! let us take the Cup of his Salvation and drink thereof abundantly and in the strength of the vigour of its vertue let us in the meekness of our hearts and in the lowliness and contriteness of our Souls praise praise the Name of the Lord our God who is worthy of all Glory and Praise for ever and for evermore A few words more unto you dear people who desire more after the love and peace of God then the glory and pleasures of the world Dear people take heed unto that which discovers unto you what are your thoughts whether they be good or evil for that is it which must redeem your minds unto God and wait to come to know it to be a stay to your minds and a stop to your thoughts and a bridle to your tongues and to cause a watch before your mouth and to raise a holy fear in your hearts of offending the Righteous God of Righteousness in thought in word in deed And dear people who have so much depended and relied upon man for teaching retire you with your minds inward to the manifestation of the Spirit of God in your own hearts and wait in it to come to know the Lord God to be your Teacher â—hat if you should be separated from those that have been your Teachers and put into a Hole a Dungeon or Cave of the Earth for your Consciences towards God and so be separated from all your teaching outward you may then feel find and witness the Lord to teach you to instruct you counsel and direct you comfort and refresh you even by his pure Eternal Spirit in you for all the children of the Lord shall be taught of the Lord and established in Righteousness and great shall be their peace in the God of their Salvation unto whom unto whom be glory glory honour and praise for ever and evermore for he is vvorthy he is vvorthy vvorthy saith my soul unto whom be glory in the highest Amen So dear people for your sakes mostly was these foregoing lines written in obedience to the tender spirit of love in my heart vvhich drew me thereunto and in tender unfeigned love and pure good-will to your souls vvho have had and still have true desires in your hearts after the Lord and have been and still are thirsting and hungering after the vvay of Truth and Righteousness and have been and still are seeking and hunting among the husks shells and shadows for to find the substance but still fail of your expectation and cannot find true and perfect satisfaction but secretly in your hearts are panting and thirsting after the living vvater and are vveary of feeding upon the husks and begin to say within your selves to each other Come vve have been long vvandering abroad hunting after the Lord afar off seeking of him in