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
contempt of a Christ without which John preached and that faith and hope of the Saints which according to the Scripture are the substance of things not seen and the evidence of things hoped for reproached as a slumbring fancy and a nocturnal dream But if you would infallibly be convinced of the gross darkness wherewith this sort of men are benighted or their palpable knavery and impudence in abusing the Holy Scripture weigh the following instance out of the preceding Author Then God sent him John to bear witness to the light which in him was made manifest that all in the light might believe and he called unto others to behold him and said he was the Lamb of God and was to take away the sins of the world and least you should mistake him and guess that a man that could but write his name should not have so little wit or modesty as to expound that text of Scripture after this sort he quotes chapter and verse John 1. 9. and the next word is mark in a parenthesis lest his folly should not appear to all men who should have the hap to read him and moreover at the close of the period after he had made a further blind comment on the text he glories in his shame with a Weigh this truth all ye Priests and Professors and pouder it in your hearts no words big enough to express its madness SECT II. Christianity made its way not only by the truth and purity of its doctrine but also by such and so many signes and wonders wrought before multitudes as were convincing to its most malicious and prejudiced adversaries and that not only by Christ himself but also by his disciples and servants both before and after his death And all bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth Luke 22. 4. but men may speak many good words and yet both say and do at other times bad enough but Christ appeals to the faces of his worst Adversaries If I have spoken evil bear witness of the evil John 18. 23 But if forcible right words would not make way Christ exhorts them to believe for the very works sake and these were not ordinary works or wonders and miracles neither If I had not done among them the works which none other man did they had not had sin And as himself so his servants introduced Christianity with the same holy pomp and state of the Mighty and miraculous works of the Power of God bearing witness to the truth of their doctrine Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord which gave Testimony unto the word of his grace and granted signes and wonders to be done by their hands Acts 1. 3. But Quakerism made its way by and began in blasphemies against the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom the Apostles preached by gratifying the pride idleness and giddiness of both Professors and prophane as will appear abundantly in the following discourse and by decrying the Scripture of the Old and New Testament as a dead Letter and altogether useless if not mischievous Your imagined God beyond the Stars a day of calamity will come upon them who have worshipped and do worship an unknown God at a distance and pretend the worship of the true God And if we will not believe the Quakers for their words sake which swell big enough with vanity folly non-sense and errour we are like to continue in the truth still for all them There have been some of them who have been sensible of this defect and have attempted to supply it to the cracking of their credit some to the loss of their lives George Fox hath found a plaister for this sore which I shall produce that you may give your judgement whether it smell more of the Fox or of the Goose Which many prayed by the Spirit and spake by the Spirit did not shew miracles at the Tempters Command though among Believers there be miracles â—n the Spirit which be signes and wonders to the world as Isaiah saith When I reade this I had much ado to keep my self from laughing but the weightiness of my thoughts on this imposture soon helped me to reduce it to a compassionate smile Indeed I think him crafty like the Fox not to venture his carcass in attempting any miracles but in spirit and yet more a Goose to call them signes and wonders to the world which the world never saw nor could have wondred at if George Fox and such as he had not blabbed of them But I must not let pass his fathering his absurdity on the Prophet Isaiah the words he intends must be in Isa 8. 18. Behold I and the Children whom the Lord hath given me are for signes and for wonders in Israel I find not the word Signes any where in that Prophecy he hath a strange spirit of discerning that can find in that Scripture any thing of Miracles wrought in the spirit for indeed they themselves were the wonders that is they were wondred at so may the Quakers well be but in a far worse sense or for a worse cause I may the lesse wonder at George's blodness with Isaiah seeing a great Rabbie of the Quakers hath said that he is as good a Prophet as Isaiah Who would conceive that so blockish a person as this should be the Fore-man and Chief in account among such a number of such singularly discerning spirits as the Quakers but as among wise men the wisest are most highly esteemed so among others the veriest SECT III. Christianity entred into the world with ravishing Songs and Hallelujahs of the Angels and heavenly Host the Songs and Thanksgivings of Mary Elizabeth Zechariah Simeon and others with the healing of all sorts of diseases casting out devils out of the possessed preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel of Peace and what might express the Sun of righteousness to be risen on the World with healing in his wings I need not finde you out the places of Scripture which speak these things But Quakerism entred the world as if Hell were broke loose and possessions by Satan were to make way and fit souls for the Quakers spirit Instead of that serious compunction that seized gross and black sinners upon their conviction and the consolation that was let into their souls by the joyful sound of remission and salvation through a crucified Jesus O the Hell-dark expressions of the Quakers Preachers the frightful and amazing words both for matter and manner wherewith they first attempted poor silly men and women whom they frighted almost out of their wits with their dismal noise whose eccho remained in their ears when their words were forgotten What bitter Curses and Execrations did they poure forth against all that made any opposition though most mildly and rationally against their unheard of innovation what disturbing of Congregations and reviling the most serious and faithful Pastors while those whose faults they have
or the honey-comb nor yet Ink and Paper-Divinity or meerly the words and works of men These are too low an opinion of them But positively First we intend the sense and matter by them expressed containing those Histories Prophesies Promises Threatnings Doctrines Exhortations c. which God at sundry times and in divers manners revealed to and spake by his Son and servants inspired by God or by inspiration of God Secondly the sense and matter aforesaid being written or printed we call the Word of God so far as the print or writing agrees in its kind with the Original Copies which were written by or by the Direction of God himself his son or servants inspired by him so we call it the Word of God but with this distinction the written Word SECT II. Now that the Scriptures are the VVord of God in the senses aforesaid I shall vindicate from the violent contradictions of the Quakers They have these three Objections against this truth 1. That it is improper so to call them viz. The VVord of God 2. That many things or sayings contained in them were spoken by wicked men or the devil 3 That this Title is peculiar to Jesus Christ the Son of God First they deny them to be the Word of God in the singular number I must therefore in dealing with this great Criticism reconcile the plural number to the singular I answer it sounds methinks very harshly that not one word in the Scripture should be the VVord of God because there are in them more words then one Surely if the first 2 3 4 and so on be the VVord of God then every word in it is the VVord of God and never the less but rather the more for being united for that there are few single words which standing alone will signifie any thing whereas divers put together have a sense and signification And the whole body of the Scripture considered together doth signifie the mind of God more compleatly then if it were dismembred and considered apart But I know they aim at more then a meer Grammar-nicety at which kind of failings they use not much to quarrel but are rather affected with them as if the Spirit of God delighted in real nonsense though I think the causes to be three especially First that their first Authors could speak or write no better and they take it to be apefection to write false English and nonsense after such infallible persons Secondly because they have so few of those they call their Ministry able to write true sense and English that those who can if they list will not lest they should disgrace their brethren and rather then that it should be admitted it shall become the fashion and obtain in time to be better English then sense A third reason may be their taking all matter and form to be infallibly from the Spirit and therefore dare not amend the sense of the Spirit But to what is the Question I return after this so long yet not altogether inexcusable digression one of their zealous Ministers as they call them thus exclaims And what an improper speech were this to call twenty thousand Sentences one word and it is called a Declaration and what a Declaration would that be which consisted but of one word but where do we say the Scriptures is but one word there is a great deal of difference between but one word and the Word and if the Scriptures be a Declaration in the singular number it must take many Declarations into one for it contains what was declared from Moses time to the Apostles and why not the word in the singular as well as a Declaration in the singular seeing the Scripture contains many Declarations but he gives one kick backward more at what he pleads for Pray have the patience to reade this man passing the sentence against himself A Rod for the fools back Prov. 26. 3. And what a foolish man is this to assert his own imaginations and then imagines the Scriptures will prove it what an improper speech is this c I know not the person he brands with folly but I am sure the cause as laid down by Howgil himself deserves it not and I must give him a little correction more for his absurdity in this one sentence he saith and it is called a Declaration here is the singular number for the plural which he is pleading against yea in the same instance it what it the Scriptures it the Relative the Scriptures the antecedent If I should stop at and examine all such passages in point of sense or true Grammar I must not finish my intended task this seven years but 't is pity not to lash a little when such idiots will be playing the Criticks He saith VVhat an improper speech c I am confident he understands not what improper means if he intend by improper that it is figurative he need not wonder and say what a figurative speech is this Alas the Scriptures and all Writings abound with figurative speeches of which number this is but if he mean by improper incongruous or unmeet he offends greatly for then the Scriptures are very guilty herein as will appear by and by and I know not what else he should mean by proper unless not peculiar or a tall speech as we call a tall man or woman a proper and by improper a short speech Let a Prophet of their own and he none of the small Prophets neither decide this Controversie Nay who never yet came so far as Balaam who had the Word of the Lord from his own Mouth But to cast this Objection out of doors we are to take it in a collective sense which is very frequent in the Scripture For instance the Scriptures themselves are sometimes expressed by a plural sometimes by a singular word Ye do erre not knowing the Scriptures Mat. 22. 23. Here it is plural It is contained in the Scripture 1 Pet. 2. 6. Here it is singular A sentence is called a word VVhere the word of a King is there is Power Eccles 8. 3. They were astonished at his doctrine for his word was with Power Either of these instances contain more then one single word The ten Commandments graven on the Table of Stone are in the Hebr ten words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which you have so rendred in the margin of some of your Bibles Deut. 10. 40. Now divide these Commandments into ten single ones and then each will have but one word come to its share to express it by and some one viz. the fourth hath at least 60 single words in the Hebr. but many more in the English Rom. 2. 9 10. To the Jew not Jewes and also to the Gentile not Gentiles can you suppose that one and but one single Jew or Gentile is hereby intended reade the sixth verse and you shall have it explained VVho will render to every man according to his deeds so that under
things or worse with the conceits of any who shall be so presumptuous as to pretend to Inspirations and Revelations and of this sort there are a crowd among the Men and Women also of the Quakers If they declare if they write yea whatever religious Action they move in they pretend all to be from the immediate Guidance and Impulse of the Spirit of God and that in as ample a manner as ever the Apostles and Prophets could pretend unto so that this principle being as universally entertained as the name of Christ it might be said without an Hyperbole that the whole World could not contain the Pamphlets that would be written and called The VVord or VVords of the Lord and of what value the Holy Scriptures would be in such a crowd of its pretended betters it is not hard to conclude Hear what James Naylor saith The things following which I have declared of are not the things of man nor by man did I receive them but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ The VVord of the Lord to his beloved City c. This is the title He concludes Through your Brother and Companion in the Tribulation and Kingdom of Patience in the Lord Jesus imitating the words of John in Rev. 1. 9. This I say in the Presence of the living God and by the Spirit of the living God Parnel Shield of the Truth p. 41. Give a most undeniable Exposition of a Scripture against their way the Answer is thy carnal minde discerns not the things of God Thou puttest thy meanings to the Scriptures the Scriptures must be judged of by the light or the Spirit from whence they came but thou art in neither If we bring a plain text in so many words against their Tenets and Practices the Answer then is Thou art in the Letter And therefore Pennington prays seriously My upright desire to the Lord for you is That he would strip you of your knowledge of the Scriptures according to the flesh By Flesh their sense is the use of our understandings though sanctified as will appear in the KEY at the end of this Book to which I must referre you for construing all such ambiguous and hard words Sixthly Doting on the Scriptures with your dark minds SECT II. That the Quakers do thus equal their Writings and Sayings c. with the Scripture shall appear by four undeniable things First they pretend to Infallibility This they assert to be necessary in all their Ministers who ordinarily declare or write and that without it it were impossible to be fitted for that work Hear what the chiefest of their Apostles saith How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible and how can they but delude people who are not infallible and George Whitehead in a Letter to me writes thus Quest Whether Infallibility be attainable by any in these days which we affirm is to true believers which if thou deniest we question thy Call to the Ministry They pretend to speak and write by the immediate Inspiration of God and this is another part whereby they aspire to equality The Apostle Paul gives this Character of the Scripture 2 Tim. 3 16. All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God c. And the Apostle Peter 2 Pet. 1â—21 For the Prophecy came not in old time by the VVill of Man but holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost Let us now compare Notes and see how far in these respects the Quakers will give the Scriptures the upper hand of their sayings or Writings And how should he do otherwise seeing he hath denied the infallible spirit from which all the Ministers ministred and all the Prophets prophecied and spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost He was here pleading for their Mens and Womens prophesying and concludes that to deny the Infaliible spirit to be and speak in the Quakers was to deny the infallible spirit by which all the Prophets prophecicd c. Therefore may I say much more it is not in the Power of that little Book either to throw down self-will in any in whom it is not yet subdâ—ed or to exalt the truth in general because its only Queries gathered by the Author from the Letter â—f the Scriptures without and no Message of heavenly Prophecie Doctrine or Exhortation received by the Author from the Lord through the divine Inspiration of his light and spirit within therefore I say it is a very vain and idolatrous Exhortation The Writings of the Quakers are full to this purpose but my business in these instances being to prove matter of Fact only this may suffice Thirdly they pretend the Spirit of God to be in them in an essential consideration and in all his divine Prophecies and that it is Gods indwelling in them thus considered from which their sayings and writings proceed In this they arrogate to themselves and their expressions more then any of the Prophets and Apostles durst once imagine all they believe and declare they say is from the light within yea it is the light within that reveals it and not they and therefore they will not call them their sayings ordinarily but such as pass through them as if God spake through them as one may speak through a Trunk which is only a passage for the voice but no proper Organ of speech Through your Brother and Companion e. W. D. Conclusion The Voice of the Son of God was uttered forth through him by which the dead was raised And indeed this light within they pretend to be both Father Son and Spirit for they make no distinction but this being matter of fact I shall prove it out of their writings but you must not suppose that I shall find any such words as essential or properties in their Authors for such words are too proper for them and expressive of the truth to such who understand them but I shall finde the things as very God cloathed with those Attributes which are peculiar to him and whoever reads what immediately follows and considers the Evidences to be but the Quakers own Confessions and shall not be touched with horror and indignation against their principles let that man or woman know that a Conscience seared with a hot iron is too soft for their insensibleness Every man hath that which is one in union and like the Spirit of Christ even as good as the Spirit of Christ according to its measure Child I am sensible that there is something in my Conscience that lets me see my secret Thoughts and the Intents of my heart c. Father That is the true light of Christ within that lets thee see the thoughts and the intents of the heart and God hath freely given it unto thee and requires thy obedience to it Ch. But if I should turn unto it and obey it when it reproves me for sin is there Power in it
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
these citations and deal with them in all their parts if I should I should often actum agere and give you one thing more than twice but what they produce as confirming their Tenet I shall answer to the falshood of this Doctrine I shall prove by Scripture and rational evidence and answering what they pretend for the grounds of it SECT II. The Laws that were given by Moses and the doctrines and promises also were binding to the Congregation of Israel Exod. 34. 32. And afterward all the Children of Israel came nigh and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai Who will say these commands were not binding to them Exod. 35. 1. These are the words which the Lord hath commanded that ye should do them Will any one in his wits say that in receiving the command from God by Moses they had it by immediate inspiration from God to say so is a contradiction in its self Moses indeed had it immediately from God but the Israelites of that Generation mediately from Moses John 1. 17. For the Law was given by Moses And the Scriptures were given first immediately from God and that is their authority with us though they are handed to us through many Generations as the Books of the Law and the Prophets were to the Jews And moreover it were a very superfluous thing for God to send his commands to them by Moses if they had them all at as nigh and as good a hand as he The like may be said of the New Testament Commands and Doctrines c. 2 Thes 2. 15. Therefore Brethren stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or Epistle Did you ever hear of an Epistle come immediately from God and all the Doctrines of the Gospel were conveyed to others except the Penmen or Prophets Evangelists and Apostles by Epistles or what is of the same import in this matter But let us say a little about the obligation of examples of the Saints That I may not run you out of one errour into another I am willing to take some pains in this as in the other parts of this Tract To imitate all the Examples of the best of Saints would lead us into sin and therefore cannot be our duty This I will not plead for for then we ought to murmur murther dissemble and be proud which at some time or other some or other of the eminentest Saints recorded in Scripture have been guilty of To imitate and take example by them from the meer authority of their Example is not a little faulty though the thing be good in its self But to take them for our examples and follow their steps wherein they act according to the written Word or are commended and rewarded by God for so doing yea not any where reproved for so doing their examples in the like cases and circumstances it is not only reason to follow but a sin not to follow yet we are to follow their examples as they are some discovery of the will of God to us which we knew not so well and clearly without them or as they are a farther incouragement to our faith and obedience Neither are we notwithstanding to follow their examples which were according to the mind of God when they lived but since those Laws are abrogated and repealed by a demonstrative act and law of God As in the case of the Mosaical Rites and Ceremonies with all those things which were Typical shadows the substance and intendment of which is performed and compleated These things promised I shall prove that their examples are binding to us yea are a superadded engagement to duty and render a sin against a command so backed with examples to be more sinful and more deeply aggravated It is lawful and a duty to imitate and follow the examples of eminent Saints Beloved follow not that which is evil but that which is good This is spoken of evil and good actions and examples as appears by the the 10th verse Leaving us an example that we should follow his steps Whose faith follow considering the end of their conversation For your selves know how ye ought to follow us But to make our selves an ensample unto you to follow us For after this manner in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves Brethren be ye followers together of me and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample These Scriptures are so plain to the purpose that they need not a comment And his sons walked not in his ways it was an aggravation that they did not only sin against the Laws of God but the example also of their Father Yea in doubtful and difficult cases wherein we cannot reach the knowledge of our duty and the way God would have us walk in by the evidence of his Laws it is our duty to follow the examples of the greater number of the Saints especially when the most serious and understanding are of the company If thou know not O thou fairest among women go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock and feed thy Kids beside the Shepherdâ— Tents It were well if young beginners in Christianity would practise this advice until by diligence and the blessing of the Lord thereon they came to an understanding more ripe and capable of discerning the mind of God in its more proper evidence such a practice would evidence humility and aknowledge of themselves and save them many a sin and trouble and the Churches peace in a great measure and secure them from the snares and delusions of Satan and his Agents who have the greatest advantage on those whose hearts are in their aims honest in the main and whose understandings are weak and indigested yet daring and presumptuous SECT III. I conclude this Chapter with some consequences of the denying the doctrines commands holy examples in the Scripture contained to be binding to us unless they come to us by immediate inspiration or motion of the Spirit Frist then all ministry by men is superfluous and vain and that not only our ministry but that also which you call yours who affirm this dangerous untruth Can you say your Ministers are the Spirit if the Spirit teach by or through them it teaches mediately but I say not this as if I took it to be of bad consequence that your Ministry should cease but to shew you how greatly contradictory you are to your own principle You say the light and the anointing within you is a sufficient and only Teacher and no other can oblige or move you and yet none make a greater noise in that you call teaching or declaring or are so troublesom and importunate therein as your selves 2. The consequence will be that however the Scriptures are a Monitor from which we may store our selves with Gods counsel and
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
light within in this spiritual war you cannot prosper nor prevail against him I have lighted on a proof of the latter part of my Charge before I was aware viz. for then it is dangerous to read the Scriptures lest you should be tempted to try some of those inviting Arms which that Magazine is stored with and so spoil all your prosperity and prevalence in your spiritual Warfare SECT II. However this shall not prevent the producing my intended proofs of the danger as the Quakers say that attend reading the Scriptures But seeing as the Quakers say we must try the Spirits by the Spirit let us try William Smith's spirit by Isaac Pennington's who speaking of knowledge gained by the Letter of the Scriptures speaks thus Making him wise and able there in his head to oppose truth and so bringing him into a state of condemnation wrath and misery beyond the Heathen and making him harder to be wrought upon by the light and power of truth than the very Heathen By opposing truth we must needs understand it of the Quakers truth and if reading the Scriptures and getting knowledge from or by them puts us into a bad condition both as rendring conversion difficult and our misery and condemnation great beyond the Heathen I scarce know what is more dangerous than reading the Scriptures But the comfort is it doth but render us harder to be wrought on to entertain the pernicious Guide and Saviour the Quakers light within and therefore is exceeding safe and necessary It follows in the same Author My upright desire to the Lord for you is that he would strip you of all your knowledge or wisdom of the Scriptures after the flesh Their meaning of after the flesh is that which comes not by immediate inspiration For those only are the Children of God who are led by the Spirit of God to whom they who were led by the Letter were ever enemies So Naylor doth as certainly say 't is dangerous to read the Scriptures to be led by them as it is truly dangerous and evil to be Enemies to the Children of God SECT III. That this abominable Tenet is the Quakers I know it sufficiently and that they look upon our adhering to Scripture light as the greatest adversary in the world to their adored light within But I love not the Quakers way of demonstration viz. we witness this and that but if you would know how they witness it it is only their own experience which is a dumb kind of witness while they can make no proof or testimony of it to another nor will ordinarily attempt it and so their witness is to themselves alone But my witnessing of what I here charge them with shall have more light in it that all that read it may be convinced of its truth Therefore take one instance more out of their famous Author W. P. or William Pen. But I will assure them they shall yet grope in the dark till they come into the daily obedience of the light and there rest contented to know only as they experience and not from a ravening comprehending brain that would in its unregenerated state grasp at the clear mysteries of the Kingdom into which fleshly comprehensions and notions can never enter but all must be as unlearned from their first birth education and traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned that is again become a little Child before the secrets of Gods Work come to be made known That W. P. of all others should talk at this rate is most ridiculous What! know only as they experience know what God is no farther than they experience Can we experience his Omnipotency his infiniteness which is not within the experience of all finite beings put together What! know the death by Spear and Nails of Iron or Steel and Cross of Wood of the man Christ Jesus which he suffered above 1600 years since only by experience What! know the life to come the judging of all men that are ever were or shall be by the Lord Jesus only by experience where is faith all the while what credit hath God with W. P that he will know him nor any thing he saith no further than he sees feels in his experience If none but Believers be Saints such as W. P. are professedly none if he know not that objects of faith and experience are contradistinct things he is very unfit to assure who they are that grope in the dark and is very unlikely to mend his confused scribling I shall not comment on his ravening comprehending brain a most affected phrase amongst the Quakers nor his clear mysteries as clear a contradiction as it is nor fleshly comprehensions as much untruth and nonsense as according to their meaning of it it comprehends for I have not room to spread all his rubbish What is to my present purpose is in the last part of his saying all must be as unlearned from their traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned c. Sure the Scripture knowledge being read knowledge or knowledge that comes by reading as one means is a most hateful thing to God that he will impart none of his secrets to those that will understand any thing by his written Word How came God to fall out at such an irreconcileable rate with his own off-spring his expressions of his mind contained in the holy Scriptures how can you have the face to call them holy Scriptures and yet make knowledge attained by reading them so nauseous to God that they shall be none of his Children that learn any knowledge by that Book or forgo it not all Did God write and cause it to be written and yet never intend we should read it or that reading it we should not believe a word on 't nor understand nor be the wiser for it Shall they be judged by the Law who lived under it and yet the knowledge of God thereby be a sin and hindrance to their salvation To what a height of wickedness and folly do they quickly grow who are poisoned with that abomination of holding the light in every mans conscience to be God Father Son Spirit Christ Scripture all But Mr. Pen what means your Latine and Greek your foreign Authors your attempted though mishapen Logick your quotations of so many Scriptures though some of them in a pitiful manner all to a bad end Did you learn all those things by immediate inspiration Had you them not by reading and tradition Could you tell that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies light rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies thick darkness but by tradition and reading But I smell your design you would have us throw away all the knowledge we have by reading or tradition 'till we come to be regenerate that is Quakers and then you are out of its danger But in the mean time you would have us without the Armour of light for whatsoever makes manifest is light that we may not be
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
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
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
in the sight of God SECT IV. Having proved the Quakers disowning that justifying righteousness which the Gospel holds forth and in some measure vindicated and explained it I shall now address my self to a discovery of that righteousness which the Quakers adventure their justification before God upon They will tell you They are justified by no other righteousness but the righteousness of Christ with abundance of confidence though as we shall prove they know not what they say nor whereof they affirm their righteousness being as far from what is pretended as darkness from light and a poor puffed deluded creatures errors and miscarriages from the obedience of him who is God-man who is the brightness of his Fathers glory and the express image of his person Let us first see what they profess of justification by Christs righteousness Quest Do not you depend on the things you do for life and salvation Answ Nay We do not so c. Quest What is the righteousness that justifieth in the sight of God Answ The righteousness of Christ alone c. One would think the Quakers in this point very sound by this part of their profession but their Bell sounds not long before its jaâ—ring with truth discovers it to be foully cracke It follows in the Answer to the first Question For we have life before we have motion to act or do any thing that is pleasing to God and in that life we have salvation and so life and salvation is freely given us of God The latter part of the Answer is brought to prove the truth of the former and you will say they are huge good at proving who reason at this rate They are not the things we do because we have life from God and that freely before we can move or do any thing This being one of the great delusions of this poor people wherein they shew so much ignorance as without much grace from God they are utterly uncapable of instruction I shall hoping in that grace for a blessing of conviction upon them demonstrate by the most familiar and easie things the falsity of their such Conclusions By the same Reason all your bodily motions and actions are the motions and actions of God and you do nothing at all the while Was there not life before motion And did not God give you this life Can any man move hand or foot or tongue in any natural action but by that life they first receive from God but will you say therefore these are Gods actions and not mens For you to say Your good actions and motions are Christs righteousness because you have life from him to perform them is no less absurd Let us see if Pennington who had somewhat of a Scholar will do any better in the explanation and proof of his Answer to the second Question This righteousness conveyed to the creature in and through the seed and brought forth in the creature by the seed and the creature united to Christ in the seed here is justification of life A strange justifying righteousness by Christ alone brought forth in the creature by the seed I would ask any of this opinion Whether their tongues and lips did not move in the words they call righteous words And the hands in some of those they call righteous actions Sure they will not deny they do and how then can they say it is the righteousness of Christ alone in which the bodies of Thomas John c. are imployed But yet the fine mysteries in this Doctrine which I must confess may puzzle many an honest Countreyman to find out the sense of amounts to no more than this great absurdity What a contradiction there is in the creatures being united to Christ in the seed the Quakers themselves if any liberty be left them so to do will find out Christ is the seed and the seed is Christ both but one and the same thing and yet the creature is united to Christ in the seed that is to Christ in Christ But the blind swallow many a Fly For by the Law of faith is self-sanctification self-mortification and self-justification excluded right so far the worst will be in the tail Though they who received the Spirit were called to all this by faith in his bloud yet it is the work of God wrought by Christ in the believer Two things are here observable for errour and ignorance First They who received the Spirit were called to all this self-work he talks of and that by faith in Christs bloud too and yet by the Law of faith it is all excluded So here faith does and undoes calls for self-justification c. and when it draws nigh shuts the door against them begets children and that by Christ too and so soon as they are born utterly disclaims them If he had said they were called to sanctification mortification and not put that blot of self in their Escutcheons to render them base-born and then have asserted they were not the righteousness by which we are justified he had spoken like a man and a Christian but they are two things in the Quakers account adverse and together by the ears and therefore Nailor will have to do with neither But that a man should be called by faith to self-justification is a strange riddle and after all the condemnation of these things it is for all that the work of God wrought by Christ in the believer But to finish Nailor's testimony of justifying righteousness observe what he saith somewhat more plainly Whereby such become his workmanship in Christ Jesus wrought into his obedience and his obedience into them in their measure till they become of one heart one mind one soul one spirit one flesh one bone and bloud and one obedience and one life that it is no more we that live but Christ that lives in us Here is some shew but a great deal of abuse of the holy Scriptures and the Spirit of God by whom they were given forth Whereas those who are Gods workmanship in Christ Jesus created to good works are thereby designed and disposed by God to walk holily Nailor will have the Saints wrought into the obedience of Christ and his obedience into them and blended together so perfectly that the most discerning Quaker of them all can make no distinction between the one and the other yea untill body and soul flesh and spirit bloud and bones and the obedience of both Christ and his Saints and their very life too be no more distinguished but what is the one is the other the Quaker is Christ for which Nailor's tongue was bored with a hot iron and Christ is I am afraid to write it From such stuff as this the poor souls who hug these Angels of darkness talk at that confused and blasphemous rate as they do and adopt whatever is the product of an idle proud deluded raw understanding into the very acts and expressions of Christ himself He saith moreover which
understood what he wrote of the Creation Hear a third that by the mouth of more than two witnesses what I have said may be confirmed John Story Short Discovery c. pag. 2. And though the holy Scripture without and the Saints practises are as lights in the world yet far be it from all true Christian men so to idolize them the Scripture and Saints practises as to set them in esteem above the light which is sufficient to guide or to esteem them equal with the light and Spirit of Christ within from which the Scriptures were given forth and are but branches of that holy root and as it were fruits of that heavenly Tree viz. the appearances of God in the hearts of his people You may see then whence their Opinion of Divine Inspiration to be the inlet of their Notions arises and that the Scriptures are but branches growing from the same root viz. the light within That I may arm those who are willing to be defended against such a strong delâ—sion where-ever it hath once seized the belief by Scripture-light I shall take she pains to lay down some certain Characters of all the Apostles divinely inspired all their Doctrines that flowed from the Spirit of God by way of inspiration immediate contained in the Scripture and having the ame divine Authority SECT III. Characters of the Persons who were Christs Apostles and preached or wrote the Gospel by Inspiration of God which we call the Scripture or Word of God They had an immediate Mission and Call from without them by Jesus Christ to preach and declare the Gospel That Call and Commission which the Apostles had Mat. 28. 16. to the end of the Chapter was from without it was Christ who conversed with them and was the Object of their bodily eyes It was that Christ whom the women held by the feet ver 9. and his Call as his person was without them the sound of which was received by their bodily ears in those words ver 18 19. And Jesus came and spake unto them saying All power is given to me in heaven and in earth Go ye therefore c. And it is a strong Argument to prove this immediate outward Call to be essential to the Apostolical Office and Power that when by Judas's fall the number was imperfect he that was chosen in his room was chosen and called by an outward Call the Spirit of God determining by a Lot Matthias to be the twelfth Apostle as Christ did the rest by his voice without them Acts 1. 24 25 verses they had a large measure of the Spirit within and Matthias in particular but that was not sufficient Yea the Apostle Paul who was born out of due time had this immediate outward Call when Christ appeared to him in that glorious and terrible form Acts 26. 13. At mid day O King I saw in the way not in the heart or I in the way saw a light from heaven above the brightness of the Sun the light in the Quakers I am sure would be seen by any who are not bodily blind if it were such shining round about me then it could not be a light only within and them that journeyed with me if it had not been without him they could not have seen it Verse 14. I heard a Voice speaking unto me not within me I am Jesus Chap. 10. Ver. 22. Jesus of Nazareth and I am sure the light within is not of Nazareth These things are enough to prove the Apostles had all of them an outward Call or a Call from Christ without them to their Ministry and Apostleship and that the Quakers apostleship and inspired ministry is far from Apostolical They were all such as had seen and conversed with the Lord Jesus in an outward visible form to the bodily senses And that I take to be the literal sense and import of that Scripture 1 John 1. 1. That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the Word of Life All these expressions cannot with any shew of reason be construed of a mental or spiritual converse with Christ as an object of faith but must be understood of the exercise of the bodily senses and faculties upon the visible humane nature of the Lord Jesus And if it be objected that it is said this Object was from the beginning which his humane Nature and body could not be I answer There is a communication of both Natures in the person of Christ by which the properties and concerns of the one are attributed to the other as I might give abundant proof of But I will instance in one which may be sufficient Acts 20. 28. To feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own bloud God is not a being made up of flesh and bloud but a pure impassible Spirit yet Christ being God as well as man the bloud of his Man-hood is called the bloud of God It is observable that the Apostle John brings these proofs of his Apostleship in the front of his Epistle as being necessary for obtaining Credence to what follows To put all out of doubt consider what is expressed 1 Cor. 9 ch 1 ver Am I not an Apostle am I not free have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord Some did probably object against Pauls Apostleship because he had not seen Christ in the flesh as all the rest of the Apostles had done but he answers this Objection Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord It could not be meant of seeing him by the spiritual eye of Faith for so all the Saints have seen the Lord that is common to the weakest babe in the Faith And where did he see him but in the way to Damascus Compare the fore-cited Text with 1 Cor. 15. 8 ver And last of all he was seen of me also as of one born out of due time He was not born a Saint or Believer out of due time for conversion will be in season to the end of the world But he was born an Apostle out of due time the Lord Jesus visibly appearing to him to that end in an extraordinay season Thus we see that to Apostleship the sight of the person of Christ as an outward visible object to the bodily sense is necessary A third distinguishing Character is they were all enabled to work Miracles such Miracles as were neither in secret for the place nor doubtful for the matter I should but waste time and paper to give instances of this the Histories of the Evangelists and Acts of the Apostles will furnish you with enough The Quakers having been conscious of the necessity of this have some of them pretended to Miracles to credit their Apostolical pretended inspirations but none can they prove Some have attempted such like performances but have failed in the undertaking so that if we will not believe them for their bold
to be meant of Christ and God I am sure we should have Lords many and Gods many in a far lower sense then the Magistrates and great men of the world and Christ would be little beholden to us I beseech you therefore who are not stark blind and steel-hard either to abandon such principles or at least do not pretend to Scripture for them and abuse it after this manner for the Scriptures are no friend to your crooked unholy principles and that your Leaders know well enough SECT II. That I may blow the dust out of your eyes I shall take a little pains to shew you your mistake and also how to amend it in more and weightier points in themselves then this under-present consideration You do not honestly distinguish betwixt proper and figurative words and phrases in reading the Scriptures but have gotten an Art to construe them backward quite cross to their true intent and meaning you will take proper speeches for figurative and figurative for proper not careing for the true sense but as they will serve your turn and thereby you can prove quodlibet ex quolibet what you will and any how and so you seem in the eyes of silly and credulous souls to make your rope of sand to hang finely together and you are no more happy here for Christ the VVord is the VVord but in a less proper sense whereas the Scriptures are the VVord of God in a much more proper sense which I shall plainly demonstrate Only take one direction in the mean-while That where any phrase or word may be taken in a proper sense it ought so to be taken unless there be a necessity to do otherwise from the consideration of the Context As in the point in hand 't is said The VVord was God in the beginning here it cannot be understood of the VVord in a proper and ordinary acceptation because such words or word cannot be God neither were in the beginning Besides what is afterwards spoken of the VVord there is plainly and only to be understood of Christ the Son of God but if you consider the VVord expressed Mark 4. 19 And the cares of this World and the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entring in choak the VVord and it becometh unfruitful Here you must take it for the doctrinal VVord or VVord of Instruction which is a proper sense of the Word and if you should take it for Christ the VVord which is figurative you must read it Choak Christ which how untrue and uncomely a phrase it is I leave your selves to judge Now I shall shew you what is a word in a proper sâ—nse and that the Scriptures are such and what in a figurative sense and that Christ or the Son of God as the Word in ordinary acceptation is such A word in a proper sense is either an articulate syllabical sound which the eare is receptive of and by which somewhat may understood as its signification in a commonly received acceptation Or else a writing impression or graving which is such a disposing of letters in their Order as doth express and signifie to the eye what the other doth to the ear Now Christ is not cannot be the Word in neither of these senses for he is not a sound thus disposed nor yet an engraved printed or written thing but the Scriptures are such or consist of such words How the Scriptures are the word in the singular number I have already shewed and must refer you thither A figurative word or word in a figurative construction is somewhat so expressed but is so only by Analogy as having some proportion with and similitude or likeness to a word but will by no means bear the definition of a word taking in all that is essential to its being a word For instance God is called a Husbandman John 10. 1. but he is not so in a proper fense for he neither goes to plow nor sowe nor cart and managing grounds and cattel as a Husbandman doth nay he is not a man of any occupation whatsoever but there is some analogy and similitude betwixt the Almighty and a Husbandman in his dealings with his people for he takes care of them he waters them purges prunes plows digs fences feeds them in a spiritual sense Christ is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah the Vine the door yet he is none of these but with respect to his relation and usefulness to his people there is some similitude betwixt Christ and these Figures and Emblems of him he is strong and courageous fears none overcomes all he encounters with he conveys sap life and fruitfulness to his living branches he is the mean by which we may be reconciled to and enjoy God but enough of this And Christ who is God is the Word but by Analogy not properly in ordinary acceptation 1. He is a great part of the substance and scope of the Scriptures the Word of God they testifie of him and direct to him in their doctrine types c. To him give all the Prophets witness Acts 10 12. 2. He doth also manifest and signifie to us all the glorious attributes of God in a splendid manner but more especially his love mercy and pity and that not only as a Prophet and Teacher by the Word of his mouth but also in all his concerns as Mediatour 3. As he is the Executioner of the good promised and evils threatned in the Scriptures So Rev. 19. 13. he was employed in bloody work executing the vengeance of God against his Adversaries threatned in the Word and he possesses his faithful ones of the happiness prepared for and promised to them Thus I hope I have cleared my way hitherto One thing only remains to prove their errour which I have reserved as the last blow and that is to shew that the Scriptures do callthe Threatnings Promises c. therein contained the Word of God and the written Word and if I prove that in any place of Scripture the phrase cannot be taken in the sense the Quakers would have it that is for Christ or God and also that it can be taken in no other sense then for the matter contained in the Scripture I have done enough whether they will be convinced or no and they must dedeny the Scriptures to be true or own their doctrine to be false Verse 20. He that regarded not the VVord of the Lord left his servants and cattel in the field verse 19. He that feared the Word of the Lord made his eattel and servants to flee into houses What colour is here to expound the Word of the Lord in these Texts of God or Christ what more plain then that they feared the threatning or regarded not the threatning or gracious Advice given from God for avoiding the blow Luke 22. 61. And Peter remembred the VVord of the Lord what word How he said unto him before the Cock crow c. and
Declaration of God Jovis omnia plena Virg. And some such things they have not only dictated for the matter but have also pressed them as the minde of God according to those notions they had of him And much more may the large and precious Sermons and VVritings of the Servants and Ministers of Christ whose Discourses are grounded on the Holy Scriptures yet he that should call them the VVord of God in a strict sense deserves correction A man may declare his mind yea or some things of the minde of God by gestures nods becks srowns smiles yet they are not to be equalled by the expression of his minde by his VVord they being much more imperfect and unintelligible then words the holy conversations of the sound and godly do eminently and effectually declare the minde of God yet had we them in its stead we should be great losers Not only the VVritings and Sayings of intelligent creatures but also the inanimate part of the Creation is a Declaration of God and of his minde also in many things Psal 19 1 2. And those Psalmes wherein they are called upon and are said to praise the Lord Rom. 1. 19 20. Acts 14. 17. the Heathen were blamed for not learning the Lesson taught by them after their kind no better yet who will say that the Declaration made by them is of equal value with the VVord of God either for matter stile manner or perspicuity Fourthly they are a Declaration of the Word of God By the VVord of God they mean Jesus Christ This is a true Character of a considerable part of the Scriptures but not of all and they often restrain them to this as if it were all the use were to be made of them So much of them the Scriptures as was given forth by the Holy Men of God through the Inspiration of the Almighty they testifie of Christ and that is only their service in their place Smith Cat. p. 14. You may observe what a skeleton they make of the Scriptures so much of them as if all of them were not of the same divine Abstract They say the Letter is it the VVord which doth but declare of it They do but testifie of me They testifie of him and it is with a but lest you should take them to have any more hand in conveying Christ and his benefits to the souls then a meer witness of who is or what is the Christ SECT VII To clench the Nail I have been driving hitherto I must demonstrate that to deny the Scriptures to be the VVord of God is to deny the Scriptures which I shall do three ways in few words First to deny the Scriptures to be the VVord of God is to deny them that title by which they are commonly known and distinguished from and lifted up above all other VVritings whatsoever I will ask any man who understands sense and hath but one grain of reason if to deny the Supream Magistrate of Great Britain to be the King of England were notto deny the King though he that doth so should allow him to be entituled a Man a Gentleman yea a Nobleman or Duke which are titles common to him with others or below him sure I am we Christians are else under an old musty mistake and guilty of great slander for affirming the Turks to deny Christ because they will not own him to be greater then their Prophet Mahomet or to be the Saviour of mens souls while they own him to be not only a man but also a great Prophet and next to Mahomet himself I suppose a Quaker whose Child should own him to be a Man and a good man too and one that provides well for him and yet say He is not his father and stand to it in earnest would say that son denies him and is a naughty wicked Child Acts 13. 13. 'T is laid of the Jewes they denied him in the Presence of Pilate v. 14 they denied the Holy One and the just Did they denie him to be a man or some common thing No they denied him to be Christ the Saviour and loaded him with reproaches in stead of his glorious and peculiar titles and this the Holy Ghost calls denying him To deny the Scriptures to be the Word of God is to deny that Appellation on which their Authority is grounded and which puts an awe upon the Consciences of men Though all truths as such so far as they are apprehended carry with them the countenance of Authority yet how much more when a Command Promise Doctrine c. comes with this written on its forehead the VVord of God the VVord of the Lord t is said VVhere the VVord of a King is there is Power and who shall say unto him VVhat doest thou 't is natural to men to despise the best and most excellent things under common and contemptible titles It is all one in a plain and true construction as to deny that the matter and sense expressed by them was over spoken by God Experience hath sufficiently taught this that no sooner this principle is taken in but the Scriptures become with such as weak as a burnt thread and whatever you may pretend to we know and shall prove that after this title is put off they become like Sampson when God was departed from him The Papists who are the more subtil will tell us that in their Image-worship they terminate their worship in God alone but alas the common people are for downright language and they poor souls being exhorted to worship the Images do it devoutly and think not on God all the while it is no otherwise in the present case people will understand after the common sense and aceeptation of words I have sometimes been amazed and not without good Company and consideration that men of such dexterity in matters that concern not Religion should be so prodigiously blind and besotted as to deny this truth hitherto vindicated But since I have been better acquainted with their principles I find it to be the most necessary to maintain and support their Great delusion viz. The light within For that they do hereby rob the Scriptures of abundance of places wherein that phrase The VVord and The VVord of the Lord is found and deck their idol with them and indeed so many are the excellent Characters given to the Scriptures under that notion that if they wear them and shine in their lustre the Quakers Glow-worm must sparkle no where but in the dark and may still keep its Court and Confines in the Heathen-world CHAP. I. The Quakers equal their own VVritings and Sayings with the Scriptures and prefer them before the Scriptures I Need not spend time with those who are yet in their wits to prove that they who fall under the Charge expressed above deny the Scriptures To take all rubs out of the way I shall furnish you with a few Demonstrations First this is tounhallow them aud make them common
Competition between Jesus Christ and G. Fox and what the Lord and Master did in this case so did his servants the Apostles as I might instance abundantly I will direct you only to Peters Sermons Acts 2. I need not instance in any more He that hath read the Scriptures may easily furnish himself And who can doubt but they who made use of the Letter of the Scriptures for evidence of what in their Ministry they preached or writ were Ministers of the Letter as well as of the Spirit And moreover if we consider the letter of the Scripture to be the letter of the Spirit written by its direction and to express in its kind the minde of the Spirit This Querie of George Fox may be turned upon himself thus and how can ye be Ministers of the Spirit if ye be not Ministers of the Letter also The latter part of his Sentence is a higher Demonstration of the fallibility of his Chair And how can they but delude people who are not infallible True indeed if they did perswade people that they could not in any thing be mistaken or be ignorant but seeing only the Quakers pretended Ministry and the Pope of Rome do assume this to themselves they only are in a necessity of deluding the people for our parts who live in all manner of pride as the Quakers by their spirit of Infallibility do charge us we are not yet come up to their Perfection for we freely acknowledge that we may erre in doctrine and do erre in practice which we bewail before God and men and also that the people may not be deluded by us we desire them and charge them not to pin their faith on our sleeves but repair to the Law and to the Testimony and search the Scriptures try whether the things we affirm be so or no And if we speak contrary to the Minde of God there expressed to reject our doctrine and also that they follow our Example no further then we follow Christ even that Man Christ Jesus who was for a time on Earth but is now in Heaven But what do you think of the Holy Apostles were they universally infallible could not they erre if you say so Paul will convict you of errour in his charging Peter none of the least of the Apostles with erring and in something deluding the people Gal. 2. 12 13 14. Peter dissembled the truth in practising the Mosaical distinction of Jewes and Gentiles and separating from the believing Gentiles as unclean And the other Jewes yea and Barnabas also was carried away with his dissimulation But then you will say how can we be sure that what they wrote and taught was truth I answer that although they might in some thingâ— be carried away by temptation as Peter was in thaâ— case yet their doctrine which they professed to bâ— from the Lord and by the Inspiration of God could not admit of erring or fallibility and that not because they had an habitual infallibility in all things buâ— because of the love of God to his people the regard of his honour and the firmness of his Promises which he made to them those especially John 14. 26. But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you John 16. 13. Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come Now these Promises being made to the Apostles for furnishing them with ability for their work as Apostles they may be concluded to be infallibly guided by the Spirit but in other things though by their eminent habitual grace they were not likely â—o fall as others who were not cloathed with such a measure and degree as they yet it was more then possible that they should fail but according to G. Fox's infallibility and without limitation the Apostles themselves could not but delude the people But to conclude this particular of Infallibility take beside what hath been said one considerable proof of their non-attainment of Infallibility and that is the most grossely absurd Exposition they give of the Scriptures See what follows with the eyes of Christian-men We are accused that we judge people It is written the Saints shall judge the world an infallible proof as if it were a Command or Prophecy of the Saints i. e. the Quakers calling men all â—o nought how serious soever who are not professedly conducted and saved by the light within but he goes on more and more infallibly And for Judgement am I come into the World saith Christ As if Christs coming into the World sixteen hundred years ago were to the end that they might pass their rash Censures freely But he grows still And where Christ ruleth in his Saints he judgeth the World as Paul witnessed It is no more I but Christ in me Where Paul witnessed this such a Spirit of discerning as they tell us of must finde out for the Scripture hath nothing like it only in two places Rom. 7. 17. It is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me But I am sure Sin and Christ are two things Gal. 2. 20. Yet not I but Christ liveth in me But that was not to censure others but to comfort Paul under the hard censures and usages of others But the passage of coming into the World for Judgement brings into my minde one remarkable Expositor It is a right and sound doctrine to preach him as he is the light of the World and lighteth every man that cometh into the world But what world is this This is the great Prophet who is come into the World which is set in the heart Eccles 3. 11. which is in the midst out of which Moses saith the Lord world raise up a Prophet Lev. 8. 15. which Prophet being come he saith I am come a Light into the World John 1. 12. and 12. 35 36 46 The World being set in the heart there is the light of him who saith I am the light So that with him the World is the heart Christs coming into the World is his comeing into the heart and as he came into the world the heart so he is also raised up out of the world the heart but how like such a Prophet is to Moses I should too much suspect your understandings if I should trouble you with my sense he that is declined as far as dotage may perceive it without a Guide as also the gross darkness of this Expositor in the rest Let us see what sound Exposition the great Lanthorn of the Quakers gives for I must not call him their Great Light for that is in the Lanthorn 1 Cor. 14 34 35. Let your women keep silence in the Churches for it is not
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
Secondly The dispensations of the revealed and written Word render God nigher to a people than to those who are without it For what Nation is there so great who hath God so nigh unto them c. Read the Context and you will find that the means of God being so nigh was chiefly his written Laws And it is notorious that the Gentile Nations who were without the Scripture had lost sight of the true God so far that they worshipped the most despicable things in his stead and as the Apostle saith were without God in the world for all their light within which the Quakers say all men ever had The dispensations of God in and to his Church rise higher and higher in excellency and glory And this is a third Argument His first after the fall were some few revelations to some few persons and by them handed to others which might be then much more easie than now for that men lived so long that the days of Methuselah and Noah took hold of the days of Adam and Abraham But men increasing in number and no less in impiety they quickly lost that little was committed to them And before the Law and Covenants and Scripture in part were written notwithstanding Creation Providence and some revelation the knowledge of God was very thin and scant in the world among good and holy men And if you will not believe me believe Holy Job By his spirit he hath garnished the Heavens his hand hath formed the crooked Serpent lo these are part of his ways but how little a portion is heard of him He is speaking before of his works of Creation yet they were but a part of the ways whereby God conveyed the knowledge of himself but take all together even that of revelation with it it was but a little of him that was known whereas when his word was written the Israel of God who enjoyed it 't is said of them In Judah is God known his name is great in Israel But the 2 Cor. 3. 11. speaks close and home to my argument For if that which is done away was glorious much more that which remains is glorious A fourth proof may be from the slipperiness of our memories Who among the sons and daughters of men is able to retain in the memory such a multitude of particulars as concern faith and life that if it should be granted that every man at some time or other should have the whole mind of God contained in the Scripture immediately and by revelation imparted to him the memory would prove a very leaky Vessel and bad Steward and let slip a great part both matter and form without a miracle to raise our faculty not only above the common course or which is ordinary but above the faculty of any man that breaths whereas the word imparted by the Scripture abides to which as to an everlasting Record we may have recourse and supply that defect More certain to the knowledge of man Since man was corrupted and so long as there remains either corruption or defect in him the inward motions and notions of the soul will be affected therewith the first risings and bubling up of thoughts and imaginations which present themselves to the understanding judgment and conscience will abundantly vary from and be opposite each to other and the sentiments or apprehensions of them be warring and contending like pleaders at the bar of judgment and conscience and those who know and are concerned in the affairs and their management on the secret stage of the Soul must acknowledge if they will speak their consciences that whatever be the question agitated in the mind there will not want the appearances of truth and goodness offering themselves on both the affirmative and negative part and in matters of religious concern all pretend to the sanction and allowance of God himself And as their pleas so their importunities shall be impetuously violent that many times the poor creature is on the rack and which way soever its judgment and resolution inclines the adverse thoughts will attend it with their Checks and clamours In the multitude of my thoughts within me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my anxious perplexed careful troubled thoughts beating against one another like the boughs of a tree agitated with a fierce wind This was not only David's case but the Saints which are now upon the earth And if it were David's so good a man and a man so frequently under the power of special divine inspirations much more may it be ours Well in such cases what course should we take if we expect and depend upon immediate teachings from the spirit how shall we know they are such and not the delusions of Satan or a vision of our own fancifull brains we can give testimonies enough to convince a Heathen or Atheist if he will not abandon the use of reason that the Scriptures are the word and mind of the spirit of God and therefore what that speaks is the voice of the Spirit but it will be long enough e're the Quakers and those that plead for a sole dependance on the spirits immediate teachings will be able to give such proofs of theirs Moreover the Quakers who pretend to these teachings and guidances resolve against the exercise of a humane though sanctified understanding and resolve all into motions impulses and the sensation of them thereby depriving men of the direction of enlightned faculties leaving the most violent motions and appetites to carry away the undoubted evidence and character of the Spirits leadings But how far this is from a spiritual understanding or a right discerning I leave those to judge who are acquainted in themselves or others with violent temptations from Satan and the unbridled lusts of men and this pure sensation of stirrings and motions becomes better by far the stark blind than those who have eyes in their heads We grope for the wall like the blind and we grope as if we had no eyes we stumble at noon day as in the night One of the severest curses for disobedience threatned against Israel was and thou shalt grope at noon day as the blind gropeth in darkness and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways And what is this principle of the Quakers but to turn us again into the darkness and Chaos of Gentilism instead of beholding as in a Glass with open face the glory of the Lord to be feeling after him by the corrupt and half senseless touches of a natural conscience acting on the narrow and uncertain indications of Creation and providence which though they may teach something concerning God and our original duty to him will be as far from acquainting us with Gospel truths or such as concern Christ and our redemption by him as a stone or tree is from discerning and expressing the secret and bosom counsels of God or man I would not yet have you think that we deny or disown a
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
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
man be a hearer of the word and not a doer he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a Glass for he beholdeth himself c. I know you who are called Quakers will say I pervert this Text which is to be understood of the light within not of the Scriptures without and that it maketh directly against me I hint this to let people know what need we have to preserve that appellation of the Scriptures the Word of God which will preserve the due reputation and use of those holy and blessed Writings But I would ask any Quaker if it be not absurd and woful lame language to exhort a man to be a doer of Christ I must not dispute the same thing over and over but affirm this Text from what hath preceded and the particular Argument given just now to be a full and plain asserting the Doctrinal word to be a means by which we may know our selves SECT III. I shall express in the close of this Chapter those absurdities falsities and impieties that are the Bastards this Errour is travelling withall The Scriptures have less in them of demonstration with respect to God than the dumb Creation or the most despicable particle of it a Worm a Stone are some means to know God by A second consequence is that no Writing whatsoever can be any such means for the holy Scriptures deserve a preference in religious cases and that which will lye very heavy upon you who are called Quakers all your scribling neither hath been neither can be to any such good purpose as the knowledge of God Christ c. Experience and sense it self and that not of one but many millions are not all together worth a straw in point of evidence for so many have experienced as plainly as sense it self can demonstrate that by the means of the Scriptures they have come by the knowledge of God Christ and themselves The incomparably greater number of those whom you confess were Saints and had peace with God knocked and entered at the wrong door and so by your own Exposition of Scripture are Thieves and Robbers Then God Christ Prophets Apostles are all to be charged with folly who taught the knowledge of God Christ and man by the matter expressed by the Scriptures which was not to them immediately expressed by God but by Prophets and humane Teachers You cast those Worthies who both disputed and died to maintain not only some Truths concerning God Christ and man the knowledge of which they came to by the Scriptures but also for continuing in the possession and to the use of souls for such ends the Books of the written Word Yea you condemn them as a company of Fools who cast away and sold themselves to all the miseries they suffered for a thing of nought Then neither is Reading Preaching nor Instruction of any such use This I fear hath gotten too much credit with you who suffer your Families and Children to take their own courses except in the concerns of this world wherein few out-do you and I should blame you the less if you would so far keep to this principle as to keep your light within and your thundring too into which though a self contradiction it breaks forth with a noise without sense or truth to the amusing of the ignorant who take them who shew the greatest zeal or heat to be the most sincere and intelligent CHAP. IX The Quakers affirm the Scriptures to be no means whereby to resist temptation and that they are dangerous to be read SECT I. I Join these into one Argument the latter being a high instance for the proof of the former and both together engage against the life of the Scriptures with a strong hand What shall we say of those mens owning the Scripture who turn this standing Table of the Lord into a snare and render them not only no Weapons to resist Satan and Lust our grand Enemies but to be as Gunpowder to blow up our selves yea as if God himself who is the Father of mercies and who in his abundant goodness hath afforded us this Armour of light did thereby rather set a trap for our souls than a means to deliver us from the snare of the Devil who leads the blind and unarmed captive at his will I shall not go about to give demonstrations that so to affirm is to deny the Scriptures when I have proved that they are criminal according to this Charge I know not what impartial person will judge them guiltless of denying the Scriptures And therefore I shall attend to it as carrying the question 'T is not your flying to the Scripture that can save you from the fire of his wrath nor overcome the least corruption for you no verily nothing then but a Christ within you c. and the next sentence is come thou then O come with boldness to Gods faithful Witness within you If he had said the Scriptures without the knowledge of them or the notion of them without the power or without the Spirits concurrence he had spoken truth But to beat these Weapons out of their hands to cry out with a vehemency to throw down those Arms as useless and run away to that second Antichrist the light within this is horrid The true Christ is not so far from the Scriptures nor so disagreeing with them but he can dwell in one heart with them and arms all his Souldiers with the Weapons of the truths therein contained but Christ Jesus the Christ of God and Redeemer of his people and the Quakers Christ are nothing of kin But one would think this should be but a slip of his Pen let us see if he speak not more favourably of the holy Scriptures in his following discourse but alas the darkness within hath so bewitched him that nothing but the Quakers Idol is good for any thing The Scriptures nor any other outward things are able to graple with him the Devil you must put on the armour of light light within and with that resist him or be taken captive by him What a rapture of zeal is here for the thing within though the Scriptures alone can do little yet sure if God Almighty undertake the combat either with or without the Scriptures he will be too hard for all the Devils or he had not kept his Throne from being usurped by him and if God be not without the Quakers or any other person as well as within them he is not infinite as we have taken him to be by the light of Reason and more by the light of Scripture But what blasphemy will not men run into who have changed their God for that which is no God and have turned their backs on the Lord Jesus and taken so gross a delusion in the room of him Again he goes on to the same purpose lest you should not understand him If you use any other Weapons than the
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
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
conceiving knowing were not Gods nor to be concerned in his worship Certainly if nothing of man soul or body be active therein man doth not worship God nor pray at all and so God worships himself which is the true result of the Quakers Tenets But let us consider a Text or two out of the Word of God I would order my cause before him and fill my mouth with arguments The word order in the Heb. signifies a marshalling his words Prayer is not only a petition but a humble pleading wrestling with God and sure there was somewhat of Job in ordering his cause and he used his spiritual skill in it 'T is render'd by Arias Montanus disponerem I would dispose my cause Give ear to my words O Lord. What is it then I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also c. Here is Paul's will in prayer I will and here is Paul's understanding also exercised in prayer vers 15. But my understanding is unfruitfull which he blames as a companion of prayer that being supposed Thus I have proved the Quakers denying Gospel-prayer in this respect above-mentioned and reproved their anti-Gospel notions by the Scriptures Lastly They own no prayer but what is by the light and in the light within And the prayers of such only are accepted and not the prayers of those who think to be heard for their much babling who have many words but not in the life So that their prayers only are acceptable who pray in the life that is with the Quakers by the motions of their light within and although we are far from thinking to be heard for the sake of much better things than much babling yet all the words of prayer that are not qualified by their principle the light within is in their account but babling For it's truth in the inward parts he seeks for wherein none of you can worship who know not the living Word in your hearts to keep them up to God in your worship and that worship which is not in the will of God is the worshipping of Devils If you ask any of them What is the truth in the inward parts They will not answer it is sincerity meanings suitable to our expressions and appearances but it is Christ the light within who is the truth And for knowing the living Word it is of the same sense it is all but the light within every man the Quakers Christ And for the will of God that is nothing but the immediate life and motions of the light within I have said enough out of their Writings to prove these things neither will they deny them but Naylor telleth you and it is not for any Quaker to resist the Spirit by which he spake that worship not thus qualified is the worshiping of Devils It may be some of the Quakers though they know in their consciences that I speak but the very truth of their Tenets and Notions will say I put my meanings to their words but if they will but bate me speaking from their light within which they hold necessary to qualifie a man to speak truly I dare undertake to expound according to their meaning their ill meant phrases as well as the most of them and their mystery is none to me at all And although they talk of praying in the name of Christ yet as Naylor phrases it That is done in the name of Christ which is done in his light and power But when all is done this Christ and name and light and power is but the light within and its teachings and motions It is to me reported on all hands That they never pray in the name of Christ as their Mediator much less then do they pray to God in or in the name of Jesus of Nazareth the Son of Mary or of that one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus even that Jesus who was crucified at Jerusalem between two thieves above 1600 years since I have put this to many of them and they denied not this Charge neither can I see how they can pray to the Father in the name of Christ seeing God the Father and Christ with them admit of no distinction and for the man Christ that was born of Mary they have nothing to do with him The Apostle saith A Mediator is not of one but God is one And whoever they are that deny and disown prayer in the name of Christ are far from owning the Gospel-Ordinance of prayer SECT IV. Reading the Scriptures and Meditation which are Gospel-Ordinances they also deny I need not tell you of the contempt they put upon the Scripture as a dead letter the carnal letter and on those who attend to it as dry Letter-mongers Take only one instance of William Pens But all must be as unlearned from their first birth education and traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned that is again become a little child before the secrets of Gods work come to be made known And Fisher calls studying the Scripture scraping in the Scripture I wonder wherefore God ordered and commanded them to be written if they are not to be read and studied The Spirit of Christ within is the end of the Tables Law Works and Books and the Law is now in the heart Whatever thou be whether a teacher of others or a professor of what thou comprehends to be truth from the letter of the Scripture under what form name or title soever thou be thou art a dead man and a dead woman and the wrath of God abides on thee though thou see it not Rom. 7. 9. Miserable man that talks at this rate and will father it on the Scripture too and such a one as is directly against him But we have had enough of this smoak SECT V. I shall say somewhat of their abundant scorn of the Lords Supper and Baptism wherein they express a superfluity of naughtiness not only in their Tenets but down-right railing The Ordinances I have hitherto considered in particular are called moral from their natural obligation although that substantial and essential part and qualification of them their respect to a Mediator will require a denomination more evangelical and without which we cannot call them Gospel or Christian-Ordinances Those two Gospel-Ordinances I come now to consider are purely and perfectly positive and depend meerly upon divinely-revealed institution without which they had never come within our notice nor had they been any way obliging to us Yet such is the sanction that the Lord hath put upon institutions of this nature that not only since his revealed Law hath abounded to his Church but also when the revelations of his mind immediately to his servants was very rare he did not omit injunctions of this kind The sacrifices we read of as early as Cain and Abel Yea Adam in his state of innocency who then needed not any indication of moral duties beyond what was within the
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
they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulchre but God raised him from the dead Be it known unto you therefore men and brethren that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins For there is one God and one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive for evermore amen and have the keys of hell and death I might fill many Pages with Scriptures of the like import these are so plain for what I produce them and the Quakers deny that they need no Exposition or Comment or as the Quakers phrase it have any meanings put to them If men be so blind as not to see the errour of disowning Jesus of Nazareth the Son of Mary who was hanged on a tree put into the Sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea to be yet alive and the Christ of God by all these Scriptures it is a blindness wherewith never any before the Quakers who professed the Scripture to be a true testimony were smitten Surely God hath given them up for their pride giddiness or idle ignorance and that in justice and the Devil the destroyer hath blinded their minds with a witness that this light of the glorious Gospel should not shine unto them Can yea dare any of you guilty of the errour here charged say That all this is true of and to be applied to the light within every man which these Scriptures assert of Gods Christ Read them over and compare them with that which is your only Christ and Saviour If this man Christ Jesus in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead and who was thus described by the Spirit of God be the Saviour your light within is not If your light within be the Saviour and Christ and Redeemer he was not Of whom all these Scriptures and a thousand more speak so plainly The Lord be mercifull to your souls the Lord rebuke you who are so bold in denying the Lord that bought you and â—rampling under foot the bloud of the Covenant O consider that fancies and dreams though having ever so strong an impression while you are possessed with them will when you awake out of your graves of earth and dust yea when your souls depart from your bodies leave you to the naked truth which God in his Word the Scripture hath revealed to us not to be abused after your manner but that we might believe and live after their direction which who despises Wo unto their souls for they have rewarded evil to themselves I have not yet given you all the evidence I have out of the Quakers chief Writers that they disown the man Jesus the Son of Mary to be Gods Christ Some of them take together Can outward bloud cleanse the conscience Yes by faith therein We witness the same Christ that ever was now manifested in the flesh The man Christ Jesus was not ever for he was made and born in time of the Virgin Mary was Abraham's and David's seed after the flesh and though he now have a Being in Heaven and is manifested on earth by his Word and by that faith which is in the hearts of his people yet he is not now manifest in the flesh according to that Scripture which saith God was manifest in the flesh not is And Christs nature is not humane which is earthly for that is the first Adams And immediately before Where doth the Scripture speak of humane Now we do not deny that Christ according to the flesh was of Abraham but not the word humane How pityfully doth he wind and turn to get out of the noose and holds the world in hand as if he did not deny the thing that Christ is constituted of the humane nature only he will not allow the word humane Yet he that hath a small measure of discerning may see that peep out which he would fain hide He denies Christs nature to be earthly which the first Adams was Sure if Christ was the seed of the woman by Adam his nature as man was such as Adams But for his questioning the word humane as not in the Scripture he pretending to be able to examine the justice of our Translators in turning the Greek into English in his great Libel called Mystery of the great Whore should methinks have found as much as humane in the Greek though not in the English 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being five times used in the Epistles which in the Latine is more hominum humanus after the manner of men humane And Christs humane nature is no more but his mans nature of his nature according to man and so he is now in the humane nature in the Heavens Seeing then that we have a great high Priest that is passed into the Heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our profession Mark the last clause For we have not an high Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin Infirmities here must not be understood of sin the Text bars that but such a weak nature as is constituted of flesh and bloud liable to pains grief hunger and weariness And he was found in fashion as a man and that I think is more hominis Now this man is not was but is our high Priest in the Heavens and not as Fox hath it was of the seed of Abraham but is so A few Instances more yet And they that are false Ministers preach Christ without Your carnal Christ is utterly denied by the light Your imagined God beyond the Stars But none can witness this whose eye is outward looking at a Redeemer afar off So much of the proof of their denying that man to be Christ SECT II. I must not say That the Quakers do not own a man Christ for that they frequently in their Writings and sayings express such a thing but I desire that none will be offended that I will not take Chips for Guineys or half Crowns because some silly Cheats would put them upon me under those valuable names much more ought I and every one else take heed of receiving that for Christ which God the Father hath not sealed because men of what countenance soever will perswade us it is no other whilst by the very Candle-light of meer reason it will appear to be a meer fancy If I should say no more but that it is an absurdity as big as an impossibility for a man constituted not only of a soul for that may be crowded into a little room but a body of flesh bloud and bones to be within a man surely no woman with child ready to be delivered would by her swelling and bigness proclaim it to the eyes of all beholders more effectually than such who should be so inmated And although they talk of all this being by faith they must give
lighteth every man that cometh into the world The Exposition of these words I shall give according to what the Lord hath enabled me with and refute what the Quakers give as the meaning of it and conclude from thence We shall not question that the Relative that hath for its Antecedent and is to be understood of the Word which was in the beginning which was with God which was God by whom all things were made the light of men c. The special Character of this Word who was God and Creator that was the true light I thus explain Light is taken properly for that which doth manifest or discover any thing so Christ is light But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel The meaning is That that salvation eternal which God had purposed to give to his people which could not be seen in the purpose of God as such is by the appearing of Christ in the flesh and therein transacting and declaring this salvation and eternal life abundantly discovered For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ And as light properly is that which makes manifest so metaphorically it is that which comforts and rejoyceth and as the first is put in opposition to ignorance or the absence of the means of knowledge so the other is put in opposition to affliction grief distress which are so frequently called darkness in Scripture that I need not turn to their Instances And I do not in the least doubt but Christ the Word is here called light in both respects and that eminently for as he discovers the gracious thoughts and purposes of God for the salvation of man it hath in its open hand the light of comfort they are glad tidings and gladding tidings And this I take to be the import of the 4th Verse In him was life and the life was the light of men That is the salvation and life eternal of poor sinners was wrapt up in Christ as God who being so qualified was capable of working it and this consideration of God manifest in the flesh for those ends is matter of strong consolation as being an adequate and sufficient foundation for faith to build on The qualification of this light the true light comes next under consideration True is taken in opposition to false but so we are not to understand it here True is taken in opposition to types and shadows so Christ is the true light which all the types and shadows in the Mosaical dispensations were not no more than the picture and pourtraiture of a man drawn with the dark lines of Charcoal are the man they so express or the figures for a thousand pounds in a Bond or Bill are the money And this is the true Exposition of the 23 d. Verse of the 4th of John God never accepted in sincere and hypocritical worshippers under the Old Testament dispensation But the question being of worshipping at Jerusalem or Mount Gerazim he tells her as his sense that question was now almost out of date for that the Temple being but a shadow and figure of Christ and Gospel-worship they were now shortly to use those shadows no more Christ being come and the Gospel spiritual-worship which they were but prefiguring of Again The true light is to be understood of the light eminently considered and so though John was a true light and by Christs own testimony a burning and a shining light and so the Prophets were true lights yet Christ excelled them all in light as the Sun doth the Stars The brightness of his Fathers glory and express image of his person So that while they gave a more dim and imperfect light Christ shined as the day-light In the Text last mentioned he is to be understood of Christ in the flesh before his ascension Lastly By true light we may understand his being that light to whom and of whom all the Prophets bare witness as Isaiah did not speak those things read out of him by the Eunuch of himself but of Jesus Christ as Philip expounded them to him I now proceed to the efficacy of this light wherein lies a great part of the controversie Which lighteth It is not to be doubted but this light doth give light both in respect of manifestation which may be of that which is matter of terrour and also of comfort to a miserable world by sin and its effects But I pray how will it follow from hence that Christ is within those whom he lighteth Truly no more than the Sun in the Firmament is within every one it affordeth light unto But it is the scope of some Pages in William Pen's late Piece to prove that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should be rendered not lighteth but enlightneth But by this I perceive he is as very as those Physicians who impose severe abstinence on others but they themselves will take their Cups off and their good cheer to wantonness and giddiness I return to the business in hand and grant that most Translators render it enlightneth But what helpeth it 'T is never the more the Quakers light within for a seeing faculty can do nothing alone no more than the best eyes in the head without a light without as a medium by which to discern objects And this faculty of mans understanding is enlightned by Christ so as that by his light it is made capable to discern the face of God shining on sinners according to the import of the Covenant of graâ—… and that enlightning may be no more Two Scriptures will evidence First That concerning Jonathan And dipt it in an honey-comb and put his hand to his mouth and his eyes were enlightned See I pray you how mine eyes have been enlightned If the light within be no more in the conscience than the honey was in Jonathan's eyes it will make little for the Quakers notion of the light in the conscience to be very Christ and not only his manifestations which are his acts and influence not himself The other Text is more plain to the purpose His lightnings enlightned the world the earth saw and trembled If by the earth be not meant the men on the earth and by the world the men in the world lightning was not likely to be seen by or help them so to see as to effect trembling unless you will say the meer animals were intended Well then the world was enlightned by Gods lightnings that were totally without them whether their seeing by those lightnings have respect to the objects of their bodily eyes or to God the object of the eye of the mind who is in a good measure made known by his mighty and terrible works But if you will needs have
great power his understanding is infinite To say That which is infinite is not beyond measure is a contradiction in its self The second Proposition I prove by their own concession and grant There is scarcely any one thing more frequent in their Writings than to talk of the measure of God the measure of Christ the measure of the light in men But turn your ear inward to that measure of light in you I could fill a volume with Instances of this nature how they measure out the light within and Christ and God and the Spirit but none of them will deny this It is a horrible abomination for men through their gross and dark conceits thus to dishonour God to share him into more and less degrees and measures who is entire infinite indivisible who is not with respect to his Being less in one place than in another This measuring would agree well to his manifestations and discoveries of himself to his creatures and by his works it would agree well to those graces wrought by his Spirit in the hearts of his people which in some is more some less and capable of growing in all but God cannot be more or less than he is and ever was That which may be darkness in a sinfull and evil sense and that in the abstract cannot be God But the light within some men may be darkness in a sinfull and evil sense in the abstract Therefore The light within every man is not God I suppose and hope they are not yet arrived to that height of wickedness as to charge God with ignorance or sin in the least degree or that he is capable of so degenerating therefore I will take the first Proposition for granted For the second I shall prove from Scripture Eph. 5â—8 For ye were sometimes darkness but now are ye light in the Lord. What can be more exclusive of all spiritual light or light in spiritual things than to be darkness in the very abstract But if you who adore the light within shall say this is meant of man but the light within is God and Christ and that is not man of whom the Apostle speaks I answer That sometimes you plead hard that the lighteth in Joh. 1. 9. should be rendred enlightneth and W. P. tugs hard for it in his Pamphlet called The Spirit of Truth c. but it will be granted with less ado Well then if the light within every man be the enlightning of every man at least virtually so that if he be willing to be guided by its conduct it will lead him as you dream then it must be within him as a qualification of his conscience though it be not produced into exercise And you tell men they have that within them that will be a sufficient guide if they will but listen to it therefore this Text reaches the light within you which saith there was a time when they were darkness It would be a strange affirmation to say the world or Creation were darkness while the body of the Sun were in it shining although not one man should move by its light And it is worth the noting that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text rendred darkness signifies such a darkness as is the total absence of light A second Scripture that proves this is Mat. 6.23 But if the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness It is the same word in the Greek as in the fore-cited Scripture And lest you should cavil and say Christ doth but suppose it he doth not affirm that the light in any one is darkness the fore-going Verse tells you That if thine eye â—e evil that is not single and sincere in its aims thy whole body shall be full of darkness And sure you will not say but there are many in the world whose eyes are evil who account all such that are not Quakers And it may be considered that where the whole body is full of darkness there cannot possibly be in it any light And that this which men conceit to be light and are conducted and led by it as if it were such is sinfull ignorance and darkness I shall not think it calls for proof Well then 't is as clear as day that the best light some men have within them is but perfect night therefore it cannot be God Thus I have proved by three Arguments That the light within every man is not God I will but name a few more and leave them to the judgement of the Reader without further proof That which may be kept under and in captivity by the lusts of men is not God But the light in some men not only may be but is kept under and in captivity by the lusts of men and that by the Quakers own confession Therefore The light in every man is not God That which may be crucified and put to pain in a proper sense is not God But the light within every man which the Quakers call God may by their own confession be put to pain and crucified and that in a proper sense or they talk but madly of being saved by its being crucified within them Therefore It is not God I proceed to the proof of the Minor or second Proposition Viz. That the Quakers do own and profess the light within every man to be God This I must prove from their own Writings which will easily be done it being the grand foundation of the whole Fabrick of Quakerism so that I may say its first stone is laid in gross Idolatry It would be needless to bring Instances of their asserting the light in every man to be that Word which John speaks of Joh. 1. 1. Which was in the beginning which was with God which was God It is the first thing they teach and that not suddenly and amphibiously as they do many other points but in so many words But I shall furnish you with proofs enough over and above that I will make you know that I the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world that all through me should believe am the true eternal God which created all things that by me the light all things are upheld and that there is not another besides me can save Although in this passage he doth not call it the light in every man yet it being a personating the light within in a large and continued discourse he doth often express it the light within as in pag. 50. You scorn me the light in you Pag. 54. Which will not own me the light in them All power in Heaven and Earth is in it the light in the conscience They that cannot read out of these passages and that without spelling that the Quakers own and profess the light in every man to be God are not like to be much the wiser for whatever they read That it is in every one hear one speak his mind who would be believed Light is the same in
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
the light Christ within and that in this world The Writings when spoken diminishingly The Scriptures or written Word I have the witness of my Conscience that I have not in this Key in any measure abused or wronged the Quakers but have declared what in their Writings and verbal Converse I have found to be true and could have proved by particular instances but for being too large And for that they who weigh what is written in the body of the Book may find satisfaction in the most if not all of them THE CONCLVSION I Have not in this Treatise dealt with the more minute and light Errors and Absurdities of the Quakers because they would amount to too large a Volume for this Subject and I love not to tythe Mint Annis and Cummin where weightier matters call forth my thoughts Where the Lord shall make what hath been written convincing and effectual those Superstructures and Appendices of the conceit of Perfection denying the sober use of civil Ceremonies unnecessary scrupling at modest Ornaments Pedantick Words Phrases and Gestures obstinate Jewish and Ceremonious respect to this or that place for Worship and a multitude more will quickly and easily dissolve of themselves I doubt not but all whose Judgments are not in Captivity to the silliest Errors will conclude with me that Quakerism is no Christianity yea Not consistent with Christianity being no more capable of dwelling together in one Breast than light and darkness in their absolute and supream Dominion I am perswaded that all who have honest meanings among the Quakers little think that in turning to Quakerism they turn Christianity out of Doors yet it is a truth a sad truth that calls for more serious notice than themselves or most others afford it who profess and that sincerely a love to Truth and Souls My greatest discouragement in writing this Treatise was from the sense of the Quakers being out of the reach of Scripture and Reason to almost or altogether a spiritual delirium Yet I was not without some encouragement from my hopes that the Lord would bless it to the informing and securing of many whose feet are yet out of their snare I have not a little been amazed to read in their Authors such Expressions as prompt us to devest our selves of being men that we may be Christians As if Rational and Spiritual God and the Scriptures Understanding and Christianity were mortal foes I intended a Chapter by it self to demonstrate Quakerism to be no Christianity from its excluding right Reason any thing called Reason from having to do in the search after Christianity its choice Defence or Approbation I care not if I collect a few for my Readers satisfaction Quest How do you manifest this inward foundation which you say is Christ to be the true and only foundation which God hath laid Answ From the feeling we have of it by which we know that it is sure in us and from the sure and certain knowledge which we have of it in the feeling we manifest it from its own Nature and Being to its own Nature and Being You may here perceive what a reasonable Religion the Quakers is whose demonstration is nothing else but sense and feeling and this sense and feeling nothing is capable of but the very nature and being of this Foundation He proceeds further pag. 65. Quest And can none have true faith unto salvation and life Eternal but such as are of your Opinion Answ We are not in any Opinion but in the principle of Life by which we are saved and receives life and in this state we stand not in any Opinion but in a feeling of life and salvation for all opinions are in notions and apprehensions in which none feels the life and salvation in Christ but what they apprehend in the natural part unto that they give up their own belief and soâ—rrs from the life in themselves and neither believs unto salvation nor receives Eternal Life Smitâ— prim p. 61. I shall not trouble you with an explanation of these uncouth Phrases you may turn to the Key and resolve your selves Sure iâ—…is be the way to understand truths we may caâ—hiere our understandings and judge the most ensual to have most of the Spirit Mr. Pen is much of the same mind He calls those disputing from the Scriptures Dry-cavilling letter-mongers Penington is a little ingenious when he saith in his Questions concerning Vnity pag. 4. Wherein confess my heart exceedingly despised them and cannot wonder that any wise man did or doth yet deâ—pise them Speaking of the way the Quakers have to get Proselytes being without rational demonstations This is far from the Apostes Doctrine and Practise who demonstrated by Reason that Jesus was the Christ who reasoned with Foelix and exhorts to be ready to give a â—eason of the hope that is in us to every one that â—â—all ask us I expect some Replies to my Book agreeable to this irrational humour But I desire those who shall think fit to undertake an Answer that they would not play the Rats and knaw here and there a scrap leaving the grand designs and Demonstrations of it untouched I do assure them I am not arrived â—et in my own Opinion to such a perfection but I am willing to learn from even my Adversary although I must likewise acknowledge I am not very big with expectation from the Quakers power of convincing But if they shall instead of answering fill some sheets with personal reproaches and reflections which do not render the things asserted more or less true I bless God I am too much above them to be moved and have cast up my accounts of those costs before I began this building If they shall deny what I charge them with in my Book they must discard their Authors I quote or prove I give not the sense of their words I shall be glad of the former and I fear not the later I desire the Quakers from henceforth if they will maintain Moral honesty even such as many Heathens were possessed of that they would no more call themselves Christians until they fall under another Conversion for it is gross Hypocrisie and Cheating if not of themselves yet of others And although some of them have scorned my Prayers and told me they hated I should pray for them I shall love them with so much benevolence as to â—eg of God to convince them of the Truth by this or what means he pleaseth that they may â—ot only be loved of the truly good with goodwill but also delight but above all that they may glorifie God on Earth in a better way and enjoy God in Heaven to a greater blessedness than their Principles express I have done But let every maâ— prove his own work and then shall he have rejoycing in himself alone and not in another FINIS Luk. 14. 23. Rom. 1. 14. Mat. 6. 23. 1 Cor. 4. 4. Jer. 10. 23. §. 1. §. 2. §. 1. Mat. 28 18 Phil. 2. 10 11.
asserting we are like to have no better evidence and he that is so silly as to believe on so feeble a ground I am sure his faith stands not only below the power and wisdom of God but the right reason of man And this must needs be a human faith in the most sordid sense which hath not any divine evidence for its support We can by the grace of God give a reason of that hope in us which is grounded on Scripture-verity because we can prove that it is the Word of God which was sent from him by the Messengers by him appointed and furnished to that end Acts 19. 13. Jesus we know and Paul we know but who are ye Fourth Character of the Apostles inspired The Apostles as they were commissionated to teach all Nations so they were furnished with Tongues and Languages in a supernatural way by which they could speak to the understandings of any Nation or people to whom they were sent Acts 2. 8. And how we hear every man in our own Tongue wherein we were born And it is remarkable that the Apostle Paul was gifted this way above all or most he being the Apostle more eminently to the Gentile-world and travelled more foreign Countries than any of the other that we read of I cannot but wonder at the blindness of the Quakers who give it as a mark to the true Ministry denying and disdaining all others not to be confined to a certain place in the ordinary exercise thereof but as the Apostles to have no less than the Universe for their Bishoprick while it is apparent that they do not more out-strip others in pretences of Spiritual and supernatural Gifts than they come short of them in visible qualifications for the ministerial imployment especially the knowledge of the Tongues and who ever among them understand any Tongue or can speak or write it besides their native Mother-tongue let them say it if they dare that they came not by it by natural and ordinary means And if God had given them an Apostolical Call and Gifts surely this of Tongues would have made some signe and noise of it for God never calleth to any Gospel-Office and work immediately where he doth not afford abilities for the discharge of it If the Quakers had the Gift of Tongues who direct their Pamphlets to all Princes and Potentates to every Creature and all Nations in the World surely some of them by that Gift would have preached their Doctrines to foreign Nations But some have attempted it and sped so ill as to become dumb preachers in other Countries Others have learned more wit than to make the adventure yet their Writings are full stuffed with the bold asserting of their Apostolical Call Gifts and Inspirations SECT IV. Having given you some Characters of the Apostles who were called to that Office and were inspired by the Holy Ghost I shall take some pains to give you an account of inspiration it self as it is distinct in its very species and kinde not in degrees only from those teachings and illuminations of the Spirit which are ordinary and common in some measure to all the Saints The right understanding of this will keep not only in the Controversie before us but in many other cases that may occur I shall before I enter on the differences between the Spirits inspirations and common illuminations of the Saints by the Spirit prove that there is such a difference and that the one is not in any degree or measure the other All the Saints have the saving and sanctifying teaching and enlightnings of the Spirit yet not all of them nay but a very few of them had the extraordinary enlightnings of the Spirit by way of inspiration Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his 1 Cor. 3. 16. So that every Babe in Christ hath the Spirit of Christ in its saving manifestations and operations or effects though but a few were immediately inspired And God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets c. Are all Apostles are all Prophets are all Teachers 1 Cor. 12. 28 29. The Apostle Paul doth plainly express this specifical difference or difference in the very kind of the Spirits teachings in and to his own person But she is happier if she so abide after my judgment and I think also that I have the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 7. 40. The Apostle doth in the case there agitated give his advice as a Saint who had the Spirit of God in the same kind of enlightning which other Saints had or all the Saints had but in an eminent measure yet this enlightning and teaching of the Spirit was not by way of immediate and Apostolical inspiration but by enlightning his judgment and enabling his natural faculty of discerning to pierce into and rightly decide the difference For if the Apostle had received what he here expressed by Divine inspiration or the Spirit of the Lord immediately inspiring it would have been not only unnecessary but very much injurious to the infallibility and authority of the Spirit of God to have made his judgment bear a part with it Yea it had been an usurping on the Divine Spirit which an exercise of our judging faculty concerning its truth or falshood must needs be where it is evident that the Spirit of God doth its part by way of immediate inspiration to which ready and full credit ought to be given without hesitation SECT V. Characters of Divine Apostolical Inspirations distinguishing them from all other Instructions That Divine inspiration whereby the Apostles and Prophets as such were illuminated came in without the use of the bodily senses as receptive of outward Objects and carrying them to the rational and considering faculties to make conclusions from them and this is properly immediate Divine inspiration or revelation But Divine Truths received by the Saints as Saints ordinarily are received by such means as are Objects to the bodily senses as significative sounds to the ear visible Objects to the eye c. let the Quakers or any other shew me if they can that the knowledge of God comes ordinarily to men by any other way without these Faith comes by hearing that is ordinarily for a Babe may have the habits of saving faith whose hearing ferves little to that purpose or by reading that knowledg of God which the Heathen had or might have had without the Word revealed handed to them as to us it was by considering the works of God's Creation and Providence which were the Books wherein God wrote to them many Lessons concerning him and their duty So that in few words persons being illuminated by inspiration it was first within them others have it first from without them at least in the premises from whence the understanding assisted by God infers Truths The great Objection of the Quakers against
the later Position is from his Scripture Rom. 1. 19 20. because that which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them for the invisible things of him c. The words in them in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are either in or among them the later sense is to me the most probable because that while the far greater part of the Gentile-world were so brutish that they little regarded or understood any thing of God but were so besotted with sensuality that they understood and minded nothing but what might gratifie a blind and impetuous appetite some among them whose intellects were better imployed came by the knowledge of excellent things concerning God which they not only taught but left in writing as a witness to Posterity But to put all out of doubt the 20 verse speaks what I affirm plainly For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead c. Here you have an account what may be known of God by the Heathen who had neither revelation immediate to themselves nor handed to them from others by the Word heard or read viz. the eternal power and Godhead and that which they were condemned for ver 26. was not for not knowing or practising what had relation to the Mediator or not believing the word of promise which never was within the reach of their ears but for their miscarriages against God the Creator whom they might and ought to have known and acknowledged God is in his essential Being the invisible God but he was manifest among them How From the Creation of the World by the things that are made Take another Text for the confirmation of my Exposition of this Act. 14. 17. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons c. They were not without witness concerning the Divine Being and Attributes of Mercy and Goodness yet if the rain and fruitful Seasons were without them the witness was without them before it was within them But for the Quakers pretences of their conceits of Divine things to be by immediate inspiration of the Spirit to them when we hear of Pagans and Heathen who never had the least notice of or from the Scripture talk of Jesus Christ a crucified Redeemer and the Promises and Covenant of God we may a little listen to them but for a people who live where the Scriptures are so much known to talk Scripture-phrases and Gospel-phrases and then tell us they had it all by Divine revelation immediate to themselves is as ungrateful and foolish as for those who were born and bred in England and have learned their Mother-tongue from their childhood after 30 or 40 years to affirm they learned every word of it by immediate inspiration or could have known it as perfectly if man had never taught them while in the mean time those forem Languages they never heard spoken they can neither speak nor understand one sentence of if it would save the world Again Those Gospel-illuminations for the matter which are by immediate inspiration are beyond the utmost reach of our natural faculties of the mind though sanctified to attain by their improvement and therefore it is said to be 2 Tim. 3. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Divinely inspired It is not produced in the exercise of the rational faculties the Soul is purely passive or receptive therein and is to those illuminations as the wax is to the Seal according to 2 Pet. 1. 21. For the Prophesie came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 acted carried Some of them viz. the Prophetical part were so far from being attained by the use of natural faculties though sanctified that their very wills which are the first movers even in intelligent agents did not ordinarily so much as direct their understandings to the finding out the Truths which were revealed to them but when their thoughts in their present posture had no tendencie to any such particular things no more than a man in a deep sleep they were then moved by the Holy Ghost that whereas ordinarily they are fixed and bent to such or such ends by the humane will here the Divine will takes its place and doth all And for those Historical parts of the Scripture as of the Creation Fall of man written by Moses c. and the Doctrinal parts written by the Apostles c. although the things in general might be the scope and aim of their intentions yet the gale by which they were driven steadily and infallibly was not the utmost of their natural and sanctified and highest improved faculties but the supernatural guidance of the Divine Spirit whose product was like it self without the least stain or spot of humane frailty and weakness Whereas that illumination of the Spirit which in the kind of it is common to all Saints flows in by the Lords blessing on the improvement of their understandings and judgments whether on Creation Providence or matter divinely revealed without them originally viz. that contained in the Scripture which although their faith be resolved into and determined by yet the highest pitch of their spiritual understanding is raised by a right and sanctified ratiocination from those principles comparing spiritual things with spiritual And experience teacheth that though an idle loytâ—râ—r mâ—y grow giddy with empty swimming notions which are rather the disease of a spiritual pride and intoxication yet God doth mostly if not only bless those with high and solid illumnations who humbly wait on him and beg the concourse and assistance of the Father oâ— Lights and Spirit of Truth That God doth bless in such ways to the such illuminations of the Spirit is clear from this Scripture Heb. 5. 12 14. For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk c. It was their sin which was rebuked as the cause of their ignorance and what that should be but their slothful unfaithfulness in the use of advantages I know not But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age this must not be understood of number of dayes but measure of knowledge even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil They were thus illuminated by the Spirit in the way of the use and exercise of their sanctified natural faculties and the Ordinances of God for that end If any Quaker shall say True we are illuminated not by study and poring as they call it on the Scripture or any thing else but have our knowledge without such carnal toil and the