out of their Synagogue and as I passed in their Hands amongst the Croud through the Grave-yard and into the Streets I Sounded forth the Day of the Lord and the Judgments of our God upon all the Wicked Head and Tail and for that together for what was done in the Steeple-house they further hawled me by Command as they said to the Prison the common Goal where I remained till the next Day and then afterwards was led amongst the Fettered Felons as they call them to their Judgment Seat three several times Thus was I numbred among the Trangsgressors and made contented to bear Christ's Reproach And though the Enemies did not only prepare a Bill of Indictment against me and by their Juries as they call them Judged me guilty as they call it of a Disturbance but also the Judge whom God will Judge did set Five Marks Fine upon me and Imprisonment until I should pay it though indeed the Disturbance and Offence was on their part for they Disturbed me in the Precious Work of the Lord and have kept me hitherto in the Goal for my good Will towards them the Lord forgive them for they do they know not what and so what in them lieth provoke the Wrath of God against themselves But Blessed be the Lord tho' they have and do use me as is said yet the Truth both at the time of my Examination and since hath had Dominion over them and the Friends of Truth in the Country rather encouraged to go on in the Truth than any way daunted the Glorious God of our Life and Peace be Magnified And so let all your Hearts dear Friends in the Living Power and Truth of our God be Comforted and Established even to you I Speak who know the goodness of the Cross of Christ and submit willingly unto it in all things not to be Terrified at all by the Enemies endeavours knowing that through many Tribulations we must daily pass to the Kingdom And this is a Faithful Saying that If we Suffer with Christ we shall Reign with him And truly Friends the Love of God to my Soul hath been so preciously and is daily Manifested in this Prison-Condition that if it could be Expressed you would never be much troubled after it at the Sufferings for the Truths Sake So all in the Light Walk and in the Power of Truth Dwell that you may bring forth Fruits in all things to the Living God that in Peace you may lay down your Heads and with joy give in your Accounts to God continually as Good and Faithful Stewards and Servants in his Vineyard and work whereunto you are called And the Lord God of Fulness supply what may seem wanting unto you or any of you in regard of mine or other Friends in the Ministry our absence in this time knowing that we are not our own but in the disposing of Him who Rules and Orders all according to the good Pleasure of His own Will and that for good in all things to such as Fear Him and in Spirit truly wait For truly Friends I had thoughts of being up amongst you again may be before this time if this or the like had not hindered So Rests your dear Brother in the Faith and Service of the Gospel Thomas Taylor TO FRIENDS Dear Friends MY Tender Love in the Lord Jesus Christ doth dearly salute you all wishing and desiring even from the Bowels of our Tender Father's Love all pure Refreshings and holy powerful Strengthning unto all your Souls that you may be born up and carried on in the way of his pure Fear and heavenly Righteousness which he hath brought you into and blessed you in to do his Will and to glorifie his Name for Ever that our Souls may live together in the sweet Unity of Love Life and Peace with our God out of the reach of the present Evil World to sound forth his holy Praises World without end even in and under our own Vine and Fig-tree Christ Jesus where none can come to make us afraid and where the Troublers of Israel neither do nor ever shall come to disturb our Happy Peace and Rest World without end For Dear Hearts however things seem to be in the outward yet truly God is good to Israel even such as are of a broken contrite pure and clean Heart So God Almighty you all keep and preserve even so in his pure Love for Ever rests yours all Dearly in the Love of our Father Thomas Taylor A Loving and Seasonable Advice TO THE Children of Light From a BROTHER Thomas Taylor YE Children of the Most High Begotten to God by the Word of his Power which liveth and endureth for Ever and who through the Leadings of his Heavenly Hand are brought through the Vail that is the Flesh into the Holiest of all the Banqueting-house of the Father where his Banner over you is Love all Day long and so are come to read your Names written in the Book of Life which is a Mystery hid from all the Wisdom of the World I say unto you O all ye Children of the Heavenly Wisdom keep your Habitation keep in the Wisdom and Strength of the Lord God Almighty your Father and give not your holy Things to Dogs nor cast your Pearls before the Swine for the Dogs will turn again and rent you and the Swine will tread the Pearl under their Feet So be ye wise in the dispensing and dealing out of your Heavenly Father's Treasures which he hath betrusted you withal and made ye Stewards of for his Glory O stand in awe and sin not in this weighty Matter be not too lavish amongst the wicked Contenders of your Master 's Choice Goods to get a Praise to your selves but be content to be as Fools before them rather than to let the Babylonians into your Treasures yea though they make a dissembling shew of Love lest a Judgment follow as it did to Hezekiah of whom you may read Isa 39. Chapter throughout O my Friends the Serpent is Subtle and Herod is Cruel and therefore wait in the dread of the Lord God to feel and savour the Serpent's Voice in all for no more will any that are guided by the Serpent receive Truth in the Love of it though it be never so plainly told them where it is and what it is in it self and what it will be to those that receive it in Love I say no more will they love it than Herod did the young Child whom he only enquired after that he might slay him So we may daily see that the Contenders and vain Enquirers of this present time are of Herod and the Serpent's Race who cannot endure to hear of the Birth of that Seed that is above every other Seed and is King of the true Jews in Spirit and to whom all the Fleshly Births under what Name or Profession soever must be subjected and bow And as the love of the Lord doth indeed constrain us as freely and abundantly to Communicate of
agree to set at naught The living Virtue by which Saints are taught And so at large the wicked Mind is left In Vnbeliâ—vers to make up by theft And stealth in their out-side and vain Profession What they of Truth do want in true Possession But Babes of Zion feed upon that Bread The real Substance Jesus Christ their Head Which came from Heaven and thither hath them led With him to rest in his Eternal Bâ—d They feed upon him in the Mistery Hid from the Raven and the Vulters Eye For where the Body is the Saints Resort And there are kept secure as in a Fort Of Brass or Iron where the Table 's Ready All day full fraught with Dainties for the Needy Yea for the Needy and the Hungry Soul To take and freely Feed without Controul When false prophane Professors in the double Mind Much seem and dream they Eat but all 's but Air and Wind. Of Prayers WHen as a tuned Instrument my Mind is in the Lord Well set and with his Power Assist O then I can Record The mighty Acts and wonders great of him that Rules on High And of his great Magnificence from whom the Heavens do fly And Earth also when he is pleased to make his Power known In Mercies and in Judgments deep for such as are his own When â—â—e an Arm of Help doth reach unto the needy Soul When he the daring Power of the Enemy doth Controul O then I say what Treasure can before his Presence stand Before his Glorious Face who is the Lord of Sea and Land Where Kings and Princes are as Dust and nothing in his sight Yea all who in their carnal Minds against his Glory fight Yet he doth make his Residence with every humble Heart That loves his Name and from his Truth by no means can depart His presence is their perfect stay and they in him can say He is our Rock that nothing shall our Spirits much dismay Yea though our Troubles for a Night or so upon us lye Yet in the Morning we are Saved as we to him did cry So be it Concerning ZION IF I Jerusalem forget a People sav'd from Pride Then let my Skilful Hand forget the warbling Harp to guide And if Mount Zion in my Joy I do not still set up Then let my Tongue cleave to my Mouth and taste of Sorrows Cup. said David So shall the Seed of David now in Heart and Pen endeavour The Praise of Zion to Record and of her God for ever And Blessed are those Men on Earth that with us now take part In this our Work of Innocence when all the rest must smart For how can Israel 's Kingdom be the Portion of such Wights As will not have God's Truth to Raign but still against it Fights The Life more than Cloaths and Meat O Lord God my Life is in thy Service and my Soul 's Everlasting Peace and Satisfaction in thy Love all the Things of this World are of an empty fading Nature and yield not the least true Content unto the Immortal Soul but only answer a Mortal Necessity as the Apostle saith Meat 's for the Belly and the Belly for Meats but God will destroy both iâ— and them so Cloaths for the Back and the Back for Cloaths but God will destroy both it and them and so for other things of the World they serve but only for Worldly and Temporal Necessities but now Man made in the Image of God breaths after a more Excellent Good than this World hath to give for in the Soul which is Mortal there abides an Immortal Desire and from that an Immortal Cry after that Holy and Heavenly Food of Life which is in the full Hand of God to give and so when that is received and digested in the pure Mind then goes forth Praises and Thanksgivings to the Lord the pure and fall Fountain of all Everlasting and Eternal good Things and so happy they who come through the Obedience of the Truth to have their Hearts seasoned with this Heavenly Salt of the Word of God the Living Word which abides for Ever For in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and that Word was God and is the Lise and Light of Man and all places in Man which is not filled with this Living Light is full of Darkness and the dark places of the Earth are full of the Habitations of Unrighteousness and Cruelty and there is engendred all the Ravenous Birds and Beasts of Prey all the fiery stinging Serpents and every Venemous Thing which annoys hurts and disquiets the Living Plant which God hath planted in the Paradise of his Pleasure and seeks to devour the Man-child as soon as it is Born but into the Arms of the Eternal Power of Life is the Babe taken and by the Choicest Angel is the Plant watered and defended and so the wicked is disappointed of his Prey and therefore doth he retreat into his Den of Darkness gnawing his Tongue because of his Plagues So be it O Lord our Strength and mighty Joy How Glorious is thy Name within our Hearts We cannot cease to Preach thy Truth Though for it at us Satan shoot his Darts Though Hell be broken loose upon the Earth To vent its Malice for a little time And make the Righteous Man his Butt to shoot at Yet God will Plague them for their mighty Crime The greatness of their Evil passeth thought Their Sins in number far exceeds the Sand And therefore will the Lord against them plead With all his Judgments in his Wrathful Hand And though great Trials be to try the Faith Of pure and upright hearted People now Yet that pure holy Power will us defend Who makes the very Devils fear and bow To the Unsatiable Devourers of Strong Drink WHat Hellish Spark is that in your Inflamed Brest Which neither suffer's God nor Man to Rest But doth disorder even the whole Creation Bringing God's Judgments thick on every Nation Ye will not hear nor learn the thing that 's good But eat and drink up Sin your daily Food Be filthy still ye filthy Ones and when Your Measure is full your dreadful Doom comes then Thomas Taylor HE that to Glory would attain And many Happy Days would see His Tongue from Evil must refrain And eke his Heart from Sin keep free He must both watch and ward in Heart And persevere in that good deed Lest Satan wound him with his Dart As he doth all that take not heed Such must not promise to themselves Great things on Earth as Sinners do Who build and plant and root therein As from it they would never go But he that to the Heavens would come To dwell in that which never fades Must not in the World set up his Rest Nor shelter under Mortal shades TO MY Dear Friends every where O My Friends and Faithful to God whose Hearts are Tender and Zealous after the Lord and his Honour in this day of the Tryal of our most
precious Faith Grace Mercy and Power from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ be abundantly multiplied in you and the Blessed Arm of his Power support you and carry you through all the present and future Tryals for the Gospels sake on Earth for us hath the Lord drawn out of the many Waters and set our Feet upon the sure Rock of Ages the tryed Foundation and brought our Souls into the unmoveable Rest Glory to his Name for ever that we might be to his Praise and Glory and Honour for ever that he might dwell in us and we in him for ever and so be safe for ever under his Wing where the Wicked cannot come because of Unbelief and that great Violence whereby they have stopt the way of all good from their Souls But now Dear Hearts and Beloved in the Lord you who have loved the Light and received the Power which makes all manifest and cleanseth from all Sin you are Blessed even the Blessed of the Lord God of Heaven and Earth who loves your Souls with a perfect Love and fills your Hearts day by day with his Infinite Goodness Therefore as a Recompence for all his Mercies give up your selves to his Holy Will in all things and love the Lord the same our everlasting God and Father with all your Hearts Souls Mind and Strength and he will do abundantly for you and us all even his whole Israel in every place beyond all that we can ask or think Look not out at the World nor their Love nor Hatred for they are Men and not Gods but keep in the Sanctuary of God the Spirit of Christ and there is Safety with him is the Well of Life which refreshes our Souls continually and makes all things easie and possible to us through Faith in his Name and Patience So let Patience have its perfect Work for we have daily need of it that we may continually see and feel the Love of the Lord in the Land of the Living and not be clouded with the Spirit of this World which gendreth to Bondage in any thing For if Lot's Wife look back she is presently turned into a Pillar of Salt and if the Israelite turn back but in his Heart into Egypt he is snared in Unbelief So my Dear Friends look up to the Lord in Spirit and Truth and wait continually to feel his living Presence in you to keep you open and single to him that of the powerful Spirit of his Holiness which slays the Sin and quickens the Soul to God you may be Witnesses and so come to possess the Immortal Kingdom where Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost only reigneth So with the Dear Salvation of my Love unto you all I commend you to the Lord to bless keep and water with his Goodness continually to his Glory who only is Holy and gives us freely every good thing to enjoy both for Soul and Body who is near to the Righteous in every Necessity to Help and Save to the uttermost To whom be Glory and Immortal Praise Even so rests with you in the full Assurance of his Tender Mercies in Christ Jesus your Dear Brother Thomas Taylor TO FRIENDS TO the Called and Chosen of God the Dear Vessels of Life and Glory in all the Earth doth the Tender Salutation of me your Dear Brother reach who as a feeling Member in the Holy Body of the Lord Jesus do daily partake with you of the Blessed Joys of Life Eternal and of the present Sufferings for the same who therefore cannot but continually through the pure Love and Lifes Motion breathe out amongst you the Happy state of our Innocent Souls because of Truth upon every Occasion to the stirring up and refreshing of the tender good thing the Heavenly Mind in all to the joint Praising Blessing and Magnifying of the Lord 's great Name for his abundant kindness towards every Particular Faithful Ones for Ever and Ever for he is good to Israel unspeakably unalterably true to them for Ever And now Dear Friends seeing God hath been so gracious to us above all the People of the Earth as to set his Name upon us in Righteousness to the Amazement and Astonishment of many and hath caused our Rod that was dry even as others to flourish and bear Fruits in the midst of the Earth to the Praise of his Living Power as a Token of his Acceptance and Choice And seeing God hath so graciously performed his Promises to us his Seed made to his Israel of Old in bringing up our Souls from Death and our Life from the devouring Sword and hath unloosed our Tongues to speak of his Wonders in the great Congregation why shall we not then speak good of this the Name of our God the true Everliving God in Comparison of whom the whole World with their many Idols Gods and Lords are nothing We may not be hindred by the Adversary from breathing forth our pure Life given us of God for his Glory in a continual mention of his Holiness for if we should be silent the very Stones would do it for now is the Lord Jesus arisen indeed and ascended far above all Heavens Principalities Powers Names and Greatnesses whatsoever and come again to our Spirits according to his Blessed Promise that of his unspeakable Fulness we might all partake in abundance to the causing of our Cup to overflow with all Holy and Heavenly Consolations and Praises for the perfect Salvation of our God to the watering of every tender holy Plant in Israel that waits for the same For as the Dew to the tender Herbs so is thy Blessing O Immanuel to the Garden of thy own planting thy Beloved Plants that waits for thee amongst whom the pourings forth of thy Name is as sweet Ointment And Blessed are all that wait for thee who hast inclosed thy Beloved People in the Arms of thy own Almightiness and filled them with thy own Blessed Kingdom and Righteousness who hungred after thee even so Father of Life be it for Evermore to thy own unspeakable Glory who alone art worthy So now Dear Friends into the Unity of the Holy Life Power and Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ let every Soul of us gather and retire it self to be nourished up thereby and preserved to a daily and perfect Victory over all Temptations and Provocations whatsoever that upon the very Head of the Serpent we may tread and let us not look at the seen things for therein lyes the Wiles and Temptations but let us eye and feel the Blessed Invisible Life and Powerful Heavenly Spirit of our God to carry us through and over all to his Glory who hath said That he will never leave nor forsake his tender breathing Seed that waits on him so Blessed are all that are found in this his Covenant and follow him as Dear Children and Obedient Servants in the sure and safe way of the daily Cross and Self-denial to a perfect mortifying and subduing of the fleshly
ye gone and there are amongst the Heathen worshipping the Works of your own Hands and falling down to that which your Fingers have framed and you delight in a thing of naught and the Lord the Light that made you you are become Strangers unto and is accounted by you as a weak natural thing that cannot help And his Day Power and Kingdom is put far away from you and instead thereof the Seat of Violence is drawn near to you and in the Seat of the Scorners and Mocker of the Last Times have you placed your selves saying Where is the Promise of his Coming when as him Christ Jesus the Light in whom all the Promises of God are Yea and Amen is rejected by you even by your Builders Thomas Taylor To the Bear-ward UNTO thee O Man who art called the Bear-ward do these words come Fear and tremble before the Lord God who is against all such wicked and ungodly Men as thy self is who contrary to the Law of God and the Nation goest up and down the Country keeping this great Evil of Bear-baiting on foot to the Corrupting of the Country for thy own filthy Lucre and abominable Covetousness which is the Root of all Evil And the Lord's Hand hath been long stretched out against all such Lewd Men but you go on in your Wickedness and repent not and therefore nothing can you expect as a Reward of your evil Work but everlasting Wo and Misery And to all you Foolish and Heathenish-minded People who are the Upholders and Spectators of these Brutish Customs of Bear-baiting yea and can spend your precious Time Strength and Money in the thing the Lord is against you also and his Soul is greatly grieved and burthened with you and will assuredly visit with his Wrath these and all your lewd and wicked Practices So if there be in any of you any Heart left for the Good repent lest you Perish in your Sins with such as hates to be reformed Rests the Lord's Servant who cannot but Sorrow to see you thus from time to time go on in your Sins without Remorse Thomas Taylor To the Dancers on the Ropes WO to the Dancers upon the Ropes and Tempters of God with their wicked Inventions and Wo to the Man that maintains and upholds such for filthy Lucre to draw the Peoples Minds from God O Repent Repent the Day of the Lord is at hand a Day of bitter Howling and Lamentation to all such Workers of Iniquity will it be Did ever any Child of God or any that had any Fear of God in them go up and down the Country with vain Fellows at their heels disfiguring themselves and playing Tricks upon Stages and Ropes like the Heathen that knew not God and all meerly to draw the Minds of the Multitude after them for filthy Lucre. O Cursed Covetousness What hast thou done in all the Earth the Root of all Evil well may it be called and Idolatry which whosoever follows do separate their Souls from the Glory of God and all the Good that is in his Kingdom And then O ye deceitful and vain People What will it profit you to gain the whole World and lose your Souls Rests God's Servant and a Witness in his Power against all vain and wicked Inventions of Faln Man Thomas Taylor A Warning to all People WEEP not for the Dead but Weep for the Living even for those that remain in the Body upon the Earth because of the Miseries Plagues and Judgments that are come and coming upon all the Wicked Sinful and Unholy People in all Lands for the Lord hath a Controversie with all Nations and great will be the Desolations because of Iniquity and Violence that is grown up to so great a height that it hath even as it were filled the whole Earth and the Lord seeth all your Doings O People and your secretest Workings when in your Minds ye Plot against the Lamb's Life which would redeem out of all the many Snares of the Devil whereby the Ungodly are kept fast at his Will But the Men of Nineveh shall rise up in Judgment against the Impenitent in the whole Earth for they repented at the Preaching of Jonah but behold a greater than all is come into the World even Jesus Christ the Righteous and they believe him not neither repent of their evil and violent Doings but harden their Hearts against his Holy Spirit 's Reproof to their own Destruction Thomas Taylor For the People of England to Weep WEEP thou England Howl Howl ye People for the Dreadful Day of the Lord God is at hand it is at the Door as an armed Man coming swiftly upon you to break down and tread under feet thy Pomp Glory Pride and Strength Thou hast exceeded in thy Sins and art grown monstrous in thine Iniquities so the Lord will be exceeding Terrible unto thee Thou hast suffered the Wicked in thee to have liberty and to take their Fill of Sin when the Voice of the Righteous cannot be endured in thee but he that departs from Iniquity and would perswade others so to do also is even made a Prey of by ungodly and unreasonable Men their Bodies imprisoned and banished and Estates spoiled and many sorts of Injuries done them for thy Name and Truths sake O Lord God And therefore will the Lord God arise to take Vengeance for these things yea his Soul will certainly be avenged on such a Nation as this saith his Spirit in his Servant Thomas Taylor And moreover because you have said in your Hearts We have compassed them about with an Act and now none shall worship God but as we please Therefore will the Lord the mighty God compass you about with his Terrors and you shall find no place to hide your selves in from his Wrath because of the Pride of your Heart and Evil of your Doings O all ye People of the Land who are guilty in these things saith the Lord God To the Comers and Goers by the Prison-Window of both Sorts ALL simple-hearted People who have any thing of the true Fear of God moving upon your Hearts and whose Desires are in any measure purely after God and Goodness and are not altogether hardned against the Lord and Good of your Souls Consider and ponder a little and unbethink you well as in the Presence of God what hath been from time to time declared to you and all People out of the Prison-Window Hath not the Witness of God in his Servant declared amongst you the Dreadful Day of the Lord God which will assuredly come upon all the Wicked and such as are covered and not with the Spirit of the Lord whether Priests or People And hath not the same Voice in great Love and Tenderness freely proclaimed Peace and Good Will to the Penitent and the most acceptable Day of the Lord to the Broken-hearted and such as Mourn under the Sense of Sin and Burthen of Unrighteousness without respect of Persons And are not these things to be
Free Gift of our God and no Inchantment shall now stand against God's Spiritual Host nor Divination against the Redeemed of the Lord who have known his Wonders in the Deep and known the Out-goings of God's Power against Pharaoh and all his Host in the Red Sea of his Fiery Indignation And now will God be exalted in Judgment and avenged in Righteousness upon all Nations and People under Heaven who hold the Truth in Unrighteousness and will not that God's Holy Son Christ Jesus the Light should Reign though he be come to Reign and Judge in the Earth For to him the Light who lighteth every Man that cometh into the World is all Power in Heaven and Earth given and his Light shines freely into all your Hearts O all People of the Earth and shineth in the thickest Darkness making manifest the Creator's Will to all your Consciences through your Darkness tho' People comprehend it not but it comprehends you and all your dark Ways and destroying Thoughts and lets you see plainly that for all your great Workings and toilsom Labours in an outside Profession in your earthly Wills you have wrought no Deliverance in the Earth but your Soul's Enemies still stand in strength and it lets you see plainly that for all your striving and sighting and killing and spoiling and destroying one another about earthly things you have done no good at all but brought God's Judgments upon all your Souls and pierced your selves through with many Sorrows And therefore the Heavenly Voice sounds through the Earth and calls aloud in your Ears and knocks at the Door of your Hearts O all People of the World High and Low Professor and Prophane Jews and Gentiles Christianâ— and Turks arise arise awake awake turn in your Minds to the pure Light of Jesus Christ the Judge of Quick and Dead the Son of the Eternal God Creator of Heaven and Earth who Died for your Sins and Rose again to give you a New Holy and Everlasting Life in himself through Faith in his Name And behold he lives for Evermore and all see and search diligently in your selves what you know of his Holy Life made manifest in you to destroy the Body of Sin and Death in you which in the Days of Darkness hath filled your Vessel and brought your very Soul Mind and Heart into the Thraldom of that wicked One who is called the Devil and Satan and compassed with Terrours and Fears and Affrightments your very Life and whole Man because of the Wrath of the Almighty which you by your sinful unrighteous and unholy and cruel doings both against God and your Neighbour have stirred up against you And behold the Earth languisheth because of these things and the Children of Light who are Redeemed to God out of these sore Evils and grievous Plagues do mourn for you and bewail your Misery Night and Day as well knowing in the Light of the Lord what your woful End will be if these Briars and Thorns and noisom Weeds the proper Fruit of the Curse be still suffered to grow in you and cumber God's Ground O how nigh unto Cursing is that Field which God's Rain rains upon and yet brings forth no better Fruit than Killing and Slaying and Spoiling and Cousening and Cheating and Defiling and Oppressing one another besides Lving and Swearing and Cursing and Drunkenness and Pride and Persecution of God's Righteous Seed with all other Abominations of the World against the holy Light and Checks and Reproofs of the good Spirit of the Almighty both in their own Consciences and the Mouth of God's Servants and Holy Witness of Truth in the Scriptures which notwithstanding all these their Abominations many of them profess to be their Rule But know O Man whosoever thou art or whatsoever Profession thou art of that that 's thy God and Ruler and Father and Teacher and Way whose Commands thou lovest and whose Works thou doest and whose Will in the inward of thy Mind thou closest with as Christ said to those Liars false Accusers and Murtherers in his Day John 8.44 c. Ye are of your Father the Devil for his Works ye will do he was a Liar and a Murtherer from the beginning so thou that goes from the Light of God in thee which shews thee thy Sin and the evil Lustings and Desires of thy Flesh and Mind thou goes from God and from his Fear and from the Way of Peace and so thou going from this and joining to evil Motions of Sin in thy Flesh or Corrupted Mind thou joins to the Devil and so brings forth Sin which is the Devil's Work and the Wages of every such Work is Death and so in the very Moment of time in which thou dost the evil Work whatsoever it be contrary to God's Light in thee thou diest the Death and so remainest Dead from the Life of God and his Blessed Righteousness until the Day of true Repentance and Amendment of Life and then what will it profit thee to have gained the World or Victory over thy Neighbour or Satisfaction to thy Lusts in the Loss of thy Soul's Life therefore arise arise awake awake O all Nations and People come forth to the Judgment of this great Day of God Almighty for now is the effect of every Vision to be known and felt in the Earth and the high Towers of the City of Confusion the Mystery Babylon the Great Whore the Mother of Harlots shall fall to the Ground and the Mountain of the House of the Lord shall be exalted over all yea the Lord alone and his Righteousness and Truth and Peaceable Kingdom on the top of all shall stand and no Weapon formed against him and his People shall ever prosper And how is it O all Nations Kings and People that ye are not yet willing after so many Years knocking at the Gates of your Cities and Doors of your Hearts that you will not open to the King of Glory Christ Jesus the Light that lightneth every Man that cometh into the World that he may come in and be Judge and Lawgiver and King in the midst of you that the Desire of all Nations may come and be Head in all For what is it that the Soul which God hath made in all Nations doth desire but to see it self unburthened of that grievous Corruption which hath defiled it and to be delivered from that Body of Sin and Death which hath and doth so Embondage it from the beginning until Christ's Power be known within to work the Work of God and to destroy the Work of the Devil and to save the Soul from its Sin and present it spotless to God which is the true Salvation indeed Now this is my Witness for God amongst the Servants and Redeemed of the Lord this Day whom the World in Scorn call Quakers who suffer for Righteousness sake That there is none that can thus know the Day of Christ's Power to Salvation but as they believe and receive that Light of God and
is above all and over all who was before the World was and hath brought us to reign with him eternally above the World Now here is the Joy and cause of our Rejoycing who have followed the Lamb through great Tribulation and are brought above the Tribulations to dwell in the Presence of the Living God This is Joy unspeakable and full of Glory which shall never have an end Hallelujah to our King for evermore By a Friend Thomas Taylor Watching for Sin WO to you that wake to Sin and watch for Iniquity that spend their Days in Vanity and so bring themselves with Sorrow to the Graves and their Souls to the Pit of Destruction The Trumpet of the Lord is sounding to awaken you to the Judgment of his great Day which burns as an Oven against all the Workers of Iniquity upon the Face of the whole Earth The Apostle saith Awake to Righteousness and Sin not But you that observe these Popish Wakes and Antichristian Revels you awake to Sin and Unrighteousness with the Strength and Delight of your uncircumcised Hearts like the Heathen that know not God The Papists appointed a Feast at the Dedication of their old dead Mass-houses and you their Children who uphold these Wakes bear witness against your selves that you were never yet in heart truly separated from their Idolatries O the Blindness and Deadness of your Teachers that cannot bark against this dead Idol And therefore doth the Lord warn you all to stand up from the Dead that Christ may be your Light to see such wretched and Soul destroying Vanities as these Wakes are that so through Repentance for them you may find Mercy and not perish with them that perish from the right way Rests God's Servant Thomas Taylor A Warning to the NATIONS To Layaside all Prejudice and Enmity The Ground of Strife and Wars And to come and Embrace the Light of Christ Jesus that they may see themselves and come to be Saved and Healed and United in the Love of God THE Indignation of the Lord is upon all Nations and his Fury upon all their Armies he will greatly distress the Inhabitants of the World he will now plead the Cause of his Covenant of Light against all those that withstand his Glorious Appearance and Work of Restoration in this the day of his Mighty Power wherein he is giving the Kingdom of his Everlasting Peace to Israel's Seed under the whole Heavens who fear his Great Name and tremble at his Almighty Word of Life which shakes not only Earth but Heaven also And now is the Lord God Almighty bringing forth his Glory to light and creating the new Heavens and new Earth wherein dwells Righteousness according to his Promise Isa 65.17 c. wherein the People beat their Swords into Plow-shears and their Spears into Pruning-hooks never to learn War any more but every one now that believes in the Truth Christ Jesus the Light and true King of Righteousness and Peace shall sit under him the true Vine and none to make them afraid Isa 2.2 c. And now even now is the Lord God Almighty arisen and got up into his high Throne of Majesty and everlasting Glory to Reign and of this his Peaceable Kingdom which he hath begun to set up in his Trembling People there never shall be End The true Israel of God is now coming up out of the Spiritual Egypt indeed to possess the true Land of Promise the Inheritance and Free Gift of our God and no Inchantment shall now stand against God's Spiritual Host nor Divination against the Redeemed of the Lord who have known his Wonders in the Deep and known the Out-goings of God's Power against Pharaoh and all his Host in the Red Sea of his Fiery Indignation And now will God be exalted in Judgment and avenged in Righteousness upon all Nations and People under Heaven who hold the Truth in Unrighteousness and will not that God's Holy Son Christ Jesus the Light should reign though he be come to Reign and Judge in the Earth For to him the Light who lighteth every Man that cometh into the World is all Power in Heaven and Earth given And his Light shines freely into all your Hearts O all People of the Earth and shineth in the thickest Darkness to make manifest the Creator's Will to all your Consciences though your Darkness O People comprehends it not but it comprehends you and all your dark Ways and destroying Phoughts and lets you see plainly That for all your great Workings and toilsom Labour in an Out-side Profession in your Earthly Wills you have wrought no Deliverance in the Earth but your Souls Enemies still stand in strength And it lets you see that for all your Striving and Fighting and Killing and Spoiling and Destroying one another about Earthly Things you have done no good at all but brought God's Judgments upon all your Souls and pierced your selves through with many Sorrows And therefore the Heavenly Voice sounds through the Earth and calls aloud in your Ears and knocks at the Door of your Hearts O all People of the World High and Low Professor and Prophane Jews and Gentiles Christians so called and Turks Arise Arise Awake Awake turn in your Minds to the pure Light of Jesus Christ the Judge of Quick and Dead the Son of the eternal God Creator of Heaven and Earth who died for your Sins and rose again to give you a New Holy and Everlasting Life in himself through Faith in his Name And behold he lives for evermore And all see and search diligently in your selves what you know of his Holy Life made manifest in you to destroy the Body of Sin and Death in you which in the days of Darkness hath filled your Vessel and brought your very Soul Mind and Heart into the Thraldom of that Wicked One who is called the Devil and Satan and compassed with Terrors and Fears and Affrightments your very Life and whole Man because of the Wrath of the Almighty which you by your Sinful and Unrighteous and Unholy and Cruel Doings both against God and your Neighbour have stirred up against you And behold the Earth languisheth because of these things and the Children of Light who are redeemed to God out of these sore Evils and grievous Plagues do mourn for you and bewail your Misery Night and Day as well knowing in the Light of the Lord what your woful End will be if these Bryars and Thorns and noisom Weeds the proper Fruits of the Curse be still suffered to grow in you and cumber God's Ground Oh! how nigh unto Cursing is that Field which God's Rain rains upon and yet brings forth no better Fruit than Killing and Slaying and Spoiling and Cousening and Cheating and Defiling and Oppressing one another besides Lying and Swearing and Cursing and Drunkenness and Pride and Persecution of God's Righteous Seed with all other Abominations of the World against the Holy Light c. Checks and Reproofs of the good Spirit of the
Almighty both in their own Consciences and the Mouth of God's Servants and Holy Witness of Truth in the Scriptures which notwithstanding all these their Abominations many of them profess to be their Rule But know O Man whoever thou art or whatsoever Profession thou art of that that 's thy God and Ruler and Father and Teacher and Way whose Commands thou lovest and whose Works thou dost and whose Will in the inward of thy Mind thou clofest with As Christ said to those Lyars false Accusers and Murderers in his Day John 8.44 c. Ye are of your Father the Devil for his Works ye will do he was a Lyar and Murderer from the beginning So thou that goest from the Light of God in thee which shews thee thy Sin and the evil Lustings and Desires of thy Flesh and Mind thou goest from God and from his Fear and from the Way of Peace And so thou going from this and joyning to evil Motions of Sin in thy Flesh and corrupted Mind thou joynest to the Devil and so bringest forth Sin which is the Devil's Work and the Wages of every such Work is Death And so in the very moment of time in which thou dost the evil Work whatsoever it be contrary to God's Light in thee thou dyest the Death and so remainest dead from the Life of God and his blessed Righteousness until the Day of true Repentance and Amendment of Life And then what will it profit thee to have gained the World or Victory over thy Neighbour or Satisfaction to thy Lusts to the Loss of thy Soul's Life Therefore Arise Arise Awake Awake O all Nations and People Come forth to the Judgment of this great Day of God Almighty For now is the effect of every Vision to be known and felt in the Earth and the High Towers of the City of Confusion the Mystery Babylon the Great the Mother of Harlots shall fall to the Ground and the Mountain of the House of the Lord shall be exalted over all yea the Lord alone and his Righteousness and Truth and Peaceable Kingdom on the Top of all shall stand and no Weapon formed against him and his People shall ever prosper any more And how is it O all Nations Kings and People that ye are not yet willing after so long a time knocking at the Gates of your Cities and Doors of your Hearts that ye will not open to the King of Glory Christ Jesus the Light that lighteth every one that cometh into the World that he may come in and be Judge Lawgiver and King in the midst of you that the Desire of all Nations may come and be Head in all For what is it that the Soul that God hath made in all Nations doth desire but to see it self unburthened of that grievous Corruption which hath defiled it and to be delivered from that Body of Sin and Death which hath and doth so imbondage it from the beginning until the Day of Christ's Power be known within to work the Work of God and to destroy the Work of the Devil and to save the Soul from its Sin and to present it spotless to God which is the true Salvation indeed Now this is my Witness for God amongst the Servants and Redeemed of the Lord this Day whom the World in Scorn calls Quakers who am a Sufferer with them for the Kingdom of God's sake That there is none can thus know the Day of Christ's Power to Salvation but as they believe and receive that Light of God and Christ which they be freely enlightened withal which shines in their very Hearts and Consciences which searcheth their very Hearts and Reins and maketh manifest to Man his Thoughts and from which none can hide any thing but all things are naked and bare before him the Light Christ Jesus who lighteth every Man that cometh into the World Jew and Gentile one and other who searcheth the most hidden things of Man and brings them forth to the Judgment of his Righteousness For though the Night may hide the Adulterer and the Thief from Man it hides them not from God there is one nigh in the Heart and Conscience that tells Man and Woman all that ever they have done and do daily do even their secret Thorghts Is not this the Christ of God the true Messiah that was to come and is come and dwells amongst us And we look not for another and of his Fulness have all we received and do daily receive who believe in his Light which shines in our Hearts according to the Scriptures of Truth And this the Fulness of our Blessed God and Saviour Jesus Christ the Light is it which filleth all that come to him with all Spiritual Blessings and Heavenly good Things and without whom all is Darkness Emptiness Death and Desolation as all the poor deceived lost Sons and Daughters of the faln Adam do sooner or later know and are made to confess But blessed are they that consider of things in time and lay things to Heart before it be too late For there are but Twelve Hours in a Day in which Men may work saith Chriff and then the Night cometh in which no Man can work But the Door will be shut upon all who have slighted and neglected the Day of their Visitation Oh England England and all Lands far and near that you had known or could yet believe the things that belong to your Everlasting Peace before they be hid from your Eyes Therefore turn ye turn ye at the Reproofs of God's Wisdom and Spirit of Light and Truth which sounds through all and lets you see the Vanity and Evil of all your Works and Frailty of all your Lives how soon the Thread of your Life is out off and then where are the great Emperors and Kings with all their Crowns And where are the great Captains and Commanders with all their Bloody Victories And where are the Wise Achitophel's and Cunning Counsellors of the Earth with all their Admirers And where are the Covetous Oppressors with all their Houses full of the Spoils of the Innocent Yea in that Day where is all the Glory and Lusts of the World with all the Lovers of it Surely in Darkness and Misery shall they lye down together and Death shall have Dominion over them even all who have not believed in the Light Christ Jesus and who have not followed him in the Regeneration that they might be saved but have spent their Days in the Pleasures and Lusts of the present Evil World to Destruction Now therefore O all People Hearken to the Counsel of the Lord in this your Day and learn of the Lamb the Light who calls you to Repentance from all your grievous Ways How long shall the Spirit of the Lord strive with you When will you cease learning War and Destruction and Oppression and Spoil O when will you beat your Swords into Plow-shares and your Spears into Pruning-hooks O when will you go and say one to another
that we are sufficient of our selves to think a good Thought but our Ability is of God who hath made us able Ministers of the New Testament not of the Letter but of the Spirit for the Letter kills but the Spirit gives Life And that which the Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard nor hath entred into the Heart of Man or Humane Heart to conceive hath God reveal'd to us by his Spirit for the Spirit searcheth all things yea the Deep Things of God and which Things we Preach or Speak not in the words which Man 's or Humane Wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth comparing Spiritual things with Spiritual 1 Cor. 2. But this R. B. comparing Spiritual Things with Carnal is not wise who because Old Men and long Students in Arts and worldly Sciences are most Wise or likely to be so therefore they that Labour and Study most in Books of Divinity so call'd get most of the Spirit 's Teaching O sad that ever the Minds of the Children of Men should be so cover'd with Darkness and yet read the Scripture of Truth which witnesses to no one thing more than to the Free Teachings of the Spirit of God without Humane Helps For all the Help that is Humane or that Man who is ab humo that is from the Earth can afford is but Natural and of this World which comes to nought therefore is it said That none of the Princes that is the Chief Men of this World knew the Mystery of Christ and his Kingdom then which made them so Band against him see the 2d Psalm And the Natural Man with all his Natural Means discerns not the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discern'd So every one that would know the Mind of the Spirit of God must come to feel through the Most Holy Faith a measure of it in themselves For after ye believ'd ye were Seal'd with the Spirit of Promise saith Paul And the Word is nigh thee even in thy Heart and Mouth O thou that hast an Ear to hear hear what the Spirit speaks even the Word of Faith which we Preach Therefore go not forth from the Anointing of God in thy Heart to hear the frothy and false Doctrine of such as R. B. who have run and set up themselves by their Humane Helps in the Place of Teachers and God never sent them and therefore they cannot profit the People at all but lead them about like silly Women laden with divers Sins and Lusts yea in their Prayers and best Performances as is manifest and so not being sent and enabled by God's Spirit they can never lead you to it but from it as is manifest Also R. B. in Page 6. before-mention'd saith The Objection hath much Confusion in it And how proves he that But by saying 1. It confoundeth the Spirit 's teaching us by inditing the Scripture with the Spirit 's teaching us the meaning of the Scriptures 2. And it confoundeth the Common Knowledge of Divinity with the Saving Knowledge of it No Man cometh to a Common Knowledge fit for a Teacher of others without the Spirit 's teaching by the Scriptures for that was the first part of the Spirit 's teaching us to inspire the Prophets and Apostles to deliver a Teaching Word to the Churches by which we might all be taught of God through all Generations But many Men have Excellent Common Knowledge by this Word and by the Common Help of the Spirit without that Special Help which begetteth Saving Knowledge And all Knowledge requireth Time and Labour to obtain it though the Spirit giveth it and though it may be sanctified to us in a little time but that may be a means of saving others which saveth not the Man that hath it And in Page 114. farther saith Take them not for no Ministers that want Grace totally And marvel not that Gifts are more necessary to the validity of Ministration than Grace is he may perform the Office of a Minister to the Benefit of the Church that hath no Saving Grace at all Thus far R. B. O! What Sorcery and Egyptian-darkness is here to make void the New Covenant and Free Gracious Teachings of the Spirit of God in these Days and to Establish the Letter in the room and stead thereof which only witnesses to is and is a Declaration concerning what the Spirit of God did in them and in the World before Christ's coming in the Flesh and what was done during his being in it and what the Spirit would do in the Believing Souls and in the World after that time But this the Hirelings do that they by their trading with and giving their false meanings upon the Scriptures they may keep the People in Blindness and so from the Anointing and Teaching and Enjoyment of that Spirit that was in them that gave forth Scriptures that they may not see their deceitful Doctrines and Merchandizes lest they should buy no more of them For no Man that knows the badness of Babylon will buy them any more and then will the Merchants of Souls mourn For they that know the Lord and his Spirit 's Teaching in them which is the Good Old Way yea and the ever New Fresh Profitable and Living VVAY will follow no more such Men as would bring in and establish a Graceless Ministry as this R. B. doth here to his Shame But such Graceless Priests the Lord will have none of nor his People neither For my Sheep hear my Voice saith Christ and a stranger they will not hear Surely a Graceless Man is this Stranger They to wit graceless Men saith John 1 Epist 4. are of the World and the World hear them we are of God Stewards of the manifold Grace of God 1 Pet. 4.10 And they that are of God hear us And so Ever Bless'd and Prais'd be the Great and Glorious Name of the Lord Jesus who hath restor'd to them that Obey him the Glorious Doctrine of the Spirit 's Teaching as was in the Apostles Days according to his true Promise where all in the Truth of which we the People of God in Scorn call'd Quakers are Members is done in and by the Holy Spirit prais'd be God and nothing own'd amongst us but what is so done Here is Praying in and by the Spirit and Preaching in and by the Spirit and Singing in and by the Spirit of our Holy Lord God and so the Head being Spiritual and the Members of the Body every one Spiritual for we are all Baptized by one Holy Spirit into the one Heavenly Body our Food is also Spiritual Heavenly Bread and Heavenly Wine and the Water Spiritual that sanctifies us and makâ—s us clean to God in all our Sacrifices and Services For Christ gave himself for his Church which is his Body that he might wash it and present it spotless to himself and without all Deformity by the washing of Water even the Water of Life in the Word of Life the Creating Word of the
Christianity for saith Christ to his Followers when they were telling of who should be greatest of them he Convinced them of their Error by setting before them a little Child and saying who will be greatest of all must be Servant of all and least of all and that not in Words only but in Deed and Truth say I. But what is any thing that is said of Peter in the Scripture to the Pope O yes saith he he is his Successor To which I say it is as false as any thing is true for Peter was a Holy Man of God of Christ's sending but the Pope an unholy Man of the wicked World's sending chusing and setting up witness the Men chusing him and the manner of their chusing and setting him up the very relation of which in all the Foolish and Antichristian Circumstances of it would even make a truly Honest Spiritual Man's Heartake to hear or read it Again Peter was a Humble Man clothed with Humility as he exhorted others not a Lord over God's Heritage but an Example to it of Faith and Goodness as he exhorted others but the Pope is a Proud Man set up at Rome like a Worldly Prince Ruling and Lording it over God's Heritage not only with his wicked Curses and Excommunications of all that will not bow to his Superstitions and Abominable Idolatries but even Persecuting to Death with worldly Power and Force where he can do it either by his own or others whom he can stir up and perswade to act his wicked Will all such as deny him and against him bear withess though otherwise they be never so dear and near to the Lord God and so instead of being an Example of Goodness to any he is become an Abhorring to Nations and therefore is the Wo come and coming upon him and his Seat and Upholders and Lovers from him who is a Consuming Fire and this Babylon with all its Strength and Glory shall be burnt in his Fire and Zion shall not take one of her polluted Stones to put in her Holy Building It is so Thomas Taylor There is more by me of this kind as in Answer to more Passages of that Bad Book herein mentioned which in due time may come forth and it is this Again as concerning the Pope's succceding Peter and all Successions relating to the Church of God truly so called I say it is meerly Spiritual as the Lord said concerning his Prophet The Spirit that I have put upon thee and the Word which I have put into thy Mouth shall not depart from thee nor out of the Mouth of thy Seed nor out of the Mouth of thy Seeds Seed from henceforth and for ever And so we finding both the Spirit and Word of the Pope to be quite of another Nature than that which was in Peter and the other Apostles we deny him and his Succession together with all other Pretenders to the like Succession who want that Heavenly Spirit Life and Doctrine that they were in In the Ninth Article this Bad Book saith But why may not a well-meaning Man be saved in any Religion He answers First from Ephes 4.5 and Heb. 11.6 where mention is made of one Faith and that without Faith it is impossible to please God Then I say well meaning in the Popish Way without true Faith will not save no more than in any other But then saith he Secondly because as in a natural Body that part which hath not a due Connexion to the Heart or Root presently dies for want of Continuity So in the Church the Mystical Body of Christ faith he that Part or Member that hath not a due Subordination and Connexion unto the Head and Commen Councils thereof that is the Pope and General Councils thou shouldst have said Christ as in Ephes 4.15 16. from whence under Christ we have our Spiritual Life and Motion as we are Christians must needs be dead nor indeed can be accounted a Member of that Mystical Body O Profound Antichristian Doctrine indeed For here thou hast pulled off thy Vizard with thy own Hand and any one of a very mean Understandstanding may see that by this Popish Doctrine Christ the Living Fountain is thrust out of Doors for it must not by this be known what saith Christ and his Spirit to my Soul but what faith the Pope and his Councils to mine Ear. And afterwards this Pleader for Baal to wit the Pope and his Councils accounts them Novelists Hereticks and Idle Brains that will not submit to this Tribunal of Christ he should have said Antichrist on Earth to wit the Pope and his General Councils and makes this alone to be the Cause of all Heresies and Sects as he calls them whether Protestants or other For saith he they will not be tried by this Tribunal but by their own idle Brain and the dead Letter of the Scripture To which I say God will judge this Man and all such for their Wickedness in coupling an idle Brain and the Letter of the Scripture together for though the Scripture be but as a dead thing to them that will neither understand nor believe it yet to an Inlightened Understanding Believing Soul it is of such Service that the Apostle is not afraid to say That the Scripture is given for our Learning upon whom the Ends of the World are come And the Scripture is of such force in the Hand of such Inlightned and truly Understanding Ones that Christ made use of it against the great Wrester of Scripture to wit the Devil and by the right use of it in the hands of the Faithful through the Spirit which gave them forth all the Mud-walls of Popery and Paper Bullwarks of the whole Antichristian Kingdom of False Professors both have and daily are beat down and therefore doth the wicked Popedom keep the Holy Scripture from the poor Slaves under them But the great King Christ Jesus upon his Heavenly Tribunal is bringing his great Work to pass in these latter days against the Beast Whore and False Prophet under what Name or Notion soever and by his Spirit according to Scripture to pour Judgments and Plagues upon all their Tribunals Glory to his Name for evermore Again this Popish Book asks Is not this to wit the want of a Popish Tribunal the reason why the Protestants and other Sects are so divided c. He answers Yea a principal reason For how can different Fancies says he upon different Principles be united I answer No The want of this Tribunal is not the cause And ask What was the Reason of Differences amongst the Jews that had their Tribunal of the Law outward and High Priests and Sanhedrims or great Councils for ordering Matters of Religion Yea and what was the reason that there was Divisions and Dissentions amongst the first Christians when even Peter and other Apostles were living Yea saith the Apostle There must be Heresies among you even you that all profess Christ and he gives a Reason that these that
true Standing and ever Continuing Worship of God which is in Spirit and Truth For saith Christ God is a Spirit and they that Worship him must do it in Spirit even in his own Spirit and Truth So then they that are in the Flesh the Carnal Mind cannot Perform this Worship and so cannot Please God but a Carnal-minded One can observe your Days whether Fasts or Feasts and say all your Prayers and do all your Devotions which you are outwardly Exercised in from the one end of the Year to the other and so get a Name yet this avails nothing to the Kingdom of God Nay Paul the Apostle speaks further If I give all my Goods to Feed the Poor and my Body to be Burnt and have not the Love of God the true Charity Understanding within to Purge thy Heart from Sinful Self in the matter it is nothing For true Christians do not do good Works noâ— suffer for well doing that they may merit Salvation thereby but being saved freely by Grace through the Redemption which is in Christ Jesus they do good Works from the Heavenly Nature of that Holy Root that bears them and brings them forth as good Trees to Glorifie God in their Bodies and Souls which are his Tit. 3.8 And the Apostle Charging Titus to Exhort Believers to good Works was not because they were Saviours but because they were Profitable to Men as well as the Prophets And as for our Religion which the World and all the outside Professors of it look so slightly at and speak so Contemptibly of we would have you as well as the rest to know that it is truly Ancient Catholick Christian and Apostolical as having its Rise and Foundation in and from the Eternal Word which is Christ in us the Hope of our Glory whom the Apostle to the Colossians Preached as a Mystery formerly hid but then Revealed to the Gentiles even Christ in the Flesh the Hope of their Glory through Faith in his Name and this is God's Foundation the Foundation of Christ's Church another Foundation can no Man lay than this which God hath laid and this is the Rock not Peter but Christ who Peter by the Revelation of the Father Confessed unto And so through Faith in this Word Christ the Foundation and Rock of all the Righteous that ever were or ever shall be do we deny all the false Faiths and Works of all who have gotten the Name but want the Nature of true Christian People and so in the true Faith which gives Victory over the World and in the Name of Christ which is above every Name do we separate from them and meet together to Worship God in Spirit and Truth as he Requires us and his Blessed Presence in the midst of us according to Promise do we abundantly feel and witness to the great Rejoycing and Establishing of our Souls in Righteousness when thus met together And therefore do we Exhort all that Name Christ whether call'd Papists or Protestants to have Fellowship with us because our Fellowship is thus truly with the Father and the Son Therefore Awake Awake stand up from your Dead Faculties and Dead Worships that Christ who is the true Everlasting Way you may walk in and Worship in where no Uncircumcised or Unclean in Heart can come and if this you do not believe and bow your Heart accordingly to obey let me tell you as one who hath received Mercy to be Faithful you can never be Established with the Establishment of the Righteous for this is the Day that burns as an Oven where in all the Proud Wicked and False Professors and Confessors must be as Stubble and neither Root nor Branch must be left them because they will not have him the true Promised Seed and Heir of all things to Reign and Sway his Righteous Scepter in them and on them O! Look up to the Lord in a Trembling Soul and True Contrite Spirit to find Favour in his sight before the Door be shut and you stand without saying Lord Lord open to us And he Answer you in his Wrath because of your Unbelief and Disobedience saying Depart from me I know you not Workers of Iniquity for all are Workers of Iniquity in their highest Performances and greatest Conceits of themselves whose Works are not wrought in God that Spirit and Holy Power that Cleanses the Heart from all Sin and so brings Life to Light for God to be Praised in for the Dead cannot Praise him So consider what I say and be not Proud lest your Bands be made strong and your Feet stumble and then Fall upon the Dark Mountains where you have been too long Wandering Neither be so Foolish as to say This is but a Quaker who hath gotten some new Upstart Religion or so for in good Earnest I tell you the Truth which will stand when all Deceit and Devices of Men of corrupt Minds will come to naught for in the true Poverty of my Spirit hath the Lord according to Promise manifest his Blessed Kingdom in me and the pure Hunger and Thirst of my Soul which was after him and his Righteousness that he Graciously satisfied And therefore am Constrained in pure Love to your Souls to invite you as well as others to come out of the Prodigal State into the Heavenly Fathers House Christ Jesus as himself said My Father is in me and I in him and as the Apostle said It pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell in him for in this House and no where else is there Bread enough true Living Bread for the Hunger of the Immortal Soul as he said of himself in John 6. before any thing was spoken concerning the Bread and Wine at his last Supper I am the Living Bread the Heavenly Bread and when the Hearers Carnally Questioned How he could give them his Flesh to Eat he told them The Flesh Profiâ—ed nothing it was the Spirit that Quickened So come away Come away from your Carnal Conceivings of a Heavenly Man the Lord from Heaven to be Comprehended in a little Earthly Bread or Wine seeing the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens contain him not much less outward Temples and outward Elements of Bread or Wine For unto his Light that is night you which shineth in your Dark Hearts though your Darkness Comprehend it not must you come and there wait for the Day to dawn in you or these Mysteries of his Kingdom you can never truly Know but in your Darkness grope and stumble for ever as People without Eyes and though this Heavenly Seed the Word the Light appear little in you yet despise it not for in it is the Blessing and if you receive it and in it abide you will know all this and it will work in you as Leaven in Meal till your whole Lumpâ— ' Heavenly Sweet and Pure and so as Christ said If thy Eye be single to wit single in and to the Lord in his Light to Believe and Walk then thy whole
and Temple and the Word of the Lord Prospers in our Hand and in our Hearts And though they say we deny the Ordinances of God because we cannot plead for or put confidence in a Shadow or Figure yet holding the Head Christ Jesus the Light and Life Eternal we are safe enough and have the Witness of God in our Hearts Justifying us and Sealing in our Hearts our Acceptance with his Majesty which is our Peace and Assurance for ever for Praised be the Name of God for ever who hath given us an understanding to know him that is true the Son of God and we are in him that is true who is the Everlasting Ordinance of God and in him are we Baptized with a Baptism made without Hands and our Supper is with the Lord in Spirit and Truth where we are daily given to feed freely at his Table whose Body is Meat indeed who said I am the Living Bread that gives Life for ever John 6. And he that Believeth in me and feedeth on me shall never Dye chap. 6.50 51. God gave the Children of Israel Manna in the Wilderness and they died notwithstanding but my Father giveth you the true Bread For God so loved the World that he gave his Son to be the Light and Life of Man and so to as many as Received him then and do Receive him now to dwell in their Hearts by Faith to them he gave and daily doth give Power to become the Sons of God whose Birth is not of the Mortal Seed of Flesh and Blood nor the Mind or Will or Words thereof but of the Incorruptible Seed of the Word of God Eternal Real and Essential which Lives and Endures for Ever which perishes not with Using as mortal thing do but it Lives and Triumphs in its own Creating saving Sustaining Upholding Comforting and satisfying Virtue and Power for evermore well witnessed in the Hearts of Spiritual Believers this day For in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and by it wore all things made and it was and is the Light and Life of Man and he Delighted and doth also this day greatly Rejoyce and Delight in the habitable parts of his Creation For I will dwell in them and walk in them who open unto me saith the Lord who by his Servant said Behold I stand at the door and knock and by his Servant also now saith Behold the Lord stands at the door of your Hearts all People and whosoever opens unto him he will come in unto them and the pure in Heart shall see the pure and Holy God supping with them and they with him and they shall drink abundantly of the Heavenly Wine with Jesus Christ in the Fathers Kingdom fresh and Living for now is the Lord rending away the Vail the Covering that hath been upon the hearts of People and making to all People the Feasts of fat things full of Marrow and of Wine upon the Lees well Refined And now is the Lord God Blessed for ever fulfilling the Promises of his Great Love in Christ Jesus which have been since the World began in this day of the pouring forth of his Holy Spirit whereby the Holy City New Jerusalem is felt come down from God out of Heaven and God himself dwelling with Men even the Tabernacle of God with Man as was said before all Holy Praises to his Name Yea he that sits upon the Throne hath made and is daily making all things New and now the Lamb is known to be the Light of his People and they need no other for the Anointing which they have of him Teacheth all things and now is Jerusalem a rejoycing indeed and her People a joy but now the Uncircumcised in Heart and Ear who do always resist the Holy Ghost are greatly troubled and offended by reason of the great Darkness and enmity of their Hearts because they cannot in their unclean mind enter in for into this City no unclean thing nor any that loves or makes a Lie can enter for now the Serpents meat is Dust and his Head is bruised Glory to God for ever See Isa 65.17 c. Rev. 21.1 c. Acts 7.51 52. And now are all the Climers who have not come in by the door but are Climed up another way in their unclean minds whom Christ calls Thieves and Robbers â—seen and by the same that discovers them Judged and Condemned these are they that have taken away the Key of Knowledge and will neither enter into the Kingdom of God themselves nor suffer those that are entring into enter These are they whom Christ-cries wo against who love to be called of Men Master heady and high minded Men with the great Train of their seduced Followers who Plead for them and Fight for them because they cry Peace to them in their Sins and tell them they must never be Perfâ—ct whil'st they are here but must carry about them a Body of Sin without all Hope of ever being free'd from it whil'st on Earth and so in effect deny the end of Christ's coming who came to set free the Soul by destroying the Body of Sin also they deny the very end the very end of Christ's Ministry for when he Ascended up on High he gave gifts to Men for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the Body of Christ and for the Perfecting of the Saints Ephes 4. Come ye Contenders against Truth Is not the Perfecting of the Saints in Holiness by bringing them out of Unholiness and in Faith out of Unbelief and into the Spirit out of the Flesh and all Fleshly and Perishing Observations And doth not the Ministry of Christ which is the true Spiritual Ministry attain its end and do its work to the utmost Yea yea though the Ministers of Antichrist Fret and Foam and Gainsay and Contradict and Blaspheme and spend their strength in Vain and perfect nothing but their Sins yet the Work of the Lord goes on and Prospers and the Body of Christ is Built up and the Songs of Sion Sung in the Holy Land and none can take part therein but the Redeemed of the Lord who are redeemed from the Earth into the Heavenly Society and Church of the First-born whose Names are written in Heaven and who follow the Lamb whither soever he goes these are not Defiled with the Cup of the great Whore for they are Virgins and have Oil in their Lamps and so need not go to the Merchants of Babylen to buy And so all People bow to Truth in the inward parts for obedience to that is the Sacrifice which God requireth and better than all other Sacrifices all your Sabboth out of this are but meer Druggeries and all your Will worship Ceremonies and Traditions being out of this are but meer mock Services yea out of this to wit the Light and Truth in the inward parts your very Faith is vain and your Hope of none effect and your Prayers Sin for unto
Pulpit in that Profession before either he or they was clearly Convinced of or Come to the Eternal Truth and awakened by the Power of God And in as much as that while he was a Publick Priest he would not Baptize his Children at the Font nor Sign them with the Sign of the Cross so that the other Priests were offended at him and upon some Discourse about it they agreed upon a Dispute to be held at Kendall Parish Steeple-house where was a very great Auditory and Three Priests appeared against him to prove Baptizing of Infants by Scripture which they could not do and he came over them all and some of the Hearers run up Kendall-street crying Mr. Taylor hath got the Day Mr. Taylor hath got the Day which Outcry grieved the Priests This was in the Year 1650. And about Two Years after George Fox came into Westmoreland and Preached the Everlasting Gospel and Power of God in the Demonstration of the Spirit of Eternal Life and many of those called Puritans was Convinced and Broken by the Power of God And the said Thomas Taylor was almost left alone it being a very great Cross to become a Fool to the World and lose his Benefit his Wife being a pretty high Woman having Six young Children and nothing else to live on yet he gave up all laying aside all superfluity of Naughtiness and received with Meekness the Ingrafted Word which is able to save the Soul and sanctifie throughout in Body Soul and Spirit And shortly after Margaret his Wife was Convinced and laid aside all her finery of Apparel and trusted Providence for a Livelihood for her self and small Children and became a very good Friend and kept the Faith and laid down her Head in Peace in the Town of Stafford a Year or more after her Dear Husband Died who Died and was Buried in the same Town of Stafford So Thomas Taylor having received the Truth of God in the Love of it and denied himself in all things for the sake of it in a short time he had his Mouth opened by the Opening and Inspiration of the Word of Life by which his Soul was then quickened and he concerned in the Motion of God and Authority of his Name to describe the Darkness of the Parish Hirelings so that they rose up against him and by the Aid of the then Unbelieving Magistrates got him to Prison in Appleby Goal where he grew in the Knowledge of God and Government of Christ Jesus and after he was released out of Prison Travelled abroad and was a Living Instrument in the Hand of the Lord to the Convincing of many And he being a Man full of Zeal and Integrity and being filled with the Spirit was always in Truth 's Service that when he had been going on the Road he commonly had a Word of Caution to Professor and Prophane and some of his Old Hearers who did not receive Truth I have seen him speak to them on the Market-day in Kendall street and sometime go to their Houses to exhort admonish and reprove as the Lord directed or if he had been Travelling on the High-way and seeing Boys playing on the First Day in the Summer-time and their Barents or Old People sitting besides them he would Preach to them so that he was always concerned for God's Glory and Truth 's Praise and Propagating of his Glorious Gospel of Peace He was a Man I loved when he was a Priest and more abundantly when he was a Gospel Preacher He was a Comely Man of Person Fair and Ruddy his Hair Gray before he Died being of a Good Old Age. I was at his Funeral in the Town of Stafford where was divers Hundreds of People and I was concerned in Testimony in the Lord's Power among them And though it had been a dark Persecuting Town â—et divers of the Priest's Hearers being his Neighbours whose Children he had Taught in the Prison they did there give their Testimonies and said He was a good Man and his Words and Counsel they believed should never be forgot and further said They had not such another to Bury in the Town of Stafford And as he Lived Honestly he Died Honourably yea even in the Lord and his good Works follows him the Reward whereof he is in the Possession of a Life that 's Everlasting out of the reach of his Adversaries Robert Barrow London the 9th of the 11th Month 1690 â— William Fallowfield's TESTIMONY Concerning Thomas Taylor THis short Testimony is with me to give concerning Thomas Taylor having good knowledge of him that he was a Man of a harmless Life and Conversation in which he was a good Savour his Conversation confirming his Doctrine God had undoubtedly indued him with Patience and had committed to him a Dispensation of the Gospel which he was both a Preacher of and a great Sufferer for his Patience in his Sufferings manifested his Christianity he never sought his Liberty by any indirect Means but waited patiently till the Lord effected it and when at Liberty he Travelled much abroad and Laboured much for Truth 's Prosperity God that called him did in all things fit him for that Work in which he imployed him and his Labour therein was very Effectual both for the Comforting and Establishing those already Convinced as also for the Convincing of many as many Living Witnesses that he hath left behind can Testifie also the stopping of the Mouths of many Opposers He had a Word of Counsel to the Weak and Feeble and a sharp Reprover of Disobedient Loose-minded ones he was altogether Accomplished for that Work whereunto his Lord called him And what shall I say but that I have Dear Unity with that Spirit that he was acted by and doth see him in that which is Immutable his Bow was always bent and retained its strength his Arrows were sharp and often pierced the Uncircumcised and as one well skilled he mist not his Mark the Churches amongst whom he was Conversant wants him for he was a Faithful Labourer in his Day he sought not his own but others good walking according to the Example of him that called him in which he was fervent and diligent Preaching the Word both in Season and out of Season and though he be taken from us as to Visibility yet his Life and Memory lives with us several sweet Expressions came from him in the time of his Illness and was very sweetly kept in that time of his Weakness he lay ill not long though for a considerable time an Indisposition of Body did attend him yet his Love and Good-will was such to the Truth that as one striving against his Distemper he kept not his Chamber long but went to Meetings and visited Friends but at last it prevailed over him and brought him to his Bed where he Died the 18th of the First Month 1681. in the Sixty-fifth Year of â—is Age I had Dear Unity with him and with those good savoury Expressions that proceeded from him which tended
to Unity and Concord amongst Friends which while he lived he was Careful to preserve he had a great Delight in it and laboured much for it In a word he was a Man of Peace and as he Delighted in it now is a Possessor of it and of that Joy that is Immutable in which he lives with his God a Possessor of that Blessedness and Reward which through the same Faith and Patience we that are yet behind shall assuredly obtain as therein we keep in the Lord's time Many good things he wrote in his Day if thou read this Book thou wilt perceive and meet with good Exhortations in it which will I hope tend to thy Strength and Incouragement William Fallowfield A short TESTIMONY Concerning that Faithful Servant of the Lord Thomas Taylor Whose Memory is Blessed DEAR Tho Taylor he was a Man who loved the Truth with a sincere Mind and sought the Honour thereof and not himself He was ready at all times to speak a word for God as there was occasion to inform the Minds of People to that which would stand them in stead when time here shall be no more He was a very good Instrument amongst us and a blessed Example in his Conversation which did bespeak him to be the Servant of Christ Jesus He loved the Prosperity of Truth more than all other things whatsoever and for that was he given up in Soul Body and Spirit to serve the Lord and his Generation Faithfully Travelling from Place to Place for that end and as he lived in the Truth so he finished his Testimony in the same And though his Body be removed from us and gone to the Earth from whence it came yet his Spirit lives amongst us and his Life shall never die Truly I am not without a living Sence upon my Spirit what a Loss we have of him amongst us who was always ready to serve the Truth and the least in it and Sorrow is ready to seize upon me in the Consideration thereof yet when I consider that it is according to the Will of the Lord I am therein well content knowing that he hath this Advantage of us that are left behind viz. Is freed from Danger of falling into the Snares of this World which we are liable to whilst in this Body except we keep in that which is only able to keep us whilst we remain here And I do believe that the Lord will raise up the same Life in others to Testifie to the same Truth which he lived in and that the Testimony thereof shall never fall This is great Comfort to me and all who love the Lord to whom be living Praises Honour Glory and Obedience given for ever and for ever more from my living Soul which he hath quickned to himself by his Living Power and Heavenly Life to him I say be all the Glory given now and always Amen Mary Comberford The 26th of the First Month 1681. Thomas Taylor 's EPISTLES TO FRIENDS MY Dear Friends and longed after in the Lord whose Minds are turned in by the Light of Jesus Christ from the Worlds Worships and Ways in measure to wait upon God that you may learn by the Teaching of his Spirit in you how to worship him in Spirit and Truth who is the Fountain of all your Soul's Happiness prize his great Love to your Souls every one of you in particular and wait to receive the Law from his own Mouth to the quickning and reviving your Souls out of the Death and for the daily watering and refreshing that which lives of himself in you for if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the Dead dwell in you he shall by that Spirit quicken your Mortal Bodies for all whose Hearts are purisied through the Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ are in the Covenant of that Everlasting Love of the Father which gives to all that waith on him a full Possession of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light but Wo and Misery from the Lord to the Unclean in the Earth And therefore mind your Soul's Guide which is pure Light of Jesus Christ and be Faithful unto the Lord in whatever he makes manifest in you to be his Will and let not the Worlds Frowns or Smiles cause you to draw back from the Truth in any thing which the Saints have so great Recompence of Reward in but be simple be pure be harmless be innocent be Lambs and walk as Lights amongst a Generation of crooked and devouring Minds and think not strange concerning any Trial but imbrace the Cross which is the Saints Rejoicing and in Patience wait to see the Fleshly Mind Crucified with it which would have ease below God and do all things in the fear of God and let not the Ear be open to the Enemy but mind that which shows you the strait way continually and learn to love one another more and more for Love is of God but none can love as Brethren of Christ but those that love God and keep the Commandments and as you follow Christ in the way of his Cross and Sufferings you will Delight in one anothers Fellowship but as any depart from the Light and Iniquity abounds in any the Love in that Person waxeth cold So God Almighty Bless you with his Everlasting Mercy to set free your Minds from all your Sins to run the way of his Holy Commandments so rests Thomas Taylor TO FRIENDS AT Stickland-head DEAR and precious Friends of God who into the Fellowship of the everlasting Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God the Light of the World that Lighteth every Man that cometh into the World are called and who have tasted of that Heaventy Gift and upon that true Bread do feed Grace Mercy and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be among you and in you all every where in every place multiplied with the Increases of the eternal Power of the Holy Spirit in all your Hearts Amen Thomas Taylor your Brother and Companion in the Patience Sufferings and Kingdom of Christ unto you all sendeth Greeting and by the Spirit of the Lord God doth hereby give you all to understand That it is the true Grace of God and Power of Life into which you are called and which you have received and wherein you stand and whereby you are inlightned and have been given to see the old dead way of Sin and Formality to avoid it and the good and living way of Truth and Righteousness in Spirit to embrace and follow it to the Praise of our Holy Heavenly Father World without end And this Grace of God that hath thus brought Salvation to us and is our Teacher and Guide in the good Way is the same that would teach all and would have all Men to be Saved and to that purpose hath appeared to all Men to leave all without Excuse So Dear Hearts all in the Light and Power of this Pure Truth of our God made manifest in us
our Heavenly Treasure to the pure in Heart who hunger and thirst after Righteousness as we have received them even so doth the same Love and the Wisdom thereof engage us to do as our Heavenly Father doth who hides the things of his Kingdom from the Serpent's Seed the Wise and Prudent of the World and so the Cross is the safe way and so as we stand in the Cross our preaching is to the Jew outward a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness as in former Times 1 Cor. 1. And so in all our Disputings and Reasoning with the World about the Things of God's Kingdom we must mind the Cross lest for want of a Hedge the wild Boar of the Forrest get in and hurt the tender Plants of God Friends strive not in your Wills for Victory but wait in the Light to feel the Spiritual Weapon the sharp Two-edged Sword of the Spirit of God to cut down the Adversary There came one to Christ and said Are there few that shall be saved And he said Strive thou to enter in at the strait Gate so his Answer was in the Cross and he minded more the Edification of the Man's Soul than to please the busiebody's curious Mind so we must dwell in his Wisdom and that will lead into Christ's Work Another asked him What he must do to enter into Life He answered What readest thou So to such as profess Scripture to be their Rule or so to bring them to the Obedience and Judgment of their Rule and if they cannot believe Scripture which they acknowledge to be true how can they believe our words whom they look upon to be as Hereticks and Deceivers The Servant of God saith the Apostle must not strive but in Meekness instructing them that oppose themselves to the Truth must seek to bring them to the Truth that thereby they may be delivered out of the Snares of Satan whom their Ignorance are led Captive by him at his Will Now the Servant of God in this weighty Matter may consider what manner of Opposers these are whether they stand in a lower or higher place of wickedness for some are wicked in a high measure who will neither enter into the Kingdom of God themselves nor suffer others as Elimas the Sorcerer Acts 13.9 10. who withstood Paul seeking to draw the Deputy from the Faith These may be more severely reproved as was thereby the Apostle but still with this Cantion that all be done by the pure Sword of God's Spirit and not by the Wrath of Man for the Wrath of Man works not the Righteousness of God And such Opposers as this had Christ to do withal against whom he pronounced so many Woes declaring their wicked Root by calling them Vipers and Serpents and Children of their Father the Devil Mat. 23. throughout and John 8.44 But to others who are not so high and strong in their Wickedness much Wisdom Tenderness and Patience must be used that if God may at any time give them Repentance that from the Darkness to the Light of God they may be turned as Jude saith in his Epistle Ver. 22 23. Of some have compassion making a difference and others save with fear pulling them out of the Fire hating even the Garments spotted by the Flesh And all my Dear Friends in Christ Jesus who are at any time called forth by the Power of the Lord God to Encounter your Spiritual Adversaries the Disputers of this World who Goliah like are so wise and strong in their own Conceit and have so armed themselves with their Carnal Weapons that they are not afraid to defie Israel yea Israel's God I say keep in the Power of God and trust not to Saul's Armour but wait to feel the little Stone cut out of the Mountain without hands to hit the Enemy in the Forehead and to bruise his Head and to strike at his Feet that the false Foundation whereon he standeth may be removed and so the Image may fall into nothing at once And in this great Business to wit the Lord's Controversie my Friends always mind your own Standing and Foundation to keep close to it and not to be driven from it by any means for the Enemy will seek to draw you from your sure Ground the measure of Life and Experienced Truth in you into vain Janglings and fruitless Disputes to gratifie their Corrupt Minds wherein is no Edification to the Soul which the Servant of God must wait in all things to edifie and though for our Work herein we may be accounted as Fools by the World who cannot judge but by the outward Appearance of things yet with God shall we be accepted because Doers of his Will and our Jay in his Sight and Presence shall abide and none shall take it from us as thus we abide in God's Will Work and Covenant who is over all Blessed for Evermore And Friends of Scorners we must beware for their Root is Rottenness and their Ground Accursed and the good Seed in them hath no place to grow And of such as Professing Scripture and Wisdom and neither can nor will believe that Christ lighteth every Man that cometh into the World with sufficient Grace or Light though John saith expresly That in the Word Christ Jesus was Life and that Life is the Light of Men and the Light of that Life shineth in Darkness to wit in Men lighting every Man that cometh into the World and that such as received him in that his Appearance to them he gave Power to become Sons of God John the first Chapter I say of these Unbelievers before-mentioned it may be truly said they are Children of Darkness and so much is not to be said to them but even to bring them to Christ's Light in them to know it and learn of it for till then they will never understand Also such Professors as have been long Reading Scripture and have heard the like Testimony of the Kingdom of God from the Spirit of God in his Servants in these Days and yet plead for outward Shadows and Sounds and things that perish with them to be the Way and Means of the Kingdom and are Ignorant of the Mystery of it in Man and so deny the Word and Power of God nigh in the Heart and yet in this their Darkness separate themselves in Profession from others thinking themselves to be something when indeed they are nothing these are to be turned away from and judged As also such as deny sinless Perfection and so know not the Birth of God in Man but will plead for Sin yea in the Regenerate during term of Life as though Christ were a Minister of Sin and could make nothing perfect like the weak Figures of the Law Though the Scripture saith expresly The Birth of God sins not and he that abides in Christ sinneth not and that Christ the better Hope makes perfect See Heb 7.19 and 1 John 1.5 6 7 8 9 10. Now the Reason why the Law could make nothing
may be put under into the Pit of everlasting Woe there to remain for ever So my Dear Friends and Fellow-Citizens of the New and Heavenly Jerusalem ye True and Faithful Seed and Servants of the everliving and true God do you rejoyce and lift up your Heads for from the eternal Fountain of Life and Love is your Salvation come your Portion is upon a Fat and Fruitful Land not as Egypt watered by Mortal Man but as the Promised Land watered from Heaven and made to excel all Lands in Goodness and Fruitfulness yea I know you Faithful ones are able to read in the Mystery where the Fullness of all is enjoyed and all Barrenness and Disappointment done away So my Dear Fellow-Members in the Heavenly Body and Faithful Branches of the living Vine do you rejoyce and lift up your tender Souls in God's Name and in his living Mercies at all times trust trust not in any thing but in the Name and merciful Power of the ever-living God our tender Father and in this Faith will be your Victory in all things by this Faith will your Hearts be kept clean to God alone out of all Defilements and Worldly Intanglements whatsoever yea and by this Faith will you be kept so continually a top of all Powers of Darkness and Spiritual Wickedness whatsoever that in Freedom of Mind and Joy of Heart you may offer your selves to your Maker and Redeemer as a reasonable Service and pure Offering of Obedience to his Praise as is due for ever and ever So my Beloved in God's pure and precious Truth I am your Brother and Fellow-Sufferer for the Elections sake well satisfied in this through the unerring Spirit that as we abide Faithful to God in our Conditions we shall never want the Support Joy and Comfort and daily Supply of his abundant Love and all-sufficient Grace so that we need not fear the Terrors of the Night nor noysom Plagues that destroys at Noon-day nor the Doing of Mortal Men because the Lord is become our sure and safe Hiding-place and Castle of Defence as he was to our Brethren in the Faith in all fore-going Ages And what if they say That we are a Poor Deceived and Contemptible People it matters not seeing we have God's certain Truth in us the Foundation of our Building and God's gracious Acceptance of us in Christ for our Strength and Glory And what if Mens Decrees be against the Liberty of our Holy and Spiritual Worship We must not be dismay'd for such things for so it was in the days of his Flesh who said The Servant is not greater than his Lord and he endured such Contradictions against himself for our sakes and he beheld his Father's Power and in it stood to the overcoming of all Enemies and so hath given a good Example what to do in Times of Trouble and whither to go in Times of Need for he that hath promised is near to all that fly to him for Succour who both hath and daily doth make fully manifest his Kindness and Faithfulness in us and for us that we might be to him a People and he to us a God for evermore So into the Arms of his eternal Power and Bowels of everlasting Love I commend you all to be kept comforted and carried over all that would hurt you or hinder you from walking in his good Way and rests your dear and tender loving Brother in the Patience and Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ as bound yet Free Glory to his Name everlasting So be it even Amen Hallelujah Praise the Lord saith my Spirit in the Unity of your precious Life which we have in his Love Thomas Taylor TO Israel's Babes THis this shall be the Everlasting Song Of Israel 's Babes who Lillie like among The pleasant Meadows grow and as the Rose Send forth their sweetest Smells and do repose Their tender Heads on their dear Mothers Knee The new Jerusalem for ever free Free from all Sin and Sorrow yea from all That doth the Soul Imbondage or Inthral As Fears and Cares and Earthly-mindedness Which as an Heritage Men's Hearts possess But Zion's Birth is free and kept in Peace Abiding in the Fathers House Increase And fitting under his pure shaddowing Love Even all day long whilst he their Faith doth prove They are in safety kept within the Just Not lending any Ear to the earthly Lust They knowing that in Heaven is a surer Rest Reserved for them ay to be possest Hallelujah Praise the Lord give thanks unto his Name say ye O Holy Seed of Israel The Lord God Almighty our Father is Good and his Mercies Everlasting and his Love unto us as Endless as Himself who is the same yesterday to day and for ever over all Blessed for evermore But Howlings Misery Wo will be the cup Of all the Earth who in their minds are up Exalted over that that 's meek i' th' Heart And on it trampling these must ever smart These these are they that Heavens fierce Wrath must feel These must be shivered with a Rod of Steel Will God Almighty ever wink at such That of his Glory due him so much grutch And will not suffer him the Earth to Inherit Which by his Sufferings as his right did Merit And through his Cross and Death became right Heir Of every Substance Jewel Precious Rare Above the Heaven and in the Earth below And in the deeps that in great Measure flow He 's Heir Apparent of all things and Chief Sure holden and possest i' th' Saints Belief Though the Wickâ—d and Vngodly will not yield That he should Rule or his pure Scepter Wield As Lord and King yet sure his Name shall spread From East to West from North to South with dread He shall arise as Lions to the prey He shall proceed in his Might and will not stay Or stop his Work for all the flattering Cries Of Hypocrites his wicked Enemies He will not then regard their feigned Voice Who have not nor yet will make Moses Choice But with the Esaus of the World chuse rather I' th' loss of all that 's Heavenly the Earth to gather And say within themselves Give give these things That we may have our Lusts and reign as Kings In this time present which with Eye we see For we believe not what shall after be We like not such harsh Doctrine as doth tell Of Abrahams Bosom and the Gluttons Hell For Pastimes Pleasures and such Recreations As feed our Sences with Prevarications Of all sorts sizes manner form and fashion That can be found in City Town or Nation Is our vain Minds Desire and Hearts Delight Here here 's the Crown for which we Strive and Fight For which both Night and Day we Ward and Watch And thus at Shadows all the World doth Catch Even all the World Professors and Prophane Who that pure thing Christ Light within Disdain And for the Light put Letters Sounds and Forms And for the Substance Shadows Over-worn In this they all
evil part and a full Resurrection of the spiritual over it so rests your Dear Brother in the Unity of the same Blessed Living Victorious Faith Thomas Taylor From the Place of my Confinement for the Everliving Testimony of Jesus in the Fifth Month 1664. TO Friends in LONDON OYE my Dear Friends and Beloved of the Lord in the City of London my Love in the Lord Our Life is drawn out at this time to salute you with an Epistle of pure and unfeigned Love because you are Dear and near unto my very Heart in the feeling Life which hath given us the Blessed Victory over all Sin and Works and Words of Death to serve the Will of our Heavenly Father with all Fervency and Perseverance in our Day Age and Generation to the Praise and Glory of his Grace in Jesus Christ our Lord whom our Souls can never cease to love because the Savour of his good Oyntment is ever fresh upon our Souls and his Law of Life it is that we daily seel to have set us free and to keep us free from the Law of Sin and Death Praised be the God of our Salvation for his unspeakable Gift though the Enemy of one hand say we are no Christians and on the other hand call us a Form and bark at our Holy Unity and Blessed Agreement in the ever-living Truth and exercise of it for the good one of another and Service of all Yet over all these unclean and unrighteous Spirits and all others of like nature we are more than Conquerors and like a Rock unmoveable which the Enemy may split himself with dashing against Yet Praised be the Lord our Rock stands sure for it is Holy Pure and Everlasting and the Gates of Hell shall never be able in the least to prevail against it nor us as we upon it continue rooted and grounded in the Love of God and one of another in his Seed where all the Promises of Life and Salvation are Yea and Amen for ever And so you my Dear Friends and much longed after in the Lord when I consider the many Tryals and great Contradiction of Sinners of all sorts which for the Love and Zeal of our Holy Lord God and his unchangeable Truth you have endured from the beginning my Heart is greatly affected with the Glory and cannot but Praise the Lord for you that you are even become as a Bullwark of his Truth in the midst of a crooked degenerate and Back-sliding Nation who though like Sampson's Foxes they look with Faces several ways yet in Heart are one every one with Firebrands and Stings in their Tails like Scorpions to do Mischief by stirring up the bad part in People against the Simplicity of the Gospel of Love and Life of our Lord Jesus Christ which would gather unite and heal all of all their Soul-Maladies for ever if they did not make themselves unworthy of But O how the Truth to you doth still abide in its Lustre and Glory without Alteration knowing that you as we your Brethren in the same every where are set for the Defence of the Gospel The Lord hath set his Love upon us and it is from Everlasting to Everlasting and therefore in his Name and perfect Goodness may we safely trust and Storms will be over and his unspeakable Peace and Joy which is with us and hath so unspeakably refreshed us shall be with us for ever We need not go to the Egyptians for help as the Wicked do for in the God of Israel is our Hope and Help who keeps Mercy and Covenant with his Dear People for ever and ever And when I also consider how the Samballat and Tobias of this Age say on one hand What will these silly returning Captives do And on the other when I see the little Horn with a Countenance more stout than his Fellows in his very Words of Reproach and Work of Scattering tell of your Scattering whom God hath gathered I cannot but say O Lord Bless thy People whom thou hast so powerfully delivered and govern and keep their Hearts in perfect Peace with thee through all and over all even as thou dost this day for ever and ever that many may come to the Brightness of our day and Glory of our Kingdom which is not of this World but of God eternal our Father who is over all Blessed for ever So under the Shadow of his ever-blessed Wing my Dear Brethren and Sisters dwell and here is the true Munition of Rocks where the Living Bread is sure and the Living Waters never fail rests your Dear Brother in the Patience and Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ at present in outward Bonds for the Testimony of his Truth in this place Thomas Taylor Stafford 21st of the 12th Month 1667. And I desire that this may be communicated as the Nature of it requires to the whole Flock of God in and about the City in the precious Wisdom of God with Bowels of Love unto you all So be it TO Friends of SUDBURY Side DEar Friends and Well-beloved in the Lord Brethren and Sisters in the Holy Covenant of his Everlasting Love my very Heart and Soul doth dearly salute you all and often do I remember you in the Dearest Affections of unfeigned Love as is meet knowing your Love and Tenderness to God's Truth and me your Dear Friend and Brother for the Truth 's sake from the beginning and how the Lord of his Infinite Love in Christ Jesus hath separated us from the present evil World for himself to hold forth his Vertues before the Children of Men in a pure Life and so to feed at his Table as the Faithful do in the unspeakable Fellowship of his Eternal Spirit of Life and Peace whereby O how often yea how continually he hath and daily doth refresh feed and strengthen our pure Minds as in the simplicity of our Hearts together or asunder as to the outward we have and do daily wait upon him and in his Light are staid upon his Power in our inward Man to the Praise of his Glory which makes us that we cannot but love him and one another in and for him and so we cannot but remember him and one another and so pray for and rejoice in one another's welfare as living Members of his Heavenly Body who is over all God Blessed for Ever who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls and therefore we shall not want nor miscarry as we abide in his Love and this we know Dear Hearts that as we keep his Commandments we do abide in his Love and are at Rest in his Power Many from the Letter may say God is their Shepherd or so and therefore they shall not want but truly Friends there is none can say this in Truth but who are led by him and subject to him in Heart and Life they are the Sheep of Christ who hear his Voice and follow him in the Regeneration not losing their first Love but growing and continuing in it
to the end perfecting Holiness in the fear of God and so working out their Salvation with fear and trembling knowing it is God of his own good pleasure that worketh in us to will and to do O Friends how true we find it in God's Light that it is not of him that willeth nor runneth but of the Mercifulness of our God in Christ Jesus to them that believe and in pure Holiness and Simplicity of Heart wait upon him at all times and this puts to silence all Flesh and keeps down all Boasting and fleshly Confidence and Conceitedness to the unspeakable Glory of the Pure Eternal Holy Name of the Living God our Father who siâ—s upon the Throne and is worthy of all Honour Submission and Obedience for Evermore For now is the Lord God suckling the Babes of his Love with the pure Milk of his Living Word and feeding the Men of his House with the strong Meat of his overcoming Truth and giving them the well-refined Wine of his Kingdom to make glad their Hearts over all the Trials and Tribulations of this present Life so that through the Overcoming Love of our God we are more than Conquerors and shall never be ashamed abiding in his Love for the Righteous are bold as a Lion and through the help of our God we shall for ever leap over all the Walls of Opposition that the Enemy makes to hinder us in our way for it 's the Fearful Unbelieving and Disobedient in Heart that cannot enter that cannot come into and sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God this Day But Praises to the Lord in the height of Heaven for all his unspeakable Goodness who over all gives us the Victory by Jesus Christ our Lord to whom be Glory Everlasting and Kingdom for Evermore And so Dear Friends into the Arms of the Lord 's unspeakable Love committing you all rests your Dearly Loving in the Truth of God a Friend and Brother Thomas Taylor Also Friends you may know that my Wife hath her very Dear and Tender Love remembred unto you all and is dearly affected upon every remembrance of you considering what sweet Refreshment she hath sound amongst you in your Holy Assemblies where the Presence of the Lord hath been abundantly witnessed by many and I hope Ever will be meeting together in his Fear to wait upon him as you do And as for our Condition here praised be the Lord it is well for though my Bonds for the Gospel in this Place be yet continued yet some little Liberty of being with my Wife and Family sometimes at her Hired House in this Town through the Tender Mercy of our God is granted me and so we are made content and all is good in the Good-will of God and so our Souls are at rest in his Love where we pray that yours and all the Holy Ones of God in every place may rest for Ever and be abundantly satisfied Amen and Amen And so we shall be glad to hear of all your Welfare in the Lord as he makes way TO FRIENDS Richard Boothman and Robert Clough DEARLY Beloved in the Lord and his Everlasting Truth which hath redeemed our Souls and doth daily Comfort our Hearts as we abide in it my very Dear Love and tender Affections Salutes you and all the Dear Flock of God about you giving you all to know of my Health in the Fountain of Health where in the midst of all these Bonds Tryals and Afflictions which in Common with all Saints for the Gospels sake on Earth is ordered for us my Soul is more than a Conqueror Praises to our God for ever And we may not let fall our Holy Hope and trust in the least for any thing that Flesh can do against us but by all means let us keep fast in our Hearts the living Faith of the Lord Jesus which in God's blessed Sight is of greatest Esteem for thereby we may effectually in all things overcome yea and be well able also to quench all the fiery Darts of the Devil For upon our Watch must we needs stand in all things clothed with the whole Armour of Light that no Enemy at all may come between us and our God to deprive us of his precious Life or hinder our Fellowship with his Holy Spirit in the least The living powerful Presence of his Glory in the Face of Jesus Christ be with all your Spirits to Sanctifie Bless Keep and Preserve you all my Dear Friends in Body Soul and Spirit Pure Spotless and altogether Blameless before him in Love Rests yours in the Dear Fellowship of God's ever blessed Truth Thomas Taylor Stafford the 20th of the Eighth Month 1668. And thus Dear Friends I could not but thus in a few words breath out of my true and tender Love amongst you desiring also as opportunity is to hear of your State THE Day of the Lord Is DAWNED THE Ever-blessed Day of the Lord God is dawned let all the Children of the Night fear for they are now fully to be made manifest and brought to Judgment and now where will the Workers of Iniquity hide themselves from the Lord's Justice Rocks nor Mountains will not cover them they must come forth this Day to the Righteous Judgment of the Great God the Just Judge of Heaven and Earth of Quick and Dead Rotten Raggs and Fig-leaves of empty and filthy Profession must now be stripped off and the shameful Nakedness of all Hypocrites and unclean outside Professors and Professions must now be laid open to the Glory of that Powerful God who hath long waited upon People to teach them and to do them good but they would not and therefore Desolation upon Desolation Overturning upon Overturning will come upon Thee O thou Corrupted Earth with thy Inhabâ—â—ants who are crying Lord Lord but never come to do the Will of the Holy Lord God in Earth as it is done in Heaven nay nor have so much as a Mind thereunto but are angry with such as do it And therefore because these Inhabitants of the Corrupt Earth rebel against the Light some under the Name of Papists and some under the Name of Protestants and yet say in their Hearts We shall have Peace and be Established in our way the Lord hath said They shall have no Peace nor be Established in their defiled Ways for God's Establishing of People is now manifested to be in Righteousness and in nothing else The Lord Jesus Christ is now to Reign and the Scepter of his Kingdom is a Scepter of Righteousness and the Kingdoms of this World must be the Kingdoms of the Lord and his Christ and he must Reign whose Right it is for Ever and Ever according to Prophesie And now it is of the greatest Concernment for Kings and Princes Priests and Prelates High and Low Rich and Poor to Kiss the Son lest his Anger which they have kindled against themselves by their sinning against his Light and grieving of his good Spirit by their manifest
His limitless Nature to a creatural Form like thy self as the Wicked do who know him not And so of that Beast and mysterious Babylon thou art who this day with their many Heads and Horns and Forms of False Knowledge and Worships and Churches so called do all with one Consent push and fight against the Lamb the Light and Son of the Incomprehensible and Infinite Father and his Faithful Followers but the Lamb both hath and ever shall have the Victory and the Mouth of all Iniquity shall be stopped saith my Soul And so well had it been for thee if thou hadst continued Faithful amongst us but a Wanderer and Unfaithful in Heart hast thou been many a day and so the Whore that watched in the Evening for the unwary young Man hath caught thee in her Net and there thou art a Slave in the Bands of Darkness to the great Wounding of thy poor imprisoned Soul Thomas Taylor TO George Ward And those that had Fellowship with him GEorge Ward to thy self and those in Fellowship with thee whether Speakers or Hearers a few Words from the Movings of God in my Heart You are weighed in the Ballance and are found wanting and the Glory of the Holy Kingdom of God you are fallen short of in your Unbelief and have not a Heart as yet to walk in the strait and narrow Way that leads unto it You have not suffered your Minds and Souls to be guided by the pure Light of Jesus Christ that hath Visited you in great Love in these Days but have rather chosen to follow your own Thoughts and wrong Expositions of Scripture to your great hurt And because you have Preached and Professed that washing the outward Water is the only Gate in the Christian Fellowship you are both to loose your Credit amongst Men by owning the more Excellent and Everlasting Way though it be most plainly declared and by the Spirit demonstrated to you in these Days And so you go about to Establish that which makes nothing perfect in Opposition to the Power of God which only makes Perfect And so you resemble them of old who stuck in the Shadows of the Law in Opposition to him that was the End of the Law and came to fulfil it Christ Jesus over all God Blessed for ever And so if I could have found in you a true Desire after God's Kingdom may be I might have gotten a little Liberty to have Reasoned with you at this time of the things thereof But seeing there hath been so many Endeavours and Desires in us after your Eternal Good and ye will not come to Christ to know him in you that you may have Life for this time I thus rest in Peace with my God the Righteous Judge believing that in his own Way and Time he will Silence every Tongue that moves against his Blessed Truth the Light and those that love it and follow it in the Regeneration in this Day of his Power wherein the willing People are brought up through the Death of the Flesh to serve the Lord in the Land of the Living in new Jerusalem as our Souls do this Day ever Praised be his Name the Arm of his Holiness for it is worthy And now where is the Disputer of this World who pleads for seen things which Quicken not the Souls and will not have the Invisible God who is the Resurrection of the Life to Rule in them but are glad when they can get any thing seemingly that makes for them in their perishing Way But our Work is Praised be God to hold the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints in a pure Conscience and in the Ability that God giveth us to help to bring People to God where is the true Rest for ever And those that will not submit their Minds Hearts and Souls to the Light of the Eternal Word which is nigh in the Heart shall never be Established in Righteousness and Peace but shall weary themselves in the very Fires for Vanity and this we have Learned through many Tribulations Blessed be God for his Unspeakable Gift and so if you be Wise be Wise for your Souls and Learn with us to sit in Silence at Jesus Feet to know what he requires of you and cease your running and doing without him for you have spent too much time in Vain already seeing the Spirit of the World is unfallen in you Rests your Souls Friend and a Lover of the whole Creation of God being become a willing Sufferer for the Holy Seeds Sake And whereas you or some of you seem Offended that Widdow Cock hath left you and come amongst us and say she hath done it and yet given you no sufficient Reason and Satisfaction for her so doing I say that Reason I suppose she hath shown sufficient to some of you but to give Satisfaction to you in it that is hard seeing you Speak Evil of the Good Way of God which she hath tasted of amongst us for of a Truth the Lord and his Power and Presence is with us Blessed be his Name for ever And she stayed too long upon the barren Mountains where your Flocks Feed Thomas Taylor TO A Plundering Priest YOUNG Man all thy Prayers Preachings and Praises are Abomination to God so long as thou keepest the Just in Bondage Thou being but newly as it were come on to the Stage of the World begins thy part very badly if thou hadst been as an old over-grown Tree in Customs of Covetousness less could not be expected from thee than what some in Swaledale have sound But thou being as I hear a young Man under the Notion of a Schollar nay more of a Minister of the Gospel to fall on a Suing People at Law and putting in Prison upon account of Hire quite stains all thy Glory and blasts thy Reputation with the Odium of a Hireling and Fersecutor Thou might consider if the God of this World had not blinded thy Mind what thou daily as it were reads in the Scripture Whatsoever ye would that Men should do unto you even so do unto them for this is the Law and the Prophets And if thou be not come so far as the Law and the Prophets thou art most unfit to take the Gospel into thy Mouth For without all question if thy Condition had been Michael Râ—w's thou would have accounted it hard Measure to have been so dealt withall as thou hast dealt with him A Man with a Wife and ten or eleven Children depending much upon his Labour for their Maintenance and this Man to be put into Prison and there kept from year to year for nothing at all but because for Conscience-sake to God he cannot put into thy Mouth What a Cry this hath and will have in the Ears of God it concerns thee deeply to consider for he is well known not to with-hold Right from any where it is due But though his Sufferings for time be long yet thine if thou repent not will be very
much longer for it is a very fearful thing for thee thus in thy Sins to fall into the Hands of the Living God So whilst thou hast time prize it and say not within thy self that thou shalt have Peace though thou continue in this thy Hard-heartedness for certainly there is no Peace from the Holy Just and Merciful God to any abiding in the Paths thou walkest in So if thou hast an Ear hear what the Spirit of Truth saith unto thee in his Servant Thomas Taylor To those that Rejoyce in Bells and Bonefires WO Wo from the Lord to this Heathenish manner of Rejoycing with Bells and Bonefires Have you not learned it from those Wicked People called Papists for Deliverance from whom you seem to Rejoyce And so instead of honouring God with your Mirth you greatly grieve and burden his good Spirit And therefore your â—ins remain and Judgment after Judgment still waits for you until you turn to God with your Hearts which yet to this day you have not done O People of Stafford and of all England who delight in such vain things yea though Mercy after Mercy you have been tried with yet still you are doing what you should not do and leaving undone what God wills you to do and so indeed have no Spiritual Health or Soundness in you but all full of Putrifying Sores you are and so unfit to enter God's Holy and Heavenly Temple And that which makes your Wound uncurable you cannot endure to have your Wounds searched to the bottom but such as can dawâ— you over with their untempered Mortar and call you good People and good Christians when your Lives loudly witness the contrary those you account your Friends And therefore will the Lord judge you according to your Deeds and according to the Fruit of your Doings will he reward you if you speedily return not to him with your whole Heart for a short Work will God make upon the Earth when neither one Name nor another nor one Profession nor another shall be able to hide the Wicked from his Stroke for it 's in the Truth it self as Truth is in Jesus that the safe Hiding-place will be and â—o where else as saith his good Spirit in his Servant Thomas Taylor To them that plays the Fool upon the Stage THOU that plays the Foolish Man upon the Stage and invents all the Lyes and vain things that ever thou canst to move Laughter in the Rude Multitude which is Madness as Solomon speaks and all this for filthy Lucre I demand of thee whether thou believest that there is a God that will call into Judgment all Mens Words and Deeds yea to the very Thoughts and Intents of the Heart and whether Christ's words are true which say that for every idle word that Men shall speak they must give account thereof in the Day of Judgment And if this be true as most true it is then how wilt thou stand in thy multitude of vain idle unclean and corrupting words before the Righteous Judge of Heaven and Earth whose Wrath is kindled against all such as have even thus sold themselves to do Iniquity And his Judgment is near and the Judge even at the Door therefore in love to thy Soul I write this that if possible thou mayst repent and not Perish Eternally O ye People whose Eyes are abroad and whose Minds are in the Vanities of this World wandered from the Lord How can ye behold such Men as these doing such Foolish things upon the Stage without all fear of God and care what any one that fears God can say against them and yet profess themselves to be Christians How can ye forbear to reprove them Doth not the Apostle say to Christians Have no Fellowship with the unfruitful Works of Darkness but rather reprove them And this is a Work of gross Darkness for People to profess Christ to do these Deeds of the Heathen who said their Tongues was their own and they may use them at their pleasure But God will call into Judgment every vile vain and unclean Word and account must Men give for them and then Wo to the Wicked and all that love Lyes and such vain Inventions as this Foolish Man upon the Stage for filthy Lucre doth practice So People fear God and repent of your Deeds for the Lord God is at the Door ready to judge the present evil World for all their Iniquities Thomas Taylor Against Mass-Times WO to this degenerate World of People called Christians What shall be said concerning you and who shall declare your Misery For as you have multiplied your Transgressions as the Sand of the Sea so will the Lord multiply his Judgments and Plagues upon you for you have violated the Laws and broken down the Bond of that everlasting Covenant that should have redeemed and kept your Souls to God and you have wholly suffered the Spirit of this wicked World to carry you away Captive by Millions and Multitudes into the Land of Darkness and Wickedness which is Spiritually called Sodom and Egypt where our Lord was Crucified and is at this day trodden under foot by you where the Abominations of the Heathen and Superstitions of the Jews are kept up by you and practiced in the face of the Sun and many of them held up by force of a Law and such as depart from the Iniquities thereof even become a Prey to you So that the Lord hath dashed you together for many Generations like a Pot-sheard one against another and will yet dash you together for your great Iniquities and grievous Idolatries and will raise up his Plant of Renown from amongst you and become the Teacher of his People himself and they shall no more be a Prey to the Teeth of the Dragon Wolf nor Fox but shall feed in the good Pasture as in the beginning before Antichrist was and the Temples of Antichrist with the False Worships therein shall be a Desolation for evermore Wo Wo to all ye observers of Mass times and Tides and Seasons of the Year wherein the Spirit of this wicked World which is called Satan God's Adversary and Antichrist Christ's Enemy sets you at liberty to do all those Evils and abominable Works wherewith the Spirit of the Holy Lord God that made you is so much burdened and gâ—ieved from one end of the Year unto the other so that he can smell no sweet Smell in any of your Sacrifices that you offer up unto him because of the gross Darkness of your willfully deceived Hearts and the great Filthiness of your polluted Hands O how the Lord and his good Spirit in all is pressed under the weight of your Iniquities as a Cart under her Sheaves And therefore hath the Lord rejected your Confidence and called you Loruhamah not Beloved and Loammi not his People for as the Plant of a degenerate Vine are you to him a Field over-grown with Weeds and your Spot is not the Spot of his People and therefore into the great Captivity are
a Reformation is this If this be not amended surely God's Hand will be stretched out against you still But you present Parish-Teachers that practice this thing Answer this sober and necessary Question Do you believe this your own Doctrine and Practice to be good or you rather do it because this is the way to please the Times and so to get Money If the former then are you blind Guides indeed If the latter then are you Covetous indeed And Covetousness saith the Apostle is Idolatry And then let all judge whether either of these be fit to guide and teach others And next in their Marrying of People besides their manifold taking of God's Name in vain as in their other doings and besides their evil Custom of the Ring do not they teach the People to swear and commit Idolatry in saying With this Ring I thee Wed with my Body I thee Worship and with all my worldly Goods I thee Endow and at the conclusion of their Work must plight their Troth one to another Is this sound Doctrine These Priests use to say the Scripture is their Rule But no Scripture is there for certain for such doings as this but against it if this be an Oath for Christ saith Swear not at all but these Priests not only break this Commandment themselves but teach others so to do also and so as Christ saith are least in the Kingdom of Heaven And Christ saith Thou shalt Worship the Lord thy God only but these teach People to Worship one another And doth the Priest examine whether this be true which he teacheth the Man to say to the Woman With all my Worldly Goods I thee Endow Or they matter not what they do so as they can stubber over the business and get Money But that which makes all this the worse is that it must be declared to be done in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost though never so unscriptural and corrupt And therefore will the Lord visit for this thing also But from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the Revelations I do not find that there is any Command from God either for Priests under the Law or Ministers under the Gospel to Marry People nor so much as an Example that they did it But the true Gospel Minister keeps himself pure to Christ out of the World 's Evil Customs and Self-Ends lest he come under Condemnation for partaking with them in their Sins For now is the Cry gone forth from the Lord Come out of Babylon my People lest partaking with her in her Sins ye partake also of her Plagues And therefore when People that pretend much run into things without the Heavenly Call it 's no wonder to see so much Evil attend their doings And Lastly when they come to Bury People having begun so badly they continue so to the end for having ushered in the dead Body in their Superstitious Surplice to the Grave they must say Earth to Earth Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust in sure and certain hope of Resurrection to Life Eternal of all they so Bury Is not this a sore Evil to conclude so directly against Christ's words who saith John 5.29 That some not all shall come forth to the Resurrection of Life and some to the Resurrection of Damnation But you say all at least all that come under your hands thus to be Buried though they live and dye never so badly Nay these Buriers profess that they have a sure and certain hope of it too though oftentimes it so falls out that they have no knowledge of the Party so Buried neither of the Person Life nor Death But what shall be said to such Priests and People whose Eyes are so blinded with Evil Custom and Covetousness that they heed not much what they say or do but heap up Wrath against the day of Wrath against their poor Souls But the true Spiritual Man the true Christian who is a new Creature in Christ Jesus sees all these things and judges them and avoids them And now as for the Sermons Prayings and Preachings of such corrupt Men as these what are they good for or what benefit hath or can your Souls O People expect to reap from them Can a corrupt Tree bring forth good Fruit can Chaff Feed Peoples Souls And he that hath not the Word it self which is Spirit and Life and as a Hammer and Fire though he may have and run with the Words that declare of it as the False Prophets of old did for filthy Lucre yet he is but a Dreamer and a Deceiver of his own and others Souls Jer. 23. And though for Witnessing against such as these do I suffer Imprisonment yet herein is my Joy that the Lord hath deliver'd my Soul from the trouble which they lye in and that I am accounted worthy to speak for God against Deceit So all People consider what you have to do for this is the day of the Revelation of all things reprovable and so whatever hath been hid in Darkness is now by the true Light to be made manifest And though the Wicked in their several dark Forms dig as deep as Hell and think to hide their Counsels and their Doings never so deep in the Dark yet to this Day of God which is already Dawned and in great Power arisen must they all come forth to be judged and to receive every one a Reward according to their Doigns without respect of Persons or Professions as testifies his good Spirit in and by his Servant Thomas Taylor And what also shall be said to that one thing amongst many in your Communion where it is said to the Receiver of the Bread and Wine when the Priest delivers it The Body or Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy Body and Soul unto Eternal or Everlasting Life Is this holding the Form of Scripture Words or of sound Words as the Apostle Exhorts Do you pray in Faith when you say these words O Priests or may it not be said rather to you who hath required this at your Hands And do you consider what Bodies and Souls these People have that you would have thus preserved are they clean are they pure perfect and Holy For such as are preserved unto everlasting Life must first be such because no unclean thing enters God's Kingdom And the Church that Christ presents to himself is such as are Sanctified and throughly Washed by his Word from all Spot and Stain of Sin Ephes 5.25 26 27. But what have you to do here you miserable Offenders who by your own daily and customary Confession have no Spiritual Health in you So as Israel's outward Lepers were shut out of the Camp by the Law so out of the Fellowship of God's Spiritual Israel must the inward and Spiritual Lepers be kept this day It is so To the Jury-Men of Appleby ALL ye of the Jury which is by Interpretation Swearers or Sworn-Men who are not yet come to Christ's Doctrine where the
the Ditch they are both in this day of God manifested to be and that which makes their Sin out of measure sinful is their Unwillingness to come out of it though one do reach never so loving a hand of help unto them Also by this we know that they are no Messengers of God who cannot put a difference betwixt the Precious and the Vile to wit between such as are under the Curse of the Law and such as are under Grace to wit betwixt such as are born after the Flesh and such as are born after the Spirit But here the Apostle John a true Minister of Jesus put the real difference when he said in the forementioned Epistle and Chapter Ver. 7 8 10. Little Children let no Man deceive you He that doth Righteousness is Righteous even as he to wit Christ is Righteous He that commiâ—teth Sin is of the Devil for the Devil sinneth from the beginning For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the Works of the Devil And in this the Children of God are manifest and the Children of the Devil Whosoever doth not Righteousness is not of God So Wo to all evil Doers and unclean-hearted hearted ones who believe not the Truth nor receive the Truth as it is in Jesus but in your Hearts suffer Madness and Folly to rest and in your Hearts continue full of Evil while you live and so with the Dead lye down in Sorrow But on the other hand Blessed and Happy for ever are all you who have believed in the Light Christ Jesus and abide in him with Thanksgiving your Cup daily overflows with Heavenly Blessings from his Heavenly Fullness and ye are Compleat in him who is the Head of all Principality and Power and in whom are hid all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge and in him abiding you daily witness his Circumcision in you which is made without Hands in putting off the Body of the Sins of the Flesh and not keeping on you the Body of the Sins of the Flesh as the Hypocrites do who only talk of Christ but in his Life do not walk So all Dear People who love your own Souls and would know the Salvation that is in and by Christ Jesus come out from amongst them that plead for the Devil's hold which is Sin Folly and Madness to be in Peoples Hearts while they live as though the Son of God were not come to destroy the Devil's Work which is Sin and so to cleanse the Heart Soul and Conscience to God from Sin And being come out from amongst these Blind Guides you will come Savingly in the Light of Jesus that leads forth from them all you that follow the Light to know daily more and more the things that belong to your Eternal Peace Also to set forth the Fruits of these Teachers how little they prosit them that follow them because they have run and God never sent them I shall mention one Passage which I had with some of these Nonconforming-Priests Followers at Stafford for I being moved of the Lord to go amongst them they did not only violently hawâ— me forth with their hands and threatning Persecution to me from the Mayor but also opposed the Blessed Doctrine of Sinless Perfection by Christ with an Argument directly one in nature with that which Priest Osland one of their Teachers yesterday brought to the same end as is said and it was this Rom. 3.10 c. There is none Righteous no not one There is none that understandeth there is none that seeketh after God None that doth good nor knows the way of Peace nor have any fear of God before their Eyes but Destruction and Misery are in all their ways c. Now when they had brought this I could not but somewhat wonder to see such gross Ignorance of the Gospel in such a Professing People for who could so have abused and wrested Scripture as to bring the wretched State of such as are manifestly declared by their Works to be under the Law and Curse to prove against the Happy State of such as by Christ are delivered from both and stated into the Holy Life of God's own Righteousness And so these Professors who know not God nor Christ are laying all these heavy Charges upon God's Elect whom he justifieth What have Christ's Members no fear of God before their Eyes And do not they know the way of Peace but Destruction and Misery in all their Ways like the wicked World whose Mouths must be stopped yea yea praised be the Lord for Ever the Day-spring from on high hath vilited us that sate in Darkness and the true Light now shineth that hath led the Zion of God out of all those Condemnable Things before-mentioned into the Way of Life Truth Holiness and Peace Glory to his Name for Ever And so by this it appears how like these Priests and their Followers are all sucking at the Breasts of that Mystical Whore and Dragon that opposes the Lamb and his Followers but the Lamb shall always have the Victory as he hath this Day Glory to his Name over all For a Voice came out of the Throne saith John Rev. 19.5 saying Praise our God all ye his Servants and all yet hat fear him small and great And I heard as it were the Voice of a great Multitude and as the Vâ—ice of many Waters and as the Voice of mighty Thunderings saying Alleluja for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth Let us be glad and rejoice and give honour to him for the Marriage of the Lamb is come and his Wife hath made her self ready and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine Linnen clean and white for the fine Linnen is the Righteousness of Saints And is not this Garment sinless and without spot Yea yea And blessed are they that are called to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Amen Thomas Taylor To all that are Worshipping in the Outward Court without God in the World in diverse Forms THE ETernal Truth of God is now making iâ—self manifest in Sons and Daughters Servants and Handmaids according to Scripture and the Lord God of Heaven and Earth to his own Glory is raifing up his own Seed by his own Power and in this Day of ours working that Work and Wonder which the Children of the Night cannot believe though it be told them And now is the Searcher of Hearts appeared and the hidden things of Esau are in searching up and Judgment bâ—gins to take hold upon Old Ely's House and the Vengeance of the Almighty upon his Prophaâ—e Sons And now that these things are in doing the Powers of Darkness band themselves together to keep out the Judgment but all in vain for the Consumption decreed must overflow in Righteousness and the Hall shall sweep away the Refuge of Lies in Priest and People and all Fellow ships and Communions of People whose Hearts are in the Earth and who are covered but not with the Spirit of
form or way of Religion so called whatsoever that are disobedient to the Light But dear Heart so long as thou judgest of Spiritual things in thy Natural Reason as here thou dost how many seeming Contradictions will there be in the Writings of the Holy Prophets and Apostles which never can be reconciled to that fall'n Wisdom but are all in Unity only to those that are new Born in God from before whose Eyes the Veil is done away in Christ who is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God to all that receive him in Love but a stumbling Block and Rock of Offence to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks who stumble and are offended at the stumbling Stone the Light within through Disobedience as saith the Scripture And therefore here will be thy Wisdom even to cease from Man whose Breath is in his Nostrils and all the Wisdom of his Words and Teachings which are without and which stand in the Will of Man and as was said before to hearken to the alone Teachings of the Spirit of God the Light wherewith Christ hath enlightned thee within which stand in a daily cross to thy own Will and Reason and of all Men and cast off every weight and burden of Sin that hinders thy Soul from running the ways of God's Commandments as in that Light they are discovered to thee and so the Beam being removed out of thy Eye and Judgment brought forth into Victory in thee thou wilt see clearly into the Mystery of Truth as it is in Jesus which yet truly the Veil of dark Flesh being unremoved in thee hinders that thou canst not and therefore in the Fear of God sink down into the deepest Humility and willingly become a Fool that thou may'st be wise for to Repentance thou must come which yet thou hast not come unto before thou enter the Kingdom to that in thy Conscience do I speak which will show thee this to be true hearkening to it though the Enemy at present in thee it seems whispers otherwise Oh! the Serpent is more subtil than any Beast of the Field and hath deceived the whole Generation of the first Man and doth and therefore his Head being not yet bruised in thee causeth thee to cover but not with the Spirit of the Lord and so the Woe will meet thee till his Head be bruised in thee by the Seed of the Woman which way soever thou turn thy self Therefore must thou pass a strait Gate as all the Children of God have and do before thou come to Feed on the Tree of Life even the fiery flaming Sword must thou pass which is in the Hand of a Cherubin which yet thou hast not passed and therefore thy own Life and Strength yet remain which yet must go or thy Soul Perishes for ever for that Sword must cut down the Subtilty that that which hath led out from God may not lead to God for it cannot but the Simplicity through the destruction of the subtile Serpentine Wisdom must enter which breathes after God to do his Will that must enter by Jesus Christ And for that thou presses the necessity of a search by what Spirit I was acted in Writing and that because as thou say'st these are Times of strong Delusion wherein Multitudes are Captivated c. Thou may'st know that though it be true that many are Captivated by Satan now as at other times and strongly deluded yet neither in these Times nor any other were any Captivated in those Delusions but such only as received not the Truth in the Love of it but have Pleasure in Unrighteousness even such as turn the Truth of God into a Lye and holding it in Unrighteousness becoming vain in their Imaginations worshipping and serving the Creature more than the Creator And such God in Justice doth indeed give up to believe a Lye and to be strongly deluded by thinking themselves to be of God and Christians when old things are not passed away from them much less all things become new and such are they also that the God of the World hath blinded the Minds of such who are minding Earthly Things who live in the Lust of Uncleanness turning the Grace of God into Wantonness having indeed a form of Godliness but denying the Power the daily Cross loving the Friendship of this perishing Evil World and the things thereof as the Lust of the Eye the Lust of the Flesh and the Pride of Life making it hereby manifest they know not the true God in his Power and his Purity within them but Worship they know not what a God at a distance far away from them and a Christ by hear-say And now Friend consider seriously and lay these things to Heart for to thy Conscience in the sight of God I speak Dost not thou love the things of this World Art thou in Soul indeed seperate from them Dost thou not love Fineness in Apparel Fineness in Dwelling Fineness in Meat and Drink Fineness in Speech and Conformity to the World in their vain Fashions and Customs in many other things I say unto thee in tender Love God is no respecter of Persons and dost thou respect Persons Art not thou more afraid to Offend some than others and more careful to please some than others and that because of the Person Friend let me speak plainly to thee hath not thy fear of displeasing thy Carnal Relations now at Hipswell been a cause of thy strangeness to us I know it is not altogether as thou writest that because thou thinks us deluded that thou art so estranged from our Fellowship which once thou seemed to Love but some other thing the Light in thy Conscience will let thee see what it is Ah! the Cross the Cross thou must bear if thou should'st now own us will be I fear found in the Matter though I know it will be heard to confess it if thou hearken to the Serpent and not to the pure voice the Light of God in thy Conscience Dear Heart consider it is not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of God as the Scripture saith and thou wilt I know acknowledge but those only that do the Will of the Heavenly Father which is Perfect and Holy and though thou look at it now as something harsh to be told of Dissembling with the Lord within yet I know through the Revelation of Jesus Christ in me if ever thou come to see in Truth the deep Deceitfulness of the Heart of Man thou wilt see a dissembling Nature lie lurking within thee under many Vails which now thou seest not and though thou say now Lord let thy Kingdom come thy Will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven yet then when God comes to set up his Kingdom in thee and so to advance his Son Jesus Christ in thee in the destruction of the Kingdom of the Devil and of all thy own Wisdom Glory and Idols and so to do his Will in thy Earthly Heart
the great People of the Earth who love the Pleasures of Sin these TO you that are great in the Earth and in the Glory of the World exalted the Word of the Lord God is to you come down come down to the Light of the Lord Jesus Christ in your Consciences which shows you Sin and Evil and it will let you see how you have spent your time and how your Hearts are taken up with the Love of the World and the Lusts thereof that the one thing necessary is not so minded by you as the worth of your Precious Souls requires but you eat and drink and sport your selves with the Pleasures of Sin and feed your minds with the vain Delights thereof so fat and so full of Self love are you that there is no place empty for Christ in you wherein to lodge or whereon to lay his Head but as a Stranger in you and in your Families is the pure Son of God found and an empty Profession of him that is heavenly in your earthly Minds is all the Food that he can find amongst you Alas Alas For you poor Careless People what will ye do in the Day of the Lord when an Account is required of you of all that ever hath been done in your Body Is not Christ a Stranger amongst you and not taken in Sick and in Prison and ye visit him not Read within Oh how often hath the Lord knocked at your Door and he is not yet in Love entertained in the Heart 's full of other Lovers he cannot Sup there with you and so you Sup not with him but you eat your own Supper and prefers that before his and so discerns not the Lord's Body and so Condemnation is near Do you not to that in your Conscience I speak Do you not I say sit down to eat and drink and rise up to play Is not all Places where you are found Witnesses against you that you serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but your own vain Minds and perishing Lusts rather Doth not your Houses your Diet your Changeable Suits of Apparel and your daily New Fashions with your manner of going abroad whether upon Horse or in Coach and your many unnecessary Attendants and their Attire show you to be so far from Christ's Doctrine and out of his Life that scarce any thing of the true Christianity is to be found amongst you For where is the daily Cross to your Wills and Lusts taken up by you Or where is the Crucifying of the World to you and you to the World witnessed amongst you Or any such thing as the pure Worship of God which stands in Spirit and Truth wherein he only delights But this poor Soul doth mostly satisfie you to wit to get a Carnal Man who loves to be called of Men Master to say over a few devised words or so which he calls Praying and Preaching to please your itching Ears but neither he nor you doing the things which Christ Commands you nor do you live the Life of what in words you profess and so to your other Sins you add that great Sin of Hypocrisie which is in words to profess the Knowledge of God but in deeds to deny it But better it were for you all to mind the Fear of the Lord and to consider what end the Lord made you for and not to pass away your precious time so without the Fear of the Lord God in your Careless Minds as you do for this you should know that the Lord of Glory who respects no Man's Person will not be mocked neither can the respecters of Persons who love the Praise of Men and seek the Worlds Glory live with him for such are Unbelievers as receive Honour one of another and seek not that Honour that comes from God only See John 5. toward the end And now that you have time prize it and lay aside your vain Thoughts a little and in the cool of your Minds consider and let that of God in your Consciences speak if it be not the greatest Folly in the World to Gain the Lusts of the World with the Loss of your Precious Souls And are you not in great danger of being found in this state so long as the true Prophet Christ Jesus whom God hath sent a Light into the World that all through him should come out of Sin is no more regarded by you So now having time prize it and know this Day of your Visitation and what indeed belongs unto your Eternal Peace Rests Thomas Taylor Concerning Bread and Wine THE Lord Jesus never ordained that the unbelieving evil World should eat Bread and drink Wine in remembrance of him when they daily deny him in their Life and Conversation for that were Abomination Carry such an Offering to the Governour and see if he will accept thee will he be pleased with thy words when he sees thy deeds daily contrary to his Mind and Will And how much less then can the pure God accept thee or thine Offering whilst thou only in thy words seems for him but in the whole Course of thy Life art directly contrary to Him and his Holiness O thou that art in the state of Sin and Corruption whose Fruits manifest thy Nature and Inside to be evil how canst thou endure the Trial of this Day of God which is as Fire wherein all that are proud and do wickedly are as Stubble to be burnt up Root and Branch he that hath an Ear let him hear what the Spirit saith Thomas Taylor The Indignation of the Lord upon all Nations THE Indignation of the Lord is upon all Nations and his Fury upon all their Armies he shall greatly distress the Inhabitants of the World he will now plead the Cause of his Covenant against all those that withstand his Glorious Appearance and Work of Restoration in this the Day of his Mighty Power wherein he is Restoring the Kingdom of his Everlasting Peace to Israel's Seed under the whole Heavens who fear his great Name and tremble at his Almighty Word of Life which shakes not only Earth but Heaven also And now is the Lord God Almighty bringing forth his Glory to light and Creating the New Heavens and New Earth wherein dwells Righteousness according to his Promise Isa 65.17 c. wherein the People beat their Swords into Plow-shares and their Spears into Pruning-hooks never to learn War any more but every one now that believes in the Truth Christ Jesus the Light and true King of Righteousness and Peace shall sit under him the true Vine and none to make them afraid Isa 2.2 c And now even now is the Lord God Almighty got up into his High Throne of Majesty and Everlasting Glory to Reign and of this his Peaceable Kingdom which he hath begun to set up in his Trembling People there never shall be end The true Israel of God is now coming up out of the Spiritual Egypt indeed to possess the true Land of Promise the Inheritance and
Christ which they be freely inlightned withal which shines in their very Hearts and Consciences which searches their very Hearts and Reins and makes manifest to Man his Thoughts and from which none can hide any thing but all things are naked and bare before him the Light Christ Jesus who lighteth every Man that cometh into the World Jew and Gentile one and other who searcheth the most hidden things of Man and brings them forth to the Judgment of his Righteousness for though the Night may hide the Adulterer and the Thief from Man it hides them not from God there is one nigh in the Heart and Conscience that tells Man and Woman all that ever they have done and do daily do even their secret Thoughts is not this the Christ of God the true Messiah that was to come and is come and dwells amongst us and we look not for another And of his Fulness have all we received and do daily receive who believe in his Light which shines in our Hearts according to the Scriptures of Truth And this the Fulness of our Blessed God and Saviour Jesus Christ the Light is it which filleth all that come to him with all Spiritual Blessings and Heavenly Good Things and without whom all is Darkness Emptiness Death and Desolation as all the poor deceived lost Sons and Daughters of the faln Adam do sooner or later know and are made to confess But Blessed are they that consider of things in time and lay things to Heart before it be too late for there are but Twelve Hours in a Day in which Men may work saith Christ and then the Night cometh in which none can work but the Door will be shut upon all who have slighted and neglected the Day of their Visitation O England England and all Lands far and near that you had known or could yet believe the things that belong to your Everlasting Peace before they be hid from your Eyes therefore turn ye turn ye at the Reproofs of God's Wisdom and Spirit of Light and Truth which sounds through all and lets you see the Vanity and Evil of all your Works and Frailty of all your Lives how soon the Thread of your Life is cut off And then where is the great Emperors and Kings with all their Crowns And where is the great Captains and Commanders with all their Bloody Victories And where is the Wise Achitophel's and Cunning Counsellors of the Earth with all their Admirers And where is the Covetous Oppressors with all their Houses full of the Spoils of the Innocent Yea in that Day where is all the Glory and Lusts of the World with all the Lovers of it Surely in Darkness and Misery shall they lye down together and Death shall have Dominion over them even all who have not believed in the Light Christ Jesus and who have not followed him in the Regeneration that they may be saved but have spent their Days in the Pleasures and Lusts of the present evil World to Destruction Now therefore O all People hearken to the Counsel of the Lord in this your Day and learn of the Lamb the Light who calls you to Repentance from all your grievous Ways How long shall the Spirit of the Lord strive with you When will you cease learning War and Destruction and Oppression and Spoil O when will you beat your Swords into Plow-shares and your Spears into Pruning-hooks O when will you go and say one to another one Neighbour to another and one Nation to another Come let us all be humbled before the Lord God of Heaven and Earth who made us all of one Blood to dwell together upon the Face of the Earth in Truth Goodness and Love to serve one another and so as Branches of one Tree to receive Life and Vertue and Power from our God into our Souls to strengthen us unto his holy Work who came not to destroy Mens Lives but to save them whose Kingdom is not of this World and therefore is not set up or maintained with Carnal Weapons Violence and Spoil but by the Eternal Spirit of our God whose Fruit is in all Goodness and Righteousness and Truth and let not the wicked Devil the Destroyer deceive us any more by his Lies and Delusions but let us all with one Heart and Soul resist his Temptations when he perswades us to seek to be great in the Earth and be avenged on them we count our Enemies let us not hearken to him but let us overcome their Evil with Goodness and not to seek the Destruction of their Persons or Spoil of their Estates as the Heathen do that know not God but let us follow the Example of Jesus Christ God manifested in Flesh who when he was reviled reviled not again but pray'd for such as despitefully used him O come let us follow this meek Lamb in Righteousness and Truth and let us learn of him in our Hearts who is meek and lowly that we may find rest for our Souls who rebuked his Disciples who would have had Fire to come down from Heaven to destroy the Samaritans who would not at that time receive Christ for what knowest thou O Man but the Samaritans may in time come to a better Mind and then thou wilt see it was thy Will and not God's that desired their Destruction in their Sins for Christ would have all to be Saved and to come to the Knowledge of his Truth but many will not come to him that they might have Life and so their Destruction is of themselves and their Condemnation just And who are now therefore those that withstand the Doctrine of the Truth which saith Love your Enemies and seek not the Destruction of their Persons and Estates but seek them by good Doctrine and good Life to bring them out of their Sins And if they will not but rather hate thee for thy Good-will be content thou hast quitted thy own Soul and art clear of their Blood and so thou becomes a Sufferer with Jesus Christ and shalt Reign with him in due time I say who are these now on the Earth that are against the good Self-denying Doctrine of Christ and continue in the hateful destroying ways of the old Jews and Gentiles but such as will not be counselled by the Lamb of God the suffering Seed who said Learn of me for I am meek and lowly of Heart but ye are Men of corrupt Minds and account Gain and worldly Honours and Promotions more than Godliness who cry Peace Peace to themselves in their Sins And that same Spirit in them which creates that false Peace in them is the same that stirs them up to kill destroy oppress and spoil one another for selfish and worldly Ends but the Lord is arisen to Judge all these Evil things and to redeem a Seed to serve him as in the beginning of the Gospel before Antichrist the Murtherer got up amongst them that professed Christ in Words but denied him in Deeds and so had a Name
that they lived but were dead from that true Life that was in Christ Jesus whom in words they Professed And though the passage we feel now to be as hard of coming from amongst the false Christians and Turks as it was for the first true Christians to come from amongst the Jews and Gentiles yet the Almighty Power of our God is able over all and through all to carry us to the End whom he hath called and saved with a mighty Salvation ever praised be his Name and who will yet save his beloved Seed Israel and gather them from the East and West and from the North and South to sit down with Christ in his Kingdom And this is no ill News to any but who are glewed to Deceit and married to Iniquity But it is good News and glad Tidings indeed to all that love their Souls and the Honour and Glory of Truth more than the things of this perishing World And I could desire that all who are apt to reason as the Jews did when they heard the Declaration of the Gospel of Peace and Kingdom of God which stands in Righteousness and Peace saying If we let this go on then the Romans and others will come and take our Place and Nation I say that they would consider that the very course which they to wit the old Jews in the denial of the Truth took for saving of themselves brought utter destruction upon them and their Nation But what shall vain Man in his foolish fall'n Wisdom and Earthly Reasonings think to be wiser than God and to have a greater Care and Love to the Creation than God himself who made it hath What shall Angels at the Birth of Christ sing Glory to God on high and Good-will to Men and yet when the way of God in Christ is published for bringing this great Work of Salvation to pass vain Man must come in with his false Mind and say This is the way to confound all Order and destroy all Good and that this Doctrine turns the World upside down and that the Messengers of Christ are Pestilent Fellows and movers of Sedition O Earth Earth tremble before the Lord for thou shalt never have Peace in ' thy own ways thou shalt never be saved by thy own Strength thou shalt never be established by thy own Counsels thou shalt never have true Peace nor Plenty within thy Borders until thou believe the Gospel which saith Learn of Christ whose Kingdom is not of this World and whose Weapons are not Carnal but Spiritual mighty through God not for the pulling down of outward Walls and Bodies but for razing and pulling down and destroying the strong Holds of Sin and Satan in the Hearts and Lives of the Children of Men. For after that saith the Apostle the World by Wisdom knew not God it pleased God by the Foolishness of Preaching such Doctrine as this which is a Cross and stumbling Block to all Flesh to save them that believe So lay things to Heart ye People of the World and Inhabitants of all the Earth for God's purpose is not to exalt any Man or Men of this World nor to glorifie any Flesh but to exalt his own Son Christ Jesus the Heavenly Man the Lord from Heaven the Truth over all of whose Kingdom and Government there shall be no End And all that Obey his Voice and for Obedience thereto are made willing to Suffer with him shall Reign with him for evermore But all others whether they be called Christians or Turks or whatever else shall be as the Dust or Chaff before the Wind to be scattered as the Lord by his Spirit from the beginning hath said and at this Time speaketh in his Servant Thomas Taylor To Loose and Wicked Professors HOW long O ye People will ye sleep and slumber in a dead Form of Religion without the Life and Power of Godliness How long will ye dote upon the shews and appearances of Things where the Substance is wanting Can the Soul of Man live upon that which perishes and passes away with the using as the things of this present time do How long shall the Trumpet of the Lord be sounded in the Land before the People prepare themselves to serve the Lord and worship him in Spirit and Truth as he requires How long shall the Judgments of the Lord be in the Earth before the Inhabitants thereof learn Righteousness O the hardness of the Hearts of the Children of Men this day upon the Earth how past feeling are the Men of this Generation grown and without Understanding Never was Sodom more secure The Day is dawned and the Sun is up and yet they lye fast locked up in the deepest Sleep of fleshly Ease and carnal Security And because the Lord suffers not his whole Displeasure to arise at once upon them therefore they go on to harden themselves in their Sins as the People of old did whom the Lord overthrew in his Wrath And so because Judgment is not speedily executed upon their Evil Deeds therefore they set their Hearts to go on in their old ways of Sin Vanity and Uncleanness and so cover themselves but not with the Spirit of the Lord nor any of the pure and Holy ways thereof but take Counsel one at another and strengthen themselves in the Arm of Flesh Wo wo unto you O wicked and evil People who harden your Hearts against the Lord who shall sufficiently bewail you or what Lamentation shall be taken up for you With the Mourning of them that mourn for the Dead slain by the Sword cast out into the High-ways to be trodden under Foot shall you be lamented Thomas Taylor To Protestants OYe poor People called Protestants in the sence of the Love of God to my Soul and pity to yours do I write these Lines It is many Years now since it pleased the Lord to deliver you from the bloody Conspiracy of them called Papists in that Powder Plot and you have kept a Yearly Remembrance of it in an outward Day in an outward manner Acclamations Organs and other bodily Exercises but alass your Souls lies still in the Death Ignorant of that Heavenly Deliverance and Resurrection from Sin which the Saints in Light witness to the everlasting Praise and Glory of his Grace daily and hourly to be remembred and at no time to be forgotten And for want of this your Offerings cannot be accepted of the pure God who looks for Spiritual Obedience from the very Heart of all that receive any Blessing Mercy or Deliverance from him either for their Souls or Bodies But truly the Lord God is not pleased with your Organs Ringing of Bells and Singing and shouting on the top of a Steeple or any vain words of Thankfulness for an Offering to him and you still remaining in that nature which grieveth his Holy Spirit And so you dishonour the Holy Lord God the Creator of all things by your base and low thoughts of him judging his Thoughts to be like your
Christ's Lambs it cannot be well with you Your Teachers may tell you of Sin in the general to be the cause of these Plagues but they tell you not nakedly and truly for what the Hand of the Lord is lifted up against you neither indeed can they because of the Blindness of their Hearts and the Spirit of deep Sleep that is fallen upon them So Friend these things are on me as from the Lord to advertise thee and you all of in love to thy Soul and you all and to desire you in the Name of the Lord to lay them to Heart and ponder of them and not to pass over them slightly as too many have done because they come from such a one as I who am as a Man rejected by you Yet the Lord loves my Soul and cares for me praised be his Name and in the Patience and Joy and Strength of the Peace of God's Blessed Spirit am I kept and preserved in these continued Bonds and Sufferings for his Names sake and the Love of Christ constrains me to seek all your Good and Welfare in the Lord though the more I do this I be the more hated and persecuted of some for my Good Will but this I impute not here to thee but desires that thou maist more and more keep thy Heart and Hands clean from the great Offence to wit the Hatred of Goodness and good Men which hath sunk Nations and Kingdoms into the Pit And my desire is That the King and all in Authority may timely know and consider of these things as things of most Concernment to their Immortal Souls Rests God's Servant Thomas Taylor Wo to the World because of Iniquity WO to the World because of the great Iniquity that lyeth upon it O how are the People of this present time wholly loose in their Hearts to all manner of Vanity The Lord seeth and well pondereth of these things though you O poor deceived People will not see it For O how the Enemy of your Souls through long Custom hath blinded your Minds so that the Good which God hath commanded you you like not at all but the Evil which your own Hearts have devised you call Good and so bring your felves under the Wo Wo Wo to the cursed Customs of the World which are many Your Races both by Men and Beasts where Multitudes meet together to spend their precious Time and to satisfie their Vain Covetous and Drunken Minds the Lord is against it and Judgment from Heaven lingreth not you will not be warned until you feel it Rests God's Servant and Witness against all vain Inventions Thomas Taylor An Apology from the Harmless against the Unjust And to the King and his Magistrates against Plotting WE who are of the World called Quakers do testifie as in the sight of the Blessed Lord God of Heaven and Earth that we are clear in our Hearts from all Plottings or Contrivings of Evil or Mischief against the King or any of his Subjects and that our Meeting apart from the Steeple-house Worship is meerly in Obedience to God and at his Command who saith Come out from amongst them who live in Sin and plead for the continuance of the Body of it Yea in the Regenerate themselves during tearm of Life And so while we touched the unclean thing with you we could not be accepted of God and therefore the Lord called us out that we might meet together as we do and have done these many years in his holy Name and Fear to worship him in Spirit and Truth not in a Pretence but in the real Truth of the thing And we have found his Heavenly Presence with us and his Holy Promise fulfilled amongst us which saith Where two or three are gathered together in Christ's Name he will be in the midst of them Praises to him for ever And now as concerning those People called Monarchy-Men who are Fighters with Carnal Weapon and it seems did rise up to disturb the Peace of the Nation by outward Force we do utterly deny and not only them but all others who think the Kingdom of Christ can be set up with a Carnal Weapon or that his Church can be preserved and kept clean by worldly Force for God hath given us graciously to see beyond all such things and hath manifested in us that Blessed Heavenly Power and Spirit of Christ by which his Church which is his Body is raised up and preserved and builded up for evermore and the Sword of this Blessed Spirit of Jesus which is the Word of God we know for the cutting down not of Persons but Sins Praised be God and so to the outward Fightings and Warrings our Hearts are dead and we dare not avenge our selves as the wicked World doth but to God to we commit our Cause in Well-doing for he is the Avenger of all Wrongs and Pleader of the Innocent Cause of his People in all Generations Glory to his Name over all And therefore it cannot be but a most unjust thing that we should suffer by a Law that was made against Plotters and Seditious Conventiclers I say we who through the Grace of Christ are made to witness against all such things from our very Hearts and therefore it concerns all who are in Authority to see what they do and to distinguish rightly of Matters lest they cause the Innocent to suffer as some to their own Hurt have done and so bring God's Judgments upon them for not the greatest that ever were upon the Earth could escape God's Judgments who wronged his People witness Ahab's House and all the great Kings of the Nations in all Ages who touched God's People who were as dear to him as the apple of his Eye Do you not remember what they did to Daniel for the Worship of his God and how the Lord delivered him and the Pit devoured his Adversaries with the Informers and false Accusers Daniel could not worship but according to the Law of the God of Heaven and so we cannot worship but according to the Law of the Spirit of Life which is in Christ Jesus Must we therefore suffer well we are helped by the Love of God to rejoyce and bear patiently the Will of the Lord until he plead our Innocent Cause and judge in Righteousness betwixt us and our Adversaries for in his Judgment is our Boldness Glory to God for ever but the Haters of the Good cannot stand before him The Jews said They had a Law and by their Law Christ ought to die Was that a good Law which condemned the Innocent So whatever Men pretend as a Cloak to cover their Doings from Men yet God sees the Hearts of all Persecutors of the Righteous and will judge them as such Rests Thomas Taylor Against May-poles O People of Penkridge and the Places thereabout who had a Heart or Hand in the setting up of these Heathenish May-poles especially this second time you have shamed your selves and your Religion thereby in the sight of all and
of Kings and Lord of Lords and dreadful over all whose Eye is as a flame of Fire who came not to send Peace on the cursed Earth but a Sword and whose Sword never returns empty from the Battle unto you all I say saith the Holy One the Lord Jesus Christ Do not I see your ways and your doings both what you have done and what you do yea do not I search and see your Hearts and Reins and know what you would do O! consider consider do you know that I am near when you sit in Council and work all your Works even your darkest Works and take notice of them and treasures them up in my remembrance to give to every Man according to his Ways and the fruit of his Doings Do not I know that you all in Words profess me and call me Lord Lord and say I am your Saviour but alas alas you will none of me to Rule in you and over you nay nay you ask not Counsel at my Spirit and so are not for my Honour in what you bring forth Only sometimes when my witness is reached in you a little is done by some of you for my Babes but then your Goodness stays not but passeth away like the early Dew and then your evil Hearts turn back again from me and then you take Counsel one at another how to establish your own Kingdom Wills Glory and Greatness which is of this World and regard not my Honour my Glory my People who fear before me and with Moses and all my Saints do quake and tremble at my Word but suffers them to be a Prey to many and lets mine Enemies go free amongst you What shall Drunkards Sweaters Morrice-Dancers Stage-players Gamesters of all sorts and Hypocrites of all sorts have liberty to meet together to dishonour my Name without danger and fear and my Babes only who meet together to wait upon me to glorifie my Name sand to edifie one another in the most Holy Faith be threatned stocked and haled before the Judgment-Seats and be Imprisoned as though they only were the burden of the Land Shall I not visit for these things saith the Lord and shall not my Soul be avenged on such a Nation and People as this O! how hath the Enemy of the Soul deceived you in making you believe that you are setting up my Kingdom and Gospel when you are fetting up your own Nests on high and going about to establish your own Traditions My Kingdom is not of this World but that which you set up is of this World My Worship stands in Spirit and Truth yours in Form and Shadows and outward Shew which the Hypocrites for self-ends can fast enough run into My way is in a daily cross to all Flesh yours in the Will and Liberty of the Flesh O the burden the burden that I bear of you O the weight that you are unto my Spirit O the cry the cry and deep Groans of my oppressed Seed amongst you because of your Iniquities O! consider consider what is lately come to pass concerning Oliver Cromwel and his House and his Friends and Flatterers and shall not my Hand find out you if you be found in their Ways or worse Did I visit amongst other things for the several Excesses committed about him in the time of his Life and Greatness and especially for that at his Death and shall I not visit for the several Excesses and Wastings of my Creatures about thee O Charles Stuart in these late Months especially about that of thy Proclamation and Coronation saith the Lord God Lay things to Heart ye forgetful and stout-hearted Children What can you say that was Evil and Oppressive in their Days and is not as yet amended in yours I the Lord look for Judgment and Righteousness from you I look that you should make use of my Power for the encouragement and help of them that love me and fear my Name in the Lands and not of their Oppressors I will call you and all Nations quickly to account for all things I will not be always saith the Lord as one that sleepeth or winketh I will arise I will come in mine eternal dreadful Power amongst you O Sinners and Hypocrites in these Islands and in all the Earth I have been long as a gentle Lamb and little oppressed Child amongst you I will now arise I will put on Zeal as a Cloak and will cloth my self with Garments of Vengeance and will roar from my Holy Hill and will be as a Lyon and as a fierce Lyon amongst you to take a Prey And all your false Shepherds and pretended Watchmen with their false Instruments shall not frey me nor in the least dismay me nor deliver the Prey out of my hands Neither will I hear their false Cry and Prayers nor regard their deceitful Fastings to do them good who now in this day of my Visitation will none of my Counsels but at naught set all my Love and evil entreat my dear Servants who mourn amongst them and in much tenderness warn them to Repentance But oh oh ye Muâ—â—â—de of tall Cedars ye strong Oaks I will raise up a strong Wind amongst you and your high tops shall dash against and split one another and with your fall shall the great multitude of Bramble Bushes Briar-Trees and low creeping Shrubs who admire and adore your Height and Greatness and tremble at you but not at me saith the Lord shall be crushed down together with you in your Fall But Israel shall do Valiantly and your Fall shall be as a Resurrection to my dear Seed and I will do Valiantly saith the God of the Spirits of all Flesh for all that wait for me and love mine appearance For Time is mine and Place is mine and I will not be limited saith the Lord and my Servants shall serve me World without End and that which hath not been seen shall be known in the Earth and Iniquity shall stop her Mouth And Israel's Liberty shall be proclaimed over all the Earth And all Holy Praises by the Lord's Redeemed and Ransomed ones shall be founded forth unto his Name for ever as it is by the living in Jerusalem at this day Even so come Lord Jesus come quickly saith my Spirit Thomas Taylor Thus much the Lord God of Heaven and Earth who desireth not nor delighteth not in the Death of Sinners but rather that they might amend their Lives and live was willing to have the King and his Servants to know which might according to its date have come sooner to your hands if it had been so ordered but if it yet be ordered to come I beseech you in the Bowels of Love as a Servant of God not to slight it but weigh it well in the true Love and Light that searcheth all things and it may be yet serviceable to you for truly Wrath from the Lord is gone out against you and how can it be turned back but by a speedy Repentance of those Evils for
which it is gone forth and by calling in all such Acts and Decrees as are gone forth either before or since its Writing whereby the pure Seed of God in these Islands either have been or may be imbondaged and the good Spirit of God limited For it is not fit that the Lord God of Glory should be stinted or limited in his Way For he is a free Spirit and will not be tyed or bound up to any outward Form whatsoever but will have his People Worship him in Spirit and Truth and to be acted forth in the World in such a form â—s he himself by his Holy Spirit pleaseth to order them unto And this is was and ever must be the order of the true Church in God built up of lively Stones Elect and Precious of Abraham's Seed 〈…〉 for ever By a Servant of Jesus Christ and a Well-wisher to th◠〈…〉 and all People upon Earth earnestly desiring the Welfare of all God's Creation that it may be delivered from the Bondage of Corruption and my Weapons are not Carnal but Spiritual For if my Enemy Hunger I am taught to feed him if he Thirst to give him Drink if he seek to do me any Evil to overcome his Evil with Goodness as the Lord hath dealt with me and not to avenge my self because it belongs to the Lord God for ever who is worthy of all pure Obedience for evermore Thomas Taylor This last part dated in the Fourth Month 1662. Against Lotteries IS it not sad O all People to see such wicked and deceitful Inventions as these Lotteries still on Foot and passing too and fro in the Land uncontrouled after all the late Manifestations of God's Anger against the Nation and People thereof O! when will People lay God's Judgments to Heart and cease to Cousen and Deceive one another Is there any so blind that they see not these filthy things called Lotteries to be one of those Abominations that have come out of the bottomless Pit to deceive the People withal and so to defile the Nations to the pulling down God's heavy Judments upon you O all People who are either the Inventers or Upholders of them so cease cease from all such sinful and ungodly Things whose Foundation is Covetousness the very Root of all Evil and mind the fear of the Lord God lest the day of his Patience pass away from you and you be shut up in that woful Darkness and Hell of Misery for all your Sins where is nothing but weeping and wailing and gnashing of Teeth for evermore Rests a Witness for God in his Power against the Sin of all People without respect of Persons and blessed are all who take warning betime for the Lord is arisen out of his Holy Place to ease him of all his Adversities Thomas Taylor To Stafford O Stafford Stafford thy Judgment lingreth not thy Condemnation slumbreth not thine Iniquity aboundeth and thy Transgressions are multiplied daily as the Sand of the Sea yea thou makes haste to fill up the measure of thine Iniquities that the Indignation when it cometh and behold it cometh swiftly and the Wrath of the Almighty whom thou hast grieved may be seen justly to come upon thee in the sight of all O the mighty Patience and Long sufferance of God hath been great towards thee in sparing thee hitherto 〈◊〉 but thou hast not at all answered the Goodness of God towards thee thou art a Stage for all manner of Sin and Sinners to act their Part in thee and thou a Partaker with the Ungodly in all their Ways and so must thou assuredly partake with them of their Plagues as sure as ever thou hast been of one Mind and Heart with them in their Sin O the haâ—d-heartedness of thine Inhabitants that could never Repent nor lay things to Heart for your good unto this Day nor say within your selves What have we done though the Lord hath made me a Warner and a Reprover unto you all this Fifteen Years both by Words and Writing in Love Truth and Faithfulness that your Souls might live and not dye shewing unto you the Evil of your Doings that you might Repent and turn from them but you would not hear nor amend your Lives to this Day but have increased your Sins as the Old World whom God destroyed with Water and Sodom whom the Lord consumed with Fire and like Jerusalem whom God gave into the hands of a cruel Enemy for all their mighty Sins over whom the Prophet Jeremiah lamented because they would not hear and over whom Christ wept because they would not believe And so my Soul hath long and yet shall weep in Secret for your Pride if you will not now at length before it be too late humble your selves and repent of all your unholy Ways and Worships whereby God's Soul is burden'd for you are most manifestly of those that say Lord Lord in a dead form of words out do not at all what he by his Spirit requires of you but the contrary and so you taking his Holy Name so manifoldly in vain he will not hold you guiltless in his Judgment Day so wo wo will unavoidable be your Portion from the Lord God and everlasting Banishment from his Holy Presence of Life except as is said ye speedily Repent in the deepest Humility and Godly Fear as saith his Spirit in his Servant Thomas Taylor To the Mayor of Stafford AND now to the Mayor of Stafford who so busieth and troubleâ—h himself without cause about the Harmless and Peaceable Meetings of the People of God in their own Houses if he would get true Praise with God and good Men and Comfort to his own Soul let him look into the Streets and open places of the Town and use his Authority to the restraining and hindering of that great Wickedness and abominable Debauchery and Heathenish Practices that are committed there at such times as these called Christmas i. e. in the face of the Sun And let him now stand up for God who is grieved and burthened with such things if he would find Mercy to his Soul for an Account to God must all give of their Stewardship For what bad Customs shall one find amongst the Heathens which at such times as these are not practiced by the People of England who in words profess Christ But alas what will such a Profession do where the Life and Power of Godliliness is wanting Rests God's Servant and all your Souls Friend Thomas Taylor For them that Rule in Stafford O Unrighteous People What will ye do in the Day of the Lord when the Just and Holy God who lives for Ever doth call you 20 Account for all your doings Do you judge it an Evil and punishable by the Law for one of us though never so truly moved of God to come amongst you when you are at your Worship to speak a few words in a peaceable manner for your good and yet can see no Evil in your selves to come in great Companies amongst us
And so the same Spirit that so committed me could not be satisfied until it had seen me run to a Premunire as they call it for not Swearing though the Man called Judge Tirrel who did it confessed before all the Country I spoke or confessed the Substance of that Oath called the Allegiance yet premunired me for want of kissing the Book or saying I Swear I Swear or so which are but light Matters compared with the Substance For I told him and the rest that Popery I was against but not against the King or good Government of this Nation And therefore as the Lord hath so will he ever judge Righteously betwixt me and my Persecutors and bring the Wheel of his Judgments upon the Wicked his Enemies Thomas Taylor To the Mayor and Priest of Stafford WHAT Is the Mayor and Priest of Stafford both in a dead Sleep that neither Heart Hand nor Tongue is left either to punish or reprove open Wickedness and Prophaneness committed in the open Sun amongst them though both the Law of God and Man forbid the same What! Are not Players Bear-wards and such lewd and wicked Persons going about the Country and practicing their Wickedness as this day not only condemned by the Law of God the Light in all Consciences according to Holy Scripture but also in express words forbidden and punishable as Rogues and Vagabonds by the Laws of England see the Statutes 39 Eliz. 4. 1 Jac. 7. 1 Jac. 25. with 3 Car. 4. And yet for all this no stop put to them but even openly tolerated and cried up by the Multitudes of People in open Streets to the great Dishonour of God and Shame both of the Town and Nation when the Servants of the Lord cannot be suffered so openly to cry Repentance and declare God's Judgments against them and the like Abominations that are in the World And therefore may it not be well said of you as it was by Jeremiah the Prophet of old Chap. 10.21 The Pastors are become Brutish and have not sought the Lord therefore they shall not prosper and all their Flocks shall be scattered And Chap. 11.9 And the Lord said unto me a Conspiracy is found amongst the Men of Judah and among the Inhabitants of Jerusalem they are turned back to the Iniquities of their Fore-fathers which refused to hear my words And Isaiah 59.14 15. Judgment is turned away backward and Justice standeth afar off for Truth is fallen in the Street and Equity cannot enter Yea Truth faileth and he that departs from Evil makes himself a Prey and the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no Judgment So awake and arise and consider well of things and repent lest the Lord God come upon you in his fierce Wrath and Judgment for these and all your Sins whereby you have dishonoured him and the King and suffered your Neighbours to be unhelped when it was in the Power of your hand to have done it And what Christian Heart can endure to see one Creature tear and spill the Blood and torment one another and that for no cause but only to satisfie the Lusts of ungodly and lewd vain and cruel Minds of the Multitude Will not God punish for these things and his Soul be avenged on such a Nation as this as have even corrupted the Earth with their Abominations He that hath an Ear let him hear and fear Thomas Taylor Concerning the Fallen Christians BLUSH O Heavens and fear thou Earth for the Lord God will certainly bring forth his Judgments and plead the Cause of his Truth in Vengeance and Righteousness against an Hypocritical People and Wicked Generation scattered upon the Earth in several Countries who call themselves Christians and yet none more contrary to Christ in Heart and Life than they For they strengthen the Hands of the Wicked in all the World with their lewd Practices and cause the Name of Christ to be Blasphemed by their evil Doings They surpass the Deeds of the Wicked and exceed all the Heathen that ever went before them for they Eat and Drink to the highest Excess of Gluttony and Drunkenness and Apparel themselves to the greatest Measure of Pride and Vanity that ever was Their Inventions how to please themselves and satisfie one another's ungodly Lust are innumerable and the Burden of their Covetousness Unreasonableness Oppressions Uncleannesses Prophaneness Superstitions Foolishness Sports Pleasures Pastimes and Unchristian Doings is too heavy for God long to endure yea and that which serveth to fill up yea to make the Measure of their Iniquities to overflow is their Hatred and Persecutions of the Righteous that are amongst them And therefore now again doth the Lord God say the second time Ah! I will ease me of mine Adversaries and be avenged of mine Enemies and will cause the Arm of my Power to rest upon them and the Power of my Jealousie and Wrath to consume them until they know and acknowledge their mighty Sins and be unfeignedly humbled and repent before me for them For their Iniquities are Grievous and I am weary with forbearing saith the Lord of the whole Earth God over all to be dreaded for ever who will shiver in sunder the Hearts of the Stubborn Wicked his Enemies and they shall fall and never rise again So be it O glorious Lord God for the raising up of thy own Dear Seed out of the great Captivity faith my Spirit Thomas Taylor To the Vain People of the World TO all the vain People of the World of what sort soever that go up and down the Country with their Vain Shews Tricks and Foolish Inventions to deceive the People for filthy Lucre by drawing their Minds from God A warning from the Lord unto you all howl howl the day of your Captivity and Scattering and Desolation is at hand the Lord will be terrible to you for you have long grieved his good Spirit burdened his Seed and deceived the People so that you are grown fat full and most careless and forgetful of God and all Goodness but the Lord will thin you and empty you and judge you in his Wrath as a Company of deceived and deceiving Men whose Minds the God of this World hath blinded that you see not the Gospel of God nor the good things thereof which so much concern the good of your Immortal Souls but you have chosen the God of this World that wicked One who Rules in all the Children of Disobedience to be your Guide and Teacher and the Gain of Sin before Goodness you have preferred and chosen to your great hurt and the Lord hath often called you to Repentance but the Custom of Sin and the filthy Lucre coming thereby hath so blinded your Minds and hardned your Hearts that you have not set your Hearts to seek the Lord unto his Day but cries Peace to your selves in your Sins where there is no Peace so if things of you that can hear and believe consider and lay things to Heart before it
Lord and the Honourable Marriage O Blasphemous Men how dare ye so Blaspheme the glorious Name of God shall you never be judged for these things yea verily the Lord will require a strict Account for it is now Day time and you Sin in the Day after Warning and so your Sins are the greater and the Judgment will be accordingly And as you begin with the People so you lead them on with their corrupt Seed bringing that also into your cursed Covenant by sprinkling with earthly Water which washes away the Sin but the Lord God is separating ye all to the Sword and you shall be a Prey to his Wrath and his Servants who now Mourns for you and thus Warns you shall rejoice for ever even so Lord Jesus Amen and Amen Thomas Taylor To the Children of Men. O Ye Children of Men doth not the Eye of the Lord God behold all your Doings and doth he not see all your studyings how to satisfie and fulfil the Lusts and Desires of your own evil Hearts Is not all your Gaming 's Sportings and Mispendings of your precious Time known to him And when he beholds your Cock-Pits your Bowling-Allies your Play-Houses and the like places of Vanity doth not his Soul abhor them that spends the Creation in making and setting up such things and that lets forth his Heart in delight after the things there practised O how is the Lord dishonoured by such doings Did Christ come into the World to hold up such things or to pull them down and will you profess Christ and keep up those things which he came to destroy O blush for shame and lay your Hand upon your Mouth and never boast of your Religion more until you leave off your Vanities and Iniquities For because of the Evil of your Doings will the Lord plead with you and all the Children of Vanity And the Wicked shall not be able to stand before him in this day of his Wrath that is come and coming upon all the Earth to consume the Sinners out of it For the Lord hath a Controversie with the whole Earth and by the Fiery Sword of his glorious Mouth will he get himself the Victory And not by the Sword of either Great or Mean Men shall the Earth be purged from her Dross He that hath an Ear let him hear and repent of the Evil of his Doings For he that goeth on in Sin after the Admonition of Truth shall not prosper saith the Spirit Thomas Taylor To the Fencers O Ye Fencers and Sword-Players vain Men How will you Fence off or defend your selves from the Judgments and Wrath of God that is to come upon you for your Sins O what a Company you gathered together Yesterday for your own filthy Lucre sake to the Dishonour of God and wounding of all your poor Souls in the sight of God! O the Wickedness of these Times and Evils of these Evil Days And what O ye People the Lovers and Beholders of these Vanities will you not see the Evil of your Doings one Day gather together into that you call your Church in a presence of Worshipping God and the very next Day found assembled together with Drums into the County House to see the Heathenish Actings of Two vain Men with Naked Swords which amongst Christians should be put up into their Sheath What Abomination is this to see a Town and a Country gathered together and that not of the Meanest of the People to give their Money and spend their Time to see Two vain Men Fight for a Wager as they pretend and yet in Hypocrisie too to get the People's Money and especially in these hard Times when many poor Souls have not a Penny to buy them Bread withal Will not God Judge for these things Will not God's Soul be avenged on such a Nation as this Yea sure he will and plenty in abundance of Drums and Naked Swords may you hear and see to your astonishment And that in earnest to waste and cut down a Proud Wicked Gainsaying and Hypocritical People Howl ye Priests the Head of all this Vileness who have taught the People to be Heathens and to delight their Hearts in things which God's Soul hateth Howl ye Magistrates who have born the Sword in vain and have not withstood the doings of the Wicked but have suffered them to act their Abominations in the chief Places of your Towns even before your Judgment-Seats Howl all ye People high and low who are Upholders of and Delighters in the vain Inventions and Heathenish Works of all sorts of Wicked Men and your Hearts are secretly departed from the Living God so that your delight is not in any of his Ways The Lord's Controversie is with you and he will certainly ease himself of you and all his Adversaries as saith his Spirit in his Servant Thomas Taylor Concerning Sprinkling HEAR O ye Priests and harken O People for the Lord hath a Controversie with you because of the Evil of your Doings your Gatherings together are for the worse and not the better and the Lord can smell no Sweet Savour in your Feasts because of his Name which is Holy which you so much take in vain at such times as these For when you tell of Christning a Child and Regenerating it and making it an Heir of God's Kingdom by such your Doings you deceive your selves and the Infant greatly And so when in words you seem to give Thanks to God for doing that which he neither doth nor never promised to do by such a means Do you not greatly dishonour him and take his Name in vain The Apostle Peter saith It is not the washing away of the filth of the Flesh but the answer of a good Conscience in the Resurrection of Jesus that Savâ—s But what answer can the little Child have at present who is sensible of no such thing And for your selves your own words do daily bear witness against you to be an Unsaved People for you say You do that you should not do and leave undone what God commands and that there is no Health in you And this not only in such Doings as this at this time but also in the whole Course of your Lives you make good For the Lord I say that he never required this at your hands to wit To take a little Water and sprinkle it on a little Infants Face and then to say that thereby it is made a Member of Christ a Child of God and Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven And the Scripture no where saith any such thing and so you have no ground in the Truth for such a thing nor for your Godfathers and God-mothers as you in your Blindness call them to promise that for the Child which you never did perform for your selves to this day as is manifest for to that of God in your Conscience I speak When did you forsake the Devil and all his Works Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful Lusts and Desires of
and Bears led about your Streets with a Drum and a multitude of People in order to more Vanity and Wickedness and that at such a time as this wherein you pretend to be more Servants of God than ordinary by your Communicating together in your Eating and Drinking the Signs of Christ's Body and Blood But alas for you What will all this avail you so long as Bull and Bear-baitings are tolerated amongst you with such full Allowance as this to the Grief of God's Spirit which abhors all such Cruel Sports and Heathenish Customs Do you not publickly profess in your Church-Service Repentance and Amendment of Life for all that 's contrary to Christ And do you not yet see that to delight in seeing Bulls and Bears and Dogs tearing and tormenting one another without cause is a grievous Sin in the sight of God and therefore not to be tolerated by you Besides the great hurt it doth in the Minds of your young ones who are led away from remembring their Creator in the days of their Youth by these things Surely the Lord is grieved with you will you not see the Evil of such Doings for I know if you would come to the Light of Christ in your Consciences you could not but see them and stand against them with all your might and so discharge a good Conscience towards God and his Creation And how do you know but the general Liberty for these Evils to act upon the Stage of these Nations is one cause of the present Judgment of the Sword amongst them Rests God's Servant who hath been a Mourner in Spirit for ye almost this Ten Years because of the Evil of your Doings but as yet you have not laid things rightly to Heart which shows your Misery to be great Thomas Taylor A Testimony against Sporting and Playing NOne can rightly rejoice in the Birth of Christ but the Spiritual New-born in Christ Those that think to please Christ with Eating and Drinking and Sporting and Playing are Carnally-minded and the Carnal Mind is Enmity to God and those that live in the Fleshly Mind cannot please God Rom. 8.6 7 8. So its manifest that the Service and Kingdom of God stands not in Meats and Drinks and Worldly Delights but in Righteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost Rom. 14.17 For Meats for the Belly and the Bâ—lly for Meats but God will destroy bâ—th it and them saith the Apostle But God will never destroy such as Serve and Worship him in Spirit and Truth all the days of their new and redeemed Life And so it is manifest the more Spiritual that any one is the more are they dead and separated from that foolish Mind and vain Customs that the Evil World loves and lives in And on the contrary those that make most Provision for the Flesh to satisfie it in the Lusts thereof let the Time be what it may are the greatest Enemies to Christ and their own Souls so let things be well weighed and considered and it will appear to the open Eye that God is not more dishonoured many Twelve Days of the Year than in these that People pretend most to Honour him in which to a Godly Heart cannot but be matter of great Sorrow as saith the Apostle Phil. 3.18 19. Many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even Weeping that they are Enemies to the Cross of Christ whose end is Destruction whose God is their Belly and whose Glory is in their Shame who mind Earthly things And this is the miserable and woful Condition of the most part of People that in these Days bear the name of Christians over whom the Spirit mourns Thomas Taylor A Loving Exhortation TO All Kings Princes Potentates Bishops and People in the whole Christendom Wherein is a Distinction betwixt the True and False Teachers To be Read over in Meekness and the Fear of the Lord. OYE Kings Princes Potentates and Rulers of the Earth we desire not your Thrones Honours Places or Dignities neither do we envy you for them for we have enough in God our Father who hath made us Kings and Priests to himself by Jesus Christ Spiritually to reign over the Evil in the World and to offer up our selves in Righteousness to his Glory and this is our Crown and that which we strive after in a pure Conscience for we are not of those that fight with Flesh and Blood and with Carnal Weapons for an Earthly Crown but such as in the Strength of Almighty God are taught with Spiritual Weapons to War only against that Mystery of Iniquity and Power of Darkness that captivates the precious Soul of Man and keeps it short of the Glory of God desiring from the Truth of our Hearts that neither the Soul nor Body of any may perish but that this Wicked one which is the Enemy of both may be destroyed out of the Earth in this day of Christ by the Spirit of his Mouth and Brightness of his appearing that so the whole Creation of God may be delivered from Bondage to stand in its Holy Order to the Glory of the Creator as in the Beginning that so he may take delight in the Children of Men and make his Abode with them as at that time when the Morning Stars sung for Joy and all was full of Beauty and Sweetness and no Death in them And O ye Bishops and high Teachers of the World we desire not your Seats neither do we envy you for your great Promotions but do desire that you may know with us the true Shepherd and Bishop of the Soul Christ Jesus the good and true Shepherd and Bishop who gave himself for the Sheep that he might Redeem them from all Iniquity and deliver their Souls from the hands of all Oppression to serve him in his own free Spirit where none can come to make afraid And as this Saviour you come to know and receive your knowledge of Men and Things according to the Flesh will cease and the Love of the World and the Worlds things will die in you and a Love to the Seed that breaths after Righteousness will arise in you and you will know what God requires of you and how you may do that which will commend you to God in the great Day of his Judgment which is nigh at hand and apply your Hearts thereto Therefore awake awake arise arise for the great Day of the Lord is indeed nigh at hand yea the Sun is already arisen and his bright Glory shineth upon the Sons of the Morning and the true fearching Light from which nothing can be hid is felt and known in the Earth and before it the Workers of Iniquity are as Chaff and before it can no mortal Man stand in Judgment though he glister never so much in outward Glory in the Worlds eye for in the presence of this Light the Judgment proceedeth not according to Person or Worldly Appearance but according to Truth Equity and Righteousness and
are come to know Christ and his Anointing in them to teach them are turned from such And though these Deceivers have proceeded for a time to wit during the late Night of Apostacy which Paul 2 Thes 2. spake of to deceive many yet now that the Light is risen again from under the Earth they are manifest and can proceed no further Let none therefore now be so void of understanding as to brand the true Messengers of Jesus Christ in this Day with the Name of Deceivers because they declare Truth not only publickly but also from House to House by virtue of the Holy Spirit only for so did the Apostles themselves and yet were no Creepers into Houses for creeping into Houses denotes the Work of the Children of Darkness who run without the Lord Jesus Christ his Spirit or Authority in their own Wills for Self-ends as before leading about People in their silliness and sinfulness all their Days as by woful Experience in the late Ages of the World since the Apostles Days hath been fully manifest wherein the World hath wondred after the Beast And as there were false Prophets among the People saith Peter even so also shall there be False Teachers among you who shall privily bring in Damnable Heresies c. 2 Pet. 2. But how may these be known may some say By their Fruits saith Christ ye shall know them And of this sort are they saith Peter in the same Chapter who through Covetousness with fained words make Merchandize of People and by walking after the Flesh in the Lust of Covetousness and Vncleanness and Despite of Christ's Government even deny the Lord that bought them These are the Presumptuous Ones indeed who count it Pleasure to Riot in the Day-time speaking evil of the worthy things that God works and makes manifest in his Children which these Presumptuous Ones know not And these false Teachers are of those whose Eyes are full of Adultery and that cannot cease from Sin For how should they seeing their Heart is exercised with Covetous Practices loving the Wages of Unrighteousness like Balaam as he to wit the Apostle Peter there speaks And therefore those that see not these are Blind indeed and those that these Teachers can deceive may well be said to be without a Foundation And hence it hath come to pass that through such Teachers Wickedness and Peoples Ignorance the World hath been as a Wilderness And now therefore is the Lord according to his Blessed Promise bringing up that knowledge of himself and his Christ again that shall make the Wilderness a fruitful Field and sweet smelling Garden for himself to be glorified in And this knowledge of God shall cover the Earth as the Waters do the Sea And thereby shall all hurting and destroying be done away from amongst Men Isa 65. last as is this Day witnessed amongst such where this Knowledge of God hath place Glory to his Name for Ever So now therefore all ye Kings Princes Potentates and Rulers of the Earth see in what Principle you stand and upon what Foundation you grow and whose Work you are a doing whether God's or your own True Magistrates are not a Terrour to the good but to the evil But how can ye see the good and the evil truly asunder or know what to punish and what to protect if you come not to the Light Christ Jesus that true Light which lighteth every Man that cometh into the World as was said before to take Counsel at him for he is the Wonderful Counsellor and whatsoever makes things truly manifest is his Light and with it every hard thing is known and every secret thing found out but without it nothing but all People that walk in the Darkness of their own Understandings do err in Vision and stumble in Judgment and so know not what they do nor whither they go And this way that seemeth good in the Man 's own Eye is that which always tended to Death and disordered all things And by such a Judgment Barrabas was Released and the Innocent Jesus delivered to be Crucified and by this the false Prophets in all Ages were protected and born up and the Dear Servants of Christ cast out as a thing of nought So arise arise awake awake to Righteousness and Sin not for the Lord is on his way to give unto every Nation and each People therein Rewards according to their Works without respect of Persons And until God's Righteousness rule in all and over all how can any thing stand let that of God in all Consciences judge so lay things to heart for this is the Day of your Visitation Also you Bishops and high Teachers who are pleased in your Minds because accepted of Man consider Are you accepted of God Is your Sacrifice so pure and your Persons so innocent that the Holy God can receive them Is your Doctrine so sound and Life incorrupt that none can justly blame it Have your Hands handled the Word of Life which you speak of to others And do you know in your selves what that living shâ—rp and powerful Word of God is which the Apostle Heb. 4. speaks of which divides betwixt Joint and 〈◊〉 Soul and Spirit and discerneth all the thoughts and intents of every Heart And are your Hearts cleansed by it And do you Preach and Minister this internal living and eternal Truth the Word to the People or the dead Letter only See how it is For the Fruit â—ow must be the real Witness of every Trees Nature Have you received the Free gift from above Then sell it not for Money Would you be counted Ministers and Embassadors for Christ and would you have the Children of Light to own you Then approve your selves to them as Paul did to the Brethren in his Days 2 Cor. 6.3 c. In much Patience in Afflictions in Necessities in Distresses in Stripes in Imprisonments as dying yet alive in the Hearts of the Hearers by the Power of Truth c. And let all People see that you mind the good of the Soul and God's Glory more than the World and your own Self-ease and Advantage For the Day is dawned that makes all things manifest And lay by your Carnal Weapons and make proof of your Spiritual Weapons if you have any and try a little how you can perswade Men to be of your Mind by that means For People begin to question much the forcing of Men into Religion by the carnal Sword and outward Constraint whether it be of God or no. For it 's found by Experience that into what People are forced by the outward Power by the same means may they be forced out of that again and so remain restless and without a Foundation until the Truth it self settle them So set not up your rest in the Wilderness much less in Egypt but look towards the Holy Land the undefiled unmoveable Foundation and suffer others to do so too And those that have spied out the good Land hinder them not
to take it from them whether they will or no I say is not this a manifest Token that such Ministers are not sent of Christ seeing he said to his Freely ye have received freely give and the Apostle said We seek not yours but you But if you say the same Apostle also said If we have ministred to you Spiritual Things is it a great Matter if we partake of your Carnal Things 3. Then I Query to let pass the Question here concerning what you minister whether it is Spiritual or Carnal whether ever the Apostle or any true Minister of God and Christ either under the Law or Gospel did ever use any other Means for that they had allowed them of God but the Power of the Word only Or did ever the Apostle or any Minister of Christ receive much less compel by worldly Force any Maintenance for Preaching from such as denied them to be true Ministers And so such now as not only compel Wages from their own Hearers but even from such as they do no Work for do plainly manifest by their Fruits that they have run and God never sent them and are so far from being Successors of the Apostles in their Spiritual and Heavenly Ministry as that they Merit to be accounted of the Kind of Old Eli's Sons who by their Doings caused the Offerings of the Lord to be abâ—oâ—red 1 Sam. 2. from Ver. 12 to 18. 4. Whether such as cannot content themselves with the Incomes of one Parish though it be Sixty Eighty or One Hundred Pounds a Year but seek after one or more Parishes or Places of Revenue besides are not out of Measure Covetous and so palpably out of the Doctrine of Christ and so Idolaters seeing the Apostle saith Covetousness is Idolatry Eâ—â— â— 5. 5. Whether did ever any Minister of Christ's sending Preach up the Tenth of Peoples Labour or Encrease of the Earth and earthly Things as a standing Gospel-maintenance for his Ministers seeing the Apostles Writings are wholly silent in the thing And now if any of you in your high Minds think much or strange to be question'd concerning these things such may know that these are the latter Days spoken of by Jeremiah Chap. 23.20 21. wherein God hath done and is doing great things for his People And in these latter Days saith the Prophet there you shall consider perfectly of the pouring forth of God's Wrathful Indignation upon the false Prophets and Teachers who have run and God never sent them as also throughout that whole 23d Chapter of Jeremiah is to be seen Also concerning the false Prophets and Teachers you may read John 10.1 c. Isa 56.9 c. Ezek. 34.1 Mic. 3. 2 Pet. 2. with divers other Scriptures which speak of the false Prophets and Teachers also of the true Ones from all which these few amongst many plain and necessary Conclusions following may be gathered viz. 1. The true Prophet Messenger or Teacher is sent of God as before in the Power and Spirit of God with the living Word of God which is as a Hammer and a Fire to break the hard Hearts in sunder and to burn up the Chaff and Dross in the Minds of Disobedient People who know God's Will but do it not but hold the Truth in Unrighteousness The false Prophet or Teacher he runs in his own Will and having stolen the Word from his Neighbour useth his Tongue to say the Lord saith when the Lord never sent him and so with good Words and fair Speeches deceives the Hearts of the unwary Hearers making glad the Hearts of Hypocrites and crying Peace when the Lord hath not spoken it 2. The true Prophet Teacher or Minister as he hath received freely so he ministers freely but the false Teacher as he runs in his own Will so he ministers for a Self-end and if People put into his Mouth he cries Peace but if otherwise he prepares War against them and out of his corrupt Heart cries Give and can never have enough 3. The true Minister hath a Mouth always open for God and against Sin and Evil in every Appearance of it without respect of Persons and like a true Watcher gives notice of the Wolf's approach and doth not flee when the Wolf comes but opposes him in the Loss of all because Christ's Sheep are dear to him But the Hireling fleeth because he is a Hireling and careth not for the Sheep and as concerning Sin it may live in People for Ever for him for he cannot bark against Sin he is so full of it himself for how can he that is an Unclean Covetous Proud Person himself with a Face stand against such Sins in others nay nay the barking of such must needs be against such as do from the Heart depart from Iniquity and so separate from such as live in it according to the Call of the Lord. 4. The true Prophet Minister or Teacher fights the good Fight of Faith and his Weapons are Spiritual and not Carnal and so he sights not with Flesh and Blood to destroy Mens Persons Liberties or Estates but his War is with the wicked Devil the Power of Darkness in Men that separates Mens Minds Hearts and Souls from God and brings them into Sin 's Captivity and so under God's Wrath and so the true Minister's Work is to Preach People out of that woful Condition into the Liberty of the Sons of God But the false Teacher or Minister his Weapons are Carnal and he runs to the worldly Powers to help him against such as oppose his evil Doctrine and Practice crying Men of England c. help as the Jews cried out against Paul Men of Israel help and so matter not though they weary the Magistrate and set all the World in an Uproar to keep themselves up in their high Places of Deceit and so prove the greatest Enemies against God's Truth and his Servants of all other as is abundantly to be seen in Scripture concerning the Priests and their Confederates who Presecuted Christ to Death and raged against his Followers because of their holy Testimony for God against their Soul-destroying Ways 5. The true Messengers and Ministers of Jesus Christ as they are powerfully sent of God so they work effectually for God for the edifying of the Body of Christ and perfecting of his People in Holiness to God But the false Teacher as he hath run without God so his Work is for strengthning that Part in Man to wit the Serpent's Wisdom which is against God and wars against the Simplicity of Christ and Good of the Soul in all and so they being themselves out of that Heavenly Power which perfects the Soul to God and gives it perfect Victory over all Sin they cry No Perfection here no perfect Victory over Sin on this side the Grave and so they lead about a People laden with Sin and Lust silly as Woman in the Transgression ever learning and never able by their Means to come to the Knowledge of the Truth itself
one Neighbour to another and one Nation to another Come let us all be humbled before the Lord God of Heaven and Earth who made us all of one Blood to dwell together upon the Face of the Earth in Truth Goodness and Love to serve one another and so as Branches of one Tree to receive Life and Vertue and Power from our God into our Souls to strengthen us unto his holy Work who came not to destroy Mens Lives but to save them whose Kingdom is not of this World and therefore is not set up or maintained with Carnal Weapons Violence and Spoil but by the Eternal Spirit of our God whose Fruit is in all Goodness and Righteousness and Truth And let not the wicked Devil the Destroyer deceive us any more by his Lies and Delusions but let us all with one Heart and Soul resist his Temptations When he perswades us to seek to be great in the Earth and be avenged on them we count our Enemies let us not hearken to him but let us over come their Evil with Goodness and not to seek the Destruction of their Persons or Spoil of their Estates as the Heathens do that know not God but let us follow the Example of Jesus Christ God manifest in Flesh who when he was reviled reviled not again but prayed for such as despitefully used him O come let us follow this meek Lamb in Righteousness and Truth and learn of him in our Heart who is Meek and Lowly that we may find Rest for our Souls who rebuked his Disciples who would have had Fire to come down from Heaven to destroy the Samaritans that would not at that time receive Christ For what knowest thou O Man but the Samaritans may in time come to a better Mind and then thou wilt see it was thy Will and not God's that desired their Destruction in their Sins For Christ would have all to be saved and come to the Knowledge of his Truth But many will not come to him that they might have Life and so their Destruction is of themselves and their Condemnation just And who are those now therefore that withstand the Doctrine of the Truth which said Love your Enemies and seek not the Destruction of their Persons and the Spoil of their Estates but seek by good Doctrine and good Life to bring them out of their Sins And if they will not but rather hate thee for thy good Will be content thou hast quitted thy own Soul and art clear of their Blood and so thou becomest a Sufferer with Jesus Christ and shalt Reign with him in due time I say who are these now on the Earth that withstand Truth and continue in the hateful destroying Ways of the Old Jews and Gentiles but such as will not be counselled by the Lamb of God the Suffering Seed who said Learn of me for I am meek and lowly in Heart But are Men of Corrupt Minds who account Gain and Worldly Honour and Promotions more than Godliness who cries Peace to themselves in their Sins And that same Spirit in them which crieâ— that false Peace in them is the same that stirs them up to Kill Destroy Oppress and Spoil one another for Selfish and Worldly Ends. But the Lord is arisen to Judge all these Evil Things and to Redeem a Seed to serve him as in the beginning of the Gospel before Antichrist the Murderer got up amongst them that professed Christ in Words but denied him in Deeds who had a Name that they lived but were dead from that true Life which was in Christ Jesus whom in Words they professed And though the Passage we seel now to be as hard of coming from amongst the false Christians and Turks as it was for the first true Christians to come from amongst the Jews and Gentiles yet the Almighty Power of our God is able over all and through all to carry us on to the end whom he hath called and saved with a mighty Salvation ever-praised be his Name and who will yet save his Beloved Seed Israel and gather them from the East and West and from the North and South to sit down with Christ in his Kingdom And this is no ill News to any but who are glewed to Deceit and married to Iniquity but it is Glad-tidings indeed to all that love their Souls and the Honour and Glory of Truth more than the things of this perishing World And I could desire that all who are apt to reason as the Jews did when they heard the Declaration of the Gospel of Peace and Kingdom of God which stands in Righteousness and Peace saying If we let this go on then the Romans or Others will come and take our Place and Nation I say that they would consider That the very Course which they to wit the Jews in the Denial of the Truth took for saving of themselves brought utter Destruction upon them and their Nation But what shall vain Man in his foolish faln Wisdom and earthly Reasoning think to be Wiser than God and to have a greater Care and Love to the Creation than God himself who made it hath What! shall Angels at the Birth of Christâ—sing Glory to God on high and Good-will to Men and yet when the way of God in Christ is published for bringing this great Work of Salvation to pass vain Man must come in with his false Mind and say This is the way to confound all Order and destroy all Good And that this Doctrine turneth the World up-side down And that the Messengers of Christ are pestilent Fellows and Movers of Sedition O Earth Earth Tremble before the Lord for thou shalt never have Peace in thy own Ways thou shalt never be Saved by thy own Strength thou shalt never be Established by thy own Counsels thou shalt never have true Peace nor any Plenty within thy Borders until thou believest the Gospel which saith Learn of Christ whose Kingdom is not of this World and whose Weapons are not Carnal but Spiritual Mighty through God not for the pulling down of Outward Walls and Bodies but for razing and pulling down and destroying the strong Holds of Sin and Satan in the Hearts and Lives of the Children of Men For after that saith the Apostle The World by Wisdom knew not God it pleased God by the Foolishness of Preaching to wit such Doctrine as this which is a Cross and Stumbling-block to all Corrupt Flesh to save them that believe So lay things to heart ye People of the World and Inhabitants of all the Earth for God's Purpose is not to exalt any Man or Men of this World or to glorifie any Flesh but to exalt his own Son Christ Jesus the heavenly Man the Lord from Heaven the Truth over all of whose Kingdom and Government there shall be no End And all that obey his Voice and for Obedience thereunto are made willing to Suffer with him shall reign with him for evermore But all others whether they be called Christians or Turks
a hint of what certainly is and will be And so having cleared my Conscience to God and paid my debt of Love to you in this matter I leave all to him who is the righteous Judge and the true Pleader of the Cause of the Innocent in all Generations and the Avenger of all Wrongs that are done upon the Earth and rests his Servant in whose Love is my Souls Life who am a Sufferer for the Testimony of the Everlasting Truth amongst the Despised People of God whom the World in Scorn call Quakers yet the Reproach of Christ to us is great Riches Thomas Taylor An Exhortation to remember the Judgments of God HOW long O ye People of this present time will ye grieve and burden the Spirit of the Lord with your Works How long shall he suffer your Manners unpunished Is it not high time for the Lord to lay to his Hand seeing you have so covered his Law with your Traditions and vain Customs that the poor People can hardly find any one thing you do savouring of Pure Christian Doctrine or the Apostles Practice But the Hand of the Man of Sin is the Worker in you and by the power of the Earth is your Building upheld But Wo to the Building which the Lord hath not builded and Wo to the Builders of that House wherein all the Wicked of the World inhabit lye down and are at ease and bring forth their Young Is this the Church of God Nay nay this is the Synagogue of Satan and not of the Living God for the House of God is Holy and nothing but Holiness dwells there nothing that defileth can enter this day into God's Temple for Holiness is the Ornament of God's House for ever So Wo to the false Builders and Daubers that cry Peace to People in their Sins the Lord speaks no Peace to any Sinners but Judgments Plagues and Woes to Priests and People who live in their Sins and plead for a Continuance in Sin as long as they live as at this day Wo to the unspiritual Men that bind heavy Burdens upon others and will not touch them with one of their Fingers that bind the poor Men whom they call Wardens of their Church by Oath to do impossible things and punish them that make Conscience of their Ways and dare not Swear nor Forswear but would keep their Hearts clean to Christ in whose Church is neither Swearing nor Forswearing this day but the Yea is Yea and the Nay is Nay in all things in Truth and Righteousness But Wo to the wicked World that takes God's Name in their polluted Lips the Lord is arisen to judge thee in Flames of Fire for the day of the Lord is dawned upon thee and thy building will he thrown down and a visible downfall shall Babylon have upon the Face of all the Earth for the Pastors have not gathered in nor visited with Truth the good Seed but with Force and Violence over it do they Rule and therefore is the Lord arisen to plead the Cause of the Poor and Innocent as the Mouth of the Lord hath said So be it And let all the Earth fear and tremble before the Lord this day fâ—r our God the true God is a consuming Fire and will by no meaâ—s acquit the Guilty Thomas Taylor To the Unclean Communicants YOU that tell of a Communion and say you eat Bread and drink Wine in remembrance of Christ's Death and yet live in your Sins confessing with your own Mouths that you daily leave undone that which you ought to have done and do what you ought not to do and that there is no Health in you Consider of your Ways and see in what your Fellowship and Communion stands Doth it not stand in Sin and Disobedience And examine your selves what you eat Do you not eat Damnation to your selves not discerning the Lord's Body For the Lord's Body is Holy but you are Unholy and live in Unholiness as your selves confess and as is manifest in your Lives and Conversations so you have cut your selves off from being of Christ's Holy Body you that live in your Sins and do your own Wills and leave undone that which he wills now to do for no unholy or unclean thing can be joyned to Christ's holy Body Again Christ's Body is a sound and healthful Body and no Leper in it but you have no Health in you as you confess and so you are of that Body and Number who have not as yet so much as touched the Hem of Christ's Garment with a true Heart but are in the Mud and Filth and Diseasedness of this sinful lost World through which the wholsom Waters of God's Sanctuary have not run to cleanse you So all you do in this your sinful State is unclean in the sight of God and he can take no pleasure in your seeming Services because of your Sins For as the Leperous Bodies under the Law were shut out of the outward typical holy Place so the Spiritually Defiled are altogether unfit in this day to enter into or have Communion with any thing of Christ's Kingdom Thomas Taylor God's Virtue and Goodness Extolled O Thou pure God of all Heavenly Glory Virtue and Goodness how Holy are all thy Ways and Righteous all thy Judgments O how plainly and clearly hast thou manifested thy Mind and Will to Mankind in all Generations and especially since the first publishing of thy Gospel and in this of ours and yet alas with grief of Heart may it be said never was the Earth more burthened with the Evil of her Inhabitants than at this day never was there more provoking of God by evil Customs and bad Doings than now They spend their Days in satisfying the Lusts of the Flesh and of the Mind that is Earthly Sensual and Devilish and say in their Hearts unto God Depart from us for we desire not the Knowledge of thy Ways The strait way of Christ they perfectly hate and the broad way of the World which leads to Destruction they willingly chuse because their Hearts are evil and to Christ's Light they will not bring their Deeds because they be so evil that the Light will utterly condemn them And thus in the Blindness of their uncircumcised Hearts they heap up Wrath against the Day of Wrath and Revelation of God's just Judgments upon them And though the Trumpet of the Lord hath been plentifully sounded amongst them yet they will not hear nor awaken to Judgment but say in their Hearts Yet a little more Sleep yet a little more folding of the Hands to Slumber the Judgment is far off we will not forego our present Pleasures and worldly Delights for Glory to come Where is he that 's come from the Dead to tell us what 's in another World Let 's Eat and Drink and take our Fill of Pleasures for to-morrow we Dye and are not say they O the Wretched O the Atheistical Hearts of the Men of this present evil and adulterous Generation The Lord
lurked in him under a Cloak of Zeal for Reformation when the World pretended to such things but now that the World is for a manifest Establishing of their old dark Stuff he turns about and is all for them as it were and against Zeal against Reformation Separation Immediate Revelation or any thing that may manifest People to have a care of their Souls But Oh the Misery the Misery the unspeakable Misery of such as are not yet redeemed from under the Slavery and Egyptian Bondage of such Men But the Lord will break the Rod of the Oppressor as in times of old as in the days of Midian and Egypt where both Jannes and Jambres who withstood the Lord's Servant Moses in his calling Israel out of Egypt were made manifest and their Folly by all clearly seen as this R. B's is by every open Eye Praised be the Lord for his Infinite Love in all things But the Hearts of the Righteous whom God delights to comfort he doth all he can to make Sad by perswading the dark cruel World that the cause of all the Miseries of the late years yea and at present in these Islands is much what if not mostly occasioned by those who in tenderness of Conscience to God could not nor cannot joyn with nor uphold the Popish Customs and Imposition in Matters relating to Religion and the Soul which is more pretious to them that know it than all the World And in the Truth we may say that if we should come amongst the Steeple-house Worshippers or any other Company who are only separated from them in Form and not in Life and Power and their exercise not in the Gift and Heavenly Holy Worship and Service to the Lord Jesus Christ our God we should even Sacrifice the Abomination of the Egyptians before their Eyes and now would you not Stone us or Imprison us or otherwise evilly iâ—treat us even as you do and ever have done Yea yea and as they dealt with the Prophet Isaiah for saying Chap. 66.3 He that killeth an Ox is as if he slew a Man he that sacrificeth a Lamb as if he cut off a Dog's Neck c. and Chap. 1.11 c. To what purpose is the multitude of your Sacrifices unto me saith the Lord I am full of them and who hath required it at your hands to tread my Courts Bring no more vain Oblations c. For which it is said they slew him so they would deal with us And what measure have the dear Servants of God in New-England met withal not long since for the like witness against those Hypocrites but Death and cruel Whippings and Banishment and in old England lately but most Savage and Cruel Usage And would this R. B. yet have us yea and those he counts his Brethren and of his Flock who have any Tenderness in them to communicate with such whose Hands are full of Blood If he were as the Mouth of God he would put a difference between the Clean and Unclean But he being of another Spirit is for leading People back again into Egypt not for bringing them out of Egypt into the Promised Land which Work and Endeavour is rejected of God and of all that know God who are escaped out of Sodom and Egypt and Babylon Spiritual where our Lord was Crucified And to us the Lord hath said Let them return to you ye Saved People but return not you to them For their Pastors are become brutish and have not sought the Lord therefore they shall not prosper and all their Flocks shall be scattered Jer. 10.21 He that hath Ears let him hear and he that readeth let him understand for the time is at hand for the Lord is arisen to plead with all the False Worshippers upon Earth and with him is no respect of Persons And now is the Lord God of ever blessed Power and love appeared in the Earth after the long Night of Apostacy to restore all things and now are the Virgins called upon through the whole World to trim their Lamps for behold the Bridegroom is come and coming and now the foolish Virgins who have been long sleeping and slumbering in a dead Profession of Christ and the Scriptures are found wanting in their Faith Holiness Love and all other Christian Virtues and so in their Unholiness shut out yea and though they run to the Hirelings that set all things to Sale to Buy yet still before they come the Door is shut for whilst the Lord stood waiting upon them with his pure free and full Grace and Spirit they would have none of it but rather chosed to go their own ways of Carnal Endeavours and Man-commanded Religion and so like the Jews of old going about to Establish their own Righteousness have not submitted to the Righteousness of God which is by Faith in Christ Jesus But the wise Virgns who are of an honest Heart to fear God and wait for the Lord Jesus Christ to appear in their Spirits to set up his heavenly and everlasting Kingdom in them they receive daily of his Fullness which filleth all in all where the true Oyl of the Kingdom is found in their Holy Lamps to the Praise of the Glory of the unspeakable Love and free Grace of the Almighty Father So be it Again to that part of this R. B's former Answer where he saith That in all Ages God giveth to some few Men more excellent Natural Parts than others and he engageth some in deeper and more laborious Studies and he blesseth some Mens Studies more than other and therefore there are still some few who know more than the rest of the Country or Mankind and it were well for the rest if they knew these and would learn of them Query But how may one know these hard and laborious Studiers as he calls them Oh saith this R. B. They are such as give proof of their Knowledge they pretend to and they are such as imploy their Knowledge to the preserving of the Peace and Concord of Believers and do not proudly make a stir with it to set up their own Names though thereby they set the World on fire To which I answer and say It is still more and more manifest that this R. B. lays the weight and stress upon Natural Parts and hard Studies as though the Kingdom of God were not at all come nor the Promise of God concerning the Free Gifts and plentiful pouring forth of the Spirit yet fulfilled and so a necessity of learning at the feet of Gamaliel and earthly Doctors still But now that the Spirit of Truth according to God's blessed Promise is come and witnessed amongst us that believe praised be God we cannot go to such as this R. B. with all their Natural Parts and hard Studies for the Spirit of Truth leads us and all that obey it into all Truth but this R. B. and such as he leads are in an Error as is manifest for they are of those that lead about a Company of
poor Souls silly as Women laden with divers Sins and Lusts ever learning but never able to come to the Knowledge of the Truth which sets free from Sin for that and nothing else is the Truth which sets free from Sin for saith Christ If ye know the Truth the Truth shall set you free indeed But this R. B. and all such teach it for Doctrine That they are so far from being free from Sin that their very Prayers and best Performances are not free from Sin but Sin is in them all Oh Sad that ever they should dare to pretend to the Ministry of the Gospel who preach such a Doctrine as make nothing perfect but leaves them in Sin all their Lives long And no wonder that they and their Doctrine should be void of all good Fruit for saith God They have run and I have not sent them therefore they shall not profit the People at all And yet they would gladly have People know them and learn of them though they can do them no good at all and this is that sorry and bad Proof that the Hirelings make of their great Knowledge they pretend unto which they have gotten with their Natural Parts and hard Studies And so thy own words shall witness against thee Oh R. B. and thy Brethren who have given no good Proof of your Knowledge to this day nor have thereby preserved Peace and Concord amongst Believers but done what you can to break it for that Doctrine that makes not Men free from Sin leaves all the Seeds of Discord and Dissention still in Peoples Minds for as Sin separated Man from God at first so doth it to this day keep them and so keeps them from Love for God is Love and none live or dwell in Love but such as live and dwell in God But such as live in Sin and never Pray without it are out of God as the Apostle said of People in Unbelief They were without God in the World It is not any outward Conformity that will or can make them to be at Peace with or love one another for if it were possible to bring Papist Atheist and Carnal Protestants and Professors of all sorts into one Form of outward Worship as for Time Place Words or the like Yet there would be neither Love Peace nor Concord amongst them for want of Unity with God and his good Spirit the only true Ground and Foundation of all true Love Peace and Concord And so Oh R. B. we have known thee this many Years to be a great Enemy and therefore we may not learn of thee nor any such but of Christ do we learn ever praised be his Name who teaches his People to profit and so it 's only the poor deluded Multitude that knows thee not who learn of thee and suck in such poysoned Doctrine as makes them most uncapable of the pure Word of Life and Doctrine of Salvation so that Publicans and Harlots who make little or no Profession enter into the Kingdom of God before you And as for making a stir with thy Knowledge and striving to set up thy own Name thereby though thou set the whole World on fire by it Who more Notorious than thy self in this R. B as witness all thy lying frothy Words Books and Pamphlets which thou hast spoken and written against the appearance of Christ and his Truth in these late years but thy Studies and such Works God hath cursed for no Child of Light will ever buy any of thy Merchandize nor the deceitful Wares of any other Merchants of Babylon for evermore Blessed be God for his unspeakable Gift Amen But the end of these words of setting the World on fire set down here by this R. B. is easily seen to be this to wit To perswade People that those who are Zealous for God in these days in publishing his everlasting Gospel upon the Earth in a cross to the World are such as set up themselves and would set the World on fire And so he is manifest to be one of the old evil Generation of Priests who accused Christ for a mover of Sedition and Paul for a pestilent Fellow Oh it was that good stirring Spirit of the Lord Jesus in himself and his Followers which did so trouble the World the combustible World in all Ages that made and doth make the Hireling Priests and their deluded Followers so rage and cry out but as for setting the World on fire in a good sence Christ Jesus saith That he came to set Fire in the Earth But for setting the World on fire in R. B's sence that is sowing Discord and Dissention amongst People this is the Work and ever was the Work of the Hireling Priests who loved to be called of Men Masters as this R. B. is witness not only our own Age but the Holy Scripture and the Histories of all Times and Ages as those that read may understand And yet these proud Masterly and false Teachers were ever the first and forwardest that cried against Christ and his Followers for disturbing the World's Peace when as this Doctrine of Christ's Spirit though it did always disturb the Devil's yet it did always tend to the working of the Hearts and Souls of the People into God's Peace and did ever and doth at this day work this glorious and blessed Effect in all that believe Whereof we are Witnesses praised be God though for the Testimony of Christ we are troubled on every side by the wicked World So that even now when the Wicked have no Peace for there is no Peace to the Wicked we whom the World Mock Stone and Persecute under the Nick name of Quakers or so have Peace in all our Dwellings Egypt is full of Darkness that one may feel it yet in our Goshen is plenty of Light ever praised be God And when the World of false Christians are learning War and preparing Weapons we are ceasing from War and not to learn it any more as the Lord hath said And therefore Oh ye Inhabitants of the Earth if ye knew us ye would not hate us and persecute us but love us with your Hearts because of the good Will of our Hearts towards you for our Weapons are not Carnal but Spiritual Not for pulling down or Destroying of you but your Enemies your Sins which War against your Souls And the Reason why we cannot joyn with you in your Liturgies and Worship-actions is not because we hate you but because we love God and your Souls for if we should joyn with you in your defiled Worships as your selves confess they are we should strengthen you in an evil Way But by our separating from you because of the Unholiness of your Sacrifices occasion may be ministred to you to question your State and so some of you in time may come out of your Darkness into the marvellous Light of the Lord Jesus with us and praise the Lord in the Land of the Living So be it Another of this R. B's
the Children of Men there will neither be Peace nor Establishment of any good thing but as a Wheel will the whole Earth be from Generation to Generation saith the Spirit who is the sweet Orderer in all things for the Holy Seed's sake Glory to his Name for ever And so in the Love and Kindness of the Lord God have I been thus enabled for the Truth and the poor Peoples sake to lay open something of the Deceits and gross Hypocrisie of these two Men called R. B. and Bryan who have long under a Cover or Vizard of Holiness deceived the unstable Souls of many But now the Covering being rent off their Wolfish Nature is fully manifest Glory to the Lord the good Work-man over all for ever So be it Thomas Taylor Some Gentle Remarks on a Book Entituled A Discourse concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome A Book coming to my Hands called A Discourse concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome Written by E. S. Stiled D. D. And finding the Man Zealous against that Romish Idolatry which is Commendable in him E. S. in his Book Orig. Sacra Page 4. hath these words God Created the Souls of Men not only Capable of finding out the Truth of things but furnished him with a Sufficient Teacher to discover Truth from Falshood by a LIGHT set up in his Vnderstanding which if he had attended to he might have secured himself from all Impostors and Deceit And also finding in his Principles towards the latter end of his Book such a saying as this to wit his fifth Priciple There can be no other means Imagined whereby we are to judge of the Truth of Divine Revelation but a faculty in us discerning Truth and Falshood in Matters Proposed to our Vnderstandings which if we do not Exercise in Judging the Truth of Divine Revelation we must be imposed upon by every thing that pretends to be so And in Article 13. The Holy Scriptures may be understood Infallibly by all Persons who sincerely endeavour to know the meaning of them in all such things as are necessary for their Salvation This is the Scope of the latter part of that Article And in Article 13. And there can be no sufficient Reason given why that may not serve in matters of Faith which God himself hath made use of as the means to keep Men from Sin in their Lives unless any imagine that Errors in Opinion are far more Dangerous to Mens Souls than a vicious Life is and therefore that God is bound to take more Care to prevent the one than the other And in his Fourth and Fifth Conclusion upon his Articles saith The more absurd any Opinions are and Repugnant to the first Principles of Sense and Reason which any Church Obtrudes upon the Faith of Men The greater Reason Men still have to reject the pretence of Infallibility in that Church as a grand Imposture And so to disown what is so Taught by such a Church is not to question the Veracity of God but so firmly to adhere to it as to what he hath Revealed in Scriptures that Men dare not out of Love to their Souls reject what is so taught Yet finding this E. S. making several Reflections upon us whom the World Scorn under the Nick name of Quakers I say us whom the Lord hath drawn out of the many Waters of Mystery Babylon into the Light of his Son that most inward Principle Faculty and alone Ability in Man to try all Doctrines and Works by I could not but thus write something to him that he might see his Mistake of us and not lose his Reward of standing against Romish Delusions by withstanding or Speaking against the Truth of God made manifest to us in our Hearts and Shining forth in our Lives to the Praise of his Glory and the Good of all who do rightly understand us and receive our Testimony I say that if possible he may understand a little and feel of that inward Principle or Faculty as he calls it which he is aiming at and which he saith must be antecedently supposed viz. necessarily to all Divine Revelation are these things writ Now that part of his Book where he some-what smites at us is that where he Treats of the Fanaticism of the Roman Church As one may see Page 249. where he says Who will not take pains to see how Faithfully I have Translated these Words out of Eymericus would imagine I have borrowed some of the canting Language of the Modern Quakers Look * where he goes on Now What is this some of this canting Language That part of Petrus Johannis's Relation of St. Francis as he calls him runs thus That those who Opposed this Order to wit of that Francis were the Carnal Persecuting Clergy in whom the Seat of the Beast is much more than in the People that in the time of the Mystical Antichrist the Carnal Church shall oppose the Doctrine Life and Zeal of the Saints and burn as it were with Fire against them but it shall be dried up from all Spiritual Wisdom and Grace and the Riches of Christ and be Exposed to Errors and Delusion and as it was with the Jews and Greeks Thus far there To which I Answer What is this kind of Language Canting where it is truly applied in any Age dost not thou Edward Stillingfleet believe that there both was and is a Carnal Church that did and doth oppose the Doctrine Life and Zeal of the Saints c. as is there sâ—t down To let Francis and his Applauders alone we know both the Holy Prophets and Apostles of Jesus Christ mentioned in Scripture as also Christ himself did vehemently Cry against a Carnal Church or Fleshly Company of Professors in those days for he that was born after the Flesh did always Persecute him that was born after the Spirit both before and in the Apostles Days And so it hath been since no question all along downwards and as we for certain find it so in these our days not only by the Papists but even amongst them called Protestants also And was those many Sharp Reproofs and large Discoveries of the False Teachers in the Prophets and Apostles time Canting O Man take heed thou knows not what thou dost when thou judges our Witness against the False Teachers and Carnal Professors of this Age no better than Canting But certainly though some of you may put it off at present as a light thing and look at it Scornfully as no better than Canting as they did who said He is Mad and hath a Devil why hear ye him but the time will come when it will be otherwise even then when the Books are opened and every one receives a Reward according to their Deeds It is strange this Doctor who seems to be so much Read should Read our Principles no better and pretending to so much Wisdom if he have Read our Books that he should no better understand us than to compare us
at the Branches but now Christ's Axe is laid again to the Root of the Evil Tree Glory to his Name to cut it up Root and Branch that the right Heavenly Root and Branch of his own planting may bring forth Fruit to his Glory and Endless Praise who is worthy who is over all God Blessed for Ever So be it The next thing after the Children are grown up to Men and Women at least to Sixteen Years of Age or upwards and have passed the Bishops Hands as is before-mentioned they are invited to the Communion which they call the other Sacrament wherein they eat Bread and drink Wine in remembrance of Christ's Death as they say until he come But here you must understand a great Mystery of Deceit which hath crept in amongst the People called Christians since the Apostles time in the Apostacy and great Darkness of Antichrist to wit that though they tell of remembring Christ's Death till he come yet they do not believe nor would have any others ever to believe that this coming of Christ shall be whilst People are in this Body upon the Earth but they must be eating Bread and drinking Wine as a Sign and never come to see it fulfilled to them in the coming of the Substance to wit Christ in Life and Power to dwell with them and in them as he promised to them that looked for him as Christ said concerning the Fruit of the Vine that he would drink it new with his Disciples in his Father's Kingdom And as Christ taught them amongst other things to pray that the Father's Kingdom might come and is not this to be known in People whilst here Yea yea and so to feel Christ supping with them and they with him and being unto them their daily Bread as he saith in the sixth of John I am the Bread of Life thus I say they remain out of the Faith of Christ and so without Faith it 's impossible to please God Also here is to be noted another grand Deceit of the Enemy in this their Sacrament so called in that he makes them believe the Bread and Wine is not holy enough and sufficient for that Business unless the Man-made Priest have said some words over it which they call Consecration and so Consecrated it as they speak with his unholy Hands unholy I call them and that appears from their own Confession for they daily say they have no Health in them by reason of their grievous Offences but if they had not in words confessed it yet their Lives makes it manifest that they are of unclean Lips and defiled Hands which whilst so are not fit to meddle with Holy Things no more than the Lepers under the Law were fit in their Leprosie to enter into the Temple or meddle with any Holy Thing And for those words they use unto all that Communicate Hand over Head which say The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy Body and Soul unto Everlasting Life It is demanded where they had them for I never read any such in Christ's giving that Bread and Wine at his last Supper nor in Paul's words to the Corinthians afterwards speaking of it where then had they them Surely they have either Invented them out of their own Heads or had them out of some Popish Book or the like For it is certain from the Lord Jesus they came not seeing they are such a Burden to the Souls of his Redeemed Ones this Day But again these words Preserve thy Body and Soul signifies the Blind Priest takes it for granted that all that he gives this Bread unto are in a good and safe Condition at present though the Lord knows and they themselves confess they remain Miserable Offenders and have no Health in them O what sad work is here amongst them O what grievous daubing First they tell them that by their sprinkling they were made so and so as is before-mentioned and in their Bishoping confirmed in it and now therefore by this eating and drinking they are preserved though to the Grief of the Spirit of God they live in their Sins and in the broad way of the Old and Evil World where the true sprinkling of the Blood of Christ is not known for saith the Apostle If we walk in the Light as he to wit God is in the Light them have we Fellowship one with another and the Blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin 1 John 1.6 7. Then it must needs be that such as walk in Darkness know not Christ nor the cleansing of his Blood for he is only the Author of Life to all that obey him but the unclean World eat and drink Damnation to themselves whatsoever to the contrary they may Imagine But whence came this Custom of Consecrating Bread and Wine if not from those of Rome who falsly imagine the Real Presence as they call it to be after their Consecration For Christ's giving of Thanks at his last Supper before his giving of Bread and Wine is nothing to your Custom Also seeing you pretend to give all the Vertue to the Thing signified and not to the Signs you spoil your own Doctrine of Consecration But Popery is easilier gotten out of the Profession than out of the Heart It would be long to tell of all the bold and strange Passages they have in this their Communion as in the other of their Observations But this one more only may be mentioned and so pass on and it is this Therefore with Angels and Archangels and with all the Company of Heaven say they we laud and magnifie thy Glorious Name Evermore praising thee and saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Hosts Heaven and Earth are full of thy Glory Now all People whose Minds are tender towards God I Appeal to God's Witness in you whether such words as these do any way suit or agree with the Condition of the Parishes of England who thus use them For what Fellowship have such Miserable Offenders and Unhealed Souls with Angels and Archangels and all the Heavenly Company Nay nay no more than Light and Darkness hath But here the Whore that fits upon many Waters which by Exposition of the Spirit are Multitudes of People hath lifted up their Minds into a Conceit that they are Real Christians and so of the Heavenly Company because of Words when Alas they are for the most part such as the Apostle wrote unto weeping Who so walk as that they are Enemies to the Cross of Christ whose God is their Bellies and glory in their shame minding earthly things Phil. 3. And what shall I say of their Ring and plighting of their Troth and Worshipping one another in their Form of Wedding when they say With this Ring I thee Wed and with my Body I thee Worship but even take up a Lamentation for the People whose Eye is so blinded by the God of this World that they will not see the things that belong unto their Peace in this the Day
say They will not pay us they will not put into our Mouths they will buy none of our Merchandize any more Alas alas our great City But for all their Crying God will not hear nor help them for they have left off to do good and God hath shaken his Hand at their dishonest Gain and the Son of God in his Ever-blessed Light is arisen and is at Work to lead out of Darkness the Souls of the Simple that they may know him alone to be their Priest Minister and Teacher and may not be a Prey any longer to the Wolf in the Sheep's Clothing the Wolf who is inwardly gone from God and ravenned into the dark Wilderness and hath stollen the Saints and Christ's Words and makes a Trade on them to deceive withal for filthy Lâ—cre Wo unto them they have gone in the Way of Cain and after the Error of Balaam for worldly Ends 2 Pet. 2. throughout Rev. 12.7 5 10. and shall pâ—rish iâ— the gainsaying of the Truth as Core did And the Lamb shall have the Victory and the Lord is at Work leading his Flock by the Streams of Living Waters Glory to his Name for ever And what shall I only complain of the Unrighteousness and declare of the Downfall of the Kingdom of false Teachers and Hirelings amongst the Turks or of the Proud Imperious Prelates of the dark Seed of Rome Or shall I not rather come nearer home to wit to the Place of my outward Nativity the Land of Old England who pretend to be neither of the Spirit of Turks nor Papists but People of the Reformed Religion called Protestants as who should say Protesters against Romish Usurpations and Antichristian Innovations But alas to the Shame of thy Nakedness O England England there is found in thee a Conspiracy a Company of lewd and treacherous Men Jer. 13. who stand over thee as Teachers covered with black both inwardly and outwardly who wear a black Garment now as the false Prophets of old wore a rough Garment to deceive who cry Give give and can never have enough for they are as Graves and if one put not into their Mouths they bite with their Teech and prepare War against them Micah 3. Suing People at Law for Wages for whom they do Work most unreasonable of all Men and contrary to all other People Reaping where they never Sowed neither Spiritual nor Temporal Seed they claim the Tenth of such Men's Labours and Increase as they themselves excommunicate out of their Synagogues and in their false Judgment judge to Hell What! doth not the Destruction of their Souls seem enough but you must destroy their Estates and Families and sometimes their Body and Life also by long and unheard-of Imprisonments and Plunderings Shall not the Nations of the World who profess not as you the Priests and Prelates of England do rise up in Judgment against you For which of the Priests in Turkey or Rome are more eager for their Bellies than you are What Means do you leave unessayed against those who for Conscience sake cannot put into your Mouths Will any whose Eyes are open believe you to be Ministers of the Gospel who rather than lose a little of the Earth will expose both your selves and your Gospel to all the Blame and Shame that may be The very Name of Tythes shews you to be Jewish and of Easter-Reckonings and such like to be Popish and now where is your Reformation You may well confess there is no Health in you who have so palpably done and do what you ought not to have done Isa 14.5 and left undone what you ought to have done as in your Custom you confess Health nay nay how should you have any Spiritual Health in you who live in such manifest Oppâ—siâ—ion to the Spirit of Christ Jesus the Heavenly Physician Christ Jesus saith to his Disciples Freely you have received freely give but you are all for Money and great Farthly Revenues that you may live in Pride Idleness and Fulness of Bread Christ saith Seek ye first the Kingdom of God but your Care is how to get great Livings and Fat Benefices and as for the Heavenly Kingdom Mat. 13. which Christ compared to a Grain of Mustard-seed you neither know it nor are willing to learn you will neither enter into it your selves Mat. 23. nor suffer others but by your Traditions you shut it up against Men. Christ saith to his Swear not at all but you teach for Doctrine that Christians may Swear Mat. 5.34 37. James 5.12 and you do Swear not only before the Magistrates but even some of you in your ordinary Communication yea and which is most Abominable in your very Church-Service compelling the Men called Church-wardens to Swear and that oftentimes with an Unwillingness of Heart and Condemnation of Conscience to perform your Church-Offices which lays a kind of Impossibility upon them Oh sad may it not be said The Land mourns because of Oaths What have you no Shame nor Care of your Credit that can do such things in the open Sun â—os 4.2 3. and not blush Will you never open your Eyes a little to see your Works What do you mean to do Or where will you hide your selves in the Day of God's Judgments when he calls you to an Account and pleads with you in Flames of Fire for all your mighty Sins Do you indeed believe 2 Thess 1.8 as in words you say That you regenerate the little Infants by sprinkling a little Water on its Face and speaking a â—ew words of your own devising over it which it knows nothing of Go you indeed I say believe That by this kind of Baptism they are made the Children of God the Members of Christ and Inheritors of the Kingdom of God Or do you not rather do these Things to get Money by Oh Cursed Covetousness Mat. 13.15 the Root of all Evil Oh how it hath drowned your Souls in Perdition how it hath blinded your Hearts that you can see nothing of the Kingdom of God You bring in a Company of poor deluded Souls who follow you blind Guides to promise for the little Infant That it shall forsake the Devil and all his Works then what shall these bold Promisers suffer if the Child do not so Will they or you their Teachers for them be content to suffer the Pains of Hell the Reward of such as break Covenant with God And when will you see that this Custom of undertaking for the little Infants greatly derogates from the Honour of Christ who is the only Undertaker for Man towards God But what if a Child through Grace be so strengthned when it grows up as to see your Wretchedness and so to forsake and bear Testimony against all the Works of the Evil One that are done amongst you Will you not call him Heretick and put him out of your Synagogues Yea yea for you can have no Fellowship with any that have Health
heavy Burdens that lye upon Soul or Body and so in Deed and Truth to let the Oppressed go free and to break every Yoke and to be Merciful Pittiful and Tender-hearted one to another according to Jesus Christ O! this is the Fast that pleaseth God that which his Soul and the Soul of the Righteous Loveth But to see People gather together for a few Hours of a Day and in a few or many Formal Words Confess Sin and Wickedness and yet Live in it this is Abominable in the sight of God and all good Men. Therefore all Awake Arise and stand up to Judgment O all ye People of the Earth who are found in such Deceitful Worship for God is not Mocked neither will he be at all Reconciled to you until you from the Heart put away all your Sins whereby his Glory this Day is so much stained and until you bring forth Fruits of Righteousness and such Words and Works daily as are worthy amendment of Life Thomas Taylor Something in Answer to some Passages in that naughty Book called A Looking-Glass for Ladies HE saith in Page 89 and 90. There are two sorts of Love One Legal The other Evangelical The First which is Legal is to Love God with all our Hearts all our Souls and all our Might This saith this Man no Man can attain unto in this Life no not the Regenerate themselves To which I Answer That this Man shews plainly that he knows not what he saith but is not only a False Witness against God and his Work in his Regenerate People but also a manifest Contradicter of himself for saith he Evangelical Love is when a Man begins here truly to Love God 2. When he doth daily grow and increase in this Love 3. When he is Constant in the same to the end so that nothing can draw him from God This he and all that sort will in words confess the Regenerate in this Life may do and yet not love God with that Love the Law requires What Contradiction is this Is not this Love perfect and answerable to God's Law when one First Loves God truly Secondly Grows and Increases daily in this true Love and Thirdly When one is so constant in the same that nothing can draw the Soul from it And therefore saith the Apostle Rom. 8.3 c. That which the Law could not do in that it was weak through the Flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful Flesh and for Sin condemned him in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit Now let any who knows God give in his Witness if this Man do not deny the very End of Christ's Coming in the Flesh which was as the Apostle saith here to fulfil the Law in and for his People that they might love the Lord their God in Christ Jesus with all their Heart Soul and Might according to his Holy Law as one well said That which the Law requireth the Gospel fulfilleth But such Men as this who flatters the faln Sons and Daughters of Adam by pleading for respect to their Persons knows nothing of the Matter in themselves but only as they imagine from the Letter without they tell every Man his Dream to his Neighbour and so by their false Doctrines and Self-contradictions as is manifest here do daily make the shame of their Nakedness appear and their Envy to the Servants of God whom they Reproach under the Name of Quakers appears very much in such sayings as he there sets down saying This serves to reprove the Quakers who are possessed of Perfection through Satan's Pride and adds O that ever a poor Worm of the Earth a very Lump of Sin and Corruption to think that he dare look God in the Face in a sinless Condition These need not a Psalm of Mercy saith the Lying Spirit in this Sam. Smith that writ that Book these will not be beholding to Christ To which I answer and say First It 's Blasphemy to say That the Regenerate Man's sinless Perfection is proud Satan's Work For it is Christ's Blessed Work to perfect his Saints as Eph. 4.12 13 14. and Chap. 5.25 26 27. And Secondly It 's a false Slander and unjust Accusation of us whom the World calls Quakers to say That we either say or think that any Worm of the Earth or Lump of Sin and Corruption either dares or ever possibly can look God in the Face or ever attain to a sinless Condition for Earth Sin and Corruption cannot enter into God's Kingdom or inherit Incorruption But this we say That the Regenerate who are Born again even Born of God of the Incorruptible Seed of his Heavenly Ever-living Word are sinless and perfect in Christ Jesus with whom they are one and in him do in all Holy Humility and Acceptance with the Father stand before his Throne where no Earth nor lumps of Sin and Corruption nor no false Accuser of the Brethren nor Respecter of Persons can ever come Again whereas this Man Sam. Smith saith The Evangelical Love before described is far short of that Love the Law requireth is a false Witness and Accuser of Christ as though he came to destroy or make void the Law But do not think saith Christ that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil And is not this the great Thing and Sum of all the Law and the Prophets thou shalt love the Lord God with all thy Soul Mind and Strength And doth not Christ the Power of God fulfil this in his Members Yea yea as Paul said expresly in Rom 8.4 before mentioned That the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit But now such as profess the Letter and want the Life and so walk not after the Spirit but the Flesh these do not love wholly nay not at all in Truth and so with this Smith are Breakers of the Law of God and so not at all in the Kingdom of God The next thing observable in this wretched Man's Book aforesaid called The Looking-glass is his grievous Opposition against the Doctrine of Perfection Where he saith That there is none so Godly Righteous or Religious here in this Life or can attain to that Measure of Grace to be Perfect but stands in need of the Exhortation Prayers and Godly Advice of others To which I answer and say That though godly Exhortation Prayers and Advice amongst Brethren of Christ be lovely yet for him to say There is none so perfect but stands in an absolute Necessity of these from Man is not true for the Apostle speaking not to the Teachers only but to the Brethren of Christ in general 1 John 2.27 These Things I have written to you concerning them that seduce you but the anointing which ye have of God the Holy One teacheth you all things and you need not that any Man teach
Lord in the Mouth of Christ's Ministers which we own is the Savour of Life to Life and of Death to Death But so is not the false frothy Doctrine of the Hireling and false Accuser such as this Sam. Smith who wrote this Book which we disown is nothing worth and therefore cannot profit the People at all And therefore he tells a great Lye in saying That God hath set his Seal to the Ministry of such as have run and God never sent them as is manifest by this Man who is not ashamed to speak all manner of Evil falsly against whom the Lord hath Blessed for his Name 's sake for those whom God sends are one with and not against such as are of God But because he neither knows the Father nor Christ therefore he thinks he doth well to persecute and revile us with all slanderous words which will be his own Burden in God's Judgment-day And for Church Order it 's manifest by the Walking of our Members who owns it most for they who walk most orderly in Life and Conversation own Church-Order indeed but those that live Disorderly and know not so much as a Bridle to their Tongue are the Disoâ—wneâ— and Breakers of the Good Order of Christ's Church and Spirit But what is that Baptism he saith we disown For the Baptism oâ— Christ which is but one by that one Spirit of Truth into one Body we dearly love and own for in it are we presented Clean to God ever Praised be his Name But that Baptism which the Hirelings use and plead for for which there is no Scripture we cannot own for if we should then should we disown the Light of Christ which makes it manifest to be vain and nothing And for the Lord's Supper we cannot but love and own it with our very Souls for it is our Souls Food and the Lord is known to us and in us daily by breaking of his Heavenly Bread in the midst of us as he said Behold I stand at the door and knock if any Man open to me I will come in and Sup with him and he with me And for Prayer to God both Publick and Private those that say we disown this do plainly manifest that they know little of us or our Practices but are shameless Forgers of Lies against the Innocent for which and for all their Sins God will judge them it is so But for Singing of Psalms what hath this false Accuser of the Brethren to do with Singing For not Singing but Mourning is the suitable Exercise for the Wicked What will ye yet Sing and Rejoyce and make Merry over the Witnesses of God which ye have slain in your Streets and over the Lamb that lyes slain in the Streets of your Spiritual Sodom and Egypt where our Lord was Crucified But the Days of Mourning are at hand to all that now sing in Sin and the Days of Darkness to them will be many But Peace upon the Israel of God in whose Book our Names are Recorded by the ever-blessed Finger of our God ever Praised be his Name who hath put a now Song into our Mouths even Psalms of Salvation to our God and to the Lamb for ever more according as it is written Rev. 14.1 c. And I looked and lo a Lamb stood on the Mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand having his Father's Name written in their Foreheads And I heard a Voice from Heaven as the Voice of many Waters and as the Voice of a great Thunder And I heard the Voice of Harpers harping with their Harps And they sung as it were a new sâ—ng before the Throne and no Man could learn that song but the Redeemed from the Earth These are they that were not Defiled with Women for they are Virgins These are they that follow the Lamb wâ—eresoever he goeth These were redeemed from among Men being the First fruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their Mouth was found no Cuâ—le fâ—r â—â—ey are without Fault bâ—fore the Throne of God And what will not all this perswade our Adversaries that there is singing of Psalms among us and that Sinless Perfection is not the Devil 's but God's own Doctrine and Work and attainable by the Believers in the Light And that this Man who writes this false Looking-glafs was a great Enemy of God and Blasphemer of his Heavenly Tabernacle in charging them with Gross and Absurd Opinions for keeping to Yea and Nay without Swearing in all things and holding forth the immediate Teaching of God's Spirit according to the New Covenant which saith They shall all be taught of God and God is a Spirit and to be known and witnessed in Man immediately to teach him and to write his Heavenly Law and Doctrine in his Heart or he perishes in his Sins and Ignorance it is so Thomas Taylor T. T. who was Ten Years and an half in Prison at Stafford writes a Letter to a particular Adversary J. D. IF the Wisdom of this World which is Foolishness with God had not clouded thy Mind thou couldst not have so juâ—ged as to account it Foolishness in me to abide in Prison whereas thou may'st as well say That to keep a good Conscience to God is â—â—olishness for in Obedience to God and for doing his Will have I suffered amongst you these many Years Also whereas thou tookest upon thee to be an Instructer saying If I did seek unto God he would deliver me out of Prison I say unto thee again as I said then That the Lord God of Life and Truth the True God over all Blessed for ever hath graciously delivered my Soul from the Pit of Darkness and Ignorance Sin and Wiâ—â—edness in which the whole World of Unbelieving People who receive Honour one of another and seek not the Honour that comes from God only do miserably Lye And as for my Body it is offered up to the Lord to do and suffâ—â— according to his Blessed Willâ—â— And 〈◊〉 thee plainly and all People in the Word of the Lord 〈◊〉 for â—oing his Blessed Will in witnessing in his Holy Power against the Wickedness of this present Evil World who in words profess they know God but in Deeds deny him as is too manifest to every one who do not willfully blind the Eye of the Understanding for because of Oaths and Drunkenness and Pride and Covetousness and Oppression and all manner of Uncleanness and Unrighteousness the Land Mourneth and the Inhabitants thereof God for these things will make to tremble and because in Obedience to Christ I cannot join with you in these Things I am made a Prey as it were For I say unto thee and all the World What Evil have I done I praise the Lord I am not conscious in my self neither have my Adversaries made it manifest of doing or intending the least Evil to the King or any Man within his Dominions but have endeavoured to my Power to do good unto you all and so the
saith Again saith this Popish Book asking this Question Is the Church visible He answers She is and must be visible at all times as consisting of a Hierarchy of Pastors Governing Teaching and Administring Sacraments to the Worlds end and of other People governed taught and receiving Sacraments at their Hands all publickly professing the same Faith all which things are visible And for this brings Ephes 4.11 12. Mat. 5.14 15. Answer Now to this I say that the true Church the Spouse of Christ and not the Adulterer the Popedom are visible and known to God and its own Members but invisible to the World as such as the Apostle saith 1 John 3.1 Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us that we should be called the Sons of God therefore the World knows us not because it knew not him to wit Christ Jesus their Head though he did appear in Flesh and so the Flesh was the Vail by which he was hid from the World then as the Flesh is the Vail by which the true Saints are hid from the World now And this makes manifest that that Scripture Ephes 4.11 12. makes nothing for his Purpose at all And as for that other Scripture Mat. 5.14 15. where it is said Ye are the Light of the World a City set on a Hill which speaks of them that were truly so and kept their savour and not at all for the Pope or his great Army of Apostates nor of any other who have the Name only of Christians but have lost the good savour and so want the true Christian Life and so having put the Candle under a Bushel though they may have a shew in outward Observances of their own devising of a Church yet still wanting the true heavenly savoury Life I say they are to be trodden under Foot of Men as unsavoury Salt and so this Scripture makes nothing for them neither But some may say Though this makes not for the Pope or any false Church yet doth it not make something for the visibility of the true Church I answer No not in the Popish or Worldly Sense at all for though the good Life of the true Church be very savoury to that of God in every Man and the same Holy Life shining before Men is of great Service to Men and Glory to God and so because they separate from the World not only in the inward but outwardly also therefore they cannot be hid if they do any thing contrary to their Holy Profession and Separation yet still the Apostle 1 John 3.1 stands firm in his Testimony to which my Spirit agrees Therefore the World knows us not because they knew not Christ For how can the World who are in the False Life and Religion and yet think it is true know or believe them to be the True Church of Christ who separate from them and bear witness against them And this farther appears if we consider how the True Church as Christ himself was ever hated and persecuted of the World Rev. 12.6 c. and many other Scriptures And wherefore is all this Enmity but even because the World knew them not as they were but even accounted them through their great Ignorance as the Off-scouring of all things As it is reported also concerning the Christians in the Heathenish Persecutions after Christ Sejanus vir bonus sed est Christianus Such a one is a good Man but he is a Christian So amongst and by you called Papists Such a one is a good Man but he is a Protestant And amongst the common Protestants Such a one is a good Man but he is a Quaker Thus hath the true living Seed been vailed from the World under some Reproach or other through Ages and Generations as at this day And so to conclude I say That which is here said of the Invisibility of the True Church is not as this Popish Book would wickedly Insinuate Because there were none called Protestants before Luther's Time or because others since Luther's Time have had other Names but because the Truth according to the Scripture of Truth so judges as is here in a few words set down But to return the Wickedness of these Popish Pleaders upon their own Heads it may be truly said That the End of their Pleading so much for the Visibility of the Church is Because they have little in their Religion if any thing at all but what the blind and evil World can both see and exercise themselves in and yet continue still in their sinful Nature So that the Pope's Daughter the Popish Synagogue is most unlike the Heavenly King's Daughter the True Church which is all Glorious within but the Pope and his Daughter the False Church is all Foul within and only Glorious on the out fiâ—e and that not with a true out-side Comliness or Glory neither but even with the rotten filthy Rays and menstruous Clouts of Humane Traditions and Carnal Ordinances and Observations of their own Devising beautiful only to the Adulterous Eye but not with the Ornament of a truly Godly Life and Holy Conversation which is the True Churches Golden Ornament or Rayment which is truly Beautiful in the Eye of God and his Saints It is so as saith God's Good Spirit in his Servant A Warning to the Papists at Stafford Thomas Taylor a Servant of the True and Everliving God in the Everlasting Gospel and Kingdom of his Son sendeth Greeting and a Warning unto you from him in whose Hand is your Breath and the Breath of all the Living I say unto you who call your selves Catholicks or Roman Catholicks here about Stafford Awake Awake look into your selves Trim your Lamps and see whether the true Oyl be in you which the first Christians witnessed in them which they had of God whereby they knew all things for if you would be found true Catholicks Members of the Universal Church the Heavenly Body this you must have for the Cry is gone forth Behold the Bridegroom cometh and it 's none but the Wise in Heart the pure Virgin Souls can enter God's Kingdom it 's not enough for you to say We are Catholicks or Roman Catholicks and our Religion is old or so for it is not how Old but how Good for how much old an Error or Way of Evil is by so much the worse it is and to imagine that God will receive you because of your many Outside Observations and Carnal Ordinances you are very much mistaken so long as the inside is unwashed for it 's a pure Heart and a right Spiritual Worship from the same that God Requires And did not the Apostle to the Galatians say He was afraid of them because they thought to Please God in observing Days and Months and Times and Years after Christ was come in the Flesh and Offered up to end all such Shadows and all of like Nature that can be brought in since then as a part of God's Worship and to bring in Everlasting Righteousness even the
his Vials Seven times Seven Upon the Seat of that proud Beast and Whore Who hate his Truth and would his Lambs devour And would set up that Worship which he hates And all that Bow unto it Desolates And will not suffer Light and Life to Reign But Preach and Pray and all for filthy Gain God shakes his Hands against you for such things And He 's the Lord of Lords and King of Kings Who will not be o'er-top'd by Mortal Birth Whose Origin and Root is from the Earth But will be Honour'd as a Heavenly King Or else his Judgments through the Earth shall Ring With Terrors great he will his Foes Confound Who have wrought all their Works as under Ground And in their Hearts have said Tush none doth see But we shall Rule and Reign and only we O turn your Ears and listen then a while Let not the Serpent always you Beguile He that deceiv'd the simple one at first Doth after all your Souls and Spirits thirst He leads you out to love the Perishing things Which swiftly fly away with Eagles Wings Which answer not the Heavenly Minds desire But leaves your Spirits scorch'd as with a Fire You seem to Eat and sumptuously to Fare But when awake you Lean and Hungry are You spend your Money for poor empty Shells And go to Drink at Springless empty Wells And when your Minds with Wind and Air are fill'd And you a little in School-Learning Skill'd Then do you Jude your selves fit Guides to be Unto the poor Unskilful Commonalty Who do not know the difference 'twixt the Wheat And Chaff which to the Soul was never Meat But hark what is it now my Mind doth see Sad Oaths impos'd on Men that should be free That should their Office do as Christians did In former times as great Jehovah bid And not as Worldly Men whose Will 's their Law Who with their Fines and Threats still kept in A we The silly Multitude which knows not God But are more Fearful of the Tyrants Rod And are in Earthly-mindedness so deep That they will lose the Soul before their Sheep And are so Ignorant of things Divine That they will part with Truth before their Swine And what Religion is it that such Men For Worldly Ends will not Profess but when The Tide of Times doth turn and changes Face Then they will leave you all unto Disgrace And that which now seems as an Iron Post Will then forsake you and be gone and lost For it 's their Bodies that by force is gain'd When as their Souls i' th' change of Sin 's detain'd So that a perfect Man you cannot bring Of all your Number unto God to Sing And Sound forth Holy Praises ' mongst the Choire Of Holy Ones who burn in pure Desire Of setting up the Lamb upon his Throne Of Highest Glory and all Sorrows gone Then what 's your Work and where will you appear When you have Slept and Slumb'red Year by Year And in mean while have suffer'd Souls to Pine For want of Heavenly Bread and Spiritual Wine And would them neither Feed nor suffer such As God hath sent to Feed them but do grutch That any but your selves should have a share I' th' Work of Feeding such as to God precious are But this be known unto you all this Day That Israel's Holy One none limit may If Christ an Amos or a Peter will Have in his Vineyard Work his Word 's their skill By which without Book-Learning they do know ' Gainst Satan's Kingdom how to bend their Bow And if proud Scribes and Pharisees Disdain Their mean Appearance and their Language plain Then doth their Master plead their Innocent Cause And soon delivers them from Tyrants Jaws And makes the Earth to know that maugre spight He 's able to secure the Harmless Wight Who trusts unto his Strength and walks the Ways Of Truth and Holiness unto his Praise And that the Earthly Man with all his Power Shall not secure himself from Heaven's sharp Shower Of Hail-stones which upon the Wicked must Be Rained down as thick as any Dust But stay a little to the present Work A Word or two in Love that does no hurt A Visitation's talk'd of in these Towns Wherein the Priests must come with Long Black Gowns To make Appearance but whose Will to do They best can tell who perfectly do know Then I demand in plainness that you may Prove by the Scripture what you do this day Why doth your Bishop Ride in so great State As if to Kings and Princes he were Mate And yet will say to others they must Dye To Worldly Pomp and Earthly Vanity Why are you Teachers now call'd Masters when Christ saith Be ye not Masters call'd of Men And why your Courts which Spiritual are by Name Do Trouble Men for carnal Things O shame That you should Read so long the Scripture Letter And yet your selves and Business do no better Why is your Maint'nance forc'd when th' Gospel's free And God's pure Day is dawn'd that all may see That those that dare not trust the Lord for that Are such as Minister they know not what For such in the Beginning that did Preach The Everlasting Gospel and did Teach Men to observe Christ's Doctrine knew not how At all by outward force to make Men Bow But said Our Weapons are not of the Earth But Spiritual Powerful from that Heavenly Breath That Fans and Winnows and doth not beguile But separates the Precious from the Vile And so into Subjection they did bring By force of Truth unto their Holy King They sought not Earthly Honours nor did crave The Earthly Riches but the Soul to save You have received freely freely give Saith Christ who took the Care how they should Live And be maintain'd and did not bid them take Wages of Heathens who the Truth do hate But now you have a Custom sad to see To force your Wages both from Bond and Free You force your own Disciples yea and those That are as Heathens Judged by your Laws Which if your Spirit were not over-base You would soon reckon it a foul Disgrace Can any Man that 's Noble in his Heart Take Hire of such as from the Lord depart And not Require it only but compel Them to Maintain you Judge is this done well May not such truly say You Love your Pride More than the Gospel and all things beside For sure a little will serve Natures turn But what can satisfie where Lust doth Burn For when in Pride and Fulness Men will Live Then comes the Horse-leach Daughters crying Give Give give yea which is ill yea worst of all We 'll have it or we 'll bring you into Thrall We 'll have your Tythes we 'll have your Easter's Dues We 'll have them all you's neither Will nor Chuse And thus old Eli's Sons are still alive Which in this World nor that to come will thrive What! Preach the Gospel and yet Sue to such For Maintenance as
the Law was in its Childhood but when the Fulness of God's time came for the Manifestation of his Christ and the Pourings forth of his Glorious Spirit according to Prophesie and Promise then came the Church to be like the Heir at full Age entering into the Blessed Possession of the Father's Kingdom the Inheritance of Saints in Light And therefore saith Christ the Law and the Prophets were unto John since which time the Kingdom of God is preached and People press into it And amongst them that are Born of Women there hath not a isen a greater Prophet than John Bâ—pâ—â—st but he that is least in the Kingdom of God is greate than he Therefore Wo is unto thee Tho. Hall and all such Jewish Spirits that would shut up this Blessed Kingdom of God from Men and you will neither enter into the Kingdom of God your selves nor suffer others Obj. But what then was the Law for Answ Paul answers The Law was added because of Transgression till the Seed which is Christ came to which the Promise was And so saith he before Faith came we were kept under the Law shut up unto the Faith afterwards to be revealed Gal. 3.23 Then saith he Verse 24. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law was our School-master unto Christ but never a word of bringing us to Christ by Moses's Law but a shuting up We were shut up schooled saith he or hard kept to our Task and Whipped But he that reveals Christ to the Soul and draws the Soul to Christ is the Father by the Living Power of his own Eternal Spirit whom the Fleshly World knows not Obj. But must not the Soul be humbled in the sight and sence of its Sin before it can receive Christ for Salvation Answ I say yea but this is the Work of Christ also who by his own Eternal Spirit which ministers his Fiery Law doth Convince the World of all their Sins of Unbelief and mighty Transgressions whereby they have dishonoured him and slighted all his Love and so that which now makes all the Sins of People so Damnable is their Sin of not believing in and receiving Christ the Light of the World into their Heares to dwell guide and rule there and so he that believeth not is Damned already saith Christ and this is the Condemnation that Light is come into the World and Men believed it not And ye search the Scriptures saith Christ to those Jews that boasted of being Moses's Disciples for in them ye think to have Eternal Life and they are they that testifie of me but ye will noâ— come to me that ye may have Life Also consider that Paul for all his Zealous Profession of Moses's Law and Letter-knowledge was never truly sensible of nor truly humbled for his Sins until Christ appeared from Heaven and struck him down See Tho. Hall how Christ here sets forth the Nature of Carnal Professors of the Letter of Scripture and Boasters of Moses's Law they are dead from God because they will not come to Christ in whom only is Life They thought to have had Eternal Life in the Scriptures which test fi d of Christ but they sticking in the Form and dead Profession of the Letter without Christ the Living Power of God to Salvation they could not have Life Eternal Foâ— he only that hath the Son of God hath Life and he that hath not the Son hath not Life but the Wrath of God abides upon him For you being under the Law as is said before are under the Curse and the Law worketh Wrath saith Paul and that is the reason that the Carnal Professors of the Letter are Persec tors of the Life of Christ where-ever it is made manifest in Son or Daughter in all Ages as Paul saith in that forementioned place Gal. 4. He that was Born after the Flesh Persecuted him that was Born after the Spirit even so it is now But the Lamb shall have the Victory and the mouth of all Iniquity shall be stopped Glory to the Lord our God over all for Evermore Another Piece of thy Enmity Tho. Hall against Christ and his Spirit is manifest in thy Paper where thou sayest That there is no Scripture that warrants Peoples going from the Law as Moses taught though it 's a Law written in the Letter to hear and learn at any other either a Christ Called a Law-giver or the Spirit of Truth as you call it Answ So here all may see that thou art so full of Enmity against Christ that thou canst not endure to have him honoured with the Title of Law-giver and thou art so full of Darkness that thou knows not nor wilt believe that God's People have any such thing indeed as the Holy Spirit to guide and teach them but comes forth with thy scornful Words like the Jews that Crowned him with Thorns and Spit in his Face saying A Christ called a Law-giver or the Spirit of Truth as you call it So it 's high time for all People to take heed of falling into the Error of these Men to wit Tho. Hall and his Fellows who have chosen the Killing Letter of Moses's Law and denied the Son of God and his Blessed Spirit and so have Builded the Babel of their Rotten Profession upon a Foundation of Sand to wit their own Righteousness which in the Day of God will utterly fail them for every Man's Works must be tried by Fire And so all such as have not Christ for their Foundation must Perish For other Foundation can no man lay than that which is laid even Christ who is our ALL and will Reign over all his Enemies for Evermore And so let no Man trouble us any more for we bear in our Bodies the Marks of the Lord Jesus And Ever-praised be his Name who hath given us an Understanding to know him the Salvation of God to be in us and we in him and so to be Witnesses for him before Men that the time of the fulfilling of his Scriptures is come which saith Jer. 31.31 c. Heb. 8. Behold the Days come saith the Lord that I will make a New Covenant with the House of Judah and with the House of Israel after those Days not according to the Covenant which I made with their Fathers in the Day when I took them by the Hand to lead them out of the Land of Egypt which my Covenant they broke although I was an Husband to them saith the Lord but this is the Covenant that I will make with them after those Days saith the Lord I will put my Laws into their minds and write them in their hearts and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a People And they shall not teach every man his Neighbours and every man his Brother saying Know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest For I will be merciful to their Vnrighteousness and their Sins and their Iniquities will I remember no more Now in
that he saith A New Covenant he hath made the first Old Now that whichâ—d cayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away This is the Apostle's Conclusion from the former words as is to be seen in the last Verse of that 8th Chapter to the Hebrews Now mind whoever thou art that reads these words that the Covenant which here he calls Old was that which God made with the Fleshly Seed of Abraham at their coming out of Egypt which is mentioned in the Writings of Moses as you may read and part of this Covenant was the Two Tables of Stone which the Lord by his Angel delivered Moses for that People to observe and keep with the rest of what Moses had in Charge for them and set down in the outward Book to be done and which the Children of Israel did Promise and Covenant that they would observe and do but they broke Covenant with God as all Flesh ever did and doth at this Day and so the Lord regarded them not for no Flesh can do what the Pure Spiritual Lord God commands them having no more help thereto but what a Law or Letter without can furnish them withal and therefore the Lord God in love to Man's Soul sent Christ into the World to be his own Arm and Power to and in Man to bring forth that Righteousness and Holiness which he required and therefore saith Paul after he saw his own utter unableness to do the Will of God with all the outward Helps that ever he had he concludes that they that are in the Flesh cannot please God let them turn which way they can for the Enmity against the Law whilst in that Principle and in that thou T. H. art still remains against the Spiritual Law of God as he saith Rom. 8.7 For the Carnal Mind is not subject to the Law of God nor indeed can be And therefore as Paul so must all come to Christ the Lord that Spirit to know him in them to destroy the Enmity out of them that so the Will of God and Law of his Mouth which is Spiritual may be done in them and so come to witness as Paul there in Rom. 8.2 did That the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made them free from the Law of Sin and Death And the Ground or Reason of the Lord 's gracious Dealing with Man in the next Verse e sets down saying For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the Flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful Flesh and for Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh And the end of all this he shews in the next Verse saying That the Righteousness of God's Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit And thus he stops the Mouths of all the Enemies of Christ who with Tho Hall would object That with Preaching of Christ and his Light and hi Spirit in Man to be all in all they make void the Law Answ Nay nay I say By Preaching Christ we establish the Law to the Glory of God in Christ over all And so thou Tho. Hall hast been he which hath not hitherto either truly heard Moses nor the Prophets nor Christ nor his Apostles or his Spirit in these days and so canst not in that wretched Mind believe though one come from the Dead And so for the Truths sake and to stop the Errors and Blasphemies of this Thomas Hall who ceaseth not to pour forth his Ignorance against the Lord Jesus Christ and his blessed Spirit of Light and Life in Man the only Teacher of God's People in these Gospel days have I writ these Lines that the Truth of the Gospel against his and all such Unbelieving Jewish Persecuting Spirits in these days may stand cear over all their Heads and triumph for ever in the Hearts and Consciences of all tender and honest-minded People whose Desires 〈◊〉 continually after the Kingdom of God and the Righteousness thereof whose Kingdom is everlasting and the Righteousness thereof is Pure Spotless and Undefiled of God and endureth for ever And this is our Righteousness and the Righteousness of all Saints Praised be God for ever and for whose Name and Truths sake and for bearing Testimony thereof in this World do we suffer Reproach and Persecutions from the present evil World not only of the Prophane but even of many such unreasonable professing vain Talkers as this T. Hall who would be Teachers of the Law not knowing what they say nor whereof they affirm as Paul the Apostle of Christ witnessed of such in his days who would never be quiet from opposing the Gospel with their False Interpretations of the Law until God cut them off and cast them away for their Wickedness But we know saith the same Apostle in that place to wit 1 Tim. 1.5 6 7 c. that the Law is good if a Man use it lawfully I nowing this that the Law is not made for a righteous Man but for the Lawless and Disobedient for the Vngodly and for Sinner c. So say we and so the Law of God we love and honour â—s God's Ordinance for good to restrain limit and condemn such ungodly and unreasonable Spirits as this T. Hall is for those that will not believe nor obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ must be ruled and bruised and condemned with the Iron Rod of God's righteous Law which whatsoever it saith it saith to them that are under it that every sinful Mouth may be stopped and all the World of wicked unbelieving Men may be found guilty before God Glory to his Name for ever who giveth us the Victory by Jesus Christ our Lord who is our Light Life Wisdom Righteousness and Salvation for ever whose Grace alone is able to keep us and preserve us and present us and all that believe in his Light and know him in them unto himself without Spot and Wrinkle and unreprovable in everlasting Peace Rests a Lover of the Soul of Man which is in great Captivity until it come to the Liberty of God's Sons and who in a patient quiet Suffering way do wait to do it good as a Servant of God wherein I may be known amongst Men by the Name of Thomas Taylor but in the New Name which is of God and not of this World which the Father hath given me doth my Soul rejoyce And though I be set a-part for Sufferings amongst the reproached despised People of God called Quakers by the World yet we are Happier than our Persecutors in that the Lord is on our sides and justifies us in his way which is Christ while his Holy Spirit testifies against our Adversaries because they are his Adversaries He that hath an Ear to hear let him hear and give Glory to God by believing for these words are Faithful and True Thomas Taylor FINIS A Testimony for the Lord God and His Work in the Earth HEar O EARTH and hearken ye
HEAVENS for the Lord hath spoken even the Lord God mighty in Power and excellent in Wisdom Loving-kindness and Mercies have appeared and are made manifest in the Children of men and the Isles of the Gentiles do feel his Power and partake of his Promise in the Light in the Life in the Eternal Covenant of his Peace and Truth whereby Japhat is perswaded in the Tents of Shem to dwell And this is the Lords own doing and it is marvellous in the pure eyes of all that behold it and the eye that seeth is Blessed and the Soul that heareth and beleiveth is Blessed and shall be Blessed for the Lord the faithful God is Arisen and his appearance is like the Sun when it Ariseth and Shineth in the Brightness of its Glory and therefore are we refreshed and caused to live in his sight and to bring forth the living fruits of Righteousness to his praise and glory Glory glory for ever for the Heaven gives now its dew and the Earth yeilds its encrease and the blessing is upon the People and the Nations of the World shall bow and the Inhabitants of the Earth do tremble at the Glory of the Lord at the Majesty of his Appearance in this his glorious day wherein he hath Visited and his Visiting his Seed and calling his Servants out of Egypt and delivering his Beloved out of the hands of him that was too strong for them and putting a new Song into our Mouths And his Rest is Glorious and his Praise is Holy and his Renown is spread abroad and his Foes become his Foot-stool and the Ransomed of the Lord do unto Zion return and in the Light of the living God do all the day rejoyce and praise him upon the truly Spiritual and well tuned loud Cymbals in the heights of Israel in the Holy Temple in the Promised Land in the Purchased Possession in the Holy Mount even the Mountain of God's everlasting Love in CHRIST JESUS where his eternal Arm of Power and Faithfulness is truly witnessed And this is the Mountain of Gods House and Holiness indeed which is now on the top of all Mountains and here the Lord is fully seen and his living Power daily felt and his everlasting Love continually enjoyed for watering and refreshing the Babes and living Plants of the New Jerusalem glory glory for ever glory to the Righteous for this is comly And now is the day of the Lords gathering and his Angels are gone forth and his Trumpet hath sounded the Alarm out of the holy Mountain Place these Sheets after Page 130. unto all the Inhabitants of the Earth And now if any Old or Young High or Low can come forth and stand before the God of the whole Earth they are warned and called upon to bring their deeds to the LIGHT to the day of the Lamb that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh unto the World John 1.9 For now indeed is the day of the Lord God appeared and the Lamb is come and who may stand before him who can abide this day of his coming for he cometh in the thousands of his Holy Ones to Judge the World even all that are Proud and do Wickedly in his sight and to convince them of all their ungodly deeds and hard speeches which they ungodlily have spoken against him and whereby they have slandred the foot steps of his Anointed Ones and blasphemed his Heavenly Tabernacle which he hath pitched amongst men that he might dwell amongst them and be glorified for evermore So WOE is to the Wicked and much Wrath will be upon the people who now stand out and strive against the Lord even the Lord the habitation of Justice in whose hands is their â—â—eath who are careless Children and do not regard this day of their Visitation So all having time prize it and bow to the Lord God and know this day of your Visitation for the Lord in his Glory is Arisen and his Eye beholds and with his own pure Light is trying the children of men And now even now shall the Mouth of Iniquity be stopped and the Righteous shall rejoiyce and be glad as the Scripture hath said Yea the high praises of God is already heard in their Mouths and the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God is felt going forth Conquering and to Conquer And the Mountains are moved and the lesser Hills are afraid and the hearts of the Hypocrites do melt for fear at the presence of the Lord at the appearance of our God the true God the everlasting Father who is exalting his own Name and seting up the Kingdom of his dear Son and shaking terribly the earth glory glory to him for ever and for ever for he is good and his Mercy endureth for ever and of his faithfulness there is no end All flesh is grass but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit and shall inherit and sound forth the living Praises of the living God for evermore as it is at this day So be it Given forth in the movings of the Lord as a Witness to his Truth in this his Day by one who bears the Reproach of Christ amonst many Brethren by he evil World under the name of Quaker Thomas Taylor Ignorance and Error REPROVED BEING AN ANSWER TO SOME QUERIES That one JOHN REYNOLDS Wrote to Two of the People called QUAKERS By THOMAS TAYLOR LONDON Printed and Sold by T. Sowle next Door to the Meeting-house in White-Hart-Court in Gracious-street and at the Bible in Leaden-hall-street near the Market 1697. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER WHEN the Lord God of Eternal Power began by his Spirit to move in these Nations in the late times of Trouble and there was an Opening in the times for the Zeal of the Heart to work out it self then every one betook themselves to that Fellowship and People that agreed most with the Working-Principle that was in them and so there came a distinguishing and knowledge of those seeking Souls according to some thing most obvious to the Eye of the World and so they called some by the name of Presbyterians some Independent and the like For as for those called Prelatical they were not of such a pressing Nature as to seek forward much after the Spiritual Kingdom but rather Breathed after their Old Form how they might come to that again without the former Troubles to lye down in that But those called Presbyterian or mixed Independent in answer to whose Queries or one of them the ensuing sheets are they seemed so Zealous while the Worlds Power countenanced them as though they would have taken Heaven as it were by force and not only so but even of late also since the Second Charles came in and they began to be put out of their high Places by some old Incumbent as they call them or upon some other Account as Zealor so yet did some of them keep up their Custom of Preaching amongst People in publick where they could get place
is not in the nature of your Doctrine but in the form And so though an Idol of Gold appear more beautiful than one of baser mettle yet it is an Idol still and so you are both in the Fighting and Persecuting nature as all Idolaters are Ephraim against Manasseh and Manassch against Ephraim but both against Judah one for the Common-Prayer another for the Directory but neither will own the Lambs Light in you to Teach and Guide you and so though you may have a Form of Godliness more Painted than they yet denying the Power Christ in man you are all alike to be turned away from And so John Finch and John Payton in turning from thee as well as the other Formalists are excuseable and though thou goest about to perswade them from the Truth by telling them of a lower way of deceiving by a voluntary Humility and neglecting of the Body and wearing a rough Garment to deceive which thou would'st intimate to be our condition yet this will not deceive their minds if they keep to the true Light of Christ in them for in that they feel our Garment to be smooth and sweet through the Fathers Love not rough or hairy as the Hypocrites is who kill one another about their ways of Worship but for voluntary Humility in the will offered up by heaps which is no better than filthy smoke in the nostrils of a pure God in this day and Praised be God that hath brought us from this into the true Humility but how thy words of accusing us here of neglecting the Body and afterwards of Drunkenness can agree let the wise in Heart consider but all in thy changeable nature and unstable must needs be Self-contradictors and so who be the Thieves that Christ in this day is Crucified between is thus far in part and will afterwards God willing more appear Also it is observable from that Preface of thine further where it is said that this latter viz. Namely the lower way of deceiving may possibly prevail though not with the present Multitude yet some unstable Souls that have been none enlightned and have tasted the good Word of God and the Power of the World to come but are not yet rooted and settled in the Truth and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ then I say thou need'st not fear any of thy followers to be deceived on this manner for none can be savingly enlightned who denies the sufficiency of Christs Light the Grace of God which hath appeared to all Men yea in their Darkness shineth though the Darkness comprehend it not as thou dost not and none can say in Truth they have tasted the Good Word of God who puts the Letter for it and denies the sufficiency of Christs Light which is his Word nigh in the Heart and Mouth as thou dost nor none can truly be said to taste the Powers of the World to come who deny to bow their Hearts to the least Measure of Christs Light in them accounting it insufficient as thou dost And so it is the real Believers that had need to take heed of being Deceived with fair Shews and rough Garments for the Hypocrites are deceived already But what Doctrine John Reynolds doth judge in these he calls filly Seducers and Quakers to be amiss and by these two men he writes unto to be taken heed of may gathered out of these Queries to instance some 1. Because they say Christ Lighteth every man with a sufficient Light that cometh into the World 2. Because they say That the Measure of the Spirit of God in man is the true and certain trier of all Spirits 3. Because they say Christ himself and not the empty declaration without is the Word of God 4. Because they say Christ the better hope being come sinless perfection thorough him is attainable here 5. Because they say Judgment is commited to the Saints even whilst they are in the Body and therefore such may Judge and yet say they it is not flesh but Spirit that Judgeth all things 6. Because they make Conscience of saying Thou and Thee to a particular which is the plain Language 7. Because they say that all Honour and Glory and Worship is to be given to God alone and not to any Creature 8. Because they say The true Church is in God and so no Unrighteous One in it or of it and so can neither call the Wicked God's Church nor a House of Wood and Stone his Church 9. Because they cannot own the Worlds Sprinkling of Infants with a little outward Water for Christ's Baptism and because they cannot own that for a right Communion which is in Sin and who eat Bread and drink Wine in Remembrance of a Coming of Christ which they say shall never be while they are here and the like But now something the Lord assisting may be spoken particularly in Answer to the Queries themselves and the first of them is this Query 1. First Question If that Light which is within every Man that cometh into the World be sufficient without the Preaching of the Gospel how is it that Heathens know little or nothing of the True God Answ To this I answer That thou run'st here upon a false Ground and so draws this and the rest of thy stumbling Consequences from thy own Imaginations not from our Words for we do not Exclude the Preaching of the Gospel from the Light nor the Light from it but say That is the true Light that Lighteth every Man that cometh into the World one loves the Light believes it and follows it and is led to God and so saved by it sufficiently the other hates it and it is his Condemnation And this is the Gospel Preaching and this Light of Christ in every Man is the Light of the Glorious Gospel whether it be declared of to the outward Ear in Words or not but he that Preaches not this True Light Preaches another Gospel though there be not another Gospel And I say unto you all People if a seeming Angel Preach not this Gospel of Light this Grace of God which brings Salvation which hath appeared to all Men and is the Saints Teacher and Keeper he is to be accursed But whereas thou tell'st of Heathen Answer All are Heathens now and Ignorant of the True God who know nothing of the sufficiency of the Light that Lighteth every Man that cometh into the World but thou askest in the end of that Query two very Childish Questions The first Why we exhort all Men to follow the Light within if that be sufficient I answer Because it is sufficient therefore do we Exhort all Men to follow it for that which is not sufficient is not safe to follow And so you that are so full of words and ignorant of the Sufficiency beat the Air and deceive the People keeping silly Women ever Learning and never able to bring them to the knowledge of the Truth which perfects to God all the comers thereunto Thy second Query there
perswade you and all People in Love to your Souls to take heed of dallying with God who is a consuming Fire for his Judgments are manifest and who can stand before his Wrath O be not Proud lest your bands be made strong but be Meek and Lowly and Gentle in Heart to Learn of him that is so that you may find rest for your Souls for there is no Peace to the Wicked saith my God the true God that made Heaven and Earth whose Wrath from Heaven is perfect revealed against all Vngodliness and Vnrighteousness of Men without respect of Persons or Professions who hold the Truth in any manner of Vnrighteousness So be it In the 2d Month 1670. Thomas Taylor WEEP thou England Houl Houl ye People for the Dreadful Day of the Lord God is at Hand it is at the Door as an Armed Man coming swiftly upon you to break down and tread under feet thy Pomp Glory and Strength Thou hast exceeded in thy Sins and art grown Monstrous in thine Iniquities so the Lord will be exceeding Terrible unto thee Thou hast suffered the Wicked in thee to have Liberty and to take their fill of Sin when the Voice of the Righteous cannot be endured in thee but he that departs from Iniquity and would perswade others so to do is even made a Prey of by Ungodly and Unreasonable Men their Bodies Imprisoned and Banished and Estates spoiled and many Injuries done them for God's Name and Truth 's Sake And therefore will the Lord God arise to take Vengeance for these things Yea his Soul will certainly be avenged on such a Nation as this saith his Spirit in his Servant if they do not repent and amend AND moreover because you have said in your Hearts We have compassed them about with an Act and none shall Worship God but as we please Therefore will the Lord the mighty God compass you about with his Terrors and you shall find no place to hide your selves in from his Wrath because of the Pride of your Hearts and Evil of your Doings O all ye People of the Land saith the Lord God who are guilty of these things Thomas Taylor THE Lord even the Lord God of infinite endless Glorious Power and Truth plead our Cause our Innocent Cause against you the Rulers of this Nation and of all the World who hate us and Persecute us without a cause The Lord hath raised us up in Righteousness ever Praised be his Name to bear our Testimony for God and his Christ against all the Ways and False Worships of Fallen Man and therefore it is that such as are in the fall through the Ignorance and Evil that is in them number us with the Transgressors and account all manner of Punishments and Grievances too little for us Yea Banishment Imprisonment Spoiling of our Goods and Death it self is Judged not less than we deserve So the Scripture is fulfilled see John 16.2 3. And all this for no manner of Evil at all but meerly because we cannot cease to Worship and Serve the Living and True God our Father as he hath taught us and doth teach all that come to him For our Worship to God is pure in Spirit and Truth And this is the True Standing and established Worship for evermore and God is now Mightily seeking such to Worship him And so the Lord the Ever-blessed and True God Plead our Holy Cause against you who hate us without a Cause We have laid before you the Truth and Righteousness of our Cause and our Good-will to all men and how it is not in our Hearts and Hands in the least to injure you or any but to this Day you will not hear but stop your Ears to our Innocent Cries and therefore to the Lord God of Heaven and Earth do we call and before him who is KING of Kings and LORD of Lords and RULER of Rulers and JUDGE of Judges do we lay our Innocent Cause O that you had known at least in this your Day the things of your Peace but you will not and therefore how can ye expect less than a Forsaking and Casting off by the Lord as the People of Old called Israel found who would not hear the Voice of the Lord and his Servants Crying and Calling unto them in those Days Read the Prophesie of Hosea Hos 1.6 8 9. and see what Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi signifie and humble your selves greatly before the Lord for assuredly great Wrath is gone out from the presence of the Eternal Majesty of Heaven and Earth against you and nothing can stay it but your ceasing from Persecuting the Blessed Truth of God which we the People of God in Scorn called Quakers do Love and Live in It is so Thomas Taylor
Everlasting Father which is Spirit and Life the Resurrection and the Life in every believing Soul for we are Redeemed from Death thereby that we might for Ever hereafter serve God in the newness of his own Spirit and not in the oldness of the Letter as all such do as know no other Teaching Word but the Letter as this R. B. doth and so they having gotten a little Brain-knowledge by their Humane Helps and not by the Spirit of Truth they wrest Scripture to their own and others Destruction desiring and boasting themselves to be Masters and Teachers of others whilst themselves need teaching what the very Principles or beginning Doctrines of the true Christian Religion is as is plainly manifested by his seeking to bring in a graceless Minister or Wolf into Christ's Fold surely the Wolf comes not but to rob and destroy All that ever came before me saith Christ are Thieves and Robbers and never came in by the Door as its plain the Graceless Man doth not but hath climb'd up another way by his Humane Helps as Baxter speaks and to this purpose see John the 10th and Mat. 23. where Christ at large sets forth such Wolfish Teachers who can perk themselves up in Places of Teachers by the World's help outwardly but will neither enter into the Kingdom of God themselves nor suffer others but shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against Men by such deceitful Doctrine and Antichristian Inventions as this R. B. hath by saying That Gifts are more necessary to the validity of Ministration than Grace is and that he may perform the Office of a Minister to the Benefit of the Church that hath no Saving Grace at all And all Knowledge requireth Time and Labour to obtain it though the Spirit giveth it which last saying doth directly thwart and contradict the Scripture which saith I was found of them that sought me not Isa 65.1 And Paul sets believing and working in this great Matter of the Knowledge of God and Christ to Salvation one against the other as the way of the Law and Gospel for to him that worketh saith he is the Reward reckon'd of Debt not Gift of Grace but to him that Believeth it is of Grace to the Glory of God's great Love to Man for saith the Scripture God so loved the World that he gave his Son that whosoever on him believe should not perish but have Life Eternal And none can truly say but those are the best knowers and wisest People that have Eternal Life in them though they never laboured for it nor sought for it and so such as this R. B. who looks at all as obtain'd by Time and Labour they are those Spiritual Proud Ones who are swelâ—ed so big with Spiritual Pride that Self-idolizing Sin which as himself saith in his second Direction so called is the great Rebel against God the chief part of the Devil's Image that one Sin which breaketh every Commandment the Heart of the Old Man the Root and Parent and Summary of all other Sin the Antichristian Vice which is most directly contrary to the Life of Christ c. and these Letter-wise Men that have parched together a Garment of Fig-leaves to cover their sinful Nakedness are Proud of meer supposed Spiritual Excellencies for the way of the Blessed Spirit and its free Gifts and free Workings in the Children of Men they are strangers unto and then through their Humane Learning and lost Labour having gotten a little or a great deal of talk from the Letter of the Scripture concerning Religion in their Earthly Spirits which sees nothing of the Kingdom of God they condemn the Generation of the Just whom God teacheth and Blesseth with all Spiritual Knowledge in Heavenly Things and call them Spiritually Proud because they cannot but speak very highly and yet in the truest humility of Heart concerning the great Things that God hath done for their Souls and because they cannot join with the Wicked whom God abhorreth neither in their Worship nor other sinful Customs And so out of that Old Bottel come all those unsavoury Expressions of R. B. before-mentioned against the free Teachings of God's Spirit yea so great an Enemy he is to the wholsom Doctrine of Free Grace that Page 7. he saith Is it not Blaspheming of God's Spirit to make it the Patron of Mens sloth and idleness under pretence of Magnifying Grace To which I answer That pretending we deny and truly say with the Apostle That God who commanded Light to shine out of Darkness hath shined in our Hearts to give us yea most freely without our own La-Labour or any Humane Help The Knowledge of the Glory of his Kingdom and those that call this Doctrine either in the Apostle or us a Patronizing of Sloth and Idleness are those that do really Blaspheme God's Spirit which teacheth it But many Texts saith R. B. commands us diligence and sloth is a great Sin To which I say the Scripture indeed commands a diligent Improvement and holy Exercise of the free Gifts which the Spirit hath given the Faithful But the Scripture never said that Humane Labour and Helps are the Means to be used for getting the Spirit 's Teachings and without which no Knowledge in Spiritual Matters is now received Stir up the Gift of God in thee saith Paul to Timothy so say I but he no where puts the Humane or Carnal Man to Work or Labour to get the Spirit for that is quite contrary to this Scripture Gal. 3.2 as also Rom. 9.16 Obj. But this R. B. asks this Question Why hath God setled a Teaching Office in his Church and commanded all to attend and hear and learn if we are taught by the Spirit without Man's help Why were the Apostles sent forth into all the World c Answer Here is the great stumbling of these Unbelievers the Worldly-wise Ones indeed what because God in his free unlimited Spirit did begift Men and in his own Spiritual Power sent them forth to preach and publish all abroad the Glory of his Kingdom and Good Will to Men cannot People therefore be taught by the Spirit without Man's help What Reasoning's this When the Scripture expresly saith That all the Gifts and Abilities Helps and Means of bringing People to God and the Knowledge and Enjoyment of all the Good Things of his Kingdom are meerly solely and wholly from God and his Blessed Spirit 's free Gift in Christ and not from Man at all And therefore when the Corinthians began to look at Man whether Paul or Apollo or Cephas he calls it Carnal and said Christ was not divided signifying plainly it was Christ and the Spirit of his Power that alone did all in all as Christ said Joh. 15. Without me you can do nothing for in the True Church Christ ever was and ever will be all in all and and Man nothing as Paul said of himself Paul is nothing But in the False Church where R. B. is pleading for Man yea Graceless Ministers Man