spirit in obedience to his Father and in all his work knew no sin yet he himself was made sin His Father by a superiour Law judged him as the sinner and acquitted pardoned and justified them This is Christs way first reprove severely as a legal Minister purely and holily and finding that short or weak he layes down his life for them he had condemned And when he had administred the Law in its highest purity he then nailed it to the Cross as a weak thing that could not save and died under it to bring in a better Law of peace and forgiveness The fourth and last is the best the reproofs of the Spirit which Christ prefers above his own John 16.7 8 c. It is expedient that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgement Christ reproved of sin from righteousness The spirit reproved of sin and righteousness Christ reproved of sin in the flesh in weakness as under it and the Law and so grieved at it The Spirit reproved of sin and of righteousness in glory and power because saith Christ I go to my Father where he was glorified Being now exalted not only over their sins but by the worst of their sins by their crucifying of him The Son of man was lifted up His love and life overcame both Law Sin Death and the Devil having taken away their sins his Spirit could now manifest to them this one only sin unbelief That there was in him love peace pardon and salvation for them and their worst sins hatred of him that he had born them himself and was acquitted of them and so they were all done away and this sin only remained that they believed not this blessed and mighty grace that could overcome all that evil and bring forth glory to himself and good to them out of their sins and his death And this the Spirit did not only declare but convince so strongly that they could not resist it For his own descending upon them was an undeniable proof of it He convinces of righteousness by shewing that they had a righteousness as well as sin and that as their sins were Christs so his righteousness was theirs that their righteousness was with the Father in a heavenly invisible state because I go to the Father That this is true his own coming as Gods gift is a sufficient proof And therefore it is conviction with judgement or of Sin Righteousness and Judgement For except both the evil and the good be produced both Sin and Righteousness in the light and power of the Spirit there may be wrath administred but not Judgement It is said of Judgement because the Prince of this world is Judged And that is true Judgement that convinces the creature of Sin and of Righteousness and by the Spirit releases him and judges the wicked one the enemy that is the principal the author and worker of all this mischief This Judgement doth right to man to Christ and to God to man it humbles and abases him and brings him to God where his righteousness is It doth right to Christ and the sufficiency of his love life death and resurrection to save the world And it exalts God his love mercy fulness and justice that he hath the righteousness of the whole world with him and that he hath accepted Christ to it as Lord and Prince of the whole world as head of man and hath given him power and spirit to reveal and dispence that righteousness freely to whom he will Now it much concerns you and me and all men that are busie in reproving others to examine our selves by these things what kind of reproofs we do administer If you will admit your work to be tried which you now cannot avoid upon a little humble and sober consideration you will find that in the administration of condemnation upon the Magistracy and Ministry of Church and Kingdom persons and things officers and offices you are very much short of the second of these which I call a Legal or Angelical reproof and punishment for sin For true legal lawful or angelical justice is administred First upon men as Gods creatures made in his image and so his children though drawn away by Satan into the worst evils It is secondly not to ruine or destroy but to reform Thirdly it is by a just holy stable Law and not from mens uncertain and broken imaginations Fourthly it is from a just holy and godly life and nature If these things be true as they are then consider What spirit have you acted in Is it not mercy and justice to you and all men that this should be known That you dealt with them not as men but as brats of Antichrist And sought not to reform either persons or things but to destroy root branch abjure and curse for ever And that by no steddy known Law of God or man such you never could own or profess but by uncertain opinions and imaginations which you never were nor could be true to or agree in either for Church or Common-wealth yea generally ye acted besides all rule Law and authority only by that you call necessity self preservation and interest And this you did not from a pure nature as is too grosly manifest but from a mixture at least of pride envy malice covetousness and self-seeking seen now by your selves and all men If you fall so short of the second I know you will not presume once to think of the third kind which Christ our Lord administred in the flesh first to discover sin and then to bear the curse and punishment of it himself This was â—nce an example and the Saints of old were called to practise the same thing read 1 Pet. 2.19 20 c. and chap. 3.17 18. But alas you are not yet instructed in the doctrine of such a thing but are taught the contrary that this is only for Christ to do and not for men But you are sheep gone astray and led away by false spirits and for the present have lost the Sheeps nature and acted as Woolves When you return unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls chap. 2. v. 25. he will teach you another and more excellent way And therefore as you are short of the second so you are opposite to the third in the very form of your spirits For Christ the holy one dies for the ungodly your holiness serves only to punish and destroy the ungodly his holiness to your practice must needs seem either unrighteous or foolish and impolitick to suffer the just for the unjust and only for well-doing and to commit his cause to God Why did ne not justifie himself and condemn others Had he power in his hands Yes he could command legions and that of Angels Why then did he not cut off the wicked out of
beauty and glory to all and receive from none Secondly it is a sin against God a distrust of him not to commit our selves wholly to the leadings of his spirit it is an ignorance of his presence with and dominion over every spirit he being in and over all men he will plead the cause of Truth with them especially when it rises simply and purely from himself and his own good Spirit And will make it effectual to that end that he sends it It is most righteously due to him that he should have the managing of what light and grace he gives to any man and to employ it to his own holy ends and purposes to be a savour of life or of death as he please Thirdly there is in it want of love to Brethren for why should we be either afraid or ashamed to appear to them we love just as we are if I love my neighbour as my self why should not I appear to him as I do to my self and be confident of him that if I be found weak to him he will both pitty cover and help me as I would do to my self or as I would do to him Sure such confidence and openness of heart one to another will sooner gain entrance into the heart then formal and neat discourses into the head being most natural and familiar And if they obtain a place in the heart they will effect more then by pleasing the fancy yea weakness as well as confidence suits best with them that are weak A man may over-power a weak mind by too great an evidence and strength of Reason We are all weak if any will seem to be otherwise I doubt he doth but dissemble and get a covering but if any could attain a perfection he would by it be more a stranger to his Brethren except he could make them like himself or descend into their imperfection and be like them Fourthly I am not justified in rejecting or scorning infirmity There is a time for all things and a season proper for weakness A mixture of light and darkness makes the morning pleasant and growing simplicity and mistakes in children is better then cunning and politick exactness Yea natural weakness is better then artificial strength Christ became weak for us and what is any man that he should refuse what he chose or to be weak with the weak much less to appear so if he be so Exactness and compleatness is desirable and exceeding beautiful in its season when we grow up naturally to it But we must come to it by degrees and arise to it out of weakness In a child perfect strength or wisdom seems strange and monstrous if it be feigned or affected in any it is Serpentine deceit and hypocrifie Besides if we refuse to do good because we would and may do better or best of all we reject the first degree of good which is the root and foundation both of better and best And cruelly slay and destroy the first spring and buddings of life which are the fountains that only can nourish and feed unto perfect strength and Eternal Life Lastly there is in it as distrust of Truth God and Brethren so of a mans self and his own life If a man have any true life in him it is sufficient to carry him forth into the world because it is better and greater then the world He that is in you is greater then he that is in the world By distrust and diffidence of a mans own life he weakens it It is the design of the enemy to keep us in fear and bondage of spirit If that life that is in me be true it is best when it is natural all art and contrivance do weaken and clog it If it be not true it is abominable hypocrisie to personate an holy or heavenly thing We see all studied and made things come to base ends they will wear out and leave a mans soul destitute But true and genuine life will stand and increase Therefore I would be natural as in all things so especially in Religion which though it is supernatural yet is never good if it be not also natural Yet I may not wholly condemn the exercise either of fancy or judgement in composing and forming things for that they also are natural faculties and are excellent when the spiritual life doth purifie them fill them and rule over them By this you see the first and great evil in this Book and in my mind in writing of it delaying or dallying till another spirit had entred and so long till all parties were so engaged and disturbed that they had neither time nor clearness of mind to examine the reason of it For which I was so sharply afflicted and threatned not only to the rejecting of my present work and Ministry but of my life also Yet it was a sin not of wickedness but weakness and therefore I found mercy and God accepted of a sacrifice from me and not only permitted me to proceed in my work but continued and enlarged his assistance and healed my foul also Which gives me hope that though the book and my self suffer awhile yet I and others may at last reap fruit and comfort from it It is for the present in the fire and let it be tryed throughly that all may see what is in it SECT IV. YOu have seen the first and great evil of the book its unseasonable birth occasioned by my delaying to write it when the things contained in it first offered themselves to come forth You have likewise seen the severe chastisments suffered for it and animadversions upon both If this evil be really removed and taken away and what I have written may a little calm and compose your minds but into a willingness to read it and seriously to ponder the things contained in it other defects the consequents and effects of the former may be cured There is a continual spring and growth of light in my mind which makes me distaste this day what I wrote two or three dayes since this made me suppress things and not giving them vent in their season they multiplyed so fast upon me that at last they crowded out one over another so thick and in a huddle that people know not what to make of them whereas had they marched out in their own order although rude and natural yet they would have been more perspicuous and so more easily discerned and understood There is I am sure a strange mistake in men even of the very drift and nature of the book so much wide of reason that I wonder at it besides other causes this may be one things pressed out so fast when they found the door open that they obscured themselves by multitude and force Being born in turba they are children of strife from the womb and then it is no wonder if they disturb others But this is a curable evil if any will be at the pains to part the notions and conceptions and take them asunder
or I do not understand it or What do you mean by this or that passage T is strange totally condemned but not examined in any parts of it I may say in my case as Job chap. 31. v. 35 36 37. That mine adversary had written a Book surely I would take it upon my shoulder and bind it as a crown to me I would declare to him the number of my steps c. Had his reproofs been heavy true or false I would have taken them upon my shoulder and born either my own or his infirmities I have done it and by the same grace of God I can do it again Or had his book been more true righteous or mercifull then mine I can boldly say I should have put it upon my head openly worn his understanding professed it and gloried in it as a crown I know I have in me that authority over my self and have been so conversant in self-judging and retracting what I have seen to be short and also such a love to truth that it would be a glory and crown to me to meet with a light that could convince mine of darkness yea I have this experience of my self I can prefer another before me and give honour time and place to my adversaries even when I know they are the weaker But I may and do think that men are not able to deal with the reason of the Book and therefore it is left to my self to Animadvert upon it and possibly I may deal as severely with it as another The first thing that I blame the book for is its untimeliness it came too late I have in my heart a love to manknid to all English men and to the opposite parties in the Nation my place and work is to heal unite and reconcile and so to prevent ruine and destruction if I might be heard none should execute it nor any suffer it Many things did offer themselves in my mind that did tend to a universal peace and a composing all differences to the great advantage of the whole and of every part They have been long conceived in my mind and did offer themselves to birth at the beginning of this great change but I delaid so long till another spirit had stepped in and engaged the minds of men both in doing and suffering so that what was proposed towards mother course could not be heard by either and for this I suffered a very sharp rebuke from the Lord before the Book came forth t was like that to Moses Exod. 4.24 God met him and sought to kill him A more dangerous assault I have not received a long time nor a deâ—per wound I have still a frequent sense of it which keeps me in an awe of God My evil was suppressing a that light of love and peace which did arise in my mind from the divine nature This we must know and I declare it from a living sense That God is in his nature most gracious tender and patient yet he knows how to take vengeance on all iniquity even in his dearest children Where there is the greatest love there is the greatest authority and majesty yea the greatest jealousie and severity I find it so in his constant dealings with me The supreme Law of God is himself Love and with it peace salvation forgiveness good-will to man The very nature and Law of this love is to do good and communicate none receives it for himself only but to give forth to others of all things it must not be confined nor imprisoned being in its own nature infinitely large You have freely received freely give If this be the highest Law it doth punish accordingly being offended or transgressed against it requires the sorest punishment which is to take away that love They that have felt love must needs have the sharpest sense of the want of it and its nature being large and communicating that evil servant that hides and buries this talent of love and peace and not communicate it it shall be taken from him This was my danger All men live under a Law the Law of love is the exactest and severest where it is in life and power or the Law of the spirit of life which is in Jesus it is there the quickest and sharpest and works most fully and strongly where it is engraven and written upon the heart and put in the inward parts Every stroke of a Law of eternal life in the most inward parts must needs be terrible threatning eternal death I write this not only that you may know that I live under a Law and exact discipline but that all may learn to fear the Lord and his goodness For know assuredly that God will be known and feared of all and that in great mercy and severity For his love and grace where it is in its truth and power will not be abused and turned into looseness and wantonness you may abuse and corrupt lesser favour but it will rise and be revenged and at last have that absoluteness in it that it will rule and give Law to us else it cannot save us My suppressing the movings of general and healing love was thus it often rose up in my mind and required to be written and published I did attempt and essay to do it but what I did one day I disliked the second or third day either from the weakness of my mind or from a growing spring of light or both but finding larger and deeper discoveries I refused and rejected the former and so in hope of doing better more strongly more certainly and completely I delayed to do what was present till the season was past There is in this a great evil for which I received a great rebuke and yet am I not wholly delivered from the snare for the further enlargement of my mind and the instruction of others I will examine the particulars of it In not giving forth truth light and love as it arises naturally in our minds but deferring till it be more accomplished and compleat or till we can give it a finer dress which may render it the more acceptable to others that so the fruit may be more certain and our selves more honoured and justified In this there is a great transgression against the Law of love and life First it is a fin against that truth or light an undervaluing of it as if it were not worthy to be seen and looked upon by men in its own natural form wherein there is the greatest beauty it is sufficiently if not most lovely in it self and in its own naked and native goodness All light hath a natural Majestie in it and is best when purest and unmixed it commands by its own brightness but above all the light of love is absolute and perfect It hath in it a sufficiency of glory to take away the spots and defects of other things and therefore it self needs no accomplishments All additions to light and love do darken and ecclipse them both for they give
thing that opposed you was one and the same enemy In that troubled state you conclude I was turned to the world and backslidden to the present rising power Great guilt and great suffering meeting together must needs much disturb the mind of poor man If you in the trouble of your souls mistake me and if my mind be clear and at peace I may well bear it and pitty you and so I do My business was to be dayes-man between adverse parties I know I did not intrude into the office but refused and excused as Moses Who am I they will not believe nor hearken to my voice I am a man of no power or esteem and so put it off till I was compelled to appear and now I find the common fate of them that interpose to part the fray both parties fall upon him You think I am turned Courtier the Court thinks I am still a Fanatick T is but just I should receive both your neglects into me standing between you I am content to feel the evil of both because I love both and have in my soul good for both But you do not only judge me to be an enemy but worse an apostate brother and more wicked then your open adversaries for they only afflict the outward man I fall upon your spirits and principles We shall have occasion to discourse of spirits and principles hereafter but here I shall only mind you of two or three things First It is I confess a very difficult thing to judge of principles and spirits because they are inward and therefore strangers and enemies cannot judge of them It must be some friend or brother that hath conversed with them They that are still under them are judged by them and therefore they cannot judge of them It must be some that have travelled through them and have had experience of them spirits and principles are Gods and who can judge the Gods If any they that have been amongst them and tryed them you may from this find some reason why I should be chosen to do this service for you you generally know me my way and work hath been trying of spirits many years Secondly as it is difficult to judge spirits and principles so it is hard to bear the judgement of them Men can easier die and lay down their natural lives then suffer their principles to be touched Men of any common honesty do freely expose their flesh to death to save their Gods although they be but Idols But thirdly There are false Gods false spirits you know it and have familiarly accused others of it you know I know it I confess I do as we say to my cost it may be to your profit you have of late been hammering at a spiritual Antichrist an Antichrist within and it is most true many such there are can you think that you should be acting so many years against Antâ—christ all the while be ignorant of an Antichrist within who doth but now begin to peep â—ut and be discovered in you and you not guilty of receiving false principles or spirits Can all this smoke of confusion darkness and enmity be amongst you and no fire of false spirits Can there be so much reeling and staggering giddiness and instability and no wine of fornication no sophisticated or adulterated wine No spiritual harlots or false lovers Must all the corruption rotteness and filth he laid upon the poor flesh Is there no evil spirit that came in under the name of God to joyn with her to beget these bastard brood of hypocrisie covetousness and self-seeking Must man only bear the blame and not the unclean spirits that are gone out Or must God and his name only stand accused that he led his people by his Spirit into no better wayes Is it not then both justice to his name and mercy to man that these evil spirits and principles should be discovered and detected As it is proper for a friend or brother that hath been partaker with you in them and hath suffered greatly for it to discover them so it will be found a friendly and brotherly office to reprove them The plucking up these principles that lie deep and secret is I know terrible I have felt it so It seems to threaten the rooting out of religion and godliness it self I have found the same thing in my tryals God comes against them and his people engaged with them in great jealousie enraged as an enemy in fiery indignation and vengeance because nothing but his vengeance can destroy them but I have found great love in these fires of jealousie yea love to our nature and persons with forgiveness to our iniquities even then when he takes vengeance of our inventions I know you can neither be inwardly cleansed nor outwardly saved but by a death in your spirits and loss of these principles which have deluded you and brought you into this grievous snare and therefore shall in love and good will to man to your souls lives and liberties prosecute my purpose of manifesting those unsound principles that have deceived and mis-led you and shall not spare for your crying or frowardness SECT V. ANother objection against the Book is it is written much in Allegories because the present state of things is there represented in and by ancient Scriptures I acknowledge this to be a fault and possibly it might arise from the first great error of delay by keeping it in too long it might be thus overgrown with hair and get this dress or at least the same distrust that made me unwilling to write might make me willing to shrowd my mind under those coverings of Scripture wanting confidence to appear more open or strength to go without that help I might affirm that the things written are not meer allegories if they be so they are to me hatefull Idols for I know nothing more abominable then meer similitudes and forms of truth I may affirm that the same eternal spirit that brought forth those works in Adam and Noah of which you there read doth for ever keep the living image of them in himself and many ages after brought them forth in Moses mind and by Moses into writing so that the works done and the words writ are one and of one mind and spirit The same eternal spirit having in himself the same eternal image doth by it preserve the image written or the words and history The same eternal spirit eternally works and brings forth his own likness in all times and in our age and the same spirit that did them and writ them then doth them now and reveals them in that Book He that is wise will understand these things But let them go for Allegories and let me bear the blame of it I am content it should go so because I know we shall gain by all our miscarriages grow wise by mistakes For sin hath something of Physick in it many times if not alwayes it hath its own cure with it because
children If you see God going before you in restoring delivering forgiving and instead of following his example you be angry at it fret and curse and think that your wrath should lead him and your prayer call forth his vengeance This is not like the Gospel nor like his Sons There is another principle which I will set at the foot of this standard Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life in him John 3.15 He that hateth his brother is a murderer then he that murdereth his brother hates him why else doth he murder him He then that hates and out of hatred endeavours the destroying or removing by death them that he hates is a hatefull murderer And then to prepare war is hatred and murder by the Law of love It is not just or good because it is commonly done It is not good because it is done by many but worse If it be murder for one man to kill another it is more murder for one party to kill another party If it be done by a more religious party upon a more prophane party it is still worse Wars for Religion are worse then for Civil rights because by such wars not only men suffer death but the peace purity and love of Religion which is the Law of Christ is violated Wars raised by a better people upon a worse if we be Christians is still worse then for a worse to raise war upon the better For according to the Law and example of Christ The strong ought to bear the infirmities of the Weak and not to please themselves Rom. 15.1 and the just to suffer for the unjust It follows no murderer hath eternal life in him For if any man have eternal life in him he need not he cannot out of fear that another will take away his life destroy him Neither can he prey upon anothers life to maintain his own Nor can he take away the sinfull life of another to secure his eternal life it is contrary to divine reason and goodness But he that hath eternal life will be enabled to lay down his life for others because he knows his life is eternal and cannot be lost This is according to our pattern ver 16. Hereby perceive we the love of God because he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren By this we perceive that his love was the love of God that he could lay down his life for us and that his life was the life of God that it could lay down it self for us And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren If this be truly and only the nature of the love and life of God and a rule to us Then that only is true godliness that answers to this pattern And what is contrary to it is of the wicked one You cannot you must not think to slight and scorn the authority and Majesty of this standard if ever you be saved you must come to it if you be saved by it you must also be judged and ruled by it I am able to say it doth save and shall judge and rule you and all men and therefore by this I must and will try and measure your present state and cause You profess in this state of opposition and enmity wherein you have been and are still engaged the cause of God and godliness Is there a cause of God that differs from himself from his life and love or another godliness then that which is born of him and conformed to him Doth he lay down his life for us that are sinners and enemies and give the same life to us which he laid down for us that we might be like him and shall we because we are his children destroy others that are not so If this be light and a rule then your enmity in which you stand is darkness and you are lead into it by a false God by an evil spirit and by a crooked rule SECT X. ALL enmity is betwixt two parties this enmity being in darkness there is a false judgement of both He that hates is ignorant of himself and of him or them that he hates in both respects the darkness of malice blinds his eyes and he knows not whither he goes In your present enmity you are guilty of both mistaken and deceived 1. In your selves And 2. In your enemies If there be these two errors there must be a third also ignorance of the way that you are in in prosecuting these enemies You think you are engaged in the cause of God and that you move in the way of God against the enemies of God But you will find that you are blinded by the enemies in all three and that you are not what you think you are nor are your enemies that which your hatred suggests they are nor is the way of opposing and destroying what your enmity imagines it is In all your eyes are blinded and you know not whither you go It will be a mercy to you if God please to open your eyes and to turn you from this way of wrath into the Way of peace we shall endeavour it First for your selves you take it for granted 1. That the cause in which you stand is the cause of God 2. You conclude that that religion and holiness in which you live is the only godliness and Christianity I doubt you are deceived in both For the first of these the cause it is cryed up among you as the Jews cried up the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord I fear your cry hath less ground then theirs However while the sound of it lives in your spirits it is no wonder if it over-powers you For there is certainly nothing more high and honourable then to be engaged in the cause of God to be his friends and champions and to be imployed in recovering of a Kingdom for Christ and setting him upon the throne All that are called to this work may well be zealous in it and freely adventure their lives for it knowing they shall have a great reward for it and whatever their lives or sins are they shall at least go to heaven if they dye in the quarrel the service is enough to answer for all Besides what we have said in the seventh and eighth Section That this cause as you have managed it agrees to no rule or example of Scripture Not to the way or work of God in delivering Israel out of Aegypt nor to that of bringing them out of Babylon much less to the way of the Gospel in Christ and the Apostles nor to the prophetical Scriptures nor to the thing it self which you profess as we have I think convincingly shewed And besides that standard of the love and life of God set up in the last Section all which you must either overthrow or subject to I shall now desire you more particularly and closely to consider First Whether this
that can live in death love and bless enemies they are fit to raign For when such come to the Kingdom they will enrich save bless and do good to all and hurt none But they that cannot bear the worst of evils among men will themselves be a burden to men if they get to the throne The good God who loves man proves and tries his own Son before he gives him the Kingdom And will not commit the Government to him till he hath found that he can be happy without it till he can glory on the Cross till he can die for others and be more happy in laying down his life and honour for them then in receiving honour from them This Lamb doth overcome For he is King of Kings He hath the Kingdom of God in him and therefore all Kingdoms in his nature And needs not take from others but gives to others And they that are with him are as he is called faithful and chosen They do partake of his royal nature and are called to suffer and to raign And in both are faithful and therefore chosen to it they strive not for it Thirdly That only is mighty and shall raign that hath power with God They that will overcome any thing truly must overcome him because his is the Kingdom and the power and the glory Now nothing prevails with him but Lamb absolute and perfect subjection to him hath only power with him And therefore none shall or can raign with him but they that will not resist him nor any power that he sets up over them For whosoever resisteth the power resisteth the Ordinance of God Rom. 13.2 By this Christ overcame and is set down upon the throne And by the same Lamb nature keeps what he got for this only is invincible and eternal If you had all the force of England and of the whole earth yea of all the Angels you could not keep it it would all ruine and destroy it self if you had it not in the Lamb for nothing can possibly subsist in the nature of God or upon the throne of God but this meek patient Lamb For it is eternally subjected to God and therefore he is eternally pleased with him and eternally honours him Fourthly The Lamb is King of Kings and Lord of Lords His Kingdom is on high higher then the Kings of the earth their glory riches titles and honours are below him they are his servants or children And therefore he cannot set himself to oppose them nor can any that have his spirit These low contests of war are the business of earthly and sensual men that live in the mire and dirt of the world who are hurt and offended with each others wayes and passions But he is on high and so are they that raign with him beyond the reach of all these things He is over them all and gives these Kingdoms to whom he please And when he hath given will defend and protect in that gift as long as he please and in what way he please And they that are with him are called to know what he doth and do as he doth Therefore if you seek for the Kingdom of Christ you must ascend by suffering into this glory from whence all men receive all their honour power and riches And then you will cease contending with that which he gives Fifthly Christ is now in the exercise of his Kingdom upon you and you are his subjects and servants now under his rod and iron scepter He hath brought you down and set up those that you would destroy And is you know righteous and just in it You are under the justice of his Kingdom and the first true and pure sense you shall have of his Kingdom is of the wrath of it You may talk of his glory but must come to feel his anger be pleased with it submit to it and rest in it before you come to enjoy his love This I can affirm upon certain knowledge and experience That if you will not embrace and kiss this his judgement you shall never rise higher neither in heaven nor in earth Therefore know he raigns now in righteousness and give him that glory that is due to him give him glory by taking shame before all the world That glory you may give him and it is all the Kingdom you or any flesh can give Christ to suffer from him But to think that as soon as you attain a notion of his Kingdom and a weak one that presently you must have share with him in it is high presumption For man or flesh to think to have it with him is to take it from him if they could Therefore you are miserably deceived by the Prince of darkness and deluded by him he would perswade you that you are for Christ and his Kingdom when indeed it is for your selves and your own advancement You are perswaded that you would exalt him and set him upon the Throne whereas he is already upon the Throne judging you and that carnal mind You can give h m no Kingdom you may acknowledge the Kingdom he hath Indeed if any will give him a Kingdom they must give of their own If then you had a glory and a Kingdom and could lay it down for him and to him you might then be said to exalt Christ And so far as you can bear this rejection that you are under and publickly justifie him and condemn your selves and the state and spirit in which you stood and acted as unworthy to stand up in his name and presence So far you will give him glory and make him to be honoured and feared in the world Could you and I come forth and openly declare that God may use us and all men and all our Zeal and Religion in what service he please But that he will not suffer either us or any other to raign with him so long as any thing of a private self-seeking proud or cruel spirit remains in us This lively and experimental testimony will make him to be honoured and feared And should I and you say and confess that the blessed God hath such love to mankind that he will suffer neither me nor you to have place in his Church till we can love and forgive all and bear the sins and curse of all men We shall thereby render him loved and honoured For this indeed is and alwayes was his mind he would not give the Kingdom to Jesus till he manifested this spirit in him neither did Christ desire it upon any other terms You may speak and do as you will but this is my sense and experience Therefore God hath brought me down and made me taste death again and again because he will not endure me to stand or to minister before his Throne till I can bear and forgive all the folly and sin of those to whom I minister And till by frequent deaths and rejection he hath killed that root of enmity to men that curses them and brought forth that love
by the sword to raigning and ruling by force They are surely most contrary and therefore Christ knowing he was to suffer commanded Peter to put up his sword and gave this rule for ever He that taketh up the sword to defend himself from suffering or to fight for Christ shall perish by the sword Note 1. We took up the sword at first to avoid suffering and to deliver our selves and Party 2. We now perish by that sword 3. If we now begin to learn what we then refused we go back and repent of all these twenty years work We may I think well do it as it was our work and therein justifie both the righteousness of God in his works and our honesty and innocency in serving of him This your Profession of suffering for Christ will I think overthrow all your active dispensation and if you be true to it it will lead you to an open declaration of the change of your minds and to a faithful resolution wholly to commit your cause to God and never more take up arms to deliver your selves and destroy others If you can do this pluck up this root of bitterness and cut out this core it will be a great ease both to your selves and the Nation If you are able to pull it up and remove it from you by a full honest and clear demonstration of your hearts and minds that may be sufficient to satisfie the Magistrate It will effect one of these two things Either it will overcome your enemies with love and so heal all the distractions of the Nation Or if they continue to persecute after such a declaration of your minds they will soon break themselves For by love and patience Christ hath and doth overcome all enmity and will do so for ever it is the most certain and invincible strength that ever was When you prosecuted the King and his Party beyond bounds and measure you went into confusion and there lost your selves And if they should be guilty of the same thing and pursue a weak faln people beyond the measure set by God the same confusion will be in their affairs that was in yours I think this of your present sufferings That in a large and common sense they are the sufferings of Christ as the sufferings of all men are his so far as they are humane though weak In all their afflictions he is afflicted The sins and sufferings of all are laid upon him We all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all and as our sins so our sorrows Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows Even of all Parties and of the worst of all not the godly only but the wicked not the obedient only but the rebells He made his grave with the wicked Even for the rebellious that the Lord God might dwell amongst them Therefore we do see that all Parties are enabled to suffer for that Cause they engage in And do find mercy to pardon their sins and strength to suffer death The common resolution of a man strengthened with the common grace of the Gospel and with any measure of common honesty or an opinion of the justice and truth of their cause do carry men off the stage of the world into death handsomly and steadily That some of you that have suffered have met with more peace and more innocency in suffering then in acting And more love and comfort in a prison and death then in a corrupt toylsom and sinful life in war and contests I do not wonder and yet cannot magnifie it as Martyrdom This I am bold to affirm That Christ hath not yet in these times so clearly or visibly set up his standard and gathered a people to it into distinction from other men as to commit his name truth and cross wholly and only to them Nor hath he formed a body by any law rule spirit or ministry into an outward profession under any visible charracters as he did in the Primitive times And therefore there are none whose sufferings can challenge this peculiar honour of fighting under this standard the Cross of Christ Therefore I do much fear that this profession and glorying in the Cross will cost you dear and involve you in deeper sufferings then you are aware of You will sooner come to a true feeling of your selves and a sober sense of your condition if you would sink down into your confession and acknowledgement of the righteous hand of God upon you for your sins And alas not so much for your personal sins as for the evil state and spirit in which you have acted Against it hath God very great indignation I feel in my soul God hath great pitty to your persons as men and as his creatures and servants And because as weak men you have been deceived and misled But that corrupt state and that spirit that misled you is judged for ever and never can nor shall recover It is not the lowness of a condition that keeps a people down but the unsoundness of it Were we once true and single we should find rest and peace in the worst things and deliverance out of them The upright may and shall rejoyce in the hottest fires and soon come forth But a false and unsound state must fall from heaven though it be exalted thither To fall under sin and shame to be humbled under the feet of the vilest creatures in the world to bear first our own sins and then the wrath scorn and revenge of all the world Is nearer to Christ shews more of innocency then t◠〈◊〉 our selves For the first part of 〈◊〉 Christian righteousness is to bear sin to judge and condemn our selves and to intercede for others To justifie our selves and condemn others is very contrary to the Cross of Christ This may seem and is strange to men but the mysterie of the Cross of Christ will open it to them that seek wisdom To conclude this point I do judge that as there was confusion in your actings so there is in your sufferings And though you are much to be pittied yet not to be justified in them or for them There is much mixtures in them Ingagements and necessity make men stout in their way Naturally what men cannot make good by wisdom and power they will maintain by resolution in suffering It is easier far for men to do so and die then to repent A false spirit and zeal will carry men out in suffering even to death it self as well as a true Yea the anguish and pain of so great a disappointment will make men chuse rather to die then to live in the shame and disgrace of it Shame is the greatest affliction to some tempers And therefore it is easier to die then to yield confess and give glory If there should be none of all this in your present sufferings yet so long as there is bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not and lie not
For every one that goes out of the world glorying in his righteousness makes a breath both in death and in the authority that inflicts it And when it comes to be easie and familiar as it will by a little practise Authority and Magistracy it self will be by such despised I shall commend to the Magistrate an Observation of mine own concerning the nature of man That he may consider what he governs and how he ought to govern him Man is a noble and stout creature There is so much of the majesty of the image of God in faln man that he retains much of the greatness though he have lost his goodness There lies raked up in this dust an invincible spirit that never will be subdued by force God could never break the rebellion of the Israelites by all his punishments upon them And therefore sayes Why should ye be stricken any more ye will revolt more and more Isa 1.5 All the terrours of the Law could never subject Paul but he sayes himself When the commandment came sin revived and I died Rom. 7.9 When the law came with terrour against him then fin roused up it self unto a desperate opposition There being such stoutness in mans heart that all the force of the Law could not subdue God sent his Son in love to this stout creature to take his flesh and so to soften and overcome it and in it to destroy both Law and sin This will shew us what is in man There is as much of this courage and greatness of spirit in the English as in any people under heaven which is very much awakened in these times both by the wars and by long liberty and a free exercise of their minds in Religion For first the people were inspired and impowered to execute the determined displeasure of God upon the Church and Nation which exalted them and subjected the Church and Nation under them Having as they think judged the former state of Religion they have opportunity and liberty to erect several new forms of Religion which is an act of spiritual principality and power and not without zeal for God and obedience to his Law By these things the genius of the Nation and the natural stoutness of the people is much lightened and encreased And therefore to reduce them into that state that they think they have judged and to destroy all their little principalities set up in their consciences only by outward force or by the meer letter of that Law which they have condemned without a superiour Law that judges them and their work to my reason seems not only impossible but dangerous Let the whole be considered and it will be found That meer legal and outward punishments upon such a people so spirited and principled so employed and exercised if their consciences and spirits be nor first fairly heard judged and convinced will inflame their minds into such a mad and desperate spirit as appeared in the late Insurrection into hardness and insensibility of death and danger which is the greatest enemy to Government that can be For it turns men into wild beasts not to be ruled by humane Laws And though they do attain nothing to themselves yet they may give disturbance and force the Magistrate from all humane and divine wayes of love and gentleness into violence and perpetual severity and fill the whole Nation with continual troubles and distractions It is true the Magistrate is bound by all bonds of Law of reason and nature to suppress and punish rebellion But when the seeds of rebellion lie in the mind and conscience the spiritual sword is as necessary as the secular and the one not effectual without the other What is written in this Treatise will I hope satisfie them that will read and consider that there is with us in the Church a spirit and understanding that will reach the root of rebellion in the mind and fully convince the conscience Which being joyned to the civil authority is sufficient to cure and heal the Church and Nation On the other side I must desire the present suffering Party that were so highly offended at my Book and at my proposition for the tryal of principles that they consider how much lower they are now faln There was certainly a loftiness and unsubjection of mind unsutable to their condition expressed in a glorying and boasting of their old cause and state which hath brought forth this contempt and suffering upon them I do believe that this late Insurrection was the work of a few rash and unreasonable men And do find that all sober men do express a great abhorrency of the act with resolution to wait patiently upon God for their deliverance Which truly I rejoyce in Yet the whole Party lying under the shame of these mens folly and madness they must seriously and deeply consider how far they yet stand unhumbled and unconvinced of those principles that carried these men into this practise Principles lie deep and when once they get rooting in the mind they are like ill weeds in a garden not presently destroyed Many times the judgement is enlightened against them yet they have a root in the heart which will spring up if not quite eradicated Their appearing in others and the evil fruit they bear is a good means to beget an utter detestation of them To make you sensible of the hand of God upon you and to help to clear your minds wholly of them I only propound these queries to you 1. First Whether those principles upon which they acted of the Cause and Kingdom of Christ and the honour and priviledge of the Saints above and against the world Have not been received into the minds and spirits of most men more or less that have erected new Churches and new Governments in the Nation Secondly Whether the same principles and the hopes of such things be not that which fills your heads and hearts with multitude of prayers and great confidences that you shall yet prevail and your enemies be destroyed And so though your understandings be more prudent then others yet whether the same things be not yet in your faith affections and duties Thirdly Whether these spirits and principles have not had a great influence upon the whole business a long time If so then if they be not rooted out by repentance and change of mind they lie not still in the heart though they seem not to act and appear Fourthly Whether men being upon an extraordinary bottom as the Saints of God distinct from others And exercising themselves in extraordinary duties with extraordinary hopes and confidences of extraordinary deliverances Are not thereby disposed and prepared to attempt extraordinary things to attain these extraordinary ends If so then you are drinking the same wine that intoxicated their heads that rose only they are weaker and you more able to bear it Remember Solomons counsel Who hath sorrow who hath contention who hath babling who hath wounds without cause They that tarry long