by the Quakers at the cheap rate of accepting though poyson taken into the Body and delusions into the Soul are ever dear and costly But to the unwillingly mistaken among the people called Quakers and such whose inclinations are towards their Principles and Practices known by the name of Quakerism I do solemnly profess That I have the witness of God and my own Conscience that I heartily desire the welfare and Salvation of all sorts of men whatever notions they fall under and however disobliging in their carriages towards me in particular And although I hope I shall not justifie the Opinions called Quakerism till I dye yet I am perswaded there are many called Quakers whom the Lord will turn from their way which is not Christs and sanctifie them by his Spirit and justifie them through his Grace by Jesus Christ even that Christ who as God is every where and as Man is ascended above the visible Heavens and Skies If sincere protestations of my righteousness and sincerity in this matter and the verity of what I have written would prevail with you my Spirit is clear and I doubt not but my Pen might be as serviceable to it as some of those whose interest is too great in you Yea I know not that suffering I might embrace without sinning against God but for Christ sake and yours I should not long to be baptized with I beg of you in the bowels of a Christian that you would not slight the Truth and Scripture-evidence here presented to your view The Quakers have no Miracles to bind you to their perswasion and sure the Truths contained in the Scripture and right reason may match all other visible demonstrations You venture hard to Father all your Opinions on the immediate inspirations and your affections and practices on the motions of that Spirit who is God which if it prove to be otherwise which will be as certainly as God is Truth your early repentance may be accepted but your late repentance will make little for your comfort I would not then be in your condition for more Worlds than there are Stars in the Firmament I beseech you do not think that God hath given you the reason of men to be serviceable to you only in the affairs of this world and not to be exercised at all in discerning truth from error good from evil of a Spiritual and Religious nature The new creature is the creature renewed that is Body Soul and Spirit so enlightned as to know God in Christ so sanctified as to be devoted to him in whatever service he shall command and to make a Heaven of nothing on this side the full Vision and enjoyment of his favour and glorious presence in the other world or the world to come and what will necessarily result from thence If you think me too smart in some passages in the Book be pleased to consider if against Persons it is against those your misleaders who are to be blamed at a sharper rate than good Eli chid his Sons and was therefore rebuked by God to the breaking his heart his neck and the loss of a great priviledge besides if against sayings or opinions I have fully proved them gross falshoods foolish and pernicious lusts and errors and I know not how to call gall and poyson by sweet and lovely names I must alter my stile according to the matter and occasion or they would agree like Harp and Harrow and I assure you it is neither my conscience duty nor design to commend their Opinions to the world Do not say I intend hereby your persecution for it is far from my principle and natural temper also and I know nothing that men who are your Adversaries can do more to promote your Tenets and Party though suffering without further evidences of truth as the cause is a poor foundation of Religion Your Souls Servant JOHN FALDO November 23. 1672. THE CONTENTS PART I. Chap. I. QVakerism affirmed to be no Christianity The tearms Quakerism Christianity Quaker Christian explained What Christianity is strictly considered and distinguished from Heathenism Judaism or any other character of Religion Chap. II. The beginning of Quakerism compared with the beginning of Christianity with respect to the manner and with respect to the time of its beginning from both Quakerism proved to be no Christianity or not the Christian administration Chap. III. Proving the Quakers denying the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God that the intent is more than a meer verbal matter that this is the gate and inlet of their other errors the grounds of their denying it to be the word of God all of which are examined and refuted the definition of a word and the Scriptures proved to be the word of God of that species contended about more properly than Christ the Son of God is the word of God the Scripture proved to be the word of God by its own undeniable evidence where it cannot be understood of any other than the written word denying the Scripture to be the word of God proved a denying of the Scripture the titles the Quakers give to the Scriptures examined and proved though taken altogether to come short of a fit and distinct character of the Scriptures the ends and necessity of the Quakers denying the Scripture this title for the support of their other fancies The sense we take the Scripture to be the word of God in the written word proved to be the word of God Chap. IV. The Quakers equal their own writings and sayings with the word of God and prefer them before the word of God So to do proved a denying the Scripture that they do so proved by their pretending them infallible that they speak and write by immediate inspiration that the Spirit of God dwells in them essentially and in all his divine properties and Christ speaks out of them as through a Trunk Proved by the characters they give of their own writings and sayings beyond and excelling the characters afforded by them to the holy Scriptures Infallibility explained the Quakers infallibility confuted by divers mediums their immediate inspiration considered and confuted the woful and absurd consequences of this error the Papists foundations of their orders and grossest absurdities and the foundation of the Quakers Religion proved to be the same thing and instances given on both sides viz. contempt of the Scripture as insufficient infallibility and immediate revelations and divine inspirations the Quakers proved to have the blackest marks of Antichrist upon them Chap. V. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be a rule of faith and life or a Judge and determiner in religious controversies This charge proved to be a denying the Scriptures That charge it self proved Herein they agree with the Jesuites That whatever is by the Lord affirmed in the Scripture ought to be believed That what is there in commanded and not repealed ought to be obeyed That the holy Scriptures do in their kind determine
born the light within whose right it is to reign and his glory he will not give to another nor his praise to Graven Images If erecting and worshipping God by Graven Images be Idolatry then the Quakers do charge us with Idolatry for walking according to Scripture instructions and examples He who will take the pains to read this inspired Author thou by an evil spirit pag. 18 19 20 21 22 23. will find it his scope to prove all Idolaters that ground their worship and order on the Scripture examples and in page 17. he likens all professions among Christians this day to Nebuchadnezzar's Image and though some are more shining and glorious in appearance as the head of Gold was beyond his legs of Iron yet he calls all parts of the Image and the Scriptures the Feet of Clay they had their standing on And in pag. 16. hath these words Then searches the Scripture for words to prove their Image a lawful Son and this is the bottom and foundation of all Religions this day I am e'en tired with searching these sulphureous Veins of the Pit and Mine of Quakerism the root of all which is the deified light within If you have not enough of this smoak to satisfie you it is the bottomless Pit it rises out of I will give you two ebullitions more and then leave you satisfied or to get better senses So amongst the words you find how the Saints in some things walked and what they practised and then you strive to make that thing to your selves and to observe it and do it as near as you can and here you are found transgressors of the just Law of God who saith thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image nor the likeness of any thing And it follows now what difference is there in the ground betwixt you and the Pope though in the appearance there seem to be such a great space SECT II. The Quakers having thus stript the holy Scriptures of their divine beauty and authority both name and thing plucked out their very heart and strength let us resume the particular Arguments produced to prove that they deny the Scriptures and look on them at one view so shall we better discern their united testimonies and strength They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Equal their own writings and sayings with the Scriptures and prefer them before the Scriptures They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Deny the Scriptures to be a rule of faith and life or a Judge and determiner in religious controversies They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Take men off from reading the Scriptures and looking into them for instruction and comfort They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Deny the Scriptures to be any means by which we may come to know God Christ or our selves They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Affirm the Scriptures to be no means whereby to resist temptation and that they are dangerous to be read They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Deny the Scriptures to be read to any profit any farther than they are beforehand experienced by them that read them They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Put or render the Scriptures and the Spirit of God in opposition to each other They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Affirm the doctrines commands promises holy examples expressed in the Scripture as such to be not at all binding to us They who Deny the Scripture to be the word of God Hold it is a sin the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and holy examples expressed in and by the Scriptures except we have them by immediate revelation as the Apostles They who do all these things mentioned in the foregoing particulars deny the Scriptures But the Quakers do all these things mentioned in the foregoing particulars therefore the Quakers deny the Scriptures If any one or all these arguments together will prove what they are brought to confirm it is proved if it be not I shall for ever dispair to prove any thing For as much as the holy Scriptures being our compass on earth and our evidence for Heaven are mostly struck at by the Prince of Darkness and grand enemies of Souls especially the two great Antichrists the Roman Bishop and Church and the new Upstarts who hold the Light within every man to be the Saviour Light Righteousness all who do not only as other erroneous or heretical persons a little eclipse or pervert the light of the Scriptures but attempt to pull it down out of the Firmament or render it a dark and useless body but as it receives Light from their Idol the one party to set up the Pope at Rome as absolute in matters of Religion The other to set up the Pope within as absolute and more than he in the little world of every individual man I shall within these following parallel lines give you a view though but in part how both these adversaries do openly spit their venom and discharge their shot against the holy Scriptures And considering how they in most things jump together in the contempt of and detracting from the Scriptures you may conclude that although the Jesuite was not the first contriver of the Quakers grand notion of the Light within to be Christ which I am verily perswaded of to be true yet that he was a promoter of the building erected on that foundation we may easily guess by his mark on so many parcels of it yet I must say that the Romanists were much more sound in their opinions of the Scriptures until about Luther's time wherein the Protestants were too hard for them at those weapons I give you the mind of the Spirit of God expressed in the middle colume the Quakers Tenets on the left and the Jesuites and Papists on the right hand I do not give the Quakers books names and pages because it would not be contained in any order and in the body of the Book they are exactly proved I give you the Jesuites names and quotations of most or all because they are not mentioned in the body of the Book The Quakers Opinions and sayings of the Scriptures and those that adhere to them The Spirit of God speaking by the Scriptures The Jesuites and Papists Tenets and sayings of the Scriptures and those that adhere to them The Scriptures are not the rule of Faith and life Thou shalt not turn aside to the right hand or to the left viz. Gods Statutes and Judgments Deut. 5. 31 32. The Scripture is not the rule of Faith Greg. de Valentia Jesuita libro quarto analyseos   Carranza in prima controver The Scriptures are not the judg and determiner of Controversies in religious matters He mightily convinced the Jews and that publickly shewing by the Scriptures that
your quarrel is not so much with the word Trinity as with the thing thereby expressed The next black mark of Antichrist which is upon you is that in 2 Thess 2. 4 who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God Do not you advance your light within above the Man Christ Jesus whom we worship as God and who is so called in the Scriptures even that man whose being is above the visible Heavens Do not you call your light within you God eternal Omnipotent c Yea you say it is the light in the Conscience which is the Temple of God and there it doth as if it were God rule govern judge execute in contempt of the written and true Laws of the divine being I beseech you consider these things and lay them to your hearts CHAP. V. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be a Rule of Faith and Life or a Judge and Determiner of Religious Controversies SECT I. THat this is to deny the Scripture is obvious and plain to all who have not the beam in their eyes I have before proved them to deny its proper and most frequent appellation but if that be not sufficient to prove they deny the Scripture methinks denying their main use and employment should render them guilty of the full measure of that iniquity To little purpose will it be to call them the Scripture the Holy Scripture c. if after all a conformity to their guidance and conduct will render our belief and practice never the less prophane I shall not further perswade my Reader that to deny the Scripture to be a rule of Faith and Life c. is to deny the Scripture for if this suffice not I know nothing will carry the Question unless the Scripture should be brought in begging some boon at the Quakers hands and they proved so hard hearted as not to to grant it If this were necessary I should not fail in the proof notwithstanding For the proof of the Charge I shall first call sorth James Parnel an early and forward Quaker and much esteemed for his works sake And he also that saith the Letter is the rule and guide of the people of God is without feeding upon the husk and is ignorant of the true Light which was before the Letter was By this mans Verdict the Scripture is cast and condemned for husks a false light or but a shadow and its Observers charged with ignorance of Christ the true light for so doing But it were well if they could come off so Behold in the next Accusation a Charge of no less than the highest robbery and sacriledge And if thou lookest upon the Scripture to be for a rule and for trying thou givest that unto them which belongs unto Christ for he is the rule and leads his people and he alone searches the hearts and trys the reins and not the Scripture But if you will see a mouth full of blasphemy against the authority of the Scripture read with horrour and amazement the following words God is at liberty to speak to his people by them the Scripture if he please and where they are given by inspiration he doth so but the sting is behind in the tail of this non-such sentence and so he is at liberty to speak by any other created thing as to Balaam by his Ass Then such a thing as Balaams Ass may call up our expectations of Gods teachings guidance and rebukes as well as the Scriptures for God is at liberty to teach us by an Ass and he hath put no more authority into the Scripture unless he shall please to hand them to us by renewed and immediate inspiration But I shall not rake into this Dunghill further which of its self gives forth so offensive a savour I intended to have given you upon this head the assertions of some of the Romish Writers who trample on the neck of the Scripture with the same foot only the difference betwixt them and the Quakers lies in the aim and design the Jesuits spurn at them to advance the dictates of the Pope and the Romish pretended Church above the Scriptures but the Quakers to advance the conceit within above them all Yet I care not if I give you one instance at large Omnis Judex praesertim supremus generalis ita debet dicere sententiam ut altera pars litigantium evidenter sciat se vicisse altera pars evidenter sciat se causam amisisse quantum est ex parte hujus judicis At hoc neque Scriptura Sacra neque Spiritus Sanctus loquens per Scripturam potest facere Ergo neque Sacra Scriptura nec Spiritus Sanctus loquens per Scripturam est talis judex Et minorem illustrabat his totidem verbis Stamus ego Collegae Domini adversarii in conspectu hujus judicis Bibliorum en contendimus an sit judex Controversiarum Jam ille judex debet pronunciare sententiam ut nobis constet evidenter Sumus hîc in conspectu Sacrae Scripturae Spiritus Sancti pronunciet sententiam sic dicat tu Jacobe Gretsere male sentis cecidisti causa tua Tu Jacobe Hailbrunnere vicisti Tunc ego statim transibo ad vestrum scamnum Et paulo post Adsit jam Spiritus Sanctus jam judicet jam me condemnet In English thus Every Judge especially who is supream and general ought so to give sentence that the one part of the contenders may plainly know they have overcome and the other that they have lost their cause so far as it is in the Judge But this neither the holy Scriptures nor the holy Spirit by the Scripture can do Therefore neither the holy Scripture nor the holy Spirit speaking by the Scripture is such a Judge The minor he illustrates in these very words I and my Collegues and the Lords Adversaries stand before this Judge the Scriptures behold we dispute whether it be a Judge of Controversies Now this Judge ought to give sentence so as it may be evidently manifest to us We are here before the holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit let him pronounce sentence and say thus thou Jacob Gretferus believest not aright thy cause is overthrown thou Jacob Hailbrunnerus hast overcome then I will quickly go over to you And a little after Now let the Holy Ghost come now let him judge me now let him condemn me If he had not had the metaphorical word to have played with the world had not been troubled with so impertinent an Argument and language so ludicrous abusive and daring to the Holy Spirit By this you may see that if the Quakers and Jesuits agreement in the same false Witness against the Scripture will carry it our cause is gone and the Scripture must not determine religious matters But 't is a sign 't is a bad step that so
them That light is in the Scriptures prove that or tell me what one Scripture hath light in it If the Scriptures gives us a true description of light Ephes 5. 8. for whatsoever doth make manifest is light this is not only an errour of the first magnitude but also one of the greatest discouragements imaginable of looking into the Scriptures for instruction and comfort for if they manifest or signifie nothing to us it will be but lost labour I am apt to believe they may hold it for very Orthodox Doctrine intending thereby that there is no light in the Scriptures more than they have or may have without them and that the Scriptures can add no more to them than the boasting Galatians who were false Brethren though they seemed to be somewhat added to Paul or that there is no Scripture hath Christ the light in it he being in their opinion no where but within as a light I shall only prove that the Scripture is a light or hath light in it and so dismiss this argument O send out thy light and thy truth let them lead me let them bring me to thy holy bill By which we are to understand the promises made to David he knew the way to Gods holy hill as well as most but his Adversaries had barred it up and therefore he prays that God would perform his promises which were not only the light of comfort to him but a guide to his faith and hope as they were truth and good and such light the Scriptures are replenished with and adorned as the Firmament with Stars and Constellations But lest they should say this is but my meaning put to the Scriptures take one Text that telleth its own meaning in so many words For the Commandment is a lamp and the Law is light A fifth Argument may be raised out of those dirty and disparaging Titles and Characters which they give of the Scriptures Of this you have enough before CHAP. VII The Quakers affirm the Doctrines Commands Promises holy Examples expressed in the Scriptures as such not at all to be binding to us SECT I. THis is a denying of the Scriptures and the authority of the God of the Scriptures at once and with a witness If any shall be furnished with so small a measure of reason as not to be able to apprehend that such an affirmation is a denying of the Scriptures I have little hope to convince them Yet I shall not leave them altogether without some Scripture evidence of the strength of this Argument Lest I be full and deny thee and say who is the Lord To say who is the Lord or what hath the Lord to do with us to command or bear rule over us is to deny the Lord and to say of the Scriptures what are they to us is as plainly to deny them What is self-denial but rejecting and denying what it would oblige us to and impose upon us to relinquish and abandon its authority To deal so by the Scriptures must needs then be a denying of them But why do I burn daylight the Argument shines bright enough in its own light and evidence The greatest expectation will be of the proving matter of Fact or that they do thus affirm and I do verily believe that few who have some tolerable opinion of the Quakers and their principles except the rank Quakers themselves have had a suspicion that they are so grosly wicked but I shall blow the dust out of their eyes by as strong a proof as their own confession And it was the râ—le unto them that gave forth the Scriptures and they spake the words as the Spirit moved so that the Spirit was before the words and was their rule that spake the words and it changes not but is the same for ever This he writes to prove that the Scriptures are not a rule and doth hereby affirm that they had been no rule to the Penmen of the Scriptures themselves had they not been moved so to take them by the Spirit and that this way of obligation is unchangeable and abides for ever He that shall read the foregoing and following words in the Piece quoted will no more doubt what I have said than that two and two make four For all the Saints have their commands in Spirit but yours is in the Letter and so of another ministration By the phrase in Spirit they intend not that which reaches the heart only but that which hath its original immediately from the Spirit of God in them That Naylor intends no other in this place than its being from the Spirit immediately he telleth you plainly for that it is a different ministration from that of the Letter by which words the Letter they alway intend the Scripture But more plain yet if more plain may be that is no command of God to me what he commanded to another Neither did any of the Saints which we read of in Scripture act by that command which was to another not having the command to themselves I challenge â—o find an example to it E. D. A bold Challenger who shall be answered in good time but let us hear a few more first Because its only queries gathered by the Author from the letter of the Scriptures without and no message of heavenly prophecy doctrine or exhortation received by the Author from the Lord through the divine inspiration of his light and Spirit within therefore may I say it 's a very vain and Idolatrous exhortation which J. A. hath given to J. B. his little Book But further And J. A. further saith let light without be guide to light within Reply If by this exhortation J. A. means that light without should guide the true light within which shines in the hearts of the Saints then I must needs say 't is a very absurd and foolish exhortation and being spoken upon a divine account it is full of Idolatry and evil and greatly contrary to the Gospel and exhortation of Gods Ambassadours to the Saints on earth which was that they should abide in the light or anointing that was in them 1 John 2. 27. I shall say somewhat to this in its order hear one more and I have done And this is your work who at this day set up an imitation from the letter of what other men have done but have not received your command and power in Spirit from the Lord and to you it will be said who hath required these things at your hands for all the Saints have their commands in spirit but yours is in the letter But in your vain imaginations are judging you know not what and limiting the spiritual Covenant of God to the literal Not in spirit but in the old letter or tradition from men I suppose that by this time my Reader is past doubting whether they are guilty or no of this charge it must not be expected that I should take up all
c. by the Scriptures and they that cleave to the Scripture teaching by the Spirit have forsaken the Spirit of God and his teachings we would owne our such profession to be a denying the Scriptures yea should take our selves bound in so many words to deny it and send it as far out of the way as may be as dangerous to the just prerogative of the Spirit of God And if those who profess what I shall instance and produce for proof to be truth had any honesty in them they would tell the world they utterly deny the Scriptures to be what the Christian world hath accounted them and in plain and open words and testimonies as far as they can produce exhort and move them to lay them aside and have no more to do with them nor give them one good word lest the adversary to the Spirit should in the hearts and lives of men be exalted against him For the proving of the Charge at the head of this Chapter take the words of James Naylor the Quakers proto-Confessor For all the Saints have their commands in Spirit but yours is in the Letter and so of another ministration for the literal ministration is done away in the spiritual Here you have the commands in Spirit or by the Spirit put in opposition to the Letter which is the written Word or the Scripture and so far in opposition that as heat being opposite to coldness and light to darkness the one so far as it prevails expelleth the other by its contrariety and opposite qualities so the spiritual ministration or ministration of the Spirit banishes and expelleth that of the Letter as its enemy and contrary But if you will have a prodigious instance a nonsuch for Blaspheming the Spirit of God in the Scriptures read what follows out of a great Writer of theirs William Smith And reading in the Scriptures that there were some who met together and exhorted one another and were edified and comforted one in another they observe and do as near as they can what they read of the Saints practice and so conceives a birth in the same Womb the Scriptures and brings it forth in the same strength as others do and they make haste thither and open their eyes to look at the things which are seen the Scriptures and this is pleasing to the carnal mind c. They Worship Order Ordinances Faith Practice understood by the written Word must all come under the severity of his judgment because they are Bastards and not Sons for these adulterous births have provoked the Lord and grieved his Spirit It would amaze a Christian and sound mind to read what is contained in the two pages in the Margin quoted of vilifying and reproach to the Scriptures and the Doctrines from thence received Traditions of men earthly root darkness and confusion Nebuchadnezzars Image putrefaction and corruption rotten and deceitful all out of the life and power of God Apostacy the Whores Cup the mark of the Beast Babylon the Mother of Harlots Bastards brought forth of flesh and blood the birth that persecutes the Son and Heir viz. the Spirit of God or light within Babylons Brats and Children Graven Images contrary to him the everlasting powerful God c. If this be not opposing the Spirit of God to the Scripture and rendring them adverse to each other the Devil himself must despair of inventing words to express it by I conclude the proof of this Charge with the words of Naylor And of this sort are they who have their preaching to study and to seek at other mens mouths or from the Letter and have it not from the mouth of the Lord. Then with him and the Quakers who are of his mind what we have from the Scriptures we have not from the mouth of the Lord. I would know of the Quakers what they will make of the mouth of the Lord Do they take it to be some part of his body which is like our mouths the Organs of speech We have thought hitherto that God being a Spirit hath no mouth at all only to express things to our understandings he speaks by similitudes taken from such things we are acquainted withall and so whatsoever God reveals his mind by may be called his mouth And it will follow that the Scriptures are his mouth as eminently as any thing yea all things in the world and more For God speaks by them to us more than by all other things he saith to Jeremy Jer. 15. 19. Thou shalt be as my mouth As thou spakest by the hand of Moses The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue Hear the rod c. Is it not a frequent phrase in the Scripture As saith the Scripture They believed the Scripture And what is that but God speaking by the Scripture and believing what God spake by the Scripture But now is made manifest and by the Scriptures of the Prophets according to the command of the everlasting God made known unto all Nations for the obedience of faith What more plain that the Scriptures are the mouth of the Lord or those means by which the Lord doth manifest his mind to men But the Quakers will not have it so and therefore it must not be so But they who enquire of or at the Scriptures for the mind of the Spirit run another way than that the Spirit walks and is to be found in and sin against the Spirit of God And that you may see how they set the Spirit and Scripture together by the ears Naylor saith further For those only are the Children of God who are led by the Spirit of God so far is true as truth it self but as the old Serpent he never heads a saying with the Scripture but he brings in a lye at the end and tail of it to whom they who are led by the Letter were ever enemies Here you have two great Commanders or Leaders brought into the field as the most hostile implacable Enemies whose followers from the time there were any were foes each to other And what can render the Spirit and the Scripture more opposite than that whosoever follows the Letter is a foe to him that follows or is led by the Spirit And the Leaders are the formal causes of it too and therefore it was ever so and is as inseparable as natural cause and effect If this be all true well might W. P. say We livingly witness against all the dry cavelling Letter-mongers in the world SECT II. Having frequently met with that Scripture 1 Cor. 3 6. by them produced to prove the Scriptures to have a contrary tendency to the Spirit I shall here open it and shew their mistake The words are Who also hath made us able Ministers of the new Testament not of the Letter but of the Spirit for the Letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life Whereas they would have us by the Letter to
Jesus was Christ Acts 18. 28. He had put the Sadduces to silence Mat. 22. 3. viz. by Scripture Neither the holy Scripture nor the holy Spirit speaking by the Scripture is the supream and general judge of matters of Faith   Beccanus item Gretserus Jesuitae in Colloquio Ratisbon   It is impossible for the Scripture to be judge of doubts concerning Faith and the Christian Religion   Lorichius Jesuita in fortalitio Matthew Mark Luke and John is not the Gospel The beginning of the Gospel of Christ the Son of God Mark 1. 1. The Gospel is not Scripture it was commanded to be preached but not to be written  Carranza Jesuita in colloquio The light within every man is the rule and guide and not the Scriptures and this light is infallible and will teach you all things If the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness Mat. 6. 23. The Tradition of the Church i. e. Roman is the first chief certain and infallible rule from which any thing may be known to be true and certain to be held in matters of saith and Christian Religion  Vain man would be wise though man be born like a wild Asses Colt Job 11. 12. Carranza Jesuita in prima controversia The Tradition of the Church is the very rule of faith and piety Pighius The Spirit was before the Scripture therefore we must be led by the Spirit not by the Scripture the Spirit with the Quaker is the light within All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness 2 Tim. 3. 16. We say that the Church is a rule before the Scripture and more known than the Scripture   Carranza in secunda Controversia The Scriptures are the Traditions of men Holy men of God spake the Scriptures as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 2 Pet. 1. 21. Traditions of the Church to be preferred before the Scriptures Frequent among the Papists Light without must be guided by light within Ye do err not knowing the Scriptures Mat. 22. 29. The Scripture is to be ruled by the Church not the Church by the Scriptures  I have hid thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee Psal 119. 11. Carranza in secunda Controversia The Scripture is a dead Letter carnal Letter Ink and Paper The words that I speak unto you are spirit and life Joh. 6. 63. The Scripture hath no voice it cannot pass judgment viva voce  For the Word of God is quick and powerful Heb. 4. 12. Beccanus Gretserus in Colloquio Ratisbon The Scriptures are but dumb judges Pighius controversia tertia The Scriptures may be burnt The Scriptures cannot be broken John 10. 35. All the Scriptures in the common and native tongues are to be burnt by a Law  Write this for a memorial in a Book c. Exod. 17. 14.  The light within was the rule from the beginning and not the Scriptures The Scriptures were a rule so soon as they had a beginning The Fathers of the Church were expert in the Traditions of the Church from the beginning as being more effectual than the Scriptures Pighius Jesuita in Colloquio Dry cavelling Letter-mongers Scraping in the Scriptures An eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures Acts 18. 24. These Lutherans and Hugonots are all for the Letter  And Paul as his manner was went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures Acts 17. 2.  He that prefers the Scriptures before the light within is blind in darkness To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this Word it is because they have no light in them Isa 8. 20. He that shall say the Scripture is to be believed rather than the Church is to be condemned as a Heathen and a Publican and a Stranger to Gods people Noguera lihro secundo de Ecclesia They are Idolaters that act by Scripture examples not having their rule by inspiration immediate from God Whatever things were written were written for our examples They are Hereticks and to be condemned who take the Scripture for their rule without the authority of the Church Be ye followers of us and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example  The Scriptures do not give light nor are they binding any further than they come by inspiration and are received in Spirit Let us break his bands asunder and cast his cords from us Psal 2. The Scripture not being understood is no Scripture Lorinus Jesuita in Psalmum 119. 105.  They that are under the Law shall be judged by the Law The Scripture without the authority of the Church not binding The Gospel of Matthew no more than the History of Titus Livius Surdisius Cardinalis in Chatechismo No more to be valued than an Aesops Fable Papists Prelats Presbyterians Independents Anabaptists all fly to the Scriptures To the Law and to the Testimony Isa 8. 20. Most of the Hereticks if not all take refuge in the Scriptures Gretserus Jesuita All that are unconverted that is not Quakers must be shut out of the Scriptures I have written to him the great things of my Law but they accounted them a strange thing The Scriptures are neither necessary fit nor profitable for the common people to read Harding Jesuita Petrus Lizetus Scriptures prophaned by their reading All the false Religions this day take their rise from the Scriptures The words of the Lord are pure words Psal 12. 6. Every word of God is pure Prov. 30. 5. All the Hereticks pretend to the Scriptures and will seem from thence to fetch the venom of their Heresies Hardingus Jesuita Bellarminus PART II. CHAP. XIII The Quakers deny and subvert all the Ordinances of the Gospel SECT I. THe Ordinances of God are those means in which God and his creature Man do hold and maintain a professed and mutual converse and communion wherein all men are as their duty to draw nigh to God in their express worship and acknowledgements of the divine Being and therein to expect from God his gracious presence with them and his blessing them both with spiritual temporal and eternal blessings And although God be not tied to this or that way wherein to shine upon his poor creatures by his manifold goodness yet he is far from being bound to the loose and wanton humours of men And having commanded some things to be done by us as means in order to our being so blessed and thereto annexed many great and gracious promises of being so found of us it is an affront of no mean nature to the divine Majesty and contempt of our own welfare yea an implicite denial of our dependance on him to neglect much more to deny most of all to disdain those his Ordinances and to cast reproach and scorn upon them The eternal
be so eminently such as the meanest that hath the true form And that the Word Christ is only so analogically I have shewed and the definition of a Word in the second Chapter I desire Mr. Pen to consider better next time and not think every body else not a hairs breadth beyond his size SECT VI. A third Scripture I am willing to explain to fence the weak against the Quakers seductions is 2 Pet. 1. 19. We have also a more sure word of prophecy whereunto ye do well to take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place untill the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts This more sure word of prophecy refers to the voice from Heaven which Peter James and John heard expressed in Verse 17. and is by Peter affirmed to be rather to be credited than that or any other immediate revelation By the more sure word of prophecy is meant those prophecies written in the Old Testament which are called Verse 20. prophecy of Scripture and are called the light that shineth in a dark place as prophecies shine but with a dim light yet are welcome and give some light comparatively with providences which are the fulfilling of those prophecies The dawning of the day and the day-star arising in their hearts cannot be meant of Christ known and received by faith to salvation and sanctification too in some measure for so he was risen in their hearts when the Apostle wrote this or else he would not have said them to have obtained like precious faith with him and others the Apostles and Saints which he doth in Verse 1. as the direction of his Epistle I therefore conclude that the sense is this He exhorts them to be intent on the prophecies whether verbal or figurative which had respect to not only the coming of the Messiah which they believed already but also the abolishing of the Mosaical rites and constituting in their room the spiritual and Gospel-administration till thereby they were convinced of that truth which is called the dawning of the day and the day-star with respect to its light and beauty and reality above the Mosaical ceremonies and rites which were but dim night-stars in comparison or till they were convinced that the day of the Gospel-realities was come and so the night-shadows of the Law to be done away The grounds I have for this Exposition are these added to the former Peter the Pen-man of this Epistle is said to be the Apostle to the Circumcision as the Gospel of Circumcision was to Peter And therefore we may gather that those to whom he wrote were Jews whom the Scripture speaks to be zealously addicted to the Law of Moses And this is farther confirmed by his direction of them to the heeding of the Scripture-Prophecies which few but the Jews were acquainted with or did own as worth the heeding except the converted Gentiles of whom there was no danger that they should Judaize unless moved thereunto by such of the Jews as needed this conviction This to me is sufficient I leave the grounds for others to consider One Text more I shall weigh and then I judge I have done enough to satisfie those that are willing how the Quakers abuse those Texts which are not so easily understood as some others to their own and others destruction To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles which is Christ in you the hope of glory From hence they conclude They have very Christ his Being and Essence within them It will not be easily refuted That the hope of glory is to be understood to be in them which being a hope in Christ the crucified Jesus was such a mystery as the Gentliles called foolishness But we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness For Christ to be in them rightly understood would be no such hard matter for the Gentiles to believe who understood Metonymical phrases very well as to believe such a glory to be attained by faith in and obedience to the Laws of a man who died as a Malefactor and that this death of his should reconcile God to man with the addition of such a purchase But because it is a truth That Christ is in Believers I shall therefore fay that which with the blessing of the Lord to a willing mind to be instructed will prove convincing First The man Christ that was nail'd to the Cross the Quakers do not believe to be in them nor that he hath a being or life nor can he be in them in his person as a man if they had a sounder faith For the God-head of Christ that is with respect to his Being and Essence every where and every where alike Do not I fill heaven and earth saith the Lord So that with respect to the infinite Being of God who comprehends all things he is in every thing at all times and nothing can be void of his presence So that if this be it you mean the Saints have no more priviledge than any other creature whatsoever But it remains that Christ is in his people by his graces wrought by his Spirit which is his image and likeness by his love which hath a uniting nature to its object as we say such are one who love dearly Every man is where he loves more than where he lives And so also where he is beloved for that will make him frequently thought on and a man to be sensible of his good or hurt as if he himself enjoyed the one or suffered the other And he is said to live in the hearts of his people by faith as faith believes how lovely and desirable he is and so loves him and works all those other graces in the soul which are his image and do as effectually possess the soul for Christ and to his use and interest as a faithfull friend can do According to that Text That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love c. You know what the Scripture saith of faith that it worketh by love So that in very deed Christ both as God and Man doth live in all his Saints but not in his person but by the manifestations of his love and glory his works and image in and on the soul And this is enough to satisfie those that are sober and are contented with and rejoyce in those priviledges which God affords to his children which are enough to render them blessed rather than those which pride and ignorance will choose like our first Parents to be as Gods and pay dear for the delusion SECT VII Having stripped them of these Texts wherewith they fortifie their light within to be the Christ and Saviour and proved That the man Jesus of Nazareth in whom dwelt and now dwelleth the fulness of the God-head bodily is the Christ of God and not the man
saith was the Lamb of God whom John bid the Jews behold and the force of the light and life within which with them is the blood i. e. the life of the Lamb. P. Put Christ to pain Resisting the motions of the light within The painted Whore Not only the Papals with their irreligious Pomp but all the good words thoughts and actions of any sort of men who derive them not from the immediate teachings and motions of the light within yea all forms of Worship according with the precepts and examples of the Scripture and they are with them the most painted who come nearest to the Scripture as a Rule The People of God They and none but they who profess the light within every man to be Christ the only Saviour and Teacher and give up themselves to its conduct as such Perfect Perfection Not that which is sincere or a Perfection of Parts or sanctification throughout in part but a being without sin in the least remains or stains of it Persecution Not only a penalty or hurt inflicted on their Bodies or Estates but also a speaking or writing against their Principles in the most purely rational and Scriptural Authority The sâ—ed in Prison and Captivity and Bondage Pictures and Images The light within not obeyed as Christ and God  Not only those Images and Pictures that to the bodily-Eye represent Christ or God or the Saints and are adored with religious worship but all Worship Opinions Actions Words that are in imitation of the Examples and in obedience to the Precepts contained in the Scripture Mâ—n-pleasers They who comply with men though in things not only lawful but also to edifification Pollutions of the world Not only things in themselves sinful as drunkenness swearing lying c. but also what ever customs they dislike and decline As Cuffs Ribands putting off the Hat signes of respect c. which they say are from the Devil all recreations as bowling ringing though used seasonably and moderately The Power of God The Light within the Christ within Praying in Spirit Secretly or inwardly not with the voice by the immediate impulses of the light and power within without the exercise of so much as the conceptions of man Prayer Christ the light within is sometimes by them so called The presence of the Lord. The powerful influences and impressions of the light within either to terrour or peace and joy The pride of Man A not submitting to their light and especially receiving tokens of respect and wearing Ribands Cuffs and Lace The Priests A word of scorn put on all indifferently who are separated to the work of the Gospel-Ministry by men or that receive maintenance for their work The Worlds Professors All that are not Quakers Formal hypocritical Professors All that walk in the Ordinances of Christ commanded or prescribed in the Scripture or in the order of the Gospel Spirit of Prophecy Immediate impulses and inspirations False Prophets All that act not by immediate revelation Prophecying falsly How true soever in it self if not from their spirit Publicans and Sinners All that are not Quakers Walking in the pare Walking after the dictates of the light within Purifying the heart by the Bloud of Christ Acting and being disposed according to inward motions by the light and life of the Christ within them Q. Quenching the Spirit Resisting the motions of the Light within Quickned in the Life Stirred up by the power within R. Raised to life Conversion to Quakerisme Ravening brain Studying and following after divine knowledge or the knowledge of divine things Inwardly ravening from the Spirit A recourse to the Scripture or any thing else except their spirit for light and understanding in the things of God Carnal reasonings Reasonings of the Flesh All use of the understanding and judgment of man for searching and finding out truths about divine and spiritual things Received from the Lord. By immediate Revelation Reconciliation Giving up themselves to the light within The Word of Reconciliation Christ the light within The Lords Redeemed Those who are conformed to the light within Redemption A being reduced into the state of Adam in innocency not what was wrought by Christ in the Flesh 1600 years since The Redeemer Not that Jesus Christ who is ascended above and beyond the Stars but the light and power within every man as such Refreshings in Spirit Something they are pleased with they know not why and come by they know not how As the Quakers who were refreshed at the Dutch-womans declaring while they understood not a word she spake The New Man CHRIST The rest of the people of God A quiet and peace within though from a blind deluded conscience The Resurrection of Life Obedience to the light in this world Resurrection of the Body Resurrection of the light within to a dominion in the man for with them the body is Christ and Christ is the light within Also the Body which was a servant to sin being acted by the light and power within Revelations Not Scripture-Revelations but what come by immediate inspiration to them Righteous ones Such as are without sin Righteousness of Christ That which is wrought by the power and conduct of their Christ the light within The Root of Jesse The Light within The Royal seed Christ and every Quaker They who run and not sent All that teach the Gospel from the Scripture and not by immediate inspiration Reprobation Sin S. The Sabbath Every day the present Rest and Heaven of the Quakers The Sacrifice of Christ The light within obeying or they obeying in the light within Having Salt in themselves Having Christ in themselves The Salt of the Earth Christ the light within Salvation Conversion to the obedience of the light within Sanctification All one with Justification all one with Christ obedience to the light Building on the Sand. Making the Scripture a rule of faith and life The Saviour The light within every man According to the Scriptures By immediate inspiration as the Prophets and Apostles received the minde of God The Seed The light within or the Christ essentially within the Eternal Word that which was in the beginning with God The Seed of Abraham according to the Flesh The Eternal Word Christ as God  All that is not from the immediate motions within Self-righteousness Shadows All Forms and external worship  The Scriptures which Pen saith are as the shadow of the true rule viz. living touches Idol-Shepherds The Ministers who have a mediate call or teach out of the Scripture Shut out of the Scriptures Cannot understand them have nothing to do with them Signes and Miracles in Spirit No body can tell what All flesh must be silent Nothing must be said but what comes by immediate revelation from the Spirit for all else is the voice of man and of the flesh In the simplicity Without the use of humane understanding or if you will out of your wits To live in Sin Sinners Such as have any remains of
controversies of a Religious concern That the Teachings motions and determinations of the Spirit of God by the Scripture are more suitable to the nature and present condition of man and more certain to his knowledge than any immediate teachings which any enjoy in our days The consequence of this error Chap. VI. The Quakers take men off from reading the Scriptures and looking into them for instruction and comfort The charge proved 1. directly 2. by their affirming the light within every man alsufficient as a Teacher 3. by their affirming the Scripture to be within 4. by their affirming the Scriptures to have no light in them each of these confuted and explained in their order Chap. VII The Quakers affirm the doctrines commands promises holy examples expressed in the Scriptures as such not to be at all binding to us That this is a denying of the Scripture proved That they are guilty of the charge proved and their error confuted That we are to follow the good examples there expressed proved and the manner how that we may not sin on that hand The ill consequences of the error charged on the Quakers Chap. VIII That the Quakers deny the Scriptures to be any means by which we may come to know God Christ or our selves proved and confuted in their order The wicked absurd consequences of this error Chap. IX The Quakers affirm the Scriptures to be no means whereby to resist temptation and that they are dangerous to be read The charge proved and that it is a denying of the Scriptures William Pen rebuked for asserting this falshood Chap. X. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be read to any profit farther than they are beforehand experienced by those that read them Chap. XI They render the Spirit of God and the letter of the Scriptures in direct opposition each to other Chap. XII The Quakers hold it to be a sin and the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and examples expressed by the Letter of the Scriptures except we have them by immediate revelation or inspiration and at first hand as the Apostles received them PART II. Chap. XIII The Quakers deny and subvert all the Ordinances of the Gospel An apologie for and account of Gospel Ordinances as such The Quakers proved to deny Gospel Ordinances in general That they deny and subvert the Gospel Ministry proved the grounds of their denying the Ministry because mediate preaching out of the Scriptures taking maintenance studying for their Sermons that none can speak the truth truly but from immediate revelation All these grounds overthrown in their order They deny a Gospel Church what Church they own and what Ministry what a Gospel Church is and to what ends Chap. XIV The Quakers deny the Ordinance of hearing the Word preached They disown Gospel Prayer In their Families and at Meals altogether Pray in publick not ministerially Deny premeditated Prayer Owne no Prayer but what is by immediate inspiration and motion They pray not in the name of Christ or any Mediator All these proved and refuted in their places The Quakers deny reading and meditating in the Scriptures An apologie for positive or sacramental Ordinances The Quakers deny all Water-Baptism What Baptism they owne The grounds on which they deny Baptism considered and refuted They deny the Lords Supper to be now an Ordinance The grounds of their denial An account of their ridiculous fancies which they call the Lords Supper Chap. XV. The Quakers deny the transactions of Christ when manifested in the flesh 1600 years since and what he doth now at the right hand of God in Heaven to have any influence into our justification and salvation The influence of Christs active and passive obedience considered and objections answered What the righteousness is that the Quakers are as they say justified by and ascribe salvation to Chap. XVI The Quakers disown and deny the Christ of God and set up a false Christ in his room and stead and attribute all that to their false Christ which is due to the true Christ These abundantly proved What Christ they owne as God and as man Those Texts of Scripture on which they chiefly build their great delusion opened largely and discharged the Quakers service Ch. XVII The Quakers are gross Idolaters Quakerism gross Idolatry Abundantly proved by their owning false Gods viz. The Light in every man the Souls of men and the Spirits of men These Charges abundantly proved and that these are no Gods proved plainly The Quakers proved to worship and that according to their own professed principles false Gods Chap. XVIII The Quakers deny the resurrection of the dead Their Evasions discovered Their Objections answered The consequences of their errour Chap. XIX The Quakers do not profess a future reward after the dissolution of the frame of soul and body but are as to that either deeply silent or imply their contempt of such a belief PART III. An Examination of William Pen's Spirit of truth c. wherein his Arguments for the Spirit of God's being in his people essentially and so teaching them immediately as is exclusive of all other teachings their infallibility as the result of such a Proposition and teachings considered and confuted and the unparallel'd vanity and folly of William Pen discovered The Doctrine of immediate inspirations considered more especially and largely the Characters given of Apostolical persons distinguishing them from all others since Christs administration Characters distinguishing the inspiration of the Apostles which gave authority divine to the Scripture from the highest illuminations of the Saints as such in our days A Key to the Quakers new coin'd Phrases and also to their meanings of such Scripture and religious phrases as are commonly used by the Orthodox The Conclusion wherein is shewed that the Quakers contemn all rational demonstration and make their experience and inward sensation the only demonstration to themselves of the principles they hold Scriptures opened in the First Part. Book Ch. Ver. Pag. Words Deut. 5 32 17 The word is nigh thee c. Job 26 13 14 74 By his Spirit he hath c. John 4 23 64 Worship the Father in c. John 14 6 97 I am the way c. Acts. 24 16 71 Conscience void of offence c. 1 Cor. 3 6 122 The Spirit of God dwelleth c 2 Thes 2 4 64 Sitteth in the Temple of c. 2 Tim. 3 15 103 And that from a Child c. 1 John 2 22 64 Antichrist that denyeth c. 1 John 2 27 62 But the anointing c. In the Second Part. Job 23 4 29 I would order my cause c. Psal 85 9 10 11. 58 Mercy and truth are not c. Jer. 5 2 14 Liveth surely they swear c. Mat. 6 11 24 Give us this day our daily c. JOHN 1 9 84 THAT WAS THE TRVE LIGHT c. Rom. 10 8 94 The word is nigh the c. Rom. 5 14 21 Nevertheless Death reigned c
the single word Jew is expressed all the Jewes from first to last in every generation and under the word Gentile all the world of mankind besides Take one Text more to conclude with Isa 8. 20. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this VVord it is because there is no light in them not so much as the dawning of the day Both Law and Testimony are here rendred by VVord in the singular number in this one Text there is enough not only to silence this petty cavil but to pluck up both root and branch all the principles of Quakerism if they who profess them had any regard to the Authority and verity of the eternal and Almighty God and a few grains of understanding at liberty to consult it SECT III. 2. Object Many Passages in the Seriptures contain the sayings of wicked meâ— Yea some have been so irreverent and irrational as to say some part of it is the words of the devil this expression hath been frequent with them and uttered in contempt of the Scripture I answer although the Scripture make frequent mention of such Passages it is to a good and holy end and hereby Satans malice is discovered whereby in a good measure we are not ignorant of his devices and hereby we understand his snares in which our first Parents were taken and others both good and bad in after-Ages and Satan is also rendred the most wicked and hateful of all that God created But to speak close to the Objection Those speeches of wicked persons such as Jobs wife the Pharisees Jewes and Rabshakeh and the speeches of the Devil are not the Word of God or any part of holy Writ as they were uttered by them but far from it We are to consider the Scripture as partly Historical and all those passages being reported historically there is not the least stain upon the Scriptures thereby What if I make a true report of the Powder-Plot the Massacres in France Ireland c. And that to good ends and purposes â— yea if I report the blasphemous speeches by them uttered against God his Saints and the holy Scriptures am I therefore blameable as if I my self had been their Author I know what hath been said is convincing Now by the Inspiration and Guidance of the Holy Spirit these things were written and there is not only a truth but also a divine truth of History in them Object 3. That this title the Word of God is peculiar to the Son of God the Lord Jesus Christ whom they call the light within the Scriptures within and here it is indeed that the shooe pinches and they would fain put off the honour and put out the light of the Scriptures because they stand in the light of their fancy Pardon me the expression for it is a truth I shall prove by the Lords assistance ere I have done But what have they to say that the Scriptures should not be the Word of God notwithstanding the Son of God is so called I will give you the best that ever I met with The first is the Authority of their Leaders who say It is so and it must be so James Parnel Christ exalted p. 4. He Christ is the VVord the Scripture is not VVhy should it be doubted after such an evidence it is unreasonable and superfluous to expect that infallible persons for so the Quakers believe all their Ministry to be should give a reason for what they affirm especially considering they are constrained to be infallible for want of reason And now seeing be can carry it so easily he goes on like an empty Cloud carried with the winde He Christ is the light the Scripture is not he is the Râ—lâ—r Guide Teacher and Judge and the Scripture is not VVhat may not a man prove in one infallible breath did he not prudently to make haste before that gale was spent VVell but who can stand before a whirl-wind one blast hath torn from the Scripture no less then six of those glorious Garments wherewith God hath cloathed it Let us hear G. F. if he do not amend the matter by a thing like an Argument He did not say John 1. 1. the Declaration was the VVord but said in his Declaration the VVord was God and he who saith the Latter is the VVord is a Deceiver and erres for the Scripture saith That in the beginning was the VVord Difference of Ministers p. 1. If you could have found where John said in his Declaration as you call it that the Scriptures are not the VVord of God a thousand to one but some or other of the Lords people would have found it out long before Quakerism was in being and have ceased to take that name in vain For the second Argument he said the VVord was God what then VVhy then the Scriptures cannot be the VVord unless they be God also I am sure I have hit on your Conclusion and the best you can make of it but let me tell you that the Scripture may be the VVord and Christ the VVord also and yet though Christ be the VVord of God the Scriptures the VVord may be quite another thing Let me give you just such another place of Scripture 1 Cor. 10. 4. They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ VVill you conclude from hence that there is no other Rock but every Rock in the VVorld must needs be Christ or that it is sinful yea Blasphemy to call any thing a Rock but Christ but it may be you will say 't is a spiritual Rock in that place And I say it was spiritual only as it was mystical or typical of Christ but in other respects it was a Rock as others are hard and stony So I say of the Word that was God it was the Word that was in the beginning that created all things shew me any such Word and I will call it God too yea I will say it is blasphemy to deny it to be so but the Scriptures which we call the Word of God were not in the beginning nor did they create any thing much less all things Pray let me ask you that are so stiffe in this point do you not take the light in John 1. 9. to be Christ and God say nay if you dare Yea and will you not say that John saith so in his Declaration I know you will and I will say so too what then Is there nothing called light or that is truly so but Christ or God the Sun Moon Day are called Light also Gen 1. 5 16. yea the disciples are called by Christ himself The Light of the World Mat. 5. 14. And must they be God too or Christ be too blame for calling them the light of the VVorld a phrase so very near that in Joh. 1. 9. Christ is called the VVay the Truth and the Life but if you should make every such expression
permitted unto them to speak but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the Law And if they will learn any thing let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for Women to speak in the Church I have known some of them to break the Bonds of this inhibition by expounding the Woman to be weakness she being called the weaker vessel and so weakness must not speak But let us hear G. F's Exposition it may be that may not be so weak Now the woman here hath a husband to ask at home this Note hath some wit in it but he proceeds and not usurp authority over the man but Christ in the male as in the female who redeems from under the Law and makes free from the Law that man may speak Now the knot is united and the womans tongue loosed beyond all question But would any man in his Wits expound this after this fashion the Woman may not speak but the Man Christ in the Woman may and what must their home be then that must be their Consciences within where they say the light Christ is And they are directed to ask their Husbands in the plural number then according to this Exposition there must be as many Christs as there are women in the world at least for every one hath a husband at home Also this home the Conscience must needs be when the women were there in the Church Take but one more though I could fill a Volume with them Ye have Moses and the Prophets within viz. This written spoken manifested in you Quod tibi nervis fieri alteri ne feceris and retro Whatever you would that men should do unto you do ye even so to them This saith Christ is the Law or Moses and the Prophets but if ye will not be admonished nor perswaded by Moses and the Prophets neither will ye be perswaded by such of us who were once dead in sin with you but are now risen to life by the Power of God which is his light and in the same sent to speak unto you from the dead SECT VI. I will conclude this Chapter with some Inferences and Conclusions that naturally flow from this errour for one errour never goes alone viz. That their writings and sayings are equal with the Scriptures and to be preferred before them First it would follow that the Scriptures both are and ever were superfluous for the light within as they pretend was alway fitted to inspire every man and woman in the same manner and to all intents and purposes as they were inspired and written Secondly upon the same ground the tenets and assertions of all the Heathen are to be received as of equal Authority with the Scriptures for although they did not pretend them for divine Inspirations or revelations yet they resulted from their light within improved much more orderly and to purpose then the Quakers do theirs whose ungrounded Pretensions to Inspirations weigh nothing in the case yea the bitter scoffs of Lucian and Julian the Apostate must be admitted into the same Orders for if it be admitted they did not vilifie and scorn and deride Christ the Scripture and Christianity according to the dictates of their Consciences it cannot be denied that they therein acted from the power within which whether it were the power of darkness or not the Quakers having no rule to judge it by but their own sentiments it is left by them undetermined And I know not hardly any worse they said of Jesus of Nazareth the Scripture and Christianity then the Quakers have done under other Names The Quakers reduce their sentiments and motions to the power within of which I will give you one taste from a chief Authorâ— but sink down from these the reasonings about things and wait to feel that which lies beneath in the free nature vertue life power and motions whereof alone is your souls salvation power and motion from within is all with them and if this be truly divine and of equal Authority with the Scriptures or accounted so the scornful and virulent invectives of some of late against many worthy Ministers of Christ and multitudes of serious Christians are not only not to be rebuked but to be reverenced as divine emanations and verities for it could be nothing but a power within with a witness that had such Productions It will absolve many of those from sin whom the Scripture speaks of as gross and heinous offenders The Apostle Paul when a persecuting Saul dealt so hardly with the Cause and precious Saints of the Lord from the Conduct of what he took to be light or the light in his Conscience Christ doth also foretel us of such who should think they did God good service in killing his servants and if meer think so â— perswasions impressions motions without a demonstrable ground may be taken for divine dictates on the one part why not on the other and by consequence the Holy Spirit must be Entituled Dux omnium malorum and every evil which is the fruit of ignorance and conceit fathered on it It will warrantize a great part of the Popish inventions and orders which had their erection on the pretended inspirations and revelations of some among them who were Monkish and cloystered Votaries whose humorous abstinence moroseness and uncommanded sanctity gained credit with the people for any thing they would affirm and the Politick Clergy made their advantage of it I remember a passage of a Romanist who comeing into England and observing the multitude of Sects here he being asked which of them came nearest to the Roman Church he replied The Quakers And if the fundamental principles of Sects as such agreeing together do most exactly express their agreement and likenesse each to other the Quakers and Papists may claim Kindred upon more demonstrable terms then any other Sects whatever SECT VII The three main principles and pillars of the Roman Absurdities are 1. A Contempt of the Scriptures as insufficient to determine in all Religious Concerns 2. And therefore a necessity of some other infallible Judge which may supply that defect 3. Immediate Revelations and divine Inspirations The first of these is so apparently and abundantly proved of both Papists and Quakers in the Parallel in the close of the 12th chapter of this Book and other places here and there that I need not agitate it in this place See chap 5. The second that the Romanists build their faith on the pretence of Infallibility is not doubted by any who are in any degree acquainted with their Writings yet I shall furnish you with a few proofs In doubtful Controversies if they were not doubtful at least to some they would be no Controversies at all we must not go to the Scriptures for satisfaction but to a lively Judge which saith he as was Moses among the Israelites the Roman Bishop is among Christians And Moses whatever he
well fits the Popes Foot to mount his usurped and infallible Chair by and which both Papists and Quakers tug for as for life I remember when I was a small Lad I heard our Protestant Divines usually affirm that every man was born with a Pope in his belly which to my then childish genius seemed a very pretty phrase but such an one as I thought as was not only improbable but also impossible but the Generation I am contending against tug for the truth of it though under other terms tooth and nail And I have ceased wondring that so many so easily turn Quakers when I consider how natural it is to shake off the Doctrine and Discipline even of God himself that we alone may rule if not over the great world of all others at least over the little world our selves without controul SECT II. For convicting the Quakers of gross errour and establishing others in the truth I shall prove from the Divine Authority of the Scripture these four things First That whatsoever is by the Lord affirmed in the Holy Scripture it is our duty to believe Secondly That whatsoever is thereby or therein commanded of the Lord not being repealed by the coming of Christ it is our duty to obey Thirdly That the Holy Scriptures do in their kind determine or discover to us whether we believe and walk or practise aright or not For the first of these I shall prove from our Saviours own words O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken c. If it had not been their duty to believe according to the sayings of the Lord by the Prophets which were not immediate to the Disciples it had been neither their fault nor their folly not to believe or to have been so slow and unready to believe even those Prophecies which foretold the death and ill handling of the Messias which was so much above their understandings and so thwart to their affections Yea the innocent and compassionate Jesus would have been not a little faulty for so severely rebuking them for what was no crime at all But lest you should say these Prophecies were within them as some of you have said know first that they were ignorant of them for as yet they knew not the Scriptures And 't is said Luke 4. 27. Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself Thus much may suffice to prove it our duty to believe what the Scriptures speak and that all and universally Secondly What is therein commanded we ought to obey c. Ye shall observe to do therefore as the Lord your God hath commanded you you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left If it be objected this was obliging to them not to us who are not under Moses's Administration I answer first that the commands here chiefly intended were such as oblige all men in all Ages for the matter of them which is alway just and righteous Secondly the ground of their authority being the Lord commanding reaches to whatever he commands in his written Word in all Ages of the World Thirdly the Israelites had them not immediately by inspiration but by the hand of Moses either from his mouth to that Generation or by Writing and Tradition to the Generations following Who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to the Robbers did not the Lord he against whom we have sinned for they would not walk in his ways neither were they obedient to his Law Thirdly The holy Scriptures determine according to their kind or as much as a Writing can do whether we believe and practise aright or not I hope you are not yet resolved with the Jesuits and William Pen that because they do not express the sense contained in them viva voce or direct it to thy conscience without any other help and say thou A. art in the right thou B. art amiss therefore thou wilt not take them to be meet to determine good and evil right and wrong We may as certainly determine by words written as by words spoken and they are altogether as worthy of credit Those who come under the executive determination of Laws do find that Process in writing doth not lose its force for the decrees and sentence being put into that form All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousnes that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works the words for correction here are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for conviction And herein all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets do I exercise my self to have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men What can be more plain the judgment whether he did righteously with respect to God and men was passed in his conscience by the Scripture and that not by immediate inspiration only though he were an Apostle but by the written Law attained by study and serious meditation Herein I exercise my self he laboured by study and meditation therein as the Greek imports he was not an idle Quaker that must have knowledge dropt in his mouth for dig he cannot and to ask of others he scorns it But for all that I had rather be laborious rich and humble with Paul than slothful poor proud and meerly in conceit rich with them To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them G. Fox the grand Quaker will needs have Christ to be the Law and the Testimony if so I am as sure as can be that they that are saved by Christ are saved by the Law and then farewel the Gospel and the righteousness of Faith which the Apostle makes so much ado to bring people to embrace and disclaim justifying righteousness by the Law SECT III. The teachings motions and determinations of the Spirit of God by the Scripture are more sutable to the nature and present state and condition of man and more certain to his knowledge than any immediate teachings which any enjoy in our days More sutable to the present condition of man I prove it first from its being that dispensation of God which he hath put an eminent Character of mercy upon He sheweth his Word unto Jacob and his judgments unto Israel he hath not dealt so with any Nation and as for his Judgments they have not known them Praise ye the Lord. If it were not more sutable to man in his fallen state and tending to his good it would hardly by the Spirit of God been expressed as a mercy so singular so excelling his dealings with any other people and such flourishing matter for the praises of the Lord. Never did any of the Saints of old call it a carnal letter husks and by such like scornful names
above half dead and benummed with the Opium of Quakerism Yet this is as agreeable to their main principle as the same thing is to its self I wonder we hear it not more frequently from them that all power in Heaven and Earth is in every one of them yea in each of them yea in each drunken Sot and the silliest prophane person This is as certainly their Tenet as that God Christ Spirit are within them and all other persons in the sense they hold But if they should say that openly which they believe and speak among themselves they would be the most ridiculous to say no worse people that breathe above ground SECT III. Thirdly They affirm the Scriptures to be within If so it is a great vanity to read them out of a Book and when I am perswaded to be herein of their mind I assure them so long as that shall last I will not be at the fruitless pains of looking into a Bible as my Monitor Fisher the best Scholar that ever professed Quakerism asserted this Ye have Moses and the Prophets within you Not in Latine I dare be confident neither had his Book mentioned in the margin been so besprinkled with that Language of the Beast for all his inspirations if it had not been first knockt and whipt into him it may be by some wicked tyrannical Pedagogue Yet here by the way observe that such a wicked thing may furnish with the gift of Tongues while the Quakers divine Spirit must be confined to speak in plain English or be dumb Another of the same mind is Parnel of whom I must give this commendation that he speaks his opinions openly and not in parables as the most of them who are afraid or ashamed that their opinions should behold the light any further than the interest they have obtained may secure their Authors but of all men Hypocrites are the most odious and dangerous for the Scripture is within and was read within before it was read without I would not wrong the Quakers as bad as they are and it is pity they should be wronged who wrong themselves more than enough if they mean by the Scripture the sense by them expressed I wish they said true and if within be in the heart i. e. not only known and readily produced out of the heart and men as a good man brings forth from thence good things but also esteemed loved with understanding I am sure they would be no Quakers It is a blessed thing to have this Word hid in the heart as David practised and as God commands but if by the Scripture they mean the dead Letter Ink and Paper as they call them when they list they would be but a bad and troublesom Inmate I do acknowledge with all my soul that to have the Scripture within in the sense of them yea and the words too is an inestimable blessing such a one as young Timothy and eloquent Apollos were crowned with and few of the Saints there are who have not the Scripture within in some good measure but alas memory is so weak and frall it will not hold all and so confused ever and anon that it is necessary to go to the Scripture without not only to get in more but also to repair decayed and broken notions of them and to be sure that our crazy imaginations by brooding upon the frame of them within have not hatched something of its own and adopted it Scripture which the Quakers are not a little guilty in But while I am commending the first part of their Tenet viz. that the Scripture is within supposing it taken in as good a sense as it may be I must not forget the latter part which hath the dregs and poison viz. and was read within before it was read without If by reading it within before without they intended it only of the Penmen of the Scriptures I would join with them and say so too but they intend nothing less but that in the light which every man hath within him there is the Scripture all and every part at least that may be of use if it had never been without I would willingly be resolved of a few things by those that are of this mind Wherefore did the gracious God expose the Prophets and Apostles to so many difficulties dangers and deaths for declaring the matters contained in the Scriptures if they were read and might be read by all men within Why did God with his own finger write the Ten Words or Commands and cause other of his Servants to write both them and the other parts of the Scripture Why doth he command to read the Scriptures and by reading and studying them to get them into the heart memory understanding Deut. 17. 19. And it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God to keep all the words of this law and these statutes to do them It was not to be with him as you commonly phrase it in him there is no such it in the Text but the Relative it hath for its Antecedent in the Verse next before he shall write him a Copy of this Law in a Book out of that which is before the Priests the Levites it shall be with him c. Why did Christ himself read out of the Book if it were within them Why did not God chide Josiah for not doing according to the Law as being guilty of wilful neglect before he found it in the Book why did God commend and reward his tenderness of heart in fearing when the Law was read out of the Book if he were so hard hearted as not to hear the Law within Why did Jesus Christ never rebuke the Jews for not heeding the Scripture within while he oft rebuked them for not heeding and believing the Scripture without these are enough and to spare to discover the vanity of this conceit The truth is the Scriptures were written with respect to us first without then within I would gladly hear any of the Quakers make a report of any of the Gospel truths contained in the Scriptures which you could assure me you never heard or read without or that you could all agree without conferring together in a Narrative of those Traditions which the Thessalonians were taught by word 2 Thess 2. 15. and of those many other things which Jesus did or some of them spoken of John 21. 25. which were not written this would be somewhat of conviction to us But you are unworthy beyond all men of the holy Scriptures who by such means as these not only take off others from reading them for their instruction but also deny the mediate and visible instruments and means of those notions you make such a noise and jingling with in the ears of men as if they were but home-born things SECT IV. Fourthly They affirm that there is no light in
commands c. yet in the intervals and mean whiles between inspirations and motions from the Spirit within we have no obligation to any duty nor can we commit any sin For where there is no Law there is no transgression take away the Scripture Precepts and to you there is none but as inspirations drop in and then I assure you for all your pretences you may live lawlesly enough inspirations being now so rare and when they were more plentiful but one Balaam among the wicked was so visited as we read of 3. Then the Scriptures signifie just nothing but a Romance to read to exercise the fancy or at most but as a prophane or common History from which we learn nothing but what others did and said and how it was with them If you read the Scripture commands they are nothing to you if you have a command in Spirit as you call it it is enough though it never were in the Scriptures yea though it be contrary to the Scripture reason and all modesty CHAP. VIII They deny the Scriptures to be any means by which we may come to know God Christ and our selves SECT I. THis is a bold and strange assertion from those who call the Scriptures the Scriptures of truth and would be thought not to deny but own them with some respect But seeing it is within them I love they should speak out If the Scriptures are thus impotent I know no use they are of in things of a religious concern all Religions aiming at and depending upon the knowledge of God and ourselves and the Christian Religion as such on the knowledge of Christ They may notwithstanding this affirmation call them Scriptures i. e. Writings still but sure they do but mock them in calling them holy Scriptures or they are greatly ignorant what the word holy imports If the Scriptures then were burned it would not be a half-penny loss and the world would be rid of a burden or a snare or both I proceed to the proof of this Charge and as I have done hitherto draw my Arrows out of their own Quiver Quest Is there not another way by which we may come to know God Answ Nay child there is not another way for Christ is the way The Scriptures which are Christs own words which say Christ is the way John 14. 6. is far from countenancing what this Author shelters under its wing Christ saith I am the way no man can come to the Father but by me But he doth not say nor is it in the least implyed in the words as their sense or consequence that there is no coming to the knowledge of God but by Christ for some knowledge of God may be attained not only without Christ as the means but without the Scripture also As the Apostle Paul affirms who we have reason to believe before all the Quakers in the world Rom. 1. 20. For the invisible things of him from thhe creation of the World are cleerly seen being understood by the things that are made even his Eternal Power and Godhead Either they never read this Scripture or the beam is in their eyes who shall say there is no other way to know God but Christ if he had said no other way to know God savingly without Christ he had saved his credit here and hit the mark but what will not men say that have a mind the Scripture should be silent The reason he grounds this upon is of like strength to most which they produce under that name or form For Christ is the way now this Scripture doth not speak of the knowledge of God but of coming to God which is somewhat more than a bare knowledge of God which must have a being in us before we can come or move towards him But suppose he had said there is no other way to come to God but Christ only he had spoken falsly For Though there is no other way to come to God without Christ yet there are many other ways to come to God by in conjunction with and subordination to Christ So our reading the Scripture knowledge of our alienation from God our sin guilt and danger sanctification c. these are all ways and means by which we come to God Add to these faith love yet who will say that any of these are Christ except James Naylor who saith Christ is the Word and Prayer but though we make these to be some ways and means of coming to God we make not any of them the way as the most excellent and only way nor do we make them our Saviours and Mediators and Intercessors with God for us nor that they by shedding their blood satisfied Gods Justice and appeased his anger and made reconciliation between God and man and yet without these any one of them at least such as are within their reach no person can be saved or be re-united to God I will give you a demonstration as easie as sense it self Suppose that over a great and deep River there were but one Bridge and he that would go to the other side must go by this Bridge and it should be said and truly no man can get to the other side of the River but by this Bridge would this conclude that you must not enquire where this Bridge is how you may pass over by it that you must not take those passages and steps that lead to the Bridge that you must not have and use your legs and your eyes and all because you cannot get over but by thy Bridge At no wiser a rate do the Quakers plead for Christ being the only way excluding all other as subservient But enough of this passage only observe that the Author quoted will not have the Scriptures nor any thing else Christ excepted to be any means of knowing God Let us hear him explain himself a little more Quest Doth God manifest himself within man Answ Yes and man cannot know him by any other way but by the manifestation of himself in his light within him Here he saith much more than in his former sentence there he saith there is no other way to know God but by Christ here but by his light Christ and that within him too lâ—st we should mistake and suppose that the light of Christ also is to be found in the Scripture Hear him speak plainer and yet more to the purpose Then he John declared him as he knew him not from any tradition or writing before him though then there was much written which did truly testifie of him This he brings in to prove that Christ is to be known and made known to others not by the Scripture but his own light or he himself the light within and that though the Scriptures were then in being he made no use of them to declare Christ by to the knowledge of those he preached to They are such people as tell the world that Matthew Mark Luke and John are
the Gospel they are but the Letter The Gospel is as much as to say a good message or glad tidings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Strange that they should not be glad tidings because they are the Letterâ— as if a good message or glad tidings were never written in this world And the Scripture brings no tidings of Christ because they are tidings in the most ample form viz. in writing or printing which will abide much longer than a breath or sound and may be better considered Take another to couple with him as very a Wiseaker as he And the knowledge of the Languages of Hebrew Greek and Latine which they call the Orignal is nothing worth as pertaining to the knowledge of God This Author did certainly lose the light or the light lose him when he wrote this I never heard the Latine called the Original of the Scripture Translations before Sure he believed that the Scriptures peept first out of Rome in that their Original Copy should be in the Roman Language as others of them that the Lords Supper and Baptism were from Rome and the Pope But however we have been hitherto of this mind the Quakers infallible monitor the Light within by which I am perswaded he wrote this will have it otherwise and I dare assure this learned person if he be alive and can but prove the Latine to be the Original the Pope of Rome will willingly give him a Cardinals Hat for his pains But this is not his original errour though an errour concerning the Original He saith the Original is nothing worth pertaining to the knowledge of God â—f so our Translations which we had from thence are less worth than nothing for they must give the upper hand to the Original I have sufficiently proved their denial of the Scriptures being any means by which we may come to the knowledge of God or Christ one Witness of the third viz. of our selves and I shall call in no more of them for the proof of this Charge Christ by his light within shews you in a glass your own faces which the Scriptures cannot do Here I find them in love yea so in love with a little Rhetorick that rather than go on plain ground they will kick their own shins and trip up their own heels Truly friends you have here gone on Glass or Ice which you will You teach or declare in almost all your Writings which concern teachings in a religious sense that you are taught immediately by the light within Was ever any thing in this world shewn in a Glass immediately that Glass may more congruously be called a Mirrour the ancient name of a Looking-Glass than any I ever saw or heard of however let whatever be the Glass or means by which or in which we may see our faces the Scriptures by your leave must not be it But whether you will or no the Scriptures are a Glass or as a Glass wherein if you or I will please to look with an honest mind God will by it in a good measure shew us what we are and they have one property above all the Looking Glasses in the world viz. that we can see your faces in and by them though you should not look into them nor suffer the Book wherein they are contained to be in the same house where you are SECT II. For the help of the unready in the Scriptures I shall quote a few of its testimonies to confute this Doctrine although the consciences of the greater number of themselves if they will but turn over their records placed in their memories will give verdict against them And for all those who have been at the pains to learn what the Scriptures are capable of teaching and have not engaged themselves right or wrong to the service of the light within I doubt not but they will subscribe themselves experimenters of the truth here by you opposed That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord that it is mighty that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever As the heathen Nations so the Generations and Posterity of Israel who had not seen those works with their own eyes were helped to the knowledge of them and of the Lord who wrought them by the means of the Scripture History And it shall be when he sitteth on the throne of his Kingdom that he shall write him a Copy of this Law in a Book out of that which is before the Priests the Levites and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life that he may learn to fear the Lord his God Here the Scriptures are not only a means to know God but also to fear God which cannot be without knowledge of him and is more than a meer notion of God And for the knowledge of Christ it is not possible that the Scriptures should be a prophetical historical and doctrinal account of the natures person and offices c. of Jesus Christ and yet no means for the knowledge of him And according to your own common phrase a testimony declaration and witness of Christ and that they are some means though not the only means that Text is enough to prove 2 Tim. 3. 15. And that from a Child thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make the wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus And who will doubt but that which is a means to save is a means to know God and Christ I have met with such a silly cavil as this in some of your Writings viz. that they are no such means to them who have not faith i. e. that obey not the light and believe not in the light True if you understood Christ aright but yet they are a means of some kind or it is not true that they are able to make wise to salvation whatever else be in conjunction with them we never yet said that they alone can do it if we should say so we should be like unto you who deny they can contribute any thing towards it Concerning the knowledge it gives of our selves whether we are believers or unbelievers take two or three testimonies These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God that ye may know that ye have eternal life and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God Surely if they are a means to know if we have eternal life they thereby shew us our faces that we have the faces of Children not Swine or Swine and not Children and those characters and marks by which one Saint may know it self may be a means by which another Saint may know it self and so on the contrary Paul knew himself by the Law to be such a sinner as he knew not before But I shall give you one Scripture which answers the case in the Metaphor a Glass used by our Adversary For if any
able to defend our selves against the most ignorant nonsense that the meanest of your votaries can attempt us with But the God above and the Scripture without hath taught us better things I am not unwilling though I hope few need it to quote a few Scriptures that people may have them in a readiness against these untruths of the Quakers Put on the Armour of light c. the Scripture makes it day in the World but especially in and with the Saints for it makes manifest abundantly There is your defensive Arms. The Word of God is quick and powerful sharper than any two edged Sword c. There is an offensive Weapon Above all taking the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench c. 17. and the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God A Sword of the Spirits making and is effectual when of the Spirits managing Observe faith in the 16. ver is preferred above the Word of God in the 17. verse therefore it is not Christ the Word but the Scripture the Word for Faith is not above Christ Jesus Christ who had less need of the Scriptures than any of us all resisted Satans temptations by the Scriptures it is written it is written and what was written being opposed to Satans temptations silenced and confounded him But it seems since then he hath gotten more confidence Consider that the Quakers will allow the man Christ to leave us a perfect example CHAP. X. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be read to any profit any further than they are before hand experienced by those that read And they put the Spirit of God and the Scripture in opposition SECT I. THey may as well say that hearing the word preached is to no profit neither any farther than it is experienced before hand for there is the same reason of the one as of the other But this is a strange Doctrine that at one blow cuts off both hearing and reading the matter contained in the Scriptures by men unregenerate For what I pray you have they experienced who are according to your notions stark blind and utterly without sense of the things of God Quest But if there be not another way to God c. Answ Why Child all that are faithful to God in what he makes known unto them they are not judged This is pretty charitable but hear farther the reason he gives why they that read the Scriptures profit not in the knowledge of God c. is but they read in that book notionally before they have passed the judgment experimentally Again p. 30. For people wanting the life and power of Christ in themselves they are betrayed into the words c. And such were the Scribes who were ever scraping in the Scriptures to find God and his life yet never knew him at any time nor saw his shape because they heard not his voice nor heeded not his word within themselves John 5. 37. What a vile insinuation is here of the Scriptures and the study of them as if the Scriptures were but a dunghil and every unregenerate person at least which all are with them who adore not the Light within as Christ did but the part of a Brute which scraping implies in searching the Scriptures to know the things of God For his blasphemous insinuation that God hath a shape and that they who heed his voice within themselves see it I am too sensible of the invisible Majesty of God to work my thoughts on such a horrid subject yet he dares quote John 5. 37. to countenance it which so far as it reaches it doth deny any such thing to be seen To reprove this evil Spirit of worse than errour read and understand these Scriptures wherein there is not any great difficulty Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testifie of me and ye will not come to me that ye might have life I have known more than a good many of the men of this controversie expound this Scripture as if Christ rebuked them for searching the Scripture and having such a fallacy in their opinion as to think eternal life were to be had by searching of them and instead of and which gives the absurdity of their searching the Scriptures to find the true Christ by their testimony and its testimony being so plain and clear that Jesus of Nazareth he that then talked with them was he they have read it but you will not c. as if the one was exceeding opposite to the other viz. searching the Scripture whereas the true sense is it condemns you as irrational men that you should think to have eternal life in the Scriptures and will not believe their testimony I must remember to tell you that I do not take the Scriptures to be able to give eternal life to all that have them in their houses or heads or that do barely search them and not set their hearts according to its direction to find eternal life It were ten to one if I had not said so much some or other of them would have had a fling at me as making a Christ of the Scripture By what hath been produced you may be sure there is the best profit by Gods blessing on an honest reading of the Scriptures Young Timothy was bred up from a Child in the Holy Scripture and it was the commendation of his Mother and Grand-Mother for so educating him but can you think he experienced all he read before he read it some of them are prophetical of things to come Can any of you alll experience things that never yet had an existence or being And should the Gentiles and Jews have been reproved for hearing Paul and Peter and Christ himself preach the Gospel and the Mediatour of it because they did not experience it in themselves But why should I use many words about such a cause the willing to understand may see its grossness and for those that will be ignorant means signifie little to their cure CHAP. XI The Quakers put or render the Scriptures and the Spirit of God in opposition to each other SECT I. I Could produce a thousand instances of this crime against the life and being of the Scriptures committed by the Quakers as their principle and duty This wickedness is their open high-way and beaten road If the Scripture had not been the word of the Spirit of God the revelation of his mind and will whose holiness and authority had its being from God its author the frame of it agreeing to the nature and will of God we would not think it worthy the name of Scripture in that peculiar sense which it hath obtained among Christians But if once we knew it opposite and an adversary to the Spirit so far at least that it must come to a parting and they that cleave to the teachings of the Spirit must forsake being taught comforted
understand the whole written Word as written that is the body of the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament Law and Gospel without distinction and by the Spirit the inward immediate teachings of the Spirit of God they are in both mistaken For it is as certain as that the following words are truth that by the Letter here is meant the Law as given forth by God from Mount Sinai and by the Spirit the Covenant of Grace especially as expressed in the New Testament under the administration of the Redeemer But if the ministration of death written and engraven on stones was glorious c. for if the ministration of condemnation be glory c. All these passages express and explain the same thing called the Letter in the 6. Verse and that it was the Law given forth by God before it was written not only as written the matter and manner of which was glorious but in terribleness insomuch that Moses said I exceedingly fear and quake and it was death for any to touch the Mountain yea the Israelites were ready to dye with fear at the appearances of God on that Mount Sinai at the giving forth of the Law And as the manner of giving it forth by God so the matter of it was mortal nothing but death was written in the forehead of it going alone The Law worketh wrath That is the Law of meer Commandments And the Commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death for sin taking occasion by the Commandment deceived me and by it slew me Thus it is plain what is meant by the Letter the Law of meer Commandments as given forth on Mount Sinai That by the Spirit is to be understood the Covenant of promise in the hand of the Mediator is as certain and not of the Scripture or written Word in general for in the 6. Verse it is opposed to the Letter of the New Testament not of the Letter that is the Gospel not the Law and it is called the Spirit in three respects First As the New Testament or Covenant of promise especially in the hand of Christ promiseth and conveyeth soul-quickning grace in a good measure to sanctifie and enable and dispose the soul to keep the Laws of God Secondly As by the New Testament or Covenant life and spirit comfort and refreshment is put into the hearts of poor drooping sinners under the sense of the severity of the Law and their liableness to the punishment of it Thirdly And chiefly the intent and mind of the Spirit in the terrible dispensation of the Law of Works was by discovering mans woful estate to make the promises of the Gospel or the new Covenant sweet and welcome and to put souls on embracing the redemption through Christ So that the matter of the pure New Testament or Covenant in the hand of the Mediator was that which God especially aimed at to promote by the Letter or the meer Law of Commandments in which alone there was not the least appearance of mercy or mans welfare implied CHAP. XII The Quakers hold it is a sin and the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and holy examples expressed in and by the Scriptures except we have them by immediate inspiration and at first hand as the Apostles received them SECT I. I Am now come to the highest round of their Ladder and I know not what one step of sin beyond it except the unpardonable one they could charge those with who walk by the light of Scripture day Samuel whose rebuke to Saul for his sin in the matter of the Amalekites was expressed in the keenest and highest terms compared his sin but to Witchcraft Iniquity and Idolatry And if this charge againstus were as true as it is that they so charge us it is high time to serve the Scriptures as Hezekiah served the Brazen Serpent And brake in pieces the Brazen Serpent that Moses had made for unto those days the Children of Israel did burn Incense to it and he called it Nehushtan that is Brass nothing of a Deity in it but a little piece of Brass So it were fit the Scriptures should be demolished as having nothing of divine authority stamped upon them When I have established this Charge by the mouths of two or three Witnesses it will be time to leave off pouring in more where the measure is already running over All people may search the Scriptures and see how you have been deceived by your Teachers who have caused you to seek your lost God in carnal and dead observations which they have not any Scripture for Who this lost God should be except Jesus Christ who is ascended above the visible Heavens is not to be imagined by those who are acquainted with the Quakers Tenets and Phrases as will appear more plainly where I treat on their Idolatry and if so as there is reason to believe there are two grand parts of Idolatry we are charged with in complying with the Scripture Precepts and Institutions as in Preaching Prayer Church-order Baptism Lords-supper The first is a false object of worship which all of them that ever I met with in print or otherwise will not deny that to be which is given to the man Christ Jesus who was crucified between two Thieves at Jerusalem The second is false worship for the matter which is Idolatry although it were intended to the true God as the object the sacrificing of Children was intended ultimately to the true God yet it was gross Idolatry And they have built the high places of Tophet which is in the Valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their Sons and Daughters in the fire which I commanded them not neither came it into my heart But you will say how is this charge for walking according to Scripture instructions and examples seeing he doth expressly exhort to trying by the Scriptures whether they do not thus I answer that they take not any thing in the Scripture to be obliging but what comes by immediate inspiration as the Scriptures were given to the Prophets and Apostles and whatever we do however consonant to the precepts there expressed is all contrary to the Scriptures with them as I have proved already if not by immediate inspiration and motion of the Spirit If this be not clear we shall pump clear by and by And this is Babylon the mother of Harlots viz. to read and practice as the Saints did and the Apostles in the Scripture of the New Testament and the abomination of all uncleanness That many Children have been brought forth of flesh and blood and of the will of man that is our choice and not passive obedience to the motions of the thing within which is the birth that persecutes the son and heir And not one of them must stand though ever so seemingly glorious for the day is come and the true birth is
set them up and is present with and in them we will quickly in that point turn Quakers But alas the proof that he hath done so is but this they limit his leadings in Spirit that is the Quakers fancies but if he intended the Spirits leadings in a true sence it is very strange that the Gospel and Law of works should be both sick of one disease that which was ordained to life I found to be unto death The Ordinances of the Gospel were ordained to enlarge and raise the spirits of the Saints but quite contrary they are found to limit and imprison the spirit sure it must be Satans Spirit and not Christs to whom the Ordinances are such chains That I may shew you the Quakers Babel let us hear Isaac Pennington's Light speak contrary to the light of G. Fox When Israel was bent to seek after the Lord and applied their hearts to wait upon him in fasting and earnest supplications wherein my heart hath often had the testimony that they were accepted of him and had many times the seal of his presence and power among them yea my heart did truly unite with and enjoy the Lord in what was then given forth and I can never deny the truth and worth of that dispensation though I know it was swallowed up by the breaking forth of a more lively dispensation This he saith he found about the beginning of the late troubles How doth this agree to G. Fox's nailing all those forms to Christs Cross at his death and then blotting out these Ordinances But yet I. P. will needs have them swallowed up now though he gave them leave to live 1600 years more mercifully however than G. who would have them stifled in the womb or crucified so soon as born But Pennington is so cruel by that time he arrives to p. 38 that he saith Such of the people of God as do not follow the Lord perfectly out of the things City of abomination visible worship but be found in any part thereof when the Lord cometh to judge her the Lord will not spare her nor the spirits of his dearest people who are found there c. Both by the Scripture and their own confession Christ did not long since dwell in those Ordinances which we call Gospel-Ordinances and the Quakers Babylons forms and abominations Untill they shew us better grounds for Christs remove than the secret witness of the Spirit within them which we can prove to be a Spirit of delusion by Scripture reason and sense it self let none who follow not Christ blind-fold have the worse opinion of Ordinances for all the Quakers talk I now come to particulars and begin with the Gospel-Ministry SECT III. They deny and subvert the Ministry of the Gospel railing on the Ministers as the vilest persons and veriest cheats in the world making ill use of those Scripture words Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered Next to the Scripture they lay not their batteries against any thing so much as against the Ministers of the Gospel and have so little honesty as to rake up all that is to be found on any one or any that pretend to be Ministers of Christ and cast it in the faces of all without distinction as equally guilty And for their more particular attempts those who are the most faithfull and serious are the objects of their greatest fury I shall not blot paper with their railing First They deny all Ministry that hath a mediate call to that office and imployment and their call to the Ministry we deny which is mediate But who can witness an immediate call from God and speak it the Gospel as they are moved by the holy Ghost and such travail from place to place and have no certain dwelling place this Ministry we own and witness Thou art corrected by the Scripture and the Apostle corrects thee who saith I have not received it of man nor by man and bid others look at Jesus the author of their faith Their Writings are abounding with matter of this nature We acknowledge that all the true Ministers of Christ ought to have an immediate call such as consists in grace and gifts and disposition to that worthy office and imployment and such as have not this immediate call we account unworthy of the thing and name but the Quakers pretended-immediate call is far from the Apostles as I have proved at large on the point of inspirations neither are the Ministers of Christ now Apostles as they were But if we call for the Quakers proof of their immediate call hear what Farnworth saith As for pretences we do not pretend that we are immediately call'd but we witness that we are And what is their witness their own fancy and their own say-so and we witness that such witnesses will carry the cause no where but in the fools Court who the wise man saith believeth every word And G. Fox's proof is as much to the purpose not of man the call of the Apostle while we pretend not to be Apostles And bid others look at Jesus the author of their faith as if that Text intended a faith that they were called to be Apostles which speaks of the faith of all believers who received it by the mediate Ministry of the Gospel For being moved by the holy Ghost which is by them made an essential mark of a true Minister we allow but yet affirm That those who are moved by the commands of the Spirit in the Scripture are moved by the holy Ghost especially when the Authority of God therein prevails with them As for having no certain dwelling place and leaving houses lands and possessions let them repair to William Pen and others of their Ministers for an Answer to it who have large possessions and brave habitations such as few Ministers whom they disclaim especially the poor non-Conformists enjoy and will not so easily as Pen's phrase is be fobb'd out of them as they fobb others out of the truths of the Gospel But indeed will you deny that the Elders that were ordained in every City by the appointment of Paul and by the hand of Titus had any mediate call or those spoken of Acts 14. 23. And when they had ordained them Elders in every Church and had prayed with fasting they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed If you will not believe these had a mediate call I despair of your believing any thing but what you list SECT IV. Another ground of their denying our Ministry is that they teach from the Scripture And the Word is immediate and all the Ministers of Christ preach the immediate Word and wait for it and the outward written words with ink and paper are mediate so then The written Word being preached from makes a man no Minister And of this sort are they that have their preaching to study and to seek at other mens mouthes or from the
letter but have it not from the mouth of the Lord. If the Scripture be not the mouth of the Lord there is no such thing as Gods mouth And here is the difference of the Ministers of the world and the Ministers of Christ the one of the letter the other of the Spirit For they are meer deceivers and witches bewitch people from the truth holding forth the shadow for the substance and what is the chaff to the wheat Here is not a bare denial of those to be Christs Ministers who preach the Word of God out of the Scriptures but charging them with witchcraft and what are the instruments of their witchcraft but the holy Scriptures most horrid doctrine and yet these wretches will tell you they honour the Scriptures and a Scripture Ministry But this is not all the tide rises yet higher And so he the Devil takes Scripture to maintain his kingdom and this he delivers by the mouth of his Ministers which he sends abroad to deceive the Nations leading people in blindness c. These words are plain and no parable therefore I leave you to behold without a glass the villany of these misleaders I have already proved that not only we ought but Christ and his Apostles did teach out of the Scriptures therefore by the Quakers account they were also as bad as they charge us to be witches and deceivers c. O but there is another inditement against us we are not infallible How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible There is none but God alone absolutely infallible And for certainty of what we teach we dare weigh with the Quakers at any time But sure I am that I never met with one of their Teachers yet in Writing or otherwise but I found him more than fallible even foolish contradicting the Spirit of God speaking by the Scripture contrary to the clearest reason and themselves also But more than all this We are Hirelings preach for Hire and take Hire for preaching And a main question for a scrutiny into the truth of our Ministry is Whether is your Gospel free and without Charge yea or nay This is the nail they find will drive People love a Cheap Gospel they that will sell them such a one shall buy their souls into the bargain and vassalize their understandings to their most corrupt dictates To preach for Hire we call a Vile iniquity to receive Hire for preaching we dare not condemn because Christ hath said The labourer is worthy of his hire And the Apostle said He took wages of other Churches to serve them the Corinthians It is ordained that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel and so hath the Lord ordained So that a Ministers maintenance for preaching the Gospel is Gods ordinance The Apostle exhorts Timothy To give himself to the work of the Ministry as it is the duty of every one ordinarily imployed therein And is God and Christ a hard Master to oblige his Ministers to give up themselves to that work and let them and theirs starve for it But moreover you may know if you please that there are thousands this day in England who preach the Gospel in poverty and distresses and cleave to their work when stripped of their wages which number there needs not one Quaker to make up yet take heed you commend them not for it Another objection is we study for our Sermons What is study but meditation and searching to understand the truth and to get it into our heads and hearts if this be a sin obedience to God is so And the Apostle bids Timothy who had excellent gifts and was brought up from a child in the holy Scripture study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the Word of truth Then it seems it is no idle task to preach like a workman and divide the Word of truth aright and that we may be approved to God and free from shame among men we must study But that which turns us all off hand-smooth is SECT V. That till we are taught by the light within immediately we cannot speak one word of truth but all lyes though the matter we deliver be the highest truth And all be in the Satanical delusions that be not in the immediate teachings from the Spirit But the greatest professors upon the earth are there of the Devil that speaketh the words of truth but not as they are in it as so saith Christ to the Jewes they were of their Father the Devil they speak of themselves they speak of themselves as the Devil doth but abide not in the truth but a lyar from the beginning The Devil speaks a lye from himself that is a truth for no body need teach the Devil to lye but how will it follow that whatever any man speaks of himself is a lye then it seems for a man to be first in telling any thing true or false 't is a lye whereas we use most to suspect the truth of that which comes by a second or third hand or more but the conclusion is what we have not by immediate inspiration and teach it we speak it of our selves and therefore are devilish lyars The learned Fisher will help the Fox at a dead lift and piece his tale And to such wise sayers and knowers as these God saith though ye say God lives yet as I live ye swear falsly and why falsly was not that a truth that God lives but not a truth truly testified unto by them any more than what is testified in foro hominum in mens Courts by such as being not eye-witnesses thereof have it only by hear-say from others because they witnessed to it but in stollen words Here is then the proof that we speak more than we know and therefore lye This is indeed pretty near a lye but that they who live in the light of the Creation and read and believe and know the Scripture to be the Word or the words of God and affirming no nicer a truth than that God liveth should lye because they know it not by immediate inspiration is very strange He that lives may know from thence that God lives who holdeth every soul in life that lives But the meaning of the Text may be and I will trust the sober Readers judgement to decide it betwixt us that they did not believe the Lord lived and swearing what they thought untrue or doubted of they therein sware falsly But I desire those who give credit to such teachers as infallible and inspired immediately from God to try by the instance I am now upon whether we are not likely to speak more rightly concerning God from the Scripture than their teachers without book In the quotation of this Text Fisher hath falsified beside his Exposition in three plain cases for they say he writes
Heb. 8. 10. And Circumcision the sign of the Covenant is called the Covenant also Gen. 17. 13. He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must need be circumcised and my Covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting Covenant Moreover Baptism with water is Baptism in a proper sense Baptism of or with the Spirit but analogically so called as having in it something a likeness to or proportion with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies washing with water dipping into water properly that of the Spirit washing the soul but improperly for freeing it from sinfull pollutions I hope none of you believe a soul can be rinsed or dipped Beside in Water-Baptism which is proper the body being dipt or washed or any part of it the flesh is put into the water but the soul is not dipt or put into the Spirit Therefore this Objection is a meer fancy and they that will contemn the Deeds and Seal because they are Paper and Ink and Wax and cast them away may lose Land and all for their contempt and then they will pay for and repent of their folly Another ground for denying it is it was not laid on the Apostle of necessity but as they found it of service or dis-service This is to be understood only of Paul who in his call which was out of duâ— time and in an extraordinary manner had not this of Baptizing mentioned as the rest had therefore he said Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the Gospel Yet he did baptize therefore it was an Ordinance and that he baptized so few in that Countrey it was rather providential than designed by Paul for he being so famous an instrument of converting the Gentiles they began to cry him up as if he had not been Christs Minister but rather his Competitor and therefore he thanks God he baptized no more lest they should have said he baptized in his own name But though he did not baptize there might be enough beside for that work and we read not of one that omitted it when they understood of the Ordinance and had any to administer it to them Object It was to confer the holy Ghost That was but one consequence but not what Baptism signified beside the giving the holy Ghost was of a miraculous nature for the confirmation of the Disciples in the newness of the Christian Religion and conviction of others and the friends of Cornelius had the holy Ghost before Baptism Object None were called to baptize but those that were sent to preach to all Nations Answ Ananias baptized Paul yet was not so sent The ends of Baptism which was a sign of what interest they had in Christ and of Regeneration and the righteousness of faith remain and therefore that remains to be dispensed by the ordinary aâ—…mediate Officers of the Church who are stewards of the mysteries of God of which this is one It being also a cognizance of Christianity there is the same reason for it and it is in vain to talk of Ordinances abolished without some proof when and why they are so Nailor saith Paul preached the Baptism of the Spirit in its stead Let that be proved and something is said But John Higgins saith That Water-Baptism was but the administration of John is known and confessed I say no more to him but I perceive he is but little acquainted with Confessions I must bring in the sentence of the great Patriarch George Fox to decide all for after his words 't is not fit any of his inferiours should speak again Where was Matthew or Mark or Luke or John baptized and many more which the Apostle Paul thanked God he had not baptized Baptizing is making Disciples to the Lord Jesus and baptizing them into his name thatis his power but he Paul told of the Spirits Baptism and brought the Saints off from the things that are seen and Water is seen and its Baptism Strange arguments as if the command and abundant instances of its practice had no force unless we have an account where every believer was baptized and because Paul did not baptize all therefore they were not baptized at all But for Baptism being a making Disciples if it be understood of Water-Baptism it will be no small friend to Infant-Baptism if of the Baptism of the Spirit I suppose George Fox will eat his words again and acknowledge that the Apostles had not power to bestow the Spirit of God on persons and make them new creatures that was the mistake of Simon Magus and now of George Fox But the last argument is such an one as never offered it self to such a service till the Quakers light which they say is almighty had the management of it and so may make an effectual instrument of any thing Paul brought the Saints off from the things that are seen and Water is seen and its Baptism He that shall look into the Text to which his words refer will admire his sharp-piercing genius or his non-such ignorance that could find such a meaning of that Text or tell the world it was there But if all that is seen must be cast away and rejected I counsel the Quakers not to be such eager pursuers of the world and that I dare ground upon the Text but above all to reject their proud dreaming intollerable notions the ignorance and delusion of which is so gross that it is not only seen but may be felt also But for all this the Quakers will affirm they own Baptism and believe that George Fox is sent of God because he speaks of the Scripture right as they are SECT VII The Quakers disown the Ordinance of the Lords Supper to be now a Gospel-Ordinance or any Ordinance of God at all As of Baptism so of the Lords Supper they will say they own it at least many of them but they call quite another thing by that name which is the way they have to delude people in all other matters of the Christian Religion If what the Apostle Paul saith he received of the Lord 1 Cor. 11. 23. do express the true Lords Supper the Quakers deny it Feeding upon the husk and shadow which is carnal For the Bread which the world all that are not Quakers breaks is natural and carnal so also the Cup which they drink and here is no communion but natural outward and carnal They Bread and Wine in the Lords Supper are the Popes invention The Priest gives it to the people and tells them it is the Bloud of Christ which is shed for them when it is Wine and not Bloud I will not trouble thee with so an unnecessary a thing as a reply to these silly cavils and plain contradictions to the Scripture The main Objection the Quakers have against this Ordinance beside that against all forms and all things that are seen is That Christ
me leave to tell them That though faith in Christ be so in the heart of a believer that it doth thereby enjoy the blessed effects and fruits of the Redeemer yet while the faith in Christ is in the heart the man Christ in his person or if you will his glorified body flesh bloud and bones is as far from them as beyond the visible Heavens And I care not if I mind you of the Popishness of their conceit near of kin to Transubstantiation but that is but an Infant-absurdity to this that one single body one individual man of flesh bloud and bones should be entirely in so many places at once as in every Quaker yea every man and woman in the world But it may be the Quakers being the only masters of the Mysteries can say more for it than we can imagine I am sure more than any man in his wits can believe Let us therefore give them the hearing before we dismiss this importunate Candidate with Ignoramus or a condemning Verdict Now the woman here hath a husband to ask at home and not usurp authority over the man but Christ in the male as in the female who redeems from under the Law and makes free from the Law the man may speak Christ in the male and female who are in the Spirit of God are not under the Law but the Whore who drinks the bloud of the Saints is gone from her husband from under the Law to ask the Whoremaster that doth drink the bloud of the Saints which Christ the seed judgeth upon to whom he gives judgement I have transcribed the more of this Answer of George Fox's that you may see what spiritual rare matter the Quakers swallow from the hand of Fox's infallible and inspired Authority the Chief among that Sect. The non-sense and rarity of the Exposition of the Apostles inhibition of Womens speaking in the Church I shall leave you to construe and descant upon But you find him owning a man Christ in the male and in the female The clearest Expositor that I have met with among the Quakers of this Mystery is Isaac Pennington Two passages of many I shall quote out of him Was not the Word made flesh And did not the Word made flesh dwell and appear in a tabernacle of flesh And cause the glory of his own divine flesh to shine through the earthly flesh Is it the flesh and bloud of the body which was prepared for and taken by him wherein he tabernacled and appeared Or is it the flesh and bloud of him who took tabernacled and appeared in that body For that which he took upon him was our garment even the flesh and bloud of our nature which is of an earthly perishing nature and his flesh and bloud and bones are of his nature c. The scope of this judicious Author in many Pages a non-such for new discoveries is to let us know that there was a heavenly spiritual divine body constituted of flesh bloud and bones in which Christ came from Heaven and that he put that body into the other body of our nature which he took of the Virgin and that outermost body of our nature he left behind when he ascended into Heaven no body knows where And this heavenly spiritual body nothing of kin to Abraham David Mary according to the flesh is the man Christ which is in the Quakers and so the Quakers are as compleat Christs as ever the Son of Mary was for they also have the divine nature of Christ dwelling in a body of spiritual flesh and bloud and that dwelling in those their bodies which we see are but the outward tabernacles of the God and the man Christ Jesus And when they speak and what they act all is but the words and deeds of this man Christ within the bodies of every he and she Quaker and so no more they but Christ in them However ridiculous this may seem to be it is no more but what they as seriously own as any Article in their Creed I say no more on this particular but that he that can digest such fables as these hath a stomack hotter than an Ostrich SECT III. The Quakers in their opinion of the divine nature of their Christ are exceeding superfluous and they have not more diminishing thoughts of the humane nature of the true Christ whose body they have doom'd to perish into dust and corruption than they have magnifying apprehensions of the divinity of their false Christ Their Tenet which I am next to consider is That every man and woman in the world have in them a saving light from Christ and this light is no other but Christ the Saviour and God eternal and there is no other Saviour but it It hath been the opinion of some before the Quakers were known in the world that by the redemption of Christ called universal all men have a sufficient light given them from God the utmost improvement of which will prove saving but far were they from accounting this light to be the Christ the Saviour However alien my thoughts may be from this Tenet it is not my work here to consider it But that peculiar to the Quakers that the light within every man is Christ and the only Saviour and very God Although there are none of them will stick to proclaim this on the house-top yet I shall for general satisfaction give it you under their hands And no one knows salvation but who knows this Christ in you who is the salvation and where he is within there is salvation And this Christ in us is he in whom our salvation standeth as the Mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus And we also know and believe that he is the same Christ in us which in dispensations past did humble himself to the Cross And you whom the Prince of the power of the air hath led out of me you scorn me the light in you They have disobeyed it and called it a natural light and ye have said that I the light am not able to save those that believe in me That if you would believe and wait in me the light I will purge out all your iniquities and forgive all your trespasses and I will change your nature and I will make you new creatures if you will hearken to me and obey me the light in you How confident they are of this to be true may be seen in a bold adventure If ever man be justified by his Maker then by believing in Gods Covenant of light which in the conscience bears its testimony against all iniquity then let me for ever be condemned from the presence of the righteous God My design is to do two things First To consider the Scriptures which they lay as their principal foundation and chief corner stones in this building Secondly Prove by Scripture and Reason the falsity and abomination of their errour SECT IV. That was the true light which
without the God-head nor the God-head without the manhood I shall resume my Argument That this Christ of God the Quakers disown and deny and set up in his room and stead another viz. the light within every man and therefore disown and deny the true Christ and set up another in his room which is not the true Christ the Christ of God The light within every man was not born of the Virgin Mary It was not the light within every man of which Mary and Joseph were said to be the Parents It was not the light within every man that was arraigned before and condemned by Pilate It was not the light within every man that was crucified being hanged on and nailed to the Cross of Wood without the gates of Jerusalem It was not the light within every man that was laid in the Sepulchre of stone belonging to Joseph of Arimathea that rose out of that Sepulchre that eat and drank after his Resurrection with the Disciples that shewed to Thomas the prints of the nails that nailed his hands and feet to the Cross that ascended up into Heaven in the sight of the bodily eyes of the Disciples but the Christ of God was he and is he that did and suffered all these things Therefore it is a most stupendious contradiction to pretend to believe the Scriptures and that they own the Christ to whom the Scriptures bear witness and yet say The light in every man is the Christ and only Saviour And that the God-head of Christ should be within every man or any man breathing I have sufficiently refuted already yet I shall offer a few of many Arguments farther to convince That the Quakers Christ is not the true Christ and Saviour They call their light within the seed That he regards not the seed of God which is fallen under all this death and darkness so long as the creature will but hearken to him the Serpent and his lying promises he will lead him from one thing to another in things without c. 'T is a strange Christ who is in the power of every man to be brought under death and darkness as long as the world endures yet this is the Quakers Christ. Whereas Gods Christ was dead but died but once and was offered up but once for all and that one offering hath that in it which perfects for ever them that are sanctified But how the seed spoken of Christ in the Scripture should be in every man and yet the Son of Mary not be there yea not be any where is a most ridiculous Riddle for God or the God-head of Christ was not the seed of the woman or Abraham or David the seed was the man Christ according to the flesh So to the light of Christ that which changeth not in every one I appear to be judged for therein alone both these things and all other that proceed from that root makes for gathering creatures together unto that one name and seed wherein all the nations of the earth are blessed The Scripture he expresses the sense of is Gen. 22. 18. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed But Christ as God was not the seed of Abraham Who that understands any thing can be thus deluded to take the light within every man to be the seed of Abraham the man Christ Jesus The Quakers light within cannot be the Saviour for their light within is as they say God Father Son and Spirit without distinction and that they are but one whereas the Christ of God is the Mediator and therefore must be distinct from God the Father and sinfull man who are the parties to be reconciled There is one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus Compare this with Gal. 3. 20. NoÌ„w a Mediator is not a Mediator of one but God is one Well then the light within which the Quakers say is God without any distinction and not the man Christ who was in the womb of Mary cannot be a Mediator for a Mediator is not of one but between two distinct persons Now this being a truth where is their Mediator God eternal is not a Mediator to himself nor man a Mediator to himself so shut out the Christ without you a middle person between God and sinfull men and you are in a wofull condition Christ as God seperate from that man who was born of Mary is not nor ever was compleat Christ. So that if it should be granted that the light within you were the true God God essential which is a blasphemy no tender and understanding soul dare come near the brink of yet I say your light within were not Christ God had no capacity to suffer to die to do the Offices necessary for a Saviour and Redeemer according to the conditions of the Covenant of grace and although many were saved before Christ was born and died for sinners yet they were saved by faith in the promised Redeemer who was to come And these all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise And therefore untill his Incarnation he is spoken of as Gods Christ in election but not actually and compleatly Christ Behold my servant whom I uphold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth I have put my Spirit upon him he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles Read Isa 49. where you may with open face behold this truth in that discursive converse and expostulation between God the Father and God the Son Wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not but a body hast thou prepared me Then I said Lo I come in the volume of 〈…〉 Book it is written of me to do thy will O Gâ—… What was this will but his fulfilling the Lâ—… both actively and passively as Redeemer whicâ— he could not do as God therefore God prepared him a body that body which was born of thâ— Virgin to which he being united and thereiâ— dwelling and performing our Redemption 〈…〉 became actually and compleatly a Saviour anâ— not before Therefore if you believed arigâ—… concerning the God-head of Christ yet denyinâ— his man hood which was made a created Being a Being in time you disown and deny the trâ—… Christ And that is a notorious unmanning of Christ and denying him which one of your greaâ— Writers saith And the Scriptures throughout testifie of him and declare his unchangeableness who through all ages abides the same what he was in the beginning Whereas if the man Christ were so the same he never had a beginning And the Scripture or you are much out for they tell us When he was twelve years old he went up to Jerusalem and there disputed with the Doctors which would have been no matter of wonder if he had been as man from the beginning But if you will read such a mystery of iniquity ignorance and bold perverting of Scripture as the
spirit of the Quakers c. Charges the Quakers for having their hearts much set on a Heaven within them but not on the things above to which Pen replies and vindicates after his fashion the Kingdome of God within but saith not a word to assert their belief of and affections to the Heaven above from whence it is plain that they believe no such thing to have a being I wonder not therefore that this is so frequently their saying That if we are not perfect here we shall never be perfect It is easily deduceable from their more openly professed principles that they deny and disown a blessedness or misery in another world For if they deny the body to have life any more after it is dead and turned to dust and that the Soul and Spirit are of the being of God and that as the body returns to its former dust from whence it came and never revives again so the Soul and Spirit returns into God its first being all which I have already proved what then remains to be the subject of happiness or misery e'ne nothing at all except God and he is not man E. Boroughs the day he dyed expressed himself thus that he was now putting of this manner of person and returning to his own Being or words of the same import which I have quoted on the Chapter of their Idolatry When I have asked some of them what should become of their souls after death Their Answer hath been they shall be taken into God Let them profess that they believe a happiness to be enjoyed by men and women after their bodies are rotted to dust distinct from the Being of God or that which they had not a thousand years before they were born i. e. to be in God from whom as of his Being they say the soul came and it will be news to me and all that are acquainted with them In the mean time I. have given you Reasons enough to conclude they believe no future blessedness or misery in another world I shall now resume the Question and gather up all the proofs of what I have affirmed into an entire body If Quakerism be another dispensation than that of Christ setled and preached by the Apostles If it deny the Scripture If it deny all the Ordinances of the Gospel If it deny any influenne of Christs transactions in Judaea above 1600 years since into our justification and salvation If it deny Jesus the son of Mary the Christ of God If it own false Gods and be Idolatry If it professedly owns the worshiping of false Gods If it deny the resurrection of the dead If it affect not a future blessedness or misery in another world to men and women according to their deeds in this Then Quakerism is no Christianity But all these things are true and have been proved of Quakerism Therefore Quakerism is no Christianity PART III. BEING AN EXAMINATION Of the First Part of W. PEN'S Pamphlet CALLED The Spirit of Truth With a Rebuke of his Exorbitances SECT I. WHiles I was writing this Book I met with a Pamphlet of William Pen's intituled The Spirit of Truth vindicated against that of Error and Envy c. Which is pretended to be an answer to a malicious Libel intituled The Spirit of the Quakers tryed c. I having the Piece by me I once perused it In the general I resented it as one of the best and most ingeniously managed and beyond all material and just exceptions at least by the Quakers that ever I read against that sort of people But reading Pens Answer and finding his Epistle giving such a Character of his Adversaries Book and himself for malice lameness trifling and what not that might render it and him wicked and contemptible I began to mistrust my conclusion supposing a person of P.'s education and pretences would not say so much evil of it without great cause and therefore I compared them diligently But for P.'s sake I shall believe it more than possible that a man of the highest pretences having some more than ordinary means to deal rightly and ingeniously may yet so far deceive my expectations as to give the highest contradictions to them all I am altogether ignorant of the name or person of the Author of the Piece opposed by Pen and if he be a Socinian as Pen affirms I shall be far enough from vindicating him therein but for the Piece it self wherein Pen saith he could find neither head nor tail I will sell my eyes and brains for two pence if it deserve so contemptible a Character And for the Answerer Pen if he were not furnished with fore-head and tales beyond measure his Pamphlet would have had nothing remarkable in it I expecting next his Epistle and Preface an orderly combating his Adversaries Charge I find him taking up his Post in the Quakers conceited strong hold of the infallible guidance of the Spirit of God afforded to his people exclusive of any other means In the debating of which he roams and tosses to and fro like a man in a confused troubled dream for above thirty pages His pretences therein lying athwart my present work I thought meet to give some account of his Forces especially considering him to be a man of noise and no small prop◠to the Quakers cause in their own esteem His Question which he pretends to include the Quakers strength and which he saith he is resolved to stand by as such he states in these words SECT II. The Question stated Whether Gods holy and unerring Spirit is or should be the proper Judge of Truth Rule of Faith and Guide of Life among men especially under the administration of the blessed Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or not I affirm it and proceed to prove it by Scripture and Reason Considering his words foregoing which are too many and too worthless to transcribe and what he aims at in the handling of this Question I never read one so lame and deformed in my life come forth with such state and confidence and such a train or rout of mediums as deformed as it self There is in it neither Logick nor Honesty Certainly if he had not turned Quaker and in that fall put all out of joynt he could not likely after so good Nursing have been thus lamentably crepled in his Intellects and somewhat besides First of all here is a fallacy à bene divisis ad malè conjuncta many Questions confounded together Secondly no explanation of the terms most or all of which are metaphorical or amphibious and in that part especially affirmed the greatest ambiguity of all Vt quisque est lingua nequior Solvant ligantque quaestionum vincula Per syllogismos plectiles He tells us indeed pag. 37. that there is no more difference to him between a judge rule and guide than essentially there can be in the wisdom justice and holiness of God he should have added nor between truth faith and life
among men and then he would have shewed himself a workman indeed to have so stitched them together into one as would admit of no distinction I do not admire that his acumen cannot distinguish Essence and Subsistance three Persons in one Divine Being and God-Head who cannot distinguish these Attributes of God nor these acts with respect to men mentioned in the Question He is unlike to wade through a deep River who is so often over head and ears in a shallow Dish But these escapes are but the Dust of the ballance to what follows The word proper in a Question as modifying these Offices or acts of the Spirit is greatly improper Proper is sometimes in opposition to figurative sometimes in opposition to common sometimes in opposition to meet or fit in which sence he would be understood it doth not fit his purpose nor principles to tell us but this is an unworthy part of a Disputant and becoming none but those who are resolved not to be understood If he would assert the Quakers Tenet he must say it is the peculiar and immediate guide rule and judge and this is that he pleads for now and then after his fashion in his following arguments And all the Quakers I have read or discoursed plead for in plain terms but if it had been so expressed in the Question his nose would have been held too hard to the Grind-stone in attempting strictly to prove it and most would have smelt the Rankness of Quakerism But Mr. Pen do you deal fairly and honestly with your Adversaries to imply in your Question that we deny the Spirit of God to be a proper that is one that is fit and hath right to be a rule of Faith guide of Life judge of Truth You know that we own it to be such and that it dothboth in the Conscience and by the Scripture Creation and Providence perform such acts and is to such purposes and that of right Onely we deny that the Spirit alwayes performs these acts without the use of the Scripture or any external means or ordinances or that it doth so at any time contrary to its mind expressed in the Scripture this you should oppose or you do but trifle and abuse us and your unwary Readers The latter part of your question which expresses the administration of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ especially to countenance your tenet is playing at Blind-Mans buff You should have told us who or what you mean by Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Quakers Lord and Saviour the light within every man that is none of our Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Man Christ Jesus who was of the Seed of David according to the Flesh who was the Son of Mary crucified to death on the cross of wood by shedding his blood and is now in his humane or mans nature united to the God-head in one person ascended above the visible heavens he is none of your Saviour and can be no more within you personally considered than the body of one individual man can be intirely in all the men and women and children in the world and at the same time it must be a transubstantiation much more ridiculous than the Papists that must support such a fancy It is also no less strange that you should talk of the Gospel administration of our Lord and Saviour who hold nothing of a Saviour but what is eternal à parte ante nor any other Gospel but the light within and its immediate dictates which you generally affirm was within every man from the beginning of the world I shall not spend time and paper to shew the many other absurdities in your question I have left a harvest for gleaners For the proof of your affirmation such a blind one as it is you produce abundance of Scriptures which are as much to your purpose as if you had quoted onely the 36 Chap. of Genesis wherein is contained Esau's posterity and how many Dukes there were of his race Yet I shall produce your arguments for the Readers satisfaction that he may believe his own eyes and I shall be more honest than to frame a meer whimsie out of my own head to abuse you and say after this lofty manner of disputing you undertake our overthrow which is your guilt and baseness in the fourth page of your Book SECT III. Your first proof you pretend from Gen. 6. 1. And the Lord said my Spirit shall not alwaies strive with man for that he also is flesh yet his dayes shall be an hundred and twenty years I will for once transcribe your Argument verbatim that it may be notorious how loftily you dispute If God's unerring Spirit has been wont to strive with men either to convince them of or convert them from the evil of their thoughts words or deeds or else to provoke them yet more fully to do the will of God so as to press on from one degree of glory to another then men have had an unerring Spirit to be their teacher and judge and rule and guid of that truth concerning that faith and in that most holy way which leads to eternal life But the Scripture proves the first Proposition that Gods Spirit hath frequently strove with men and for the ends before mentioned and consequently they have not been without an holy unerring Spirit to teach judge regulate and guid them If I should only say your whole Argument is a meer confused thicket of impertinencies and non sequitur's I believe your conclusion would be most absolute that it wae for want of eyes and that I dare not touch a bough of it for fear of pricking my fingers A man had need of good arithmetick also to number the terms You tell us the Scripture proves your first Proposition you are a non Such for diving if you can fetch up from this Scripture what is expressed in your first Proposition especially the latter member of it It is more than probable that the Spirit did strive with them to make them better than they were yet none of those ends are expressed in the Text but that it should be that they might more fully do the Will of God and press on from one degree of Glory to another is a guess wonderfully well becoming your infallibility Why did you not say or to turn them into Suns Moons and Stars which were all out as much in the Text as the other and I dare say some of your Friends would have taken themselves bound to believe it who find no fault with greater absurdities dropt from their admired inspired Dictators but Quos Deus vult perdere hos dementat There were eight persons saved in the Ark but one Noah said to be righteous before God and all the rest overwhelmed by the Deluge for their extreme impieties yet these were pressed on from one degree of Glory to another The consequence of your first Proposition is all manner of Fruits
body i. e. that may in some things err or be mistaken be worthy of your such reflections I know none will escape them among professed Christans but Quakers and Papists I see by this you may serve for a voter at Rome but your logick is â—o leaky you will hardly attain a higher promotion there she will be loath to venture her grandeur built upon the Foundation of the Churches infallibility upon your pittiful scribling I wonder how you came to talk of Christsbody to which he is Head Or what men of your principles can mean by it with the qualification of infallible Sure you do not mean his body in the most strict sense i. e. the invisible Church that is not yet compleatly existing and I doubt not but when they meet and vote they will be infallible but that will not be yet Nor yet the Universal Church visible i. e. Professors of Christianity Members of the universal Church or any particular organical Church for your party have gored and besmeared those to excess I know not how we shall get a vote from them except in the Creed called the Apostles to which a small matter excepted all give consent But then the Quakers are none of the Church who will subscribe but to few of the Articles in that Creed How shall we find your meaning I will undertake to shoot near the mark if not hit the pin in the white You intend it of all the Quakers and every individual person among them at least such who give up to the light within and its guidence and is the Church in Spirit a Phrase used by Friends more than once in their writings but never in the Scripture But Mr. Pen if Christ be Head to none but the infallible woe to the poor Saints who have trusted hitherto they had a Head in Heaven who hath pity on the ignorant and those that are out of the way who is their Advocate with the Father and thereby a remedy against the sad consequences otherwise of their errings And I am sure Christ is then none of your Head But to conclude this form of your reasoning what I shall say to it You may as well conclude all Gods people are omnipotent because they have the Spirit of God which is omnipotent And they are omniscient because the Spirit of God who teaches them is so And they are infinite upon the same grounds The last two of these I can prove from some of the Quakers writings to be their blasphemous opinions from this ground on which you build Monstr ' horrend ' inform ' ingens cui lumen ademptum Were you so judicious and humble to submit to the certain teachings of the Spirit in and by the Scripture you may know That the Spirit though it never teacheth an errour yet those whom it teacheth directively may err either not understanding or not submitting to his teachings that where the Spirit moves and strives too Though it self be omnipotent yet it may move and strive in such a measure as the corruption of bad men and sometimes of good men do prevail against its strivings and motions Although the Spirit of God will teach and move all the elect so largely and so effectually that they shall not fail of heaven nor the necessary means thereunto yet there is not one that can be proved not to err in practice much less to have learned all things of a religious concern to them SECT VIII I might proceed to your fallacious arguing from the Spirits teaching indefinitely expressed to its teaching peculiarly and immediately which is frequent in your Pamphlet particularly page 18 29. and many more of your fallacious and confused arguings I might expose were it worth while to trace such a trifler in all his vagaries who hath the faculty only to the stupidly ignorant Fallere mille modis nec non intexere fraudes In the winding up of your intangled bottom you frame an Objection thus Object 1. Though you have said a great deal to prove that Christians should have an infallible Spirit in general You want neighbours I see you would fain be praised and rather than not have it scratched where it itches Manus manum fricat but if the judicious give their vote concerning your elaborate triflings it will be Multa loquatur nihil dicuntur Yet you prove nothing distinctly but confound a Judg Rule and Guide together Habemus confitentem reum Least you eat your words I shall put good proof of the truth of your confession upon record You say in your answer to your own Objection That to me there is no more difference then essentially there can he in the Wisdom Justice and Holiness of God They are so interwoven that the one goes not without the other thus it is in being a Judge Rule and Guide c. If some should read their neck verse at the rate you plead your innocency of your own charge the benefit of the Clergy would befriend them but a little What would you say of a man that should affirm his brains and heart and lungs being essential to the life of the body and so interwoven that the one goes not without the other are but one and the same thing the one cannot live and be in good state without the other and therefore they are but one and the same thing without difference or distinction And the man suppose John a Nokes should upon this ground when he hath a delirium or vertigo diseases seated in the brain be very busie to enquire what is good for the Pthysick or Cough of the Lungs or palpitation of the heart but being rebuked for his impertinencies should reply they cannot be one without the other They are essential to the body of man its perfection therefore what is said of the one may be said of the other and what is good against the Pthysick or Cough is good must be good for a vertigo or delirium Mutato nomine narratur fabula de te Let me advise you next time you write to frame no Objections against your self unless you shall have learned better to solve them A second Objection you frame thus But at this rate you utterly contemn and seclude the Scriptures as having no part nor portion in being a Rule Judg or Guide to Christians I would your whole book had consisted of Objections for you have spoke more truth of your own framing in two Objections than in most of your affirmations You attempt to solve this with much the like success as the other you praise the Scriptures and hug them hugely till you have reduced them to much like the shadow of the true rule And then you illustrate the sense of their authority in these very words He that is so inward with a Prince as to know viva voce what his mind is heeds not so much the same when he meets it in print because in print as because he hath received a more living touch
and sensible impression from the Prince himself to whose secrets he is privy And this the Scriptures teach us to believe is a right Christian state and priviledge For said the Apostle we haue the mind of Christ And the secrets of God are with them that fear him And guide me by thy counsel and bring me to thy glory What Friends but when they read this Princely flourish but will conclude not only that he hath done it neatly but hit the nail o' th' head full and spoken their minds on as right as if he had been inspir'd by them all and no doubt he shall be their White Boy for all his defects who strokes them so finely and advances them to such a singular dignity of privacy and inwardness with God that not onely his revealed will in print is known by them in a more honourable and immediate way but also his secrecs which never stooped so low as to be wrapt in letters Here we have as in a glass W. P's opinion of the immediate teachings of the Spirit to be not only above his teachings by the scripture as to have a thing whispered in the ear from the princes own mouth doth excell any narrative by a declaration but also so much above them that he who injoyes this favour which must still be no other but a Quaker heeds not so much the same in print How much just not at all For if this viva vox more liveing touch and sensible impression do not put authority into them they are but meer Ciphers And if this living touch c. as he be lieves be without or contrary to the Scripture 't is all as good and authentick It is upon my Spirit is of much more divine obligation than it is written But Mr. Pen That The Scriptures teach us to believe this is a right Christians state and priviledge is a beetle-headed and hard hearted saying The Scripture knows nothing of it nor could I ever yet have a proof that any of you all ever heard the voice of God as viva voce is to be understood and I am very well satisfied the Quakers may be mistaken if they should presume they did ever since some of them took Paul Hobsons mumbling through a trunck and a hole in the wall to be the voice of the Lord. But that this should be the state of a right Christian wo worth the dayes past for so many ages wherein among all professed Christians but now and then One were in this state and that but a little while ere Their folly appeared to all men Onely now and then the Papists had a job to do for which a viva vox was a fit pretence But you have little Charity in unchristianing all he world whose very state is not according to these Characters A man in the dark especially if his fancy be strong is full of visions which have no other being than his imagination affords them this appears to be your state and the part you are acting I shall in short consider your warrants which you annex to your rare harangue For said the Apostles we have the mind of Christ Sure he had a good part of it by tradition from the other Apostles who were Christs witnesses of what he said and did and we have it in the Scripture And the Secrets of God are with them that fear him But where did the Apostle say this 't is no matter if it was not the Apostle Paul it was the Apostle David and that as good Nay it is all one if it had been the apostle G. Fox or the apostle W. Pen whose words and writings are of propherical and apostolical authority and may be numbred among the Scriptures as well as Pauls or Davids or any other Witness your audacious lines put in a different letter to be so understood You say but the Scriptures are herein fulfilled the holy way the vulturous eye did never see and that same ravenous Spirit after knowledge our adversary must come to know judged c. It is further to be considered that the words you quote out of the Scripture you pervert and the sense also For secret you put secrets For Lord you put God For the latter you 'l say it is one and the same sense for the Lord is God and God is the Lord but here you are too bold for all that God hath more Names in Scripture than one and if the varying had nothing of significancy whâ— wisdom of God would not have so expressed himself But to put secrets for secret marrs the sense But you 'l say not the truth Yes verily the truth in this place for this text doth not say so and to say it saith and the Apostle saith what they say not is an untruth and if I greatly mistake not the words that that follow and he will shew them his Covenant are interpretative of the word secret For indeed though the matter and surface of the Covenant be obvious to every common intelligence yet the necessity worth a considerable part of the sense but especially the faith interest and well grounded comfort of it are the secrets which this one great secret the Covenant contains and this Scripture speaks of imparting to those who fear the Lord yet it excludes not external means And guide me by thy counsel What is this to oppose or exclude Gods guidence by his written or printed word Have I not written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge Sure these were then afit guide as Gods means But verily there appears such a Spirit of slumber idleness and worse in your labours as if you gloried in a careless or designed perverting the Scriptures both for sense words and form and to vindicate the sense of G. Fox by the authority of your like crimes or greater The text saith thou shalt guide me c. Which expresses his faith in Gods promises but you turn it in to a prayer guide me c. I had almost forgotten a main consideration in your flourish about immediate teachings viz. he meets it in print because in print you here insinuate the formal cause of our respects to the written word or printed to be its being in print and that there lyes the difference between you and us Not so good Mr. Pen the beam in our eye is not so big neither are we inclined to that piece of superstition for then no sooner you could get your conceits in print but immediately we must hugg them and get the second impression in our hearts without more a do for they are in print But if you would know the Truth and speak it of us the next time you have occasion it is this We value not the sense for the prints sake but the print for the sense sake and the blessings that attends that way of conveying the holy and revealed Will of God And so much to correct your vapour which may do you good if you
which hath a respect to the things done within their knowledge as men the Writers of that or those parts of the Scripture were either under the Testimonies of Miracles or were by some express Testimony of God rendred holy men and being so qualified they would not write more than they knew and could not easily be mistaken in matter of fact and being Scripture is said by Paul to be of Divine inspiration Fourthly All those Books of the Old Testament out of which somewhat is not quoted in the New as Scripture were received as Scripture by the Jews and then Church of God and that in the time of many Prophets to whom Divine Testimony hath been given and it cannot with any shew of Reason be supposed that those Writings should be faâ—â—â—y fathered on God or taken for authentique Scripture and the Prophets not discover and reprove it whereas far less haâ—nous evils than that would have been were often the subject-matter of their sharp reprehensions Let any Quaker of other give me or themselves the like satisfaction of their being immediately inspired and they shall have my leave to hold such an Opinion of it But for those inspirations which they say many had before the Scriptures were written the mention of their time will give full satisfaction it will be a poor Argument to prove men are now inspired as they considering they had not the revealed written Word at all and we have it so full that all things necessary for any to know are therein included and thereby expressed The second thing I must reply to is what the Quakers frequently Object viz. That we make the Scripture the judge of the Spirit whereas the Spirit gave forth the Scriptures I answer this is for want of judgment in the Objectors Far be it from us to bring the to-be-adored Spirit of God to any mans bar for judgment to be passed on it or any thing that is his immediate Work or Word all we profess in this matter to make the Scripture a judge or determiner of is whether this or that be the mind of the Spirit or no but if once it appear to be the Voice and Mind of the Spirit we profess it our duty to reverence and submit to it And we being certain that the Holy Scriptures were given forth from God and that God is not opposite to himself we conclude that what is contrary to the Scripture cannot be the Word of the Spirit because then the Spirit should bear witness against it self and the word of the Spirit would be contrary to the word of the Spirit And moreover if any shall pretend to abolish by the Authority or inspiration of the Spirit those Ordinances and Institutions which were setled by Christ or Christ in his Apostles it would be unreasonable to credit them without the same Testimonials such Miracles as they wrought by which they were erected But the Quakers are far enough from shewing such a zeal for their pretended Ministry and Order And further we are obliged not to receive another Gospel and that by the Holy Spirit though an Angel from Heaven should preach it and we are warned not to believe any other as Truth Divine against it though many Wonders should be wrought for confirmation The third thing I must reply to is that our knowledge of the mind of God by the Scripture is uncertain I answer If you mean a knowledge of all Gods mind you are not to expect it it you mean all that is there contained it is not necessary and you may go to Heaven and do your duty without such a vast knowledge and if you endeavour it in your places and as God hath given you the means it will not be your sin much less your condemnation that you do not know it all Sure there are many Babes in Christ's Family yet they are Children and all are first Babes and that would be a Monster never yet seen in the Church of Christ a new-born Babe knowing the mind of God contained in the Scripture as fully as the most serious Christians of the longest standing Jesus Christ himself grew in wisdom and in stature and I intreat you be content to leave a little of the mind of God to be found out in the Scripture by the generations to come If you mean our knowledge of the mind of the Spirit is uncertain so far as it is necessary for our living in an acceptable manner to God soberly righteously and godly in this present world and to attain Heaven at last it is a great mistake for if pride lust and idleness stand not in our way there is no person that hath a few grains of Reason but may understand so much of the mind of God by the Scripture as is necessary for him to know to his eternal salvation But if you talk of the Scriptures being a dead Letter and not moving and teaching with a voice or impulse without our reading praying and applying it in the Lords strength you talk at a strange random as if God had given us our eyes and brains only to look after the world and the things thereof but in the knowledge of God we must be meerly passive A KEY TO THE Quakers Usurped and to most UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASES THere is not any thing in the Quakers Method of deluding which doth more tend to the insnaring of unwary Souls than their asserting their false Antichristian and Anti-Scriptural Tenets under Scripture-Words and Phrases and in those very Terms wherein are expressed the Truths of God while in the mean time they mean nothing less than their true import and what People who are not well acquainted with their Tenets suppose them to mean By this Artifice they beget a good Opinion of themselves and Errours with too many and by degrees so vitiate their Principles that in a short time they are prepared to embrance the grossest errors bare-faced I shall therefore as a work of no small use to such who are attempted by them or who have a Call or opportunity to deal with them for their convincing or confuting or the securing others who are in danger by them give you a true and candid account of their sense and meaning of a multitude of Scripture and Religious Phrases which they utter and apply to their falshoods and also of their new-coin'd Words and Phrases which are more peculiar to their Sect and Notions I dispose them Alphabetically for their more easie finding on any occasion A. Above NOt in locality but excelcie so Christ and Heaven they say are above i. e. excellent and may therefore be nothing but what is within them The Anointing The Light within Christ the Spirit essentially Assembling Meeting in Spirit Assurance What they feel in themselves not what they believe from the Scripture the inward witness viz. experience teachings of the light within B. Babylon All the Ordinances Worship Faith Obedience that have any thing of a form or visible in
sin in them or do at any time in any sort commit sin Slaying the Witness Disobeying the light within but especially a resolved rejecting it as our only Rule Teacher and Saviour Sons of God Only the Quakers Soul A part or measure of God Speaking in the Spirit By immediate Inspiration Spirit of Anti Christ That which leads to Forms though Christ's and Gospel-Forms All that opposes the light within to be Christ False Spirits They that ground their Doctrine on the Scripture or any mediate thing Spirit of Bondage Being under the power of any sin Spirit of God The light within every man God the Father Son Holy Ghost without distinction Spirit of the World Whatever is not conformable to the light within as Christ The Spiritual man Christ or Christ in every Quaker The Lord hath Spoken What comes to them by immediate inspiration The Lord hath not Spoken Whatever is not by immediate inspiration though it be written in the Scripture A true Christians State Being taught by God immediately not by the Letter The Statutes of God The Law in the heart or within They Steal my Word every one from his neighbour Teaching Doctrines as the Word of the Lord taken out of the Scripture Stoln words All that we have out of the Scriptures and not by immediate inspiration to our selves In the stilness An unactive attending to the light within Standing in the Counsels of God Conformity to the Teachings of the light within and abiding therein Studying for divine Knowledge what comes thereby from the Scripture Carnal toil birth and wisdom of the flesh  Scraping in the Scriptures The woman in Subjection Weakness must subject it self to the man Christ The Supper of the Lord. Spiritual joy or joy in the Spirit from the presence and influence of the light within all eating and drinking to God and in remembrance of Christ Sword of the Spirit Christ the light within  What is declared by immediate inspiration of the Spirit Synagogues of Satan The Assemblies of any sort of people for Divine Worship who are not Quakers T. Christ Tabernacling in the outward vessel Christs dwelling for a little time in the body born of the Virgin Mary The like of every Quaker Taking away the Tables All Forms and Books as useless in the things of God Taught of God Taught immediately from the light within Teachings of Men. All that is not immediately inspired though the sense and words of the Scripture Cease from man From the Teaching by man Outward Court of the Temple given to the Gentiles All Forms of Worship all visible Worship being the Worship of Heathens not of Christians Testifie to the light in the Conscience Appealing or speaking to Christ the light within Bearing Testimony to the light Declaring for and from the light within The Testimony and the Testaments Christ the light and Law within Thanksgiving Give Thanks in Spirit or inwardly Thieves and Robbers All that are Teachers by a mediate Call  All Ministers but the Quakers  All that walk by Scripture-light Traditions of men The Scripture or written-Word Trading with the Scripture Having maintenance for a Ministry Ministring from the Scripture or written-Word The Birth In Travel The time of wrestling betwixt convictions of the light within and perfection Trembling and Quaking The horrour and consternation that they are under from as they say the wrath of God while the flesh is judged and they are in the hell of condemnation which is all the hell they hold that I can find and this trembling and quaking they say is such as Moses and other Prophets were seized with at the appearance of God The Truth No other but Christ the light within Speaking Truth Truly When it is spoken from immediate inspiration and motion of the Spirit but however true without these it is falsly spoken Witnessing to the Truth Declaring or suffering for the light within and its dictates V. The flesh of the Vail The Body wherein Christ dwelt and tabernacled which for a while he took of the Virgin Mary but at the death of that left it no body knows where The Vail is over them The belief of the man Christ Jesus which was of our nature to be the Christ and now existing in Heaven in that body of flesh of our nature which he took of the Virgin Mary The Vessel The Body wherein for a while Christ dwelt also our bodies Victory over the Devil Sin Flesh World Perfection in this life resulting from the travail of the light within In the Vnbelief Not acknowledging the light within to be the onely Teacher and Saviour whatever the faith and life otherwise may be The Vncircumcised and Vnclean All that are not Quakers Vngodly The same Vnlearned and without Vnderstanding To be without the light within its teachings and immediate revelations The Voice of the Lord. The secret immediate lively touches and teachings within W. Hirelings serving for Wages Ministers who receive maintenance little less then Robbery at least very Jewish and Antichristian Wait on the light Desisting from a search after Truth by any external means and passively attending to the motions and teachings within Watch to the light To be so listning and attentive to the inward teachings as not either to let slip any of its motions or reject them Blinde-Watchmen Those Ministers who see and warn by Scripture-light and not their light within Watch to the Morning To be diligent to observe and improve the first breakin gs forth of the power of the light within The Way CHRIST The way of Truth Those into which they are led by the pure light within The Whore of Babylon All forms of Worship visible Worship all that is believed or practiced from the written Word Will of God The commands from within from the light Will of Man Will of the Flesh All that we Chuse by the direction of the understanding or in which the humane faculties have any thing to do Will-worship What ever Worship is not from the motions of the light within Children of Wisdom The Quakers born to the light within We Witness We experience we speak it from the testimony and feeling of the light and motions within And Pen saith This is right witnessing to witness what they experience But they that testifie what they believe from the Scriptures and right rational demonstrations go by hear-say and reports but cannot witness it The Word The Word of God No other but Christ the Eternal God The Word of the Lord. The secrets of the Work of God The inward power and motions neither wrought nor perceived by or with the use of the humane understanding and will Righteousness of works Whatever man hath any hand in or doth Chuse The World All that are not Quakers Worship in Spirit Not the Worship where the heart and will goes along with the outward appearance but what is from the motions of the light within Wrath of God Day of Wrath. The inward judgings and terrours by