most agrees with his words is in 2 Col. 14. blotting out the hand-writing of 2 Col. 14. opened Ordinances he might have added the next words that was against us which was contrary to us and took it out of the way nailing it to his Cross but these words were not for his turn The true meaning of the Text is that Jesus Christ § 3 by his death fulfilling what was signified by the typical Jewish Ordinances and abolishing the Mosaical Dispensation entred his house his Church to undertake the administration of its affairs which he in all things disposed as was suitable to the gracious nature of the Redeemer and that glory of Gods goodness that now shines in the Face of Jesus Christ But will this great Prophet G. F. say that the pure Gospel-Ordinances are against us contrary to us or as the Jewish standing in the way of the Conversion of the Gentiles through their burthensomness Will he say that Christ by his death abolished his own proper Ordinances Will he say that he nailed them to his Cross before they had a being divers of them not being formed till by his Apostles after his Resurrection Will he say that he blotted out the Lords Supper and nailed that to his Cross also as soon as he had instituted it as if he delighted in a fickle humour as the Quakers and to give life to an Ordinance and within twenty four hours put it to death yea to ingage his Disciples thereby to remember his death as often as they did it and yet abolish the Ordinance by his death and so take away all opportunity of remembring his death thereby And that phrase of the Angel seeking the living § 4 among the dead because they are taken with the sound is often used by them though not only beside the meaning of it but contrary to the sense of any Scripture I am sure it was never intended to prove Gospel-Ordinances dead You may hereby note what he denies viz. outward forms they are not to be touched and his reason is an excellent one the Saints have Christ in them At another time he will say Moses Abraham and the Old-Testament Saints had Christ in them and that in their own sense and yet I hope he will give us leave to believe that it was their duty to observe Gods forms But I wonder not that they that hold not fast the form of sound words are so easily perswaded to let go the forms of sound worship Let us hear another For this I say that the Father hath given his Son James Nayloâ— Love to lost p 52. §. 5. for a Leader and Guide to all Ages and into and out of all forms at his will and in his way and time in every Generation and therefore it is that all who know his will herein cannot endure that any visible thing should be set up to limit his leadings in Spirit Here you have the Tenet and the pretended reason of it all that know his will herein that is the Quakers cannot endure that any visible thing should be set up c. But what if Christ have set them up If they can prove as strongly that Christ hath pulled them down and is departed from them as we can that Christ did set them up and is present with and in them we will quickly in that point turn Quakers But alas the proof that he hath done so is but this they limit his leadings in Spirit that is the Quakers fancies But if he intended the Spirits leadings in a true sense it is very strange that the Gospel and Law of Works should be both sick of one disease That which was ordained to life I found to be unto death The Ordinances of the Gospel were ordained to inlarge and raise the spirits of the Saints but quite contrary they are found to limit and imprison the spirit Sure it must be Satans spirit and not Christs to whom the Ordinances are such Chains That I may shew you the Quakers Babel let us § 6 hear Isaac Pennington's Light speak contrary to the Light of G. Fox When Israel was bent to seek after Isaac Pennington concerning Vnity p. 1. the Lord and applied their hearts to wait upon him in fasting and earnest supplications wherein my heart hath often had the testimony that they were accepted of him and had many times the seal of his presence and power among them yea my heart did truly unite with and enjoy the Lord in what was then given forth and I can never deny the truth and worth of that Dispensation though I know it was swallowed up by the breaking forth of a more lively Dispensation This he saith he found about the beginning of the late troubles How doth this agree to G. Fox's nailing all those forms to Christs Cross at his death and then blotting out these Ordinances § P. 38. I deny that God did ever or will ever reveal himself by any of those things thou callest the means of Grace C. Atkinson But yet I. P. will needs have them swallowed up now though he gave them leave to live 1600 years more mercifully however than G. who would have them stifled in the womb or crucified so soon as born But Pennington is so cruel by that time he arrives to p. 38. that he saith Such of the people of God as do not follow the Lord perfectly out of the City of abomination visible worship but be found in any part thereof when the Lord cometh to judge her the Lord will not spare her nor the spirits of his dearest people who are found there c. Both by the Scripture and their own confession Christ did not long since dwell in those Ordinances which we call Gospel-Ordinances and the Quakers Babylons forms and abominations Until they shew us better grounds for Christs remove than the secret witness of the Spirit within them which we can prove to be a spirit of delusion by Scripture reason and sense it self let none who follow not Christ blind-fold have the worse opinion of Ordinances for all the Quakers talk I now come to particulars and begin with the Gospel-Ministry They deny and subvert the Ministry of the Gospel SECT III railing on the Ministers as the vilest persons and veriest Cheats in the world making ill use of those Scripture words Smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered Next to the Scripture they lay not their batteries against any thing so much as against the Ministers of the Gospel and have so little honesty as to take up all that is to be found on any one or any that pretend to be the Ministers of Christ and cast it in the faces of all without distinction as equally guilty And for their more particular attempts those who are the most faithful and serious are the objects of their greatest fury I shall not blot paper with their railing First They deny all Ministry that hath a mediate § 2 â—arnâ—l ' s Shield
their room and stead But let us hear another Witness and he none of the § 9 Isaac Penington concerning Unity p 1. meanest Yea my heart did truly unite with and enjoy the Lord in what was then about the beginning of the late troubles given forth and I can never be drawn to deny the truth and worth of that dispensation though I know it was swallowed up by a greater desolation soon following after and since by the breaking forth of a more lively dispensation And a little after p. 2. and remained fixing their mind on that former dispensation which the Lord had departed from It is hereby as plain and clear as the Sun shining § 10 at noon-day that Quakerism is a late dispensation taking its date since the beginning of the late troubles But to put all out of doubt in page 3. he saith Is not this Quakerism the lowest of all dispensations Is not this common to all mankind doth not this fall short in it self as I may say and as it hath formerly been dispensed by young Countrey-Lads of no deep understanding or ready expression but very fit to be despised every where by the Wisdom of Man of the dispensation of the Law of Moses to the Jews much more of the dispensation by Christ and his Apostles who would have looked for the Lord here And yet this hath the Lord chosen to gather his people by and to appear to the World in and hath gathered the life vertue and substance of all former dispensations into it c. So that this new despensation hath swallowed up all others yea that of Christ and his Apostles and if so it is not the dispensation of Christ and his Apostles but another accounted by the Quakers more excellent and compleat and therefore is not Christianity any more then Christianity is Judaism by their own account To shut up the proof of this as owned by themselves according to the most plain Construction of their own words or consequence not to be disowned by a rational man I will give you James Naylor's doctrine But yours Commands in the Letter and Love to the Lost p. 16. so of another Administration for the literal Ministration is done away in the spiritual Well then if Christianity began in a manner so vastly differing from and a time so long before Quakerism which is not that but another Administration Quakerism is no Christianity but the former hath been proved to be true therefore the latter CHAP. III. The Quakers deny the Scriptures SECT I THAT the Quakers pretend to own the Scriptures I do not deny but I shall prove it to be one of the most naked and self-contradicted pretences that ever peep'd out into the World with such a noise and confidence If meer pretences were of sufficient Authority 'T is Satans Master-Piece to betray with a kiss to command our faith that portion of Scripture might be well spared 1. Thes 5. 21. Prove all things c. If they should deny the Scriptures in so many words they cannot but know it would nip their designs in the bud and in stead of promoting their principles render themselves odious but Satan is not so silly an Impostor as to spoil his Market by appearing so unseasonably and at first dash in so deformed a shape he is not ignorant of that Text Surely in vain is the Not spread in the sight of any Bird. I shall therefore wave pretences on both sides and bring my charge to a fair triall wherein their own Testimonies shall be their principal Judges I desire them not to accuse me of wounding their reputation seeing the stabs are given with their own daggers and the Murther is no better nor worse then felo de se as the Law phrases it but in plain English Self-Murther this I shall prove by sufficient Argument The Quakers deny the Scriptures of the Old and Arg. 1 § 2 New Testament to be the Word of God This Charge none of them that ever I read heard or heard of will deny and if you please to cast your eye on the instances you may take it on their own words Blasphemy for any to say To all that would know p. 4. Naylors answer to the Jews p. 25 Cuffs Ribands Lace and such other like things invented by the devil F. Howgill one of Antichrists c. p. 2. the Letter is the Word of God It is the Devil that contends for the Scriptures to be the Word of God This errour is by some reputed meerly verbal and that in other words they allow the Scripture as much as this comes to I would it were true of this and all the rest of their errours which they trumpet out in the Scripture titles and dialect upon that condition I would be really content to Yea and Nay it and Thee and Thou it and moreover forbid Ribands Lace and Cuffs though the most modest that were ever worn to pollute my Garments and offend their unnecessary self-denial from that time forward But they have another opinion of it or they would not call it blasphemy to be otherwise minded and we shall finde it ere I have done to be their forelorn Hope by which they attempt to make a breach on the Authority and esteem the Scripture hath justly obtained in the hearts of all serious Christians and thereby with more ease and security to enter the whole Army and gross of their delusions and therefore I shall encounter it first and in good earnest It will be necessary before I proceed to let you § 2 know what we intend by the phrase that the Scriptures are the Word of God that you may know what we hold and contend for though they know not what they contend against except the vain fictions of their own begetting Know therefore that we do not assert them to be the Son of God the Christ and Saviour nor the Spirit of God neither do we say that they are so self-sufficient and all-powerful as to sanctifie and enlighten savingly without the coagency efficiency or assistance of the good Spirit of the Lord to open our understandings and write them in our hearts These things are too high for them On the other hand we dare not call them a dead letter who have felt them sharper then any two-edged § 3 sword and tasted them sweeter then then the honey or the honey-comb nor yet Ink and Paper-Divinity or meerly the words and works of men These are too low an opinion of them But positively First we intend the sense and matter by them expressed § 4 containing those Histories Prophesies Promises Threatnings Doctrines Exhortations c. which God at sundry times and in divers manners revealed to and pake by his Son and servants inspired by God or by inspiration of God Secondly the sense and matter aforesaid being § 5 written or printed we call the Word of God so far as the print or writing agrees in its kind with the Original Copies which were
and Earth is in it To shut up this particular hear one of their prime § 4 Ministers who speaks plainly his mind and not in Parables I will make you know that I the light which G. Fox jun. p. 53. p. 54. p. 55. lighteth every man that cometh into the World that all through me should believe am the true eternal God which created all things that by me the light all things are upheld and that there is not another besides me can save And I will purge out all your iniquities and forgive all yâ—ur trespasses and I will change your Natures and I will make you new Creatures if you will bearken to me and obey me the light in you What I have here written is the words which the Father who is one with Christ the Son gave me to write in which words the true Christ is renewed and a Testimony given of him and no other But enough and too much of this Blasphemy I need not take pains to ravel into it for it s so plain that none but those who shut their eyes and are wilfully blind but may see it in an unexpressible deformity I now procced to the fourth proof of their equalling SECT III their Sayings Writings and Light within and preferring them before the Scriptures I place them in this Order that you may behold them at one view in their not only disproportion but opposition The CHARACTERS of the Scriptures given by the Quakers CHARACTERS of their own Teachers Writings and Sayings given by them Feeding Death with Death The Letter which killeth Declaration from the Ministers of the Word p. 7. The Voice of the Son of God was uttered forth by him by which the dead was raised F. H. Life of E. B. p. 20. Paper Ink and Writing Declar. from the Ministers of the Word p. 2. A Shield of the Truth Title of James Parnel's Book A dead letter The old letter Seeking the living among the dead Parnel Shield to the Truth Naylor Love to the Lost His words ministred Grace to the Hearers Fox jun. life of E. B.  Forcible and very pleasant as apples of gold in pictures of silver This in the freshness and quick sense of life Penington quest c. 41. Leave men in the dark and confusion Frequent Passage A clear Discovery Title of Smiths Prim.  O how certain a sound did his Trumpet give Life of E. B. p. 2. Part of it the words of the Devil and wicked men Wisdom of words Nayl Love to the lost c. 21. Written from the Spirit of the Lord. Title page Parnel Shield of truth  The Voice of the Son of God Life of E. B. 20. My upright desire to the Lord for you is that he would strip you of all your knowledge of the Scriptures according to the flesh Penington quest p. 12. And now Child hear Instruction and be wise Treasure it up in thy heart that thou mayest lay up for thy self a good foundation Smith Prim. p. 56. Shews you in a Glass your own faces which the Scriptures cannot do Scorned Quakers Account p. 20. A spiritual Glass opened Title of Smiths Cat. and part of the Title of his Morn Watch. Precept and Traditions of men Morning-Watch p. 18. Truths Principles Title of Crooks Book That light is in the Scriptures prove that or tell me what one Scripture hath light in it Lip of truth c. p. 7. Light risen out of darkness Title of Farnworths Book Natural Lawson Carnal Letter Shield of the truth p. 10. God is at liberty to speak by them the Scriptures if he please and where they are given by Inspiration he doth so and so he is at liberty to speak by any other created thing as to Balaam by his Ass Ja. Naylor Light of Christ c. p. 19. Earthly Root Morning-Watch 22.  Worship and obedience as to its direction The Harlots Child Morn Watch p. 23.  Hagar and Ismael Mother and Child after the Letter Penington Mysteries of the Kingdom Preface He proclaimed liberty to the Captives in the Power and Authority of God F. H. of E. B. p. 15. Letter without Swine feeding on the husk The shadow Parnel Shield of Truth p. 10. Let this be sent to be read in the fear of the Lord in the Holy Assemblies of the Church of the first-born where she is scattered to the ends of the Earth W. D. Doting on the Scriptures Parnel Christ exalted p. 4.  Betrayed into the words Smith Prim. p. 30.  Dangerous to feed on them Sm. Cat. 36.  I having sufficiently proved that they equal their SECT IV writings and sayings with and prefer them before the Scriptures it is not fit I should let them pass without contradiction I shall therefore review their Grounds for so doing and discover them to be but swelling words of vanity And I shall begin with their Infallibility I am confident that G. Fox the Ring-leader of the Sect understands not what he saith nor whereof he affirms It is one thing not to fail another to be infallible for that is to be without all possibility of falling or erring Again it is one thing to be infallible with a restriction to something another to be universally infallible and without limitation If G. Fox understands so much he is a Non-such § 2 for confidence and being void of reason that affirmeth as he doth let us examine but that one passage before-cited How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible Here he puts Ministry of the Spirit and of the Letter in opposition which Christ and his Apostles joyned hand in hand as loving companions and meet helps each to other And there was delivered unto him the Book of Luke 4. 17. the Prophet Isaiah and when he had opened the Book he found the place where it was written the Spirit of the Lord is upon me c. verse 21. And he began to say unto them this day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears and all bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words c. was not Christ then a Minister of the Spirit it is by him said this day this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears viz. the Spirit of the Lord is upon me And was he not also a Minister of the Letter why he opened the Book and found where it was written and no doubt read it out of the Book to his Auditors or else it would have been very impertinent to tell them This Scripture is fulfilled for they must have divined or not known what Scripture he intended And I suppose none will doubt whether that which is written in a Book be written in Letters Well then either George Fox is fallible yea and hath grosly failed or Jesus Christ was not a Minister of the Spirit and which of these you who call your selves infallible Ministers of the Spirit will admit of I know not but I am sure every true Christian will
his mouth as eminently as any thing yea all things in the world and more For God spake by them to us more than by all other things he saith to Jeremy Jerem. 15. 19. Thou shalt be as my mouth As thou spakest by the hand of Moses 1 Kings 8. 53 2 Sam. 23. 2. The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue Hear the rod. c. Is it not a frequent phrase in the Scripture As saith the Scripture They believed the Scripture And what is that but God speaking by the Scripture and believing what God spake by the Scripture But now is made â—om 16. 26. manifest and by the Scriptures of the Prophets according to the â—â—mmand of the everlasting God made known unto all Nations for the obedience of faith What more plain that the Scriptures are the mouth of the Lord or those means by which the Lord doth manifest his mind to men But the Quakers will not have it so and therefore it must not be so But they who â—nquire of or at the Scriptures for the mind of the Spirit run another way than that the Spirit walks and is to be found in and sin against the Spirit of God And that you may see how they set the Spirit and Scripture together by the ears Naylor saith further For those only are the Children of God who are Love to lost c. p. 25. led by the Spirit of God so far is true as truth it self but as the old Serpent he never heads a saying with the Scripture but he brings in a lye at the end and tail of it to whom they who are led by the Letter were ever enemies Here you have two great Commanders or Leaders § 5 brought into the field as the most hostile implacable Enemies whose followers from the time there where any were foes each to other And what can render the Spirit and the Sâ—ripture more opposite than that whosoever follows the Letter is a foe to him that follows or is led by the Spirit And the Leaders are the formal cause of it too and therefore it was ever so and is as inseparable as natural cause and effect It this be all true well W. Pen Sp of truth â— might W. P. say We livingly witness against all the dry cavelling Letter-mongers in the world Having frequently met with that Scripture SECT II 1 Cor 3 6. By them produced to prove the Scriptures to have a contrary tendency to the Spirit I shall here open it and shew their mistake The words are Who alsâ— hath made us able Ministers of 1 Cor. 3 6. openeâ— 1. the new Testament not of the Letter but of the Spirit for the Letter killeth but the Spirit giveth â—ife Whereas they would have us by the Letter to § 2 understand the whole written word as written that is the body of the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament Law and Gospel without distinction and by the Spirit the inward immediate teachings of the Spirit of God they are in both mistaken For it is as certain as that the following words are truth that by the Letter here is meant the Law as given forth by God from Mount Sinai and by the Spirit the Covenant of Grace especially as expressed in the New Testament under the administration of the Reedemer But if the ministration of death written and engraven Ver. 7. Ver 9. one stones was glorious c. for if the ministration of condemnation be glory c. Thâ—se passages express and explain the same § 3 thing called the Letter in the 6. Verse and that it was the Law given forth by God before it was written not only as written the matter and manner of which was glorious but in terribleness insomuch that Moses said I exceedingly fear Heb. 12. 21. and quake and it was death for any to touch the Mountain yea the Israelites were ready to dye Exod. 20. 19. with fear at the appearences of God on that Mount Sinai at the giving forth of the Law And as the manner of giving it forth by God so § 4 the matter of it was mortal nothing but death was written in the forehead of it going alone The Law worketh wrath That is the Law of meer Rom. 4. 15. Rom. 7. 11. 12. Commandments And the Commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death for sâ—n taking occasion by the commandment deceived me and by it slew me Thus it is plain what is meant by the Letter the Law of meer Commandments as given forth on Mount Sinai That by the Spirit is to be understood the Covenant § 5 of promise in the hand of the Mediator is as certain and not of the Scripture or written Word in general for in the 6. Verse it is opposed to the Letter of the New Testament not of the Letter that is the Gospel not the Law and it is called the Spirit in three respects First As the New Testament or Covenant of promise especially in the hand of Christ promiseth and conveyeth soul quickning grace in a good measure to sanctifie and enable and dispose the soul to keep the Laws of God Secondly As by the New Testament or Covenant life and spirit comfort and refreshment is put into the hearts of poor drooping sinners under the sense of the severity of the Law and their liableness to the punish of it Thirdly And chiefly the intent and mind of § 6 the Spirit in the terrible dispensation of the Law of Works was by discovering mans woful estate to make the promises of the Gospel or the new Covenant sweet and welcome and to put souls on embracing the redemption through Christ So that the matter of the pure New Testament or Covenant in the hand of the Mediator was that which God especially aimed at to promote by the Letter or the meer Law of Commandments in which alone there was not the least appearance of mercy or mans welfare implied CHAP. XII The Quakers hold it is a sin and the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and holy examples expressed in and by the Scriptures except we have them by imme iate inspiration and at first hand as the Apostles received them I Am now come to the highest round of their SECT I Ladder and I know not what one step of sin beyond it except the unpardonable one they could charge those with who walk by the light of Scripture day Samuel whole rebuke to Saul for his sin in the matter of the Amalekites was expressed in the keenest and highest terms compared his sin but to Witchcraft Iniquity and Idolatry And if this charge against us were as true as it is that they so charge us it is high time to serve the Scriptures as Hezekiah served the brazen Serpent And brake in peioes the Brazen Serpent that Moses had made 2 Kings 18. 4. for unto thâ—se days the Children
diligently But for P's sake I shall believe it more than possible § 2 that a man of the highest pretences having some more than ordinary means to deal rightly and ingenuously may yet so far deceive my expectations as to give the highest contradictions to them all I am altogether ignorant of the name or person of the Author of the Piece opposed by Pen and if he be a Socinian as Pen affirms I shall be far enough from vindicating him therein but for the Piece it self wherein Pen saith he could find neither head nor tail I will sell my eyes and brains for two pence if it deserve so contemptible a Character And for the Answerer Pen if he were not furnished with forehead and tales beyond measure his Pamphlet would have had nothing remarkable in it I expecting next his Epistle and Preface an â—rderly § 3 combating his Adversaries Charge I find him taking up his Post in the Quakers conceited strong hold of the infallible guidance of the Spirit of God afforded to his people exclusive of any other means In the debating of which he roams and tosses to and fro like a man in a confused troubled dream for above thirty pages His pretences therein lying athwart my present work I thought meet to give some account of his Forces especially considering him to be a man of noise and no small prop to the Quakers Cause in their own esteem His Question in which he pretends to include the Quakers strength and which he saith he is resolved to stand by as such he states in these words The Question stated Whether Gods holy and unerring Spirit is or should SECT II be the proper Judge of Truth Rule of Faith and Guide of Life among men especially under the Administration of the blessed Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or not I affirm it and proceed to prove it by Scripture and Reason Considering his words foregoing which are too many and too worthless to transcribe and what he aims at in the handling of this Question I never read one so lame and deformed in my life come forth with such state and confidence and such a train or rout of mediums as deformed as it self There is in it neither Logick nor Honesty Certainly if he had not turned Quaker and in that fall put all out of joynt he could not likely after so good Nursing have been thus lamentably cripled in his Intellect and somewhat besides First of all here is a fallacy à bene divisis ad malè § 2 conjuncta many Questions confounded together Secondly no explanation of the terms most all of which are metaphorical or amphibious and in that part especially affirmed the greatest ambiguity of all Vt quisque est linguâ nequior Solvans ligantque quaestionum vincula Per syllogismos plectiles He tells us indeed pag. â—7 that there is no more difference to him between a Judge Rule and Guide than essentially there can be in the Wisdom Justice and Holiness of God he should have added nor between truth faith and life among men and then he would have shewed himself a work-man indeed to have so stitched them together into one as would admit of no distinction I do not admire that his Acumen cannot distinguish Essence and Subsistence three Persons in one Divine Being and God-Head who cannot distinguish these Attributes of God nor these acts with respect to men mentioned in the Question He is unlike to wade through a deep River who is so often over head and ears in a shallow Dish But these escapes are but the Dâ—st of the Ballance § 3 to what follows The word proper in a Question as modifying these Offices or Acts of the Spirit is greatly improper Proper is sometimes in opposition to figurative sometimes in opposition to common sometimes in opposition to meet or fit in which sense he would be understood it doth not fit his purpose nor principles to tell us but this is an unworthy part of a Disputant and becoming none but those who are resolved not to be understood If he would assert the Quakers Tenet he must say it is the peculiar sole and immediate Guide Rule and Judge and this is that he pleads for now and then after his fashion in his following arguments and all the Quakers I have read or discoursed plead for in plain terms But if it had been so expressed in the Question his Nose would have been held too hard to the Grind-stone in attempting strictly to prove it and most would have smelt the Rankness of Quakerism But Mr. Pen do you deal fairly and honestly with your Adversaries to imply in your Question that we deny the Spirit of God to be a proper that is one that is fit and hath right to be a Rule of Faith Guide of Life Judge of Truth You know that we own it to be such and that it doth both in the Conscience and by the Scripture Creation and Providence perform such acts to such purposes and that of right only we deny that the Spirit always performs these acts without the use of the Scripture or any external means or Ordinances or that it doth so at any time contrary to its mind expressed in the Scripture This you should oppose or you do but trifle and abuse us and your unwary Readers The latter part of your Question which expresses § 4 the Administration of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ especially to countenance your Tenet is playing at Blind-mans-buff You should have told us who or what you mean by Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Quakers Lord and Saviour the light within every man that is none of our Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Man Christ Jesus who was of the seed of David according to the flesh who was the Son of Mary crucified to death on the Cross of Wood by shedding his blood and is now in his humane or mans nature united to the God-head in one person ascended above the visible heavens he is none of your Saviour and can be no more within you personally considered than the body of one individual man can be entirely in all the men and women and children in the world and at the same time It must be a Transubstantiation much more ridiculous than the Papists that must support such a fancy It is also no less strange that you should talk of the § 5 Gospel Administration of our Lord and Saviour who hold nothing of a Saviour but what is Eternal à parte ante nor any other Gospel but the light within and its immediate Dictates which you generally affirm was within every man from the beginning of the world I shall not spend time and paper to shew the many other absurdities in your question I have left a Hâ—rvest for Gleaners For the proof of your affirmation such a blind one as it is you produce abundance of Scriptures which are as much to your purpose as if you had quoted
to do SECT VI thy will for thou art my God thy Spirit is good lead me into the Land of uprightness Psal 43. 10. To bend this Text to your bow you talk thus The Question will be whether it was Davids intent and the scope of his desire that God should teach and lead him by his good Spirit or some other thing But methinks it is resolvable in the affirmative in two respects What a strange Question is this Who doubts but David commended the Spirit of God as a good Teacher what then must all other Teachers which the Spirit of God makes use of as the means by which he teaches be cast off Suppose I should say such a man is a good School-master I would fain be taught by him doth that imply I would not learn out of a Grammar or other books which he uses to that end or doth it not rather conclude that I like not only his abilities but his method and means by which he teaches The Psalmist saith Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest O Lord and teachest out of thy Law You would little less than hoot at him that should from hence conclude the Psalmist to reject the Spirit as a Teacher and to admit of no other Teacher but the Law It is after this lofty manner of disputing you undertake our overthrow When you have so learnedly framed your Question § 2 which by the disjunctive Or you make to consist of two members which would he have for his Teacher the Spirit or some other thing You answer it like your self Methinks it is resolvable in the affirmative But I pray which of the parts of your Question do you affirm which do you deny Why truly it is the safest course you take to affirm it of both for then the truth is owned and in this point the quarrel ended But then what need your fighting against what you affirm unless you are resolved to be quarrelsome Alas poor man it was by a meer mistake you said truth you intended to resolve in the affirmative that he desired to be taught by the good Spirit of God but in the negative of any other thing Canis festinans coecos parit catulos The two respects which thus blinded you are enough § 3 to keep any mans eyes open that is but willing to see First How that the Word was hid in his heart That internal Law Word and Spirit of God which plentifully shews how much he was an Enthusiast and Quaker in the sense this man esteems us most Heterodox Law Word and Spirit are all one with you But where do you find the Word hid in the hearts of the Saints called the Internal Word 'T is true that it is within in the memory faith love and hid there with the hiding of security but it was as much without before it was within as the Childs Lesson which it gets by heart out of a book which when done you might as well call it the Child 's Internal Lesson Your second respect is the very words viz. of the § 4 Text imply the thing we urge them for and can import no other sense Also what did that clause do there viz. thy Spâ—rit is good Can the Spirit be good for nothing if the external word be good for something as a Teacher I mistrust not the eyes of any but the Quakers but that they will see at first glance what a feeble Champion you are without my pointing Parvas habet spes Troja si tales habet I shall trace you foot by foot no further you shoot at so many marks at once that 't is hard to find which you level at only in the conclusion you presume you have hit the Pin of the white Vnisâ—nat cuculis rudibus geminantibus odis Your Arguments are generâ—lly sick of one disease § 5 you argue from the presence of the Spirit of God in and with his people by his motions influences manifestations gifts graces means to his Essential Being as the sense of those Texts which is fallacious as I prove by this Argument answer it when you can The Spirit of God essentially considered or as very God is every where at all times without the least change or alteration for ever But the Spirit of God in and with his people according to the import of those Texts of Scripture which you produce is not every where at all times without any the least change or alteration for ever Therefore the Spirit of God in and with his people according to the import of those Texts of Scripture which you produce is not the Spirit of God essentially considered or very God The first Proposition is proved from Mal. 3. 6. For § 6 I am the Lord I change not The second Proposition I prove from Joel 2. 28 29. which you cite Pag. 21. And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophesie c. This was in time what and where it was not before Ezek. 36. 27. Pag. 20. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my Statutes c. it was future what it was not before and is spoken of the gathering of the Jews from all Countries Then the Spirit of God shall be put within them but this is not alway the same without alteration 1 Cor. 6. 19. cited by you Pag. 30. What know you not that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you The Holy Ghost did not dwell in them according to the import of that Text before their Conversion The Lord was in the Temple at Jerusalem and dwelt therein I have built a House of habitation for 2 Chron. 6. 2 thee and a place for thy dwelling Who is able to build him an House seeing the Heaven and Heaven of Heavens 2 Ki. 19. 15 cannot contain him How did God dwell there more then elsewhere but by placing his Name owning a relation to it as his house sanctifying it to his own use manifesting himself in it to those who waited on his Ordinances there solemnized But now the place is void of all the foot-steps of that presence I deny not I doubt not but the presence of God § 7 by his Spirit in and with his people is much more glorious than that Type possessed yea such a Mystery of Union and Glory as will be matter of intellectual exercise and delight for ever yet it is most certainly no more his Essential Presence than is every where The difference is his being related to actuating of effecting in and manifesting himself to and union with the Souls of his people so as none in the world but they are blessed withal And herein the Saints are so happy they may well be content and not put the name of the God-head in a strict and proper sense on these his blessings Such conceits are the natural source and have been of Opinions and practices
of divine things Inwardly ravening from the Spirit A recourse to the Scripture or any thing else except their spirit for sight and understanding in the things of God Carnal reasonings Reasonings of the Flesh All use of the understanding and judgment of man for searching and finding out truths about Divine and Spiritual things Received from the Lord. By immediate Revelation Reconciliation Giving up themselves to the light within The Word of Reconciliation Christ the light within The Lords Redeemed Those who are conformed to the light within Redemption A being reduced into the state of Adam in Innocency not what was wrought by Christ in the Flesh 1600 years since The Redeemer Not that Jesus Christ who is ascended above and beyond the Stars but the light and power within every man as such Refreshings in Spirit Something they are pleased with they know not why and come by they know not how As the Quakers who were refreshed at the Dutch-womans declaring while they understood not a word she spake The New man CHRIST The rest of the people of God A quiet and peace within though from a blind deluded conscience The Resurrection of Life Obedience to the light in this world Resurrection of the Body Resurrection of the light within to a dominion in the man for with them the Body is Christ and Christ is the light within Also the Body which was a servant to sin being acted by the light and power within Revelations Not Scripture-Revelations but what come by immediate inspiration to them Righteous ones Such as are without sin Righteâ—usness of Christ That which is wrought by the power and conduct of their Christ the light within The Root of Jesse The Light within The Royal Seed Christ and every Quaker They who run and not sent All that teach the Gospel from the Scripture and not by Immediate Inspiration Reprobation Sin S The Sabbath Every day the present Rest and Heaven of the Quakers The Sacrifice of Christ The light within obeying or they obeying in the light within Having Salt in themselves Having Christ in themselves The Salt of the Earth Christ the light within Salvation Conversion to the obedience of the light within Sanctification All one with Justification all one with Christ obedience to the light Building on the Sand. Making the Scripture a Rule of Faith and Life The Saviour The light within every man According to the Scriptures By immediate inspiration as the Prophets and Apostles received the mind of God The Seed The light within or the Christ essentially within the Eternal Word that which was in the beginning with God The Seed of Abraham according to the Flesh The Eternal Word Christ as God Self-righteousness All that is not from the immediate motions within Shadows All Forms and external worship The Scriptures which Pen saith are as the shadow of the true Rule viz. living touches Idol-Shepherds The Ministers who have a mediate Call or teach out of the Scripture Shut out of the Scriptures Cannot understand them have nothing to do with them Signs and Miracles in Spirit No body can tell what All flesh must be silent Nothing must be said but what comes by immediate revelation from the Spirit for all else is the voice of man and of the flesh In the Simplicity Without the use of humane understanding or if you will out of your wits To live in Sin Sinners Such as have any remains of sin in them or do at any time in any sort commit sin Slâ—ying the Witnesâ— Disobeying the light within but especially a resolved rejecting it as our only Rule Teacher and Saviour Sons of God Only the Quakers Soul A part or measure of God Speaking in the Spirit By immediate Inspiration Spirit of Antichrist That which leads to Forms though Christ's and Gospel-Forms All that opposes the light within to be Christ False Spirits They that ground their Doctrine on the Scripture or any mediate thing Spirit of Bondage Being under the power of any sin Spirit of God The light within every man God the Father Son Holy Ghost without distinction Spirit of the World Whatever is not conformable to the light within as Christ The Spiritual man Christ or Christ in every Quaker The Lord hath Spoken What comes to them by immediate inspiration The Lord hath not Spoken Whatever is not by immediate inspiration though it be written in the Scripture A true Christians State Being taught by God immediately not by the Letter The statutes of God The Law in the heart or within They steal my word every one from his Neighbour Teaching Doctrines as the Word of the Lord taken out of the Scripture Stoln words All that we have out of the Scriptures and not by immediate inspiration to our selves In the Stilness An unactive attending to the light within Standing in the Counsels of God Conformity to the Teachings of the light within and abiding therein Studying for Divine Knowledge and what comes thereby from the Scripture Carnal toil birth and wisdom of the flesh Scraping in the Scriptures The Woman in Subjection Weakness must subject it self to the man Christ The Supper of the Lord. Spiritual joy or joy in the Spirit from the presence and influence of the light within all eating and drinking to God and in remembrance of Christ Sword of the Spirit Christ the light within What is declared by immediate inspiration of the Spirit Synagogues of Satan The Assemblies of any sort of people for Divine Worship who are not Quakers T Christ Tabernacling in the outward Vessel Christs dwelling for a little time in the body born of the Virgin Mary The like of every Quaker Taking away the Tables All Forms and Books as useless in the things of God Taught of God Taught immediately from the light within Teachings of Men. All that is not immediately inspired though the sense and words of the Scripture Cease from man From the Teaching by Man Outward Court of the Temple given to the Gentiles All forms of Worship all visible Worship being the Worship of Heathens not of Christians Testifie to the light in the Conscience Appealing or speaking to Christ the light within Bearing Testimony to the light Declaring for and from the light within The Testimony and the Testaments Christ the Light and Law within Thanksgiving Give thanks in Spirit or inwardly Thieves and Robbers All that are Teachers by a mediate Call All Ministers but the Quakers All that walk by Scripture-light Traditions of men The Scripture or written Word Trading with the Scripture Having maintenance for a Ministry Ministring from the Scripture or written Word The Birth In Travel The time of wrestling betwixt convictions of the light within and perfection Trembling and Quaking The horrour and consternation that they are under from as they say the wrath of God while the flesh is judged and they are in the hell of condemnation which is all the bell they hold that I can find aâ—d this trembling and quaking they say is such as
spirits breath that we all may be preserved until we have well finished our Course and Testimony to the honour and glory of our Lord God who is over all blessed for ever 1. We having a true sense of the working of the Spirit which under a Profession of Truth leads into a Division from and Exaltation above the Body of Friends who never revolted nor degenerated from their Principles and into marks of Separation from the constant Practice of good and ancient Friends who are found in the Faith once delivered to us And also into a slight esteem of their Declarations or Preaching who have and do approve themselves as the Ministers of Christ and of the Meetings of the Lords people whereby and wherein Friends are and often have been preciously revived and refreshed And under pretence of keeping down Man and Forms doing down the Ministry and Meetings or encourage those that do the same We say the Lord giving us to see not only the working of that Spirit and those that are joyned to it that bring forth these ungrateful fruits but also the evil Consequents and Effects of it which are of no less importance than absolutely tending to destroy the work of God and lay waste his Heritage We do unanimously being thereto encouraged by the Lord whose presence is with us declare and testifie That neither that Spirit nor such as are joyned to it ought to have any Dominion Office or Rule in the Church of Christ Jesus whereof the Holy Spirit that was poured forth upon us hath made us Members and Overseers Neither ought they to act or order the affairs of the same But are rather to be kept under with the power of God till they have an ear open to Instruction and come into Subjection to the Witness of God of the encrease of whose Kingdom and Government there shall be no end 2. We do declare and testifie That that Spirit and those that are joyned to it who stand not in Vnity with the Ministry and Body of Friends that are constant and stedfast to the Lord and to his unchangeable Truth which we have received and are Witnesses of and Ambassadors have not any true Spiritual Right or Gospel-Authority to be Judges in the Church and as the Ministry of the Gospel of Christ so as to condemn you and their Ministry Neither ought their judgment to be any more regarded by Friends than the judgment of other Opposers who are without For of right the Elders and Members of the Church which keep their habitation in the Truth ought to judg matters and things that differ and their jugdment which is so given therein ought to stand good and valued among Friends though it be kickt against and disapproved by them who have degenerated as aforesaid And we do further declare and testifie That it is abominable Pride which goeth before Destruction that so puffs up the mind of any particular that he will not admit of any judgment to take place against him For he that is not justified by the Witness of God in Friends is condemned by it in himself though being hardned he may boast over it in a false Confidence 3. If any difference arise in the Church or amongst them that profess themselves Members thereof We do declare and testifie That the Church with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ have power without the assent of such as dissent from their Doctrine and Practices to hear and determine the same If any pretend to be of us and in case of Controversie will not admit to be tried by the Church of Christ Jesus nor submit to the judgment given by the Spirit of Truth in the Elders and Members of the same but kick against their judgment as only the judgment of Man it being manifested according to truth and consistent with the Doctrine of such good ancient Friends as have been and are found in the Faith agreeable to the Witness of God in his people Then we do testifie in the Name of the Lord if that judgment so given be risen against and denied by the party condemned then he or she and such as so far partake of their sins as to countenance and encourage them therein ought to be rejected And having err'd from the Truth persisting therein presumptuously are joyned in one with HEATHENS and INFIDELS 4. We do declare That if any go abroad hereafter pretending to that weighty Work and Service who either in Life or Doctrine grieve good Friends that are stedfast in the Truth sound in the Faith so that they are not manifest in their Consciences but disagree to the Witness of God in them Then ought they whatever have been their Gifts to leave them before the Altar and forbear going abroad and ministring until they are reconciled to the Church and have the Approbation of the Elders and Members of the same And if any that have been so approved of by the Church do afterwards degenerate from the Truth and do that which tendeth to Division and countenance Wickedness and Faction as some have done then the Church hath a true Spiritual Right and Authority to call such to Examination and if they find sufficient cause for it by good testimony may judg them unfit for the Work of Gods Ministry whereof they have rendred themselves unworthy and so put a stop to their proceedings therein And if they submit not to the judgment of the Spirit of Christ in his people then ought they publickly to be declared against and warning given to the Flock of Christ in their several Meetings to beware of them and to have no fellowship with them that they may be ashamed and Lambs and Babes in Christ preserved 5. And if any man or woman which are out of the Unity with the Body of Friends print or cause to be printed or published in writing any thing which is not of service for the Truth but tends to the scandalizing and reproaching of faithful Friends or to beget or uphold Division and Faction then we do warn and charge all Friends that do love Truth as they desire it may prosper and be kept clear to beware and take heed of having any hand in printing republishing or spreading such Books or Writings And if at any time such Books be sent to any of you that sell Books in the Country after that you with the advice of good and serious Friends have tried them and find them faulty to send them back again whence they came And we further desire from time to time faithful and sound Friends may have the view of such things as are printed upon Truth 's account as formerly it hath used to be before they go to the Press that nothing but what is sound and savoury and that will answer the Witness of God even in our Adversaries may be exposed to publick view 6. We do advise and counsel That such as are made Overseers of the Flock of God by the Holy Spirit and do watch for the good
period after he had made a further blind Comment on the Text he glories in his shame with a Weigh this truth all ye Priests and P. 6. Professors and ponder it in your hearts No words big enough to express its madness Christianity made its way not only by the truth SECT II and purity of its Doctrine but also by such and so many signs and wonders wrought before multitudes as were convincing to its most malicious and prejudiced Adversaries and that not only by Christ himself but also by his Disciples and servants both before and after his death And all bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth Luke 22. 4. but men may speak many good words and yet both say and do at other times bad enough but Christ appeals to the faces of his worst Adversaries If I have spoken evil bear witness of the evil John 18. 23. But if forcible right words would not make way Christ exhorts them to believe for the very works sake and these were not ordinary works or wonders and miracles neither If I had not done among them the works which none other man did they had not had sin And as himself so his servants introduced Christianity with the same holy pomp and state of the Mighty and miraculous works of the Power of God bearing witness to the truth of their Doctrine Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord which gave Testimony unto the word of his grace and granted signes and wonders to be done by their hands Acts 1. 3. But Quakerism made its way by and began in blasphemies against the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom the Apostles preached by gratifying the pride idleness and giddiness of both Professors and prophane as will appear abundantly in the following discourse and by decrying the Scripture of the Old and New Testament as a dead Letter and altogether useless if not mischievous * Sword of the Lord drawn p. 5 Fox the younger Gen. epist P. 4 Your imagined God beyond the Stars a day of calamity will come upon them who have worshipped and do worship an unknown God at a distance and pretend the worship of the true God And if we will not believe the Quakers for their words sake which swell big enough with vanity folly nonsense and errour we are like to continue in the truth still for all them There have been some of them who have been sensible of this defect and have attempted to supply it to the cracking of their credit some to the loss of their lives George Fox hath found a plaister for this sore which I shall produce that you may give your judgement whether it smell more of the Fox or of the Goose FOX Which many prayed by the Spirit and spake by § 3 the Spirit did not shew miracles at the Tempters Command The great Mystery of the great Whore p. 3. though among Believers there be miracles in Spirit which be signes and wonders to the world as Isaiah saith When I read this I had much ado to keep my self from laughing but the weightiness of my thoughts on this imposture soon helped me to reduce it to a compassionate smile Indeed I think him crafty like the Fox not to venture his carcase in attempting any miracle but in spirit and yet more a Goose to call them signes and wonders to the world which the world never saw nor could have wondred at if George Fox and such as he had not blabbed of them But I must not let pass his fathering his absurdity on the Prophet Isaiah the words he intends must be in Isa 8. 18. Behold I and the Children whom the Lord hath given me are for signes and for wonders in Israel I find not the word Signes any where else in that Prophecy He hath a strange spirit of discerning that can find in that Scripture any thing of Miracles wrought in spirit for indeed they themselves were the wonders that is they were wondred at So may the Quakers well be but in a far worse sense or for a worse cause I may the lesse wonder at George's boldness with Isaiah seeing a great Rabby of the Quakers hath said that he is as good a Prophet as Isaiah Who would conceive that so blockish a person as this should be the Fore-man and Chief in account among such a number of such singularly discerning spirits as the Quakers but as among wise men the wisest are most highly esteemed so among others the veriest Christianity entred into the world with ravishing SECT III Songs and Hatlelujahs of the Angels and heavenly Host the Songs and Thanksgivings of Mary Elizabeth Zechariah Simeon and others with the healing of all sorts of diseases casting out devils out of the possessed preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel of Peace and what might express the Sun of righteousness to be risen on the World with healing in his wings I need not find you out the places of Scripture which speak these things But Quakerism entred the world as if Hell were § 2 broke loose and possessions by Satan were to make way and fit souls for the Quakers spirit Instead of that serious compunction that seized gross and black sinners upon their conviction and the consolation that was let into their souls by the joyful sound of remission and salvation throuâ—h a crucified Jesus O the Hell-dark expressions of the Quakers Preachers the frightful and amazeing words both for matter and manner where with they first attempted poor silly men and women whom they frighted almost out of their wits with their dismal noise whose eccho remained in their ears when their words were forgotten What bitter Curses and Execrations did they pour forth against all that made any opposition though most mildly and rationally against their unheard of innovation What disturbing of Congregations and reviling the most serious and faithful Pastors while those whose faults they have made use of to bespatter the guiltless might remain quiet enough as not so dangerous and adverse to Satans interest and Kingdome How generally were their Meetings either silent or taken up with the sudden and violent irruptions of dismal howling and horrible roarings Persons suddenly taken as with the falling-sickness shaking and foaming at the Mouth and some lying flat on the ground as stark dead Some such things as these I have seen and heard and what there are undeniable Testimonies of are so numerous and notorious that though they have now almost if not altogether left the latter sort of them they dare not deny that it was so And if they dare to challenge this with untruth I may requite them with a good Part of a Volume of them to keep alive their remembrance I now proceed to my second consideration of the beginning of Quakerism with respect to time What I have already said in the opening the SECT IV term Christianity will save me much of the labour of proving in this
place when it began to take place I know none that assert Heathenism or the state of the Saints before the flood or of the Patriarchs after the flood or of the Israelites under Moses's Administration to be in a proper and strict sense Christian except some of the Quakers who date it from the reign of the light within their onely Christ and will needs have not onely Jews but Heathen and especially Adam in innocency to be under that dispensation Yet I doubt not to prove both from Scripture and also from their own Writings by necessary consequence that Christianity is not so old as the formentioned nor yet so young as Qâ—akerism Some though but few date Christianity from the § 2 Birth of Christ Others with much more reason from the Resurrection of Christ when he had finished his Transactions for the merit of our salvation in the Person of God-Man and from that Declaration he made of the possession of the power committed to him Matth. 28. 18. All Power is given unto me in Heaven and in Earth But all agree who make any distinction that it began immediately upon the abrogation and dissolution of the Mosaical Administration and Temple-Worship which was above sixteen hundred years since although as the Scripture speaks The Disciples were called Christians first at Antioch Acts 11. 26. But the thing Christianity might well be before the name Christian so short a space And that the Christian Name had about that time its Beginning appears by the reply of Agrippa to Paul Almost thou preswadâ—st me to be a Christian Acts 28. 8. which then it seems was the common appellation of Believers and Professors of the Fath of Christ But if all this will not convince I will adde one Text more to make down-weight Yet if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed 1 Pet. 4. 16. Here Christianity is distinguished both from Heathenism and Judaism Both the Gentiles and the Jews were bitter enemies to the Christian Name and that not for the Name but the things sake the Gentiles for their denying Idol-worship the Jews for their deserting the Mosaical Constitution the Gentiles for their only worshipping the only true God the Jews for worshipping the true God by and through Jesus Christ the Mediator And I Brethren if I yet preach Ciroumcision why do I yet suffer persecution then is the offence of the Cross ceased Gal. 5. 11. Having adjusted the entrance of Christianity into § 3 the world in point of time lâ—t us now compare Notes whether it agree with the Birth of Quakerism I know but of two Arguments such as they be upon which they build their Antiquity and by both of them they date their Christianity either from Adam or Eternity The first is from Christ the Light who was in the Beginning with God But if they make the being of their Christianity commensurate with the being of Christ as God I confess 't is but folly for any other to number dayes with it But besides the notorious absurdity of this Fancy at first view to those that dream not waking I have already proved that Christianity had a beginning and that long since the Creation The other Argument is from Inspirations and § 4 immediate teaching which next to the light within is the main principle of Quakerism To this I answer by way of grant and concession that there was immediate teaching and revelation very early in the world but that wherever and whenever there was immediate teaching then and there was Christianity is a thing that men who have better skill in the Scriptures and more use of their reason then they will be ashamed to attempt the proof of But if it were granted That Inspirations divine and immediate did constitute Christianity and that all who are or were thereby conducted are to be accounted Christians it will be long enough ere the Quakers prove they are the persons and not long before I have proved that they are not as will appear when you come to that point handled at large in this Treatise But beside the notoriousness of the Quakers novelty § 5 I shall fully prove it from their own Assertions and if they oppose one another let them look to that and agree among themselves as well as they can It is now about seven years since the Lord raised Mystery of the great Whore Epist 1659. us up in the North of England and opened our Mouths in this his spirit By the date of the Impression it should be about 51 that Quakerism brake forth in this Nation and England hath this unhappiness that it was the first Breeder of this Sect and the North of England the part first infected I remember there is an old Proverb I suppose grounded on manifold experiences All evil comes out of the North. But against this it may be objected that although they were the first in England and of late generations yet the Religion it self is ancient Let us therefore follow it to the root by their own direction After these things in the year 1648. God who § 6 had compassion on his people did cause a branch to Jo. Whithead small Treat p 4 spring forth of the root of David which was filled with vertue for the Covenant of Life and Peace was with him and he spread and shot forth many branches which did partake of the fatness of the Root and the weary came to rest under his branches in him also was the Word of Reconcilation which turned the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the Wisdome of the just Observe the blasphemy of these expressions § 7 many of which are by the Scripture spoken of Christ and agreeing to him only but applied by this Wretch to the first of their Sect brought forth in their Spirit in the year 1648. Who it should be except James Naylor I cannot guess and follows immediately And in the Year 1655 I being a branch of this Ibid. Tree viz. the Branch aforesaid the life of its Root caused me to blossom and bring forth fruit for the Spirit of the Lord come upon me c. So that whatever was the Root the first branch of this degenerate Vine sprung forth in 48. And if the words immediately foregoing those § 8 I here quote signifie any thing it must be a new Administration for which the Lord was against them the publick Pastors and brought night upon them that their vision ceased Then those Pastors had sometime the Vision and presence of God with them who never preached the light within to be the only Rule the only Redeemer nor pretended to minister from immediate Inspirations but from the Scriptures by which they were directed and which were the Treasury out of which they brought forth whatever they handed as from the Lord to the people but about the year 48 or 50 that way of ministration was cryed down and those principles called Quakerism by you inserted in
irrational as to say some part of it is the words of the devil this expression hath been frequent with them and uttered in contempt of the Scripture I answer although the Scriptures make frequent mention of such Passages it is to a good and holy end and hereby Satans malice is discovered whereby in a good measure we are not ignorant of his devices and hereby we understand his snares in which our first Parents were taken and others both good bad in after-Ages and Satan is also rendred the most wicked and hateful of all that God created But to speak close to the Objection Those speeches of wicked persons such as Job's wife the Pharisees Jews and Rabshakeh and the speeches of the Devil are not the Word of God or any part of holy Writ as they were uttered by them but far from it We are to consider the Scripture as partly Historical and all those passages being reported historically there is not the least stain upon the Scriptures thereby What if I make a true report of the Powder-plot the Massacres in France Ireland c. And that to good ends and purposes yea if I report the blasphemous speeches by them uttered against God his Saints and the holy Scriptures am I therefore blameable as if I my self had been their Author I know what hath been said is convincing Now by the Inspiration and Guidance of the Holy Spirit these things were written and there is not only a truth but also a divine truth of History in them Object 3. That this title the Word of God is peculiar to the Son of God the Lord Jesus Christ whom they call the light within the Scriptures within Here it is indeed that the shoe pinches and they would fain put off the honour and put out the light of the Scriptures because they stand in the light of their fancy Pardon me the expression for it is truth I shall prove by the Lords assistance ere I have done But what have they to say that the Scripture should not be the Word of God notwithstanding the Son of God is so called I will give you the best that ever I met with The first is the Authority of their Leaders who say It is so and it must be so He Christ is the Ja. Parnel Christ exalted p. 4. Word the Scripture is not Why should it be doubted after such an evidence it is unreasonable and superfluous to expect that infallible persons for so the Quakers believe all their Ministry to be should give a reason for what they affirm especially considering they are constrained to be infallible for want of reason And now seeing he can carry it so easily he goes on like an empty Cloud carried with the wind He Christ is the light the Scripture is not he is the Ruler Guide Teacher and Judge and the Scripture is not What may not a man prove in one infallible breath did he not prudently to make haste before that gale was spent Well but who can stand before a whirl-wind one blast hath torn from the Scripture no less then six of those glorious Garments wherewith God hath cloathed it Let us hear G. F. if he do not amend the matter § 4 by a thing like an Argument He did not say John 1. 1. the Declaration was the Word but said in his Declaration the Word was God and he who saith the Latter Difference of Ministers p. 1. is the Word is a Deceiver and erres for the Scripture saith That in the beginning was the Word If you could have found where John said in his Declaration as you call it that the Scriptures are not the Word of God a thousand to one but some or other of the Lords people would have found it out long before Quakerism was in being and have ceased to take that name in vain For the second Argument he said the Word was § 5 God what then Why then the Scriptures cannot be the Word unless they be God also I am sure I have hit on your Conclusion and the best you can make of it but let me tell you that the Scripture may be the Word and Christ the Word also and yet though Christ be the Word of God the Scriptures the Word may be quite another thing Let me give you just such another place of Scripture They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed ◠Cor. 10. 4. them and that Rock was Christ Will you conclude from hence that there is no other Rock but every Rock in the World must needs be Christ or that it is sinful yea Blasphemy to call any thing a Rock but Christ but it may be you will say 't is a spiritual Rock in that place And I say it was spiritual only as it was mystical or typical of Christ but in other respects it was a Rock as others are hard and stony So I say of the Word that was God it was the Word that was in the beginning that created all things Shew me any such Word and I will call it God too yea I will say it is blasphemy to deny it to be so But the Scriptures which we call the Word of God were not in the beginning nor did they create any thing much less all things Pray let me ask you that are so stiff in this point § 9 do you not take the light in John 1. 9. to be Christ and God say nay if you dare Yea and will you not say that John saith so in his Declaration I know you will and I will say so too what then Is there nothing called light or that is truly so but Christ or God the Sun Moon Day are called Gen. 1. 5 16. Mat. 5. 14. Light also yea the Disciples are called by Christ himself The Light of the World And must they be God too or Christ be to blame for calling them the Light of the World a phrase so very near that in John 1. 9. Christ is called the Way the Truth and the Life but if you should make every such expression to be meant of Christ and God I am sure we should have Lords many and Gods many in a far lower sense then the Magistrates and great men of the world and Christ would be little beholden to us I beseech you therefore who are not stark blind and steel-hard either to abandon such principles or at least do not pretend to Scripture for them and abuse it after this manner for the Scriptures are no friend to your crooked unholy principles and that your Leaders know well enough That I may blow the dust out of your eyes I shall SECT II take a little pains to shew you your mistake and also how to amend it in more and weightier points in themselves then this under present consideration You do not honestly distinguish betwixt proper and figurative words and phrases in reading the Scriptures but have gotten an Art to construe them backward quite cross to their true intent and
celebrated Orders at this day in the Roman Church are the Bellar. de Pont. Rom. l. 3. c. 18. Benedictines Carthusians Dominicans Franciscans and Jesuits It is a very fair way towards the proof of it that Bellarmin confesseth concerning the four first and that of Romoaldus that they were at first instituted by S. Benedict S. Romoaldus S. Bruno S. Dominick S. Francis by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost and for Ignatius Loyola if he do not appear as great a Fanatick i. e. Enthusiast as ever hath been in the World we shall be contented to be upbraided with the Charge of Fanaticism among us You may find the Doctor as good as his word in the p. 234. Bonaven vita Franc. c. 2. following Pages St. Francis is said by Bonaventure a canoniz'd Saint to be an illiterate man had no Teacher but Christ and learned all by Inspiration for a long time wherein he got his credit among the Papists once casting away his very breeches and being stark naked before them all he said thus to his Father Hitherto I called thee Father on Earth but henceforward I can securely say Our Father which is in Heaven I know not but the Quakers learned their going naked and denying to call any Father which was their practice at first but the light grows wiser and wiser from St. Francis rather then the Prophet Isaiah Let us cite a little of the doctrine and phrases some § 3 of which are pretended from Inspiration by the Popish Votaries and first of Mother Juliana That the soul is so deep-grounded in God and so endlesly p. 224. treasured that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God which is the Maker to whom it is oned Our kindly substance is beclosed in Jesu with the blessed soul of Christ resting in the Godhead for into the time that it the soul p. 285. Pref. to Sanct. Sophia is in the full mights we may not be all holy The only proper disposition towards the receiving supernatural Irradiaâ—ions from Gods Holy Spirit is an Abstraction of life a sequestration from all business that concerns others and an attendance on God alone in the depth of the Spirit And a little after the lights here prayed for and desired are such as do expel all images of Creatures and do calm all manner of passions to the end that the soul being in a vacuity may be more capable of receiving and entertaining God in the pure fund of the spirit But they seek rather to purifie themselves and inflame their hearts to the love of God by internal quiet and pure actuations in spirit so disposing themselves to receive the influxes and inspirations of God whose Guidance chiefly they desire to follow in all things Rejecting and striving to forget all images and representations of him God or any thing else yea transcending all Operations of the imagination and all subtilty and curiosity of reasoning And lastly seeking an union with Sanct. Sophia c. 3. God only by the most pure and intime affections of the Spirit what possibility of illusion or errour can there be 289. The Approbations 519. to such a soul In which passive unions God after a wonderful and unconceivable manner affords them interiour illuminations and touches yet far more efficacious and divine then active Exercises in all which the soul is a meer Patient and only suffers God to work his divine pleasure in her The which unions though they last but even as it were a moment yet do more illuminate and pacifie the soul then many years spent in active exercises of spiritual Prayer and Mortification could Treat 3. sect 11. c. 1. 292. 215. do Yea so far is the soul from reflecting on her own Existence that it seems to her God and she are not distinct but only one thing That God only by his holy Inspirations is the Guide and Director of an internal and contemplative life Reynaldus tells of Nerius the Father of the Oratorians out of Bacius the Writer of his Life that he was so offended with the smâ—ll of filthy souls that he would desire the persons to empty the Jakes of their souls Such a divine Nose had this Saint among them a degree of Enthusiasm above the Quakers who can but discern not smell souls Some of you called Quakers pretend a great advantage § 4 from 1 John 2. 27. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie and even as it hath taught you ye shall abide in him The Anointing here cannot be understood of Christ neither do we find the Anointing any where to be understood of Father Son or Spirit essentially considered and indeed the phrase is not fit to be applied to God who is the Anointer or Christ who is the Anointed The teaching of the Anointing being understood of the Graces and the habitual and special Enlightnings of the Spirit these devote and addict the soul under the power of them to adhere to the true Christ For the all things it is to be considered as restrained to the matter agitated in the Chapter which is their adhering to the true Christ and this is plain in the 26. ver These things have I written to you concerning them that seduce you The summe then is this they knowing certainly the true Christ from any Antichrist that which they were mainly to look after was a heart cleaving to and improving him which the Graces of God in their souls actuated by the Spirit of God was sufficient in this matter to make their knowledge of Christ sanctifying and saving As for the words in him which render it Masc in the Gr. it may be rendred in any Gender These Considerations duly weighed if there § 5 were no more are sufficient to any who have respect to the pure truths of the Gospel to render the principles here detected and opposed not only suspicious but hateful It is no little absurdity in the Quakers to make an out-cry against Popery Babylon false worship formes that are not onely unscriptural but also idolatrous while in the mean time they plant and hug the root in their own bosomes from which all those evils and more and worse naturally spring It were no hard matter to prove a symbolizing and agreement in a multitude of particulars between the Papists and Quakers in those things wherein they are contrary to the Protestant Profession of Christianity and the Scripture Rule but more especially in the spiritual part of their errors which in the sight of God are of all other the most sinful and to men a snaâ—e most dangerous The Apostle speaks of more Antichrists then one § 6 though of one as the Chief of whose Characters Quakerism hath the blackest I shall mention only two the first expressed in 1. Ep. of John chap 2.
ver 22. Who is a lier but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ he is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son That you who are called Quakers deny Jesus to be the Christ I prove at large in a Chapter by its self that you deny the Father and the Son is no less true of you who will admit no distinction between the Father and the Son so that the Father is with you as much the Son of the Father as the Son is the Son of the Father and the Son is as much the Father with you of the Son as the Father is the Father of the Son that by distroying these distinctions you destroy the relation of Father and Son in the Godhead which the Scripture speaks of so plainly and it is hereby apparent that your quarrel is not so much with the word Trinity as with the thing thereby expressed The next black mark of Antichrist which is upon you is that in 2 Thes 2. 4. who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped so that he as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himself that he is God Do not you advance your light within above the Man Christ Jesus whom we worship as God and who is so called in the Scriptures even that Man whose being is above the visible Heavens Do not you call your light within you God eternal Omnipotent c. Yea you say it is the light in the Conscience which is the Temple of God and there it doth as if it were God rule govern judge execute in contempt of the written and true Laws of the divine being I beseech you consider these things and lay them to your hearts CHAP. V. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be a Rule of Faith and Life or a Judge and Determiner of Religious Controversies THat this is to deny the Scripture is obvious and SECT I plain to all who have not the beam in their eyes I have before proved them to deny its proper and most frequent appellation but if that be not sufficient to prove they deny the Scripture methinks denying their main use and imployment should render them guilty of the full measure of that iniquity To little purpose will it be to call them the Scripture the Holy Scripture c. if after all a conformity to their guidance and conduct will render our belief and practice never the less prophane I shall not further perswade my Reader that to deny the Scripture to be a Rule of Faith and Life c. is to deny the Scripture for if this suffice not I know nothing will carry the Question unless the Scripture should be brought in begging some boon at the Quakers hands and they proved so hard-hearted as not to grant it If this were necessary I should not fail in the proof notwithstanding For the proof of the Charge I shall first call forth § 2 James Parnel an early and forward Quaker and Parnels Shield of the Truth p. 10. much esteemed for his works sake And he also that saith the Letter is the rule and guide of the people of God is without feeding upon the husk and is ignorant of the true Light which was before the Letter was By this mans Verdict the Scripture is cast and condemned for husks a false light or but a shadow and its Observers charged with ignorance of Christ the true light for so doing But it were well if they could come off so Behold in the next Accusation a Charge of no less then the highest robbery and sacriledge And if thou lookest upon the Scripture to be for a rule Smiths Prim. p. 10. and for trying thou givest that unto them which belongs unto Christ for he is the rule and leads his people and he alone searches the hearts and trys the reins and not the Scripture But if you will see a mouth full of blasphemy against the authority of the Scripture read with horrour and amazement the following words God is at Naylors Light of Christ c. p. 19. liberty to speak to his people by them the Scripture if he please and where they are given by inspiration he dâ—th so but the sting is behind in the tail of this non-such sentence and so he is at liberty to speak by any other created thing as to Balaam by his Ass Then such a thing as Balaams Ass may call up our expectations of Gods teachings guidance and rebukes as well as the Scriptures for God is at liberty to teach us by an Ass and he hath put no more authority into the Scripture unless he shall please to hand them to us by renewed and immediate inspiration But I shall not rake into this Dunghill further which of its self gives forth so offensive a savour I intended to have given you upon this Head the § 3 assertions of some of the Romish Writers who trample on the neck of the Scripture with the same foot only the difference betwixt them and the Quakers lies in the aim and design the Jesuits spurn at them to advance the dictates of the Pope and the Romish pretended Church above the Scriptures but the Quakers to advance the conceit within above them all Yet I care not if I give you one instance at large Omnis Judex praesertim supremus generalis ita debet dicere sententiam ut altera pars litigantium evidenter sciat se vicisse altera pars evidenter sciat se causam amisisse quantum est ex parte hujus judicis At hoc neque Scriptura Sacra neque Spiritus Sanctus loquens per Scripturam potest facere Ergo neque Sacra Scriptura nec Spiritus Sanctus Argumentum Jacobi Beccani item Gretseri Jesuitae in Col loquio Ratisbon loquens per Scripturam est talis judex Et minorem illustrabat his totidem verbis Stamus ego Collegae Domini adversarii in conspectu hujus judicis Bibliorum en contendimus an sit judex Controversiarum Jam ille judex debet pronunciare sententiam ut nobis constet evidenter Sumus hîc in conspectu Sacrae Scripturae Spiritus Sancti pronunciet sententiam sic dicat tu Jacobe Gretsere male sentis cecidisti causa tua Tu Jacobe Hailbrunnere vicisti Tunc ego statim transibo ad vestrum scamnum Et paulo post Adsit jam Spiritus Sanctus jam judicet jam me condemnet In English thus Every Judge especially who is supreme and general ought so to give sentence that the one part of the contenders may plainly know they have overcome and the other that they have lost their cause so far as it is in the Judge But this neither the holy Scriptures nor the holy Spirit by the Scripture can do Therefore neither the holy Scripture nor the holy Spirit speaking by the Scripture is such a Judge The minor he illustrates in these very words I and my Collegues and the Lords Adversaries stand before
righteousness of Faith which the Apostle makes so much ado to bring people to embrace and disclaim justifying righteousness by the Law That the teachings motions and determinations of the SECT III Spirit of God by the Scripture are more sutable to the nature and present state and condition of man and more certain to his knowledge than any immediate teaching which any enjoy in our days More sutable to the present condition of man I prove it first from its being that dispensation of God which he hath put an eminent Character of mercy Psal 147. 19 20. upon He sheweth his Word unto Jacob and his judgments unto Israel he hath not dealt so with any Nation and as for his Judgments they have not know them Praise ye the Lord. If it were not more sutable to man in his fallen state and tending to his good it would hardly by the Spirit of God been expressed as a mercy so singular so excelling his dealings with any other people and such flourishing matter for the praises of the Lord. Never did any of the Saints of old call it a carnal lettter husks and by such like scornful names The dispensations of the revealed and written Word § 2 render God nigher to a people than to those who are without it For what Nation is there so great who hath God so Deut. 4. 6 7 8. nigh unto them c. Read the Context and you will find that the means of God being so nigh was chiefly his written Laws And it is notorious that the Gentile Nations who were without the Scripture had lost sight of the true God so far that they worshipped the most despicable things in his stead and as the Apostle saith were without God in the world for all their Eph. 2 12. light within which the Quakers say all men ever had The dâ—spensatâ—ons of God in and to his Church rise § 3 higher and higher in excellency and glory His first after the fall were some few revelations to some few persons and by them handed to others which might be then much more easie than now for that men lived so long that the dayes of Methuselah and Noah took hold of the dayes of Adam and Abraham But men increasing in number and no less in impiety they quickly lost that little was committed to them And before the Law and Covenants and Scripture in part were written notwithstanding Creation Providence and some revelation the knowledge of God was very thin and scant in the World Job 26. 13 14. among good and holy men And if you will not believe me believe Holy Job By his spirit he hath garnished the Heavens his hand hath formed the crooked Serpent lo these are part of his ways but how little a portion is heard of him He is speaking before of his works of Creation yet they were but a part of the ways whereby God conveyed the knowledge of himself but take all together even that of revelation with it it was but a little of him that was known whereas when his word was written the Israel of God who enjoyed it 't is said of them In Psal 76. 1. Judah is God known his name is great in Israel But the 2 Cor. 3. 11. Speaks close and home to my argument For if that which is done away was glorious much more that which remains is glorious From the slipperyness of our memories Who among the sons and daughters of men is able § 4 to retain in the memory such a multitude of particulars as concern faith and life that if it should be granted that every man at some time or other should have the whole mind of God contained in the Scripture immediately and by revelation imparted to him the memory would prove a very leaky Vessel and bad Steward and let slip a great part both matter and from without a miracle to raise our faculty not only above the common course or which is ordinary but above the faculty of any man that breaths whereas the word imparted by the Scripture abides to which as to an everlasting Record we may have recourse and supply that defect More certain to the knowledge of man § 5 Since man was corrupted and so long as there remains either corruption or defect in him the inward motions and notions of the soul will be affected therewith the first risings and bubling up of thoughts and imaginations which present themselves to the understanding judgement and conscience will abundantly vary from and be opposite each to other and the sentiments or apprehensions of them be warring and contending like pleaders at the bar of judgment and conscience And those who know and are concerned in the affairs and their management on the secret stage of the Soul must acknowledge if they will speak their consciences that whatever be the question agitated in the mind there will not want the appearances of truth and goodness offering themselves on both the affirmative and negative part and in matters of religious concern all pretend to the sanction and allowance of God himself And as their pleas so their importunities shall be so impetuously violent that many times the poor creature is on the rack and which way soever its judgment and resolution inclines the adverse thoughts will attend it with their Checks and clamours In the multitude of my thoughts within me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my anxious perplexed careful troubled thoughts beating against Psal 94. 19. one another like the boughs of a tree agitated with a fierce wind This was not only David's case but the Saints which are now upon the earth And if it were David's so good a man and a man so frequently under the power of special divine inspirations much more may it be ours Well in such cases what course should we take if we expect and depend upon immediate teachings from the spirit how shall we know they are such and not the delusions of Satan or a vision of our own fancifull brains we can give testimonies enough to convince a Heathen or Atheist if he will not abandon the use of reason that the Scriptures are the word and mind of the Spirit of God and therefore what that speaks is the voice of the Spirit but it will be long enough ere the Quakers and those that plead for a sole dependance on the Spirits immediate teachings will be able to give such proofs of theirs Moreover the Quakers who pretend to these § 6 teachings and guidances resolve against the exercise of a humane though sanctified understanding and resolve all into motions impulses and the sensation of them thereby depriving men of the direction of enlightned faculties leaving the most violent motions and appetites to carry away the undoubted evidence and character of the Spirits leadings But how far this is from a spiritual understanding or a right discerning I leave those to judge who are acquainted in themselves or others with violent temptations from Satan and the unbridled
message of heavenly prophecy doctrine or exhortation received by the Authâ—r from the Lord through the divine John Story Short discovery p. 1. inspiration of his light and Spiriâ— within therefore may I say it 's a very vain and Idolatrous exhortation which J. A. hath given to J. B. his little Book But further § 5 And J. A. further saith let light without be guide to light within Reply If by this exhortation J A. means that light without should guide the true light within which shines in the hearts of the Saints then I must needs say 't is a very absurd and foolish exhortation and being spoken upon a divine account it is full of Idolatry and evil and greatly contrary to the Gospel and exhortation of Gods Ambassadours to the Saints on earth which was that they should abide in the light or anointing that was in them 1 John 2. 27. Hear one more and I have done And this is your work who at this day set up an James Naylor p. 16. imitation from the letter of what other men have done but have not received your command and power in Spirit from the Lord and to you it will be said who hath required these things at your hands for all the Saints have their commands in Spirit but yours is in the letter But in your vain imaginations are judging you know p. 31. not what and limiting the spiritual Covenant of God to the literal Not in spirit but in the old letter or tradition p. 40. from men I suppose that by this time my Reader is past doubting whether they are guilty or no of this charge it must not be expected that I should take up all these citations and deal with them in all their parts if I should I should often actum agere and give you one thing more than twice The falshood of this Doctrine I shall prove by Scripture and rational evidence and answering what they pretend for the grounds of it The Laws that were given by Moses and the SECT II doctrines and promises also were binding to the Congregation of Israel And afterward all the Children Exod. 34. 32. of Israel came nigh and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai Who will say these commands were not binding to them These are the words which the Lord hath commanded Exod. 35. 1. that ye should do them Will any one in his wits say that in receiving the command from God by Moses they had it by immediate inspiration from God to say so is a contradiction in its self Moses indeed had it immediately from God but the Israelites of that Generation mediately from Moses For the Law was given by Moses And the Scriptures were John 1. 17. given first immediately from God and that is their authority with us though they are handed to us through many Generations as the Books of the Law and the Prophets were to the Jews And moreover it were a very superfluous thing for § 2 God to send his commands to them by Moses if they had them all at as nigh and as good a hand as he The like may be said of the New Testament Commands and Doctrines c. 2 Thes 2. 15. Therefore Brethren stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or Epistle Did you ever hear of an Epistle come immediately from God and all the Doctrines of the Gospel were conveyed to others except the Penmen or Prophets Evangelists and Apostles by Epistles or what is of the same import in this matter But let us say a little about the obligation of examples § 3 of the Saints That I may not run you out Morning Watch. of one errour into another I am willing to take some pains in this as in the other parts of this Tract To imitate all the Examples of the best of Saints would lead us into sin and therefore cannot be our duty This I will not plead for for then we ought to murmur murther dissemble and be proud which at some time or other some or other of the eminentest Saints recorded in Scripture have been guilty of To imitate and take example by them from the meer authority of their Example is not a little § 4 faulty though the thing be good in its selfe But to take them for our examples and follow their steps wherein they act according to the written Word or are commended and rewarded by God for so doing yea not any where reproved for so doing their examples in the like cases and circumstances it is not only reason to follow but a sin not to follow Yet we are to follow their examples as they are some discovery of the will of God to us which we knew not so well and clearly without them or as they are a farther incouragement to our faith and obedience Neither are we notwithstanding to follow their § 5 examples which were according to the mind of God when they lived but since those Laws are abrogated and repealed by a demonstrative act and law of God As in the case of the Mosaical Rites and Ceremonies with all those things which were Typical shadows the substance and intendment of which is performed and compleated These things premised I shall prove that their examples are binding to us yea are a superadded engagement to duty and render a sin against a command so backed with examples to be more sinful and more deeply aggravated It is lawful and a duty to imitate and fâ—llow the § 6 examples of eminent Saints Beloved follow not that which is evil but that which 3 Ep. of Jo. 11. is good This is spoken of evil and good actions and examples as appears by the 10th verse Leaving us an example that we should follow his steps Whose 1 Pet. 2. 21. Heb. 13. 7 2 Thes 3. 7. and 9. 1 Pet. 3. 5. 3 Phil. 15. faith follow considering the end of their conversation For your selves know how ye ought to follow us But to make our selves an ensample unto you to follow us For after this manner in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God adâ—rned themselves Brethren be ye followers together of me and Mark them which walk so as ye have us fâ—r an ensample These Scriptures are so plain to the purpose that they need not a comment And his sons walked not in his ways It was an aggravation that they did not 1 Sam. 8. 3. only sin against the Laws of God but the example also oâ— their Father Yea in doubtful and difficult cases wherein we § 7 cannot reach the knowledge of our duty and the way God would have us walk in by the evidence of his Laws it is our duty to follow the examples of the greater number of the Saints especially when the most serious and understanding are of the company If thou know not O thou fairest among women go thy
c. p. 16. Call to that Office and Imployment And their Call to the Ministry we deny which is mediate But who can witness an immediate Call from God and speak it the Gospel as they are moved by the Holy Ghost and such travel from place to place and have no certain dwelling place this Ministry we own and witness Thou art corrected by the Scripture and the Fox mystery c. p. 48. Apostle corrects thee who saith I have not received it of man nor by man and bid others look at Jesus the Author of their Faith Their writings are abounding with matter of this nature We acknowledge that all the true Ministers of § 3 Christ ought to have an immediate Call such as consists in grace and gifts and disposition to that worthy Office and Imployment and such as have not this immediate Call we account unworthy of the thing and name but the Quakers pretended immediate Call is far from the Apostles as I have proved at large on the point of Inspirations neither are the Ministers of Christ now Apostles as they were But if we call for the Quakers proof of their immediate Call hear what Farnworth saith As for pretences Farnworth against Stalham p. 22. we do not pretend that we are immediately call'd but we witness that we are And what is their Witness their own fancy and their own say-so and we witness that such Witnesses will carry the Cause no where but in the fools Court who the wise man saith believeth every word And G. Fox's proof is as much to the purpose not § 4 of man the call of the Apostle while we pretend not to be Apostles And bid others look at Jesus the Author of their Faith as if that Text intended a a Faith that they were called to be Apostles which speaks of the faith of all believers who received it by the mediate Ministry of the Gospel For being moved by the Holy Ghost which is by them made an Essential mark of a true Minister we allow but yet affirm That those who are moved by the Commands of the Spirit in the Scripture are moved by the Holy Ghost especially when the Authority of God therein prevails with them As for having no certain dwelling place and leaving § 5 houses lands and possessions let them repair to William Pen and others of their Ministers for an Answer to it who have large possessions and brave habitations such as few Ministers whom they disclaim especially the poor Non-Conformists enjoy and will not so easily as Pen's phrase is be fohb'd out of them as they fob others out of the truth of the Gospel But indeed will you deny that the Elders that were 〈◊〉 6. ordained in every City by the appointment of Paul Tâ—â— â— and by the hand of Titus had any mediate Call or those spoken of Acts 14. 23 And when they had ordained Acts 14. â—3 them Elders in every Church and had prayed with fasting they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed If you will not believe these had a mediate Call I despair of your believing any thing but what you list Another ground of their denying our Ministry is SECT IV that they teach from the Scripture And the Word is immediate and all the Ministers of Christ preach the Fox mystery â— c. p 44. immediate Word and wait for it and the outward written words with ink and paper are mediate So then the written Word being preached from makes a man no Minister And of this sort are they that have their W. D p. 30. preaching to study and to seek at other mens mouths or from the letter but have it not from the mouth of the Lord. If the Scripture be not the mouth of the Lord there is no such thing as Gods mouth And here is the difference of the Ministers of the World and the Parnel ' s Shield of the Truth p. 17. Ministers of Christ the one of the Letter the other of the Spirit For they are meer Deceivers and Witches bewitch people from the truth holding forth the shadow for the substance and what is the Chaff to the Wheat Here is not a bare denial of those to be Christs Ministers § 2 who preach the Word of God out of the Scriptures but charging them with Witchcraft and what are the instruments of their Witchcraft but the holy Scriptures most horrid doctrined and yet these wretches will tell you they honour the Scriptures and a Scripture Ministry But this is not all the tide rises yet higher And so he the Devil takes Scripture to maintain his kingdom and this he delivers by the mouth of Ministers which he fonds abroad to deceive the Nations leading people in blindness c. These words are plain and no parable therefore I leave you to behold without a glass the vileness of these misleaders I have already proved that not only we ought § 3 but Christ and his Apostles did teach out of the Scriptures therefore by the Quakers account they were also as bad as they charge us to be witches and deceivers c. O but there is another inditement against us we are not infallible How can ye be Fox Mystery c. p. 72. Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye not infallible There is none but God alone absolutely infallibly And for certainty of what we teach we dare weigh with the Quakers at any time But sure I am that I never met with one of their Teachers yet in Writing or otherwise but I found him more than fallible even foolish contradicting the Spirit of God speaking by the Scripture contrary to the clearest reason and themselves also But more than all this We are Hirelings preach § 4 for Hire and take Hire for preaching And a main question for a scrutiny into the truth of our Ministry is Whether is your Gospel free and without Charge yea Fruits of a Fast p. 21. or nay This is the nail they find will drive People love a Cheap Gospel they that will sell them such a one shall buy their souls into the bargain and vassalize their understandings to their most corrupt dictates To preach for Hire we call a Vile iniquity to § 5 receive Hire for preaching we dare not condemn because Christ hath said The labourer is worthy of his 10 Luke 7. 2 Cor. 11 8. hire And the Apostle said He took wages of other Churches to serve them the Corinthians It is ordained 1 Cor 9. 14. that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel And so hath the Lord ordained So that a Ministers maintenance for preaching the Gospel is Gods Ordinance The Apostle exhorts Timothy To give himselfe to the work of the Ministry as it is the duty of every one-ordinarily imployed therein And is God and Christ a hard Master to oblige his Ministers to give up themselves to that work and let them and theirs starve
he miscarried so little as in sinning against a positive Law by putting forth his hand to save the Ark the intention of it being good and commendable And as under the Old so under the New-Testament-Dispensation God hath not left his positive Laws without the fence of his special displeasure witnessed against the contemners and abusers of them For this cause many are weak and sickly 1 Cor 11 30 among you and many sleep that is are dead turned into the grave This was inflicted on them for their disorder at the Lords Supper although especially among the Corinthians we read of many great sins against Moral Precepts yet the Spirit of God assigns not them but this breach as the cause And if we consider the great inclination of man § 5 to pride himself in his own innate reason and wisdom and great unwillingness to subscribe to any thing that is not in its own nature within the reach of it we may suppose that something with respect to thâ—t which is so apt to break the bonds of meer Authority even that of God himself the Lord hath put such a guard on positive Laws and will not no not now under the Dispensation of the gracious Gospel leave men without a Test of their Resignation to his Divine Wiâ—dom and absolute though never unjust Soveraignty and Authority And I having observed these Ordinances of the Gospel which are the only meerly positive Laws of the New Testament to be slighted because in their own nature they seem of no tendency to edification have given my Reader this not superfluous Introduction I shall begin with Baptism it being the first in order of the two both in its Institution and Practice The Quakers deny Water-Baptism to be now an Ordinance or Christ The Baptism we own which Parnel ' s Shield of the Truth p. 11. is the Baptism of Christ with the Holy Ghost and with fire but we deny all otâ—er Here is Water-Baptism plainly denied But this will not serve the turn it must be stigmatized also with all those who ever so conscientiously and regularly practise it And now I p. 12. see the other Water-Baptism to be formal imitation and the invention of man and so a meer delusion and all are Heathens and no Christians who cannot witness this Baptism the Baptism of the Quakers spirit of Delusion who can witness this denies all other Farnsworth against Sâ—alham Your Brain-imaginations we deny Methinks they who have read the Scripture should not call Water-Baptism the invention of men that is too palpable an untruth though to call it § 2 Formal Imitation be an untruth also it is more tollerable than the other but to brand it with the charge of a meer Delusion is of such reflection on its Author as nothing but a heart Steel-hard and a head Dungeon dark and both void of the fear and awe of God could thus suggest And to make up the measure full all must be reproached as Heathens and no Christians whose eyes are not as blind and foreheads as impudent as theirs and yet as rank Quakers as this will call me not only injurious but a Blasphemer also for saying and proving they are no Christians But lies and confidence with them are prerogativ'd things while Truth must beg and have nothing but by their good leave and grace and then it may starve or flee where the Quakers rule the roast They Baptism Bread and Wine rose from the § 3 Smith prim p. 39. Popes invention and the whole practice of those things as they use them had their institution from the Pope c. Without doubt the light within is wonderfully learned in History and as some of the Quakers write doth declare to them the Creation the Fall and what not without the Scripture This regardful Prophet can tell you that Baptism rose from the It was that which by the Pope and Popish affected Priests was ordained and by such it is upheld to this day Higgins Warning p. 5. §. 4. Parnel Shield of the truth p. 11. Pope yea and the Wine in the Sacrament too which the Pope indeed took away from the Laity but never instituted it And this Author as I have before cited him tells the world we call the Latine the Original his mind is all on Rome and there I 'le leave him Yet that I may not imitate the Quakers who will not consider the weightiest reasons and clearest against their Tenets I shall weigh theirs truly and justly before I determine this point They who would have one Baptism inward another outward would have two Baptisms when the Scripture saith the Baptism is but one I must tell him by the way that he tells an untruth wilfully and what that is he could tell another He uses or rather abuses the words of the Apostle just before repeated One Lord one Faith one Baptism and there he adds his but which the Text hath not And here the Scripture saith the Baptism is but one let him find such a Scripture and I will be bound to turn Quaker But there being no such I am sure he hath not the Spirit of God and is by it infallibly guided who thus forges Scripture But to the Objection take notice that Water-Baptism is the sign the Baptism of the Spirit the main thing but not all signified now to have the thing signifying and the thing signified called by the same name doth not make them to be two of that name no more than there were two new Covenants because the matter contained in the Covenant is called the Covenant Heb. 8. 10. And Circumcision the sign of the Covenant is called the Covenant also Gen. 17. 13. He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must need be circumcised and my Covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting Covenant Moreover Baptism with water is Baptism in a proper sense Baptism of or with the Spirit but Analogically so called as having in it something a likeness to or proportion with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies washing with water dipping into water properly that of the Spirit washing the soul but improperly for freeing it from sinful pollutions Therefore this Objection is a meer fancy and they that will contemn the Deeds and Seal because they are Paper and Ink and Wax and cast them away may lose Land and all for their contempt and then they will pay for and repent of their folly Another ground for denying it is it was not laid § 5 Naylor Love to the lost p. on the Apostle of necessity but as they found it of service or dis-service This is to be understood only of Paul who in his Call which was out of due time and in an extraordinary manner had not this of Baptizing mentioned as the rest had therefore he said Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the 1 Cor. 1. 17 Gospel Yet he did
not deny that there was such a man as § 2 Jesus the Son of Mary and that God was in him or rather Christ was in him but this is no more than they profess of themselves that Christ as God and the Eternal Word is in them yet that body of the Man Jesus which he calls here the bodily garment he tells us they can never call it Christ Another passage out of the same Author will explain this For that which he took upon him was our garment even the p. 20. flesh and bloud of our nature very right But what follows is wofully false Which is of an earthly perishing nature but he is of an heavenly nature and his flesh and bloud and bones are of his nature The sum is this The Flesh and Bloud and Bones or Body of Christ which they own is of a heavenly and Eternal Nature but the body which Christ took on him of our nature is earthly and perishing and therefore they can never call that or own that to be Christ This is as plain a denying the Man Christ Jesus § 3 whose body of flesh was of our nature and of the seed of Abraham and the Son of Mary as can be They own him as one that once had a Being but is now perished that is his body of flesh and bloud What can we expect of those men who can disown what the Scripture speaks so plainly and frequently and that not now and then by the by but as its main scope Do not all the Prophets that prophesie of Christ speak of him as to come Doth not he himself and others contemporary that lived with him in the flesh speak of him as then come Do not the Scriptures after his Death and Resurrection speak of him as having finished the Merit of our Redemption and Salvation and departed from the earth ascended into Heaven and there at his Fathers right hand ruling the affairs of Heaven and Earth and making intercession for his people And all this of the Body of Christ which he took of mans Nature and this called Christ and Jesus and the Saviour Let not these Blasphemers of the Lord of Life and Glory delude people with a fancy as if we believe and preach the Flesh and Bloud of Christ to be Christ separated from his Soul his Soul of the nature of mans soul but undefiled or that we take his humane or mans nature to be Christ separate from his Eternal and Divine Nature for they cannot be separated the one is not now without the other nor was the Divine Nature of Christ compleat Christ until united to and dwelling in its fulness in the humane or mans nature of Christ Yet as what the mind conceives in a man the man § 5 conceives and what the least member of the body doth or suffereth the man doth and suffereth so by a communication of properties and union of natures in Christ the Divine and Eternal Being of Christ is called Christ sometimes but much more often the humane nature or the Man Christ Jesus And the reason is clear because although Christ offered up himself by the Eternal Spirit as both dignifying him to a worthiness for such a Sacrifice and enabling him to undergo it as a Lamb for patience innocency and meekness and to overcome death yet the mans nature of Christ his soul and his body was the only proper sufferer and sacrifice for God cannot suffer nor be put to death and by the obedience and sufferings thereof was our reconciliation and redemption wrought Only as I said before its union hypostatical with the Divine Nature did put it into such a capacity and entitle God or the Divine Nature which in its fulness dwelt in him bodily to all that he did and suffered Having thus explained my self that the weakest § 6 that are but willing may understand the truth in this point I shall quote some Scriptures wherein the Man Jesus who was born of the Virgin is called the Christ and Saviour and that this Man Jesus is now in being and in that body of flesh which he took of the Virgin and wherein he eat and drank and slept and performed those actions proper to a body of flesh and bloud and bones and that this man Jesus is still and ever shall be the Christ of God And it was revealed unto him by the holy Ghost that Luke 2. 26 27 28 29 32. he should not see death before he had seen the Lords Christ And he came by the spirit unto the Temple and when the parents brought in the Child Jesus to do for him after the custome of the Law then took he him up in his arms and blessed God and said Lord now lett est thou thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation a light to lighten the Gentiles This was the Lords Christ whose parents were Mary by nature Joseph in Law and by reputation as being Mary's Husband though after Christs birth whom Simeon then saw and not before whom he took up in his arms not only into his heart by faith and love and this Christ is Gods salvation and a light to lighten the Gentiles Therefore being a Prophet and knowing that God Act 2. 30. 31. had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh he would raise up Christ to sit upon his Throne he seeing this before speaks of the resurrection of Christ that his Christs soul was not left in hell neither his Christs flesh did see corruption This Jesus hath God raised up whereof we all are Verse 32 witnesses Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly Verse 36. that God hath made the same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ The God of our Fathers raised up Jesus whom ye Acts 5. 30. 31. slew and hanged on a tree him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins Which also said Ye men of Galilee why stand ye gazing Act. 1. 11. up into Heaven This same Jesus which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven Opening and alleadging that Christ must needs have Acts 17. 3. suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ Be it known unto you all and to the people of Israel Acts 4. 10 11 12. that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom ye crucified whom God raised from the dead even by him doth this man stand before you whole This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders which is become the head of the corner Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved And though they found no cause of death in him yet
Acts 13. 28 29 30. desired they Pilate that he should be slain and when he had fulfilled all that was written of him they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulchre but God raised him from the dead Be it known unto you therefore men and brethren that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of Verse 38. sins For there is one God and one Mediator between God 1 Tim. 2. 5. and man the man Christ Jesus I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am Rev. 1. 18. alive for evermore amen and have the keys of hell and death I might fill many Pages with Scriptures of the like import these are so plain for what I produce them and the Quakers deny that they need no Exposition or Comment or as the Quakers phrase it have any meanings put to them If men be so blind as not to see the errour of disowning § 7 Jesus of Nazareth the Son of Mary who was hanged on a Tree put into the Sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea to be yet alive and the Christ of God by all these Scriptures it is a blindness wherewith never any before the Quakers who professed the Scriptures to be a true testimony were smitten Surely God hath given them up for their pride giddiness or idle ignorance and that in Justice and the Devil the Destroyer hath blinded their minds with a witness that this light of the glorious Gospel should not shine unto them Can yea dare any of you guilty of the errour here charged say That all this is true of and to be applied to the light within every man which these Scriptures assert of Gods Christ Read them over and compare them with that which is your only Christ and Saviour If this man Christ Jesus in whom dwells the fulness of the Godhead and who was thus described by the Spirit of God be the Saviour your light within is not If your light within be the Saviour and Christ and Redeemer he was not of whom all these Scriptures and a thousand more speak so plainly The Lord be merciful to your souls the Lord rebuke you who are so bold in denying the Lord that bought you and trampling under foot the bloud of the Covenant O consider that fancies and dreams though having ever so strong an impression while you are possessed with them will when you awake out of your graves of earth and dust yea when your souls depart from your bodies leave you to the naked truth which God in his Word the Scriptures hath revealed to us not to be abused after your manner but that we might believe and live after their direction which who despises Wo unto their souls for they have rewarded Isa 3. 9. evil to themselves I have not yet given you all the evidence I have § 8 out of the Quakers chief Writers that they disown the man Jesus the Son of Mary to be Gods Christ Some of them take together Can outward bloud Penningtons Questions P. as Fox cleanse the conscience We witness the same Christ that ever was now manifested in the flesh The man Christ Jesus was not ever for he was made and born in time of the Virgin Mary was Abraham's and David's seed after the flesh and though he now have a Being in Heaven and is manifested on earth by his Word and by that Faith which is in the hearts of his people yet he is not now manifest in the flesh according to that Scripture which saith God was manifest in the 1 Tim. 3. 16 flesh not is And Christs nature is not humane which is earthly Fox mystery c. p. 71. for that is the first Adams And immediately before Where doth the Scripture speak of humane Now we do not deny that Christ according to the flesh was of Abraham but not the word humane How pitifully doth he wind and turn to get out § 9 of the Noose and holds the world in hand as if he did not deny the thing that Christ is constituted of the humane nature only he will not allow the word humane Yet he that hath a small measure of discerning may see that peep out which he would fain hide He denies Christs nature to be earthly which the first Adams was Sure if Christ was the seed of the woman by Adam his nature as man was such as Adams But for his questioning the word humane as not in the Scripture he pretending to he able to examine the Justice of our Translators in turning the Greek into English in his great Libel called Mystery of the Great Whore should methinks have found as much as humane in the Greek though not in the English 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being five times used in the Epistles which in the Latine is more hominum humanus after the manner of men humane And Christs humane nature is no more but his mans nature of his nature according to man and so he is now in the humane nature in the Heavens Seeing then that we Heb 4 14 15. have a great High-Priest that is passed into the Heavens Jesus the Son of God let us hold fast our profession Mark the last clause For we have not an High-Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin Infirmities here must not be understood of sin the Text bars that but such a weak nature as is constituted of flesh and bloud liable to pains grief hunger and weariness And he was found in fashion as a man and that I think is more hominis Now this man is not was but is our High-Priest in the Heavens and not as Fox hath it was of the seed of Abraham but is so A few Instances more yet And they that are false Ministers preach Christ Smith prim p. 9. without Your carnal Christ is utterly denied by the light Your imagined God beyâ—nd the Stars But none Sword of the Lord c. p. 24. Shield of the Truth p. 30. can witness this whose eye is outward looking at a Redeemer afar off So much of the proof of their denying that man to be Christ I must not say that the Quakers do not own a SECT II man Christ for that they frequently in their writings and sayings express such a thing but I desire that none will be offended that I will not take Chips for Guinâ—ys or half-Crowns because some silly Cheats would put them upon me under those valuable names much more ought I and every one else take heed of receiving that for Christ which God the Father hath not sealed because men of what countenance soever will perswade us it is no other whilst by the very Candle-light of meer reason it will appear to be a meer fancy If I should say no more but that it is an absurdity as big as an impossibility for a man constituted not only of a soul for
not gone after Baalim See thy way in the Valley know what thou hast done thou art a swift Dromedary traversing her ways A wild Ass used to the Wilderness that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure in her occasion who can turn her away All they that seek her will not weary themselves in her moneth they shall find her CHAP. XVII The Quakers deny the Resurrection of the Dead I Doubt not but all who are not infatuated with the SECT I Quakers Spirit to a perverting the genuine sense of almost all the expressions of Principles of Faith will understand by the Resurrection of the Dead the raising again to life and from the dust and corruption the bodies of men and women however disposed of after their natural death or dissolution The Quakers will deny their guilt of this Charge and come off with an Allegorical evasion They will tell youâ— that they believe and own the Resurrection of the Dead yea of the dead body whereas in truth their opinion and meaning is quite another thing than the ordinary acceptation of that Doctrine as will appear by the instances following And hath no will nor wisdom nor reason left in him Smith Cat. p. 31. §. 2. but all baptized down into the sufferings of Christ and there the power kills him and gives him life again and so man lays down his own life and takes up life in Christ in which life he comes to be raised in the Resurrection of Christ I must confess this account is like his who though he may have too much Will is utterly void of Reason But he that shall own no other Resurrection of the Body than what Smith expresses comes under that severe rebuke of the Apostle Who concerning the Faith have erred saying that the Resurrection is past already and have destroyed the faith of some The foresaid Author saith farther Quest But must man pass through death and rise p. 29. again while he is in the Body Answ Yes for except he be regenerated and born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore he must die to the first Adams flesh and be quickned and raised again in the second Adams Spirit And so in the Resurrection and life enter the Kingdom as a little Child You see here plainly that their Resurrection of the Body is but their Regeneration and this is fulfilled while they are in the body But above all that I have read of the Quakers § 3 Velata quaedam revelata Fisher is the best skilled in the allegorizing of the Resurrection But if you will not be admonished nor perswaded by Moses and the Prophets within you neither will you be perswaded by such of us who were once dead in Sin with you but are now risen to life by the Power of God which is his light and in the same sent to speak unto you from the dead I know not how they can deny his words to be his gloss on 16 Luke 31. If they will not hear Moses and the Prophets neither wilâ— they be perswaded if one should rise from the dead If Christ had intended Conversion or Regeneration there by rising from the Dead it were no rare thing to have such Preachers sent to them for all the Saints of God are such as are Regenerated and such Preachers they had many at that time we may conclude that the Resurrection spoken of by Christ was of some one in the state of the Dead to have his body raised to life and with that advantage of experience to preach to them Whereby the heart is free from corruption and § 4 Naylor Love to the Lost p. 3. made able to escape the pollutions of the World and to run in the pure ways with delight which is the glâ—rious liberty of the Sons of God the Resurrection from the Dead I have said enough of what abundantly implies their denial of this great and fundamental truth I do not at all expect nor can I with any reason that they should in their writings in so many words deny the Resurrection of the Dead because so open and plain dealing in this great point would render them intolerable and shut the door against Proselites but yet in verbal and private converse they stick not to deny the Resurrection of the same bodies which ordinarily when dead are put into a hole in the ground and covered with earth I have examined many of their Books that pretend to give a full account of their Tenets and Belief but in all of them their Resurrection is no other than I have already expressed Take an Account of one or two in their Systems of their Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead We say that Christ is the Resurrection and the Life to § 5 Isaac Pennington Some principles of the Elect called Quakers p. 34. raise up that which Adam lost and to destroy him who deceived him viz Adam so Christ is the Resurrection unto Life of Body Soul and Spirit and so renews man c. What is this Resurrection but what they call Regeneration and the Resurrection of the Body is but in the same sense as the Soul and Spirit is raised which is not from a natural death or dissolution of their essential form but from their depravation and defection to a sensual and sinful disposition and their aversation from God Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead In the Chapter intituled ' as above he hath these Naylor love to the lost p. 78. words But to such busie minds who are saying how are the dead raised and with what bodies do they come I say to such the Apostles words are very suitable Thou fool that which thou sowest is not quickned except it die but the mystery is sealed with the Sons of God nor can any ever know with what bodies they shall arise but who comes to the Flesh of Christ and discerns his Body the sight whereof in the life slays the Serpent and opens the Mystery Till then cursed is he that reveals that which God hath sealed and hidden from the Serpents Wisdom c. Naylor before and after quotes many Scripture-phrases which abundantly prove the Resurrection of the Body after dissolution or natural death but when all is done there is a Mystery a sealed Mystery in his meaning and a curse laid on those who reveal their Tenet No wonder then that they speak not out to any other but themselves whom he dare trust with the greatest abominations in their delusions but notwithstanding his inhibition divers of them have to me acknowledged that they believe not that the body which when dead is ordinarily put into a hole in the ground and covered with earth and turns to dust shall ever be made alive again And that which may put you out of doubt that this is their Tenet I can prove by many Witnesses that George Whitehead one of their chief Misleaders after much importunity to speak his mind plainly in this
only the 36. Chap. of Genesis wherein is contained Esau's posterity and how many Dukes there were of his Race Yet I shall produce your arguments for the Readers satisfaction that he may believe his own eyes and I shall be more honest than to frame a meer whimsie out of my own head to abuse you and say after this lofty manner of disputing you undertake our overthrow which is your guilt in the fourth page of your Book Your first proof you pretend from Gen. 6. 1. And SECT III the Lord said my Spirit shall not always strive with man for that he also is flesh yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years I will for once transcribe your Argument verbatim that it may be notorious how loftily you dispute If God's unerring Spirit has been wont to strive with men either to convince them of or convert them from the evil of their thoughts words or deeds or else to provoke them yet more fully to do the will of God so as to press on from one degree of glory to another then men hâ—ve had an unerring Spirit to be their Teacher and Judge and Rule and Guide of that Truth concerning that Faith and in that most holy way which leads to Eternal Life But the Scripture proves the first Proposition that Gods Spirit hath frequently strove with men and for the ends before-mentioned and câ—nsequently they have not been without an holy unerring Spirit to teach judge regulate and guide them If I should only say your whole Argument is a § 2 meer confused thicket of impertinencies and non seâ—uitur's I believe your conclusion would be most absolute that it was for want of eyes and that I dare not touch a bough of it for fear of pricking my fingers A man had need of good Arithmetick also to numbâ—r the terms You tell us the Scripture proves your first Proposition You are a non Such for diving if you can fetch up from this Scripture what is expressed in your first proposition especially the latter member of it It is more than probable that the Spirit did strive with them to make them better than they were yet none of those ends are expressed in the Text but that it should be that they might more fully do the Will of God and press on from one degree of Glory to another is a guess wonderfully well becoming your infalliblity Why did you not say or to turn them into Suns Moons and Stars which were all out as much in the Text as the other and I dare say some of your Friends would have taken themselves bound to believe it who find no fault with greater absurditiâ—s dropt from their admired Dictâ—tors but Quos Dâ—us vult perdere hos dementat There were eight persons saved in the Ark but one Noah said to be righteous before God and all the â—est overwhelmed by the Deluge for their extreme impieties yet these were pressed on from one degree of Glory to another The consequence of your first Proposition is all manner of Fruits which you had a mind should be grafted on this Stock but as the Text will not impart its Sap to your Proposition so your Proposition is as dry to your Consâ—quence but that 's no matter if they will not grow one upon another you 'l make them hang together right or wrong Yea and if the Spirit do but strive it must be how you will have it and for what ends you please or you 'l rack the letter for it but the'res no cruelty to a dead letter Bâ—t Mr. Pen if your conscience have any eyes § 3 I intreat you make use of the light here afforded you to compare the Text and what you lay at its doors and see how alike they look Your Question is of the Spirits teaching among men c. indefinitely and your proof speaks of the Spirits striving with wicked men Your aim is to prove it an immediate and peculiar Teacher c. of Gods people the Text speaks of neither If I affirm the Spirit strove with them by providential Chastisements ominous presages of Calamities at hand by his goodness which leads to Reâ—entance by the Ark which Noah built moved by faith and fear and by which he condemned the unbelieving besotted World by his Preaching righteousness I can prove my being guided therein by the unerring Spirit of God at another rate than you 2 Pet 2. 5. can your contradiction But your wandrings from truth and reason can § 4 hardly have a higher instance and evidence than that you should be so infatuated as to conclude from a Text which saith my Spirit shall not always strive with man that it doth now teach c. and God hath not left his people in our present nor will in future ages without his Spirit to teach them immediately and solely which is in your Question or your prosecution of it and should have been expressed there if you had had so much ingenuity Instead of being angry that I have shewed your vanity and made your folly in this argument such a spectacle to the world you have reason to give me thanks that I examine it no further However before we part I will try you at another SECT III weapon which you forge out of Neh. 3. 19 20. Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness the pillar of the Cloud departed not from them by day to lead them in the way c. This part of your quotation is not onely no friend to your affirmation and principles but an invincible adversary No man in his wits will say the pillar of the cloud and fire were the Spirit of God and if God led his people by them they were not led onely and immediately by the Spirit of God It may be the latter part of your citation may do more for you Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them This good Spirit was mainly the Spirit of God which he put upon Moses and Joshua and some other their chief Persons by God's appointment as is evident from these Texts And I will take off the Spirit which is upon thee and § 2 will put it upon them and they shall bear the burthen of the people with thee Num. 11. 17. And the Lord said unto Moses take thou Joshua the Sun of Nun a man in whom is the Spirit and lay thy hand upon him Num. 27. 18. Thou leadest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron Psal 77. 20. Now God is said to give them his good Spirit to instruct them by bestowing it in such a way and measure on their instructers and guides though I deny not but every true Israelite had the Spirit also dwelling in him yet they were never the less but the more submiss to the conduct of their mediat or if you will men-teachers and guides for that Your third chosen Scripture for your service is SECT III But there is a Spirit in man
and the inspiration of the Job 32 3. Almighty giveth him understanding I shall explain this text by another which carries the full sense of it and almost the same words For the Lord giveth wisdome out of his mouth cometh knowledg and understanding But doth this incourage men to cast off all external means and the use of their reason Nothing less It is given as an encouragement to the use of the means expressed in the four first verses which are made conditional of being blessed with that knowledg and wisdom which comes from the Lord. If thou searchest If thou triest It will now be more easie to take in the right sense of your cited Scriptures There is a Spirit in man that is a rational Soul § 2 say some yet knowledge and understanding doth not so depend upon its improvement as to shut out the breathing and blessing of God from the chief efficiency A young man as Elihu may attain a measure by that divine blessing beyond the aged and more experienced If you can prove that those holy men who carried on that debate of which the Book of Job is a history did neglect the external means which the Lord afforded them for informing their judgments about divine and spiritual concernments upon the grounds of the inward teachings of the Spirit of God Eris mihi magnus Apollo and unless you can do that your arguing from this Text is but meer trifling beating of the air and contending for what is granted on all hands but nothing at all to your purpose And it is not beside the purpose to consider that those holy eminent Saints who contended with Job were rebuked by God for not speaking rightly of God as Job did and Job did not pass free without a chiding also for his miscarriages and presumptions Job 42. verse 7. and forward To conclude this Argument you talk at a miserable § â— lame rate to say that because the inspiration of the Divine Spirit giveth understanding therefore it is not from the strength of mans reason memory or utmost câ—eature-ablities that his knowledge of religious and heavenly things comes but from the revelation and discovery of the inspiration of the Almighty Let me tell you once for all that if reason memory and humane abilities have nothing at all to do in the search and understanding of Divine things a meer animal or such an ideot as Jack Adams may know as much of the Divine and Heavenly mysteries as W. Pen but if I should say such a one is as able a Teacher or Writer as you I doubt not but you would take your self to be not a little affronted And it is as lame arguing to conclude because some § 4 men had Divine inspirations and teachings of some Divine truths when there was not one Book of the written Word in being as I dare undertake to prove and they who had those Inspirations made use also of their reason to know Divine things by all external means within their reach therefore all Gods people i. e. Quakers have in these days wherein God hath blessed us with so large a portion of his written Word or Word without us sufficient teachings by immediate Divine Revelations to lead them infallibly in the way that is most acceptable with the Lord without the use of their created faculties or any outward means is no good consequence The next Scripture you abuse is Psal 139 7. Whither SECT V Psal 139. 7. shall I go from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence from whence you scribble thus If Gods unerring Spirit be so nigh and the sense of it so certain it must be either to reprove for evil done or to inform uphold lead and preserve in reference to all good now in which of the two senses it shall be taken the presence of Gods Eternal Spirit and his being the Saints Instructor Judge Rule and Guide are evidently deduceable from the words Rudis indigestaque moles worse than ever Bear brought forth her Cubs which with her licking may be brought into some shape but your products are so defective both in Truth Right Reasoning Syntax and Sense that it is no dis-reputation to your Adversary to be confounded by them It is an effectual but an impudent course to silence all the world from opposing you by writing such confident confused non-sense Were it not for the sake of many who conceit your infallibility which you are here so blindly pleading for I would as soon abandon my time to dispute with a distracted man in his raving fits as with W. Pen till he come better to himself than I can find him in this Pamphlet If Gods infinite Being Omnipresence Omniscience § 2 wonderful works of Creation all-disposing Providence which is the scope of the Psalm and his Omnipresence especially the sense of the Text do prove that which you produce it for and infer from it you have found out a way of seeing that may tempt us to dig out our eyes punish them for meer Cheats and for ever hereafter commend the blind Archer for the best Marks-man We may presume that you intend this Text to § 3 prove that all Gods people are upheld ruled guided c. In reference to all good by the Spirit of God which you say is evidently deduceable from the words But who would have thought that such desirable considerations and the certain sense of them should put so holy a man as David on such expressions of going and flying from the Spirit and presence of the Lord No doubt the presence of God is every where in the Skies the Seas the Wilderness what then doth he therefore perform all these acts where ever he is present in his infinite Being even where there are no intelligible Creatures Doth he judge inform instruct stones and trees and mountains I and must do so too or else he doth not answer the end of his presence being so nigh Truly Mr. Pen we have had more reverend thoughts of the Eternal and Omnipresent God than to assign any thing as the end of his Being but himself But it may be you lay your stress on the certain § 4 sense of it and this joyned to his Omnipresence will do your work Is the sense of it so certain to every good man was it so to David when he so long time was tainted with a heap of impieties Was it so with Jonah when he fled as he thought from the presence of the Lord or was it so with you when you wrote some things in this book of yours which I shall acquaint you with before I have done If it should be granted you that all Gods people have the certain sense of it without doubting or alteration it would be nihil adrhombum far from proving Gods Spirit to be the peculiar Teacher of his people and so to teach them as to render them infallible which is the mark you aim at The next Scripture you produce is Teach me
dishnourable to God and unworthy of his Grace Another fallacy in your arguings is from the Spirits § 8 teachings Indefinitely to the Spirits teaching Universally at least all that concerns the duty of the people of God in religious things The people of God have the Spirit therefore they could not be destitute of an unerring Spirit in what concerned them either towards God or men But your main fallacies are these two from an SECT VII infallible Spirit teaching to the infallibility of the Subjects in which the Spirit dwells as a Teacher and from the Spirits teaching to its immediate and peculiar teaching For the first of these I shall produce some of your wild reasonings 1 Thes 15. 19. Quench not the Spirit Page Those to whom he gave the caution had the Spirit if those could not quench the Spirit who had it not Consequently the Primitive Churches were not without an unerring Spirit But I believe and can prove that they who had not the Spirit themselves might quench it in others by despising Prophecyings in the exercise of its gifts 20. ver and those who have the motions of the Spirit as you say the old World had before the Flood may be far from having the Spirit in the Scripture-sense i. e. dwelling in them to sanctification But supposing they had the Spirit dwelling and teaching in them 't is a miserable erroneous and weak Conclusion that they were infallible That this is that you would conclude from such improper premises is apparently your drift all along A taste of this you give us p. 32. in these words § 2. Page 32. If God sends forth his Spirit into the hearts of his children then are they not without an infallible Spirit but the express Letter of the Scripture affirms it and consequently our Adversaries reflection upon us for making it part of our belief is unsound and condemnable Your Adversaries have not so little knowledge of the Spirit of God as to say the Spirit of God is fallible nor yet so ignorant of your spirits and of the Scripture as to say you are infallible If the latter be it you say is unfound it is upon no other grounds than your arguing from the infallibility of Gods Spirit to the infallibility of your spirits or of theirs who are Gods people But we are not ignorant that your principles make no distinction much less a difference between the spirits of Gods people and the Spirit of God which is indeed the secret byass which moves you so obliquely of which I shall give a more ample account in its place But you are yet so unwilling to speak plainly your mind that you appear in many shapes to insinuate this untruth but are industrious to be uncertain and amphibious Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo You say page 31. And how this man can be esteemed § 3. Page 31. a good Christian who would render Christ Jesus the Head of a fallible body by divesting Christians of an infallible Spirit I leave to persons of better judgment more honesty and greater moderation to judge By this we may more than guess your mind But verily if the asserting Christ to be the Head of a fallible body i. e. that may in some things erre or be mistaken be worthy of your such reflections I know none will escape them among professed Christians but Quakers and Papists I see by this you may serve for a Voter at Rome but your Logick is so leaky you will hardly attain a higher promotion there she will be loath to venture her Grandeur built upon the Foundation of the Churches infallibility upon your pitiful scribling I wonder how you came to talk of Christs body to § 4 which he is Head Or what men of your principles can mean by it with the qualification of infallible Sure you do not mean his body in the most strict sense i. e. the invisible Church that is not yet compleatly existing and I doubt not but when they meet and vote they will be infallible but that will not be yet Nor yet the Universal Church visible i. e. Professors of Christianity Members of the Universal Church or any particular organical Church for your party have gored and besmeared those to excess I know not how we shall get a vote from them except in the Creed called the Apostles to which a small matter excepted all give consent But then the Quakers are none of the Church who will subscribe but to few of the Articles in that Creed How shall we find your meaning I will undertake to shoot near the mark if not hit the pin in the white You intend it of all the Quakers and every individual person among them at least such who give up to the light within and its guidance and is the Church in Spirit a Phrase used by Friends more than once in their writings but never in the Scriptuâ—e But Mr. Pen if Christ be Head to none but the infallible wo to the poor Saints who have trusted hitherto they had a Head in Heaven who hath pity on the ignorant and those that are out of the way who is their Advocate with the Father and thereby a remedy against the the sad consequences otherwise of their errings And I am sure Christ is then none of your Head But to conclude this form of your reasoning what § 6 I shall say to it You may as well conclude all Gods people are omnipotent because they have the Spirit of God which is omnipotent And they are omniscient because the Spirit of God who teaches them is so And they are infinite upon the same grounds The last two of these I can prove from some of the Quakers writings to be their blasphemous Opinions from this ground on which you build Monstr ' horrend'inform ' ingens cui lumen ademptum Were you so judicious and humble to submit to the certain teachings of the Spirit in and by the § Scripture you may know that the Spirit though it never teacheth an errour yet those whom it teacheth directively may erre either not understanding or not submitting to his teachings that where the Spirit moves and strives too though it self be omnipotent yet it may move and strive in such a measure as the corruption of bad men and sometimes of good men do prevail against its strivings and motions Although the Spirit of God will teach and move all the Elect so largely and so effectually that they shall not fail of heaven nor the necessary means thereunto yet there is not one that can be proved not to err in practice much less to have learned all things of a Religious concern to them I might proceed to your fallacious arguing from SECT VIII the Spirits teaching indefinitely expressed to its teaching peculiarly and immediately which is frequent in your Pamphlet particularly page 18 29. and many more of your fallacious and confused arguings I might expose were it worth while to trace such a Trifler in
sound as of a mighty rushing wind Cloven Tongues like as of fire all of which were witnesses sent by God for the confirmation of the Lord Jesus Christ whom they preached to be Gods Messias before promised But let us see how near the Quakers approach to § 3 this evidence That they began with a noise yea a rushing noise we know but that it was a sound from heaven we are sure of the contrary That they have Tongues and fiery and Cloven Tongues also we shall not deny but these are not such Cloven Tongues like as of fire sitting on them and appearing to the bodily â—yes of others Nor do they speak variety of Languages by the gift of the Holy Ghost though some of them have gone into forreign Countries with a confidence they should be gifted with strange Languages but their Spirit deceived them Those in the Text in those Languages or Tongues spake the wonderful works of God but the Quakers with their Native Language only speak the amazing delusions of Satan The persons in the Text had and used these gifts to confirm and evidence Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ 22 verse and that same Jesus to be exalted by the right hand of God verses 32 33. but the Quakers improve their gifts with all their might to disclaim that man Christ Jesus as having any being and to exalt their own Christ whom they call the light within every man And considering also that the Prophet saith the Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh methinks they of all others should claim the least share in it who call others flesh who are not of their mind but themselves Spiritual and will not seem to endure any thing that hath a relation to the flesh though sanctified by the Spirit and Grace of God which they rebuke in such-like terms as these Silence all flesh before the Lord. Thus I have discharged this Text from so bad a service The next main Prop for this mistake is that they SECT II speaking and writing by the conduct and motion of the light within them that being with them the Spirit of God as well as Christ the Son of God it must needs be by Inspiration of God and motion of the Holy Ghost And by the same light light within do we discern and testifie c. Parnel Shield of the Truth pag. 10. Yea they will have Moses and all the Prophets to be inspired Divinely as they were guided and moved by the light within The Word said Let there be light Gen. 1. 4. mark this and the light was brought out of darkness so the morning was come and the day was created in the Eternal Word and into this life I suppose it should be light was Moses gathered and had his understanding opened that he could see to the beginning And there was no Tradition to give him the knowledge of it but the light which shone out of darkness in his heart Morning Watch pag. â— What words can express the untruths absurdities and blasphemies of this saying The Word Christ created the Light Christ the first created morning is Christ and all this together within was the Inspiration by which Moses understood what he wrote of the Creation Hear a third that by the mouth of more than § 2 two Witnesses what I have said may be confirmed John Story Short Discovery c. pag. 2. And though the holy Scripture without and the Saints practises are as lights in the world yet far be it from all true Christian men so to idolize them the Scripture and Saints practises as to set them in esteem above the Light which is sufficient to guide or to esteem them equal with the Light and Spirit of Christ within from which the Scriptures were given forth and are but branches of that holy râ—ot and as it were fruits of that heavenly Tree viz. the appearances of God in the hearts of his people You may see then whence their Opinion of Divine Inspiration to be the Inlet of their Notions arises and that the Scriptures are but branches growing from the same root viz. the light within That I may arm those who are willing to be defended § 3 against such a strong delusion where ever it hath once seized the belief by Scripture-light I shall take the pains to lay down some certain Characters of all the Apostles divinely inspired and all their Doctrines that flowed from the Spirit of God by way of Inspiration immediate contained in the Scripture and having the same Divine Authority Characters of the Persons who were Christs Apostles SECT III and preached or wrote the Gospel by Inspiration of God which we call the Scripture or Word of God They had an immediate Mission and Call from without them by Jesus Christ to preach and declare the Gospel That Call and Commission which the Apostles had Mat. 28. 16. to the end of the Chapter was from without it was Christ who conversed with them and was the object of their bodily eyes It was that Christ whom the women held by the feet ver 9. and his Call as his person was without them the sound of which was received by their bodily ears in those words ver 18 19. And Jesus came and spake unto them saying All power is given to me in heaven and in earth Go ye therefore c. And it is a strong Argument to prove this immediate outward Call to be essential to the Apostolical Office and Power that when by Judas's fall the number was imperfect he that was chosen in his room was chosen and called by an outward call the Spirit of God determining by a Lot Matthias to be the twelfth Apostle as Christ did the rest by his voice without them Acts 1. 24. and 25 verses they had a large measure of the Spirit within and Matthias in particular but that was not sufficient Yea the Apostle Paul who was born out of due time had this immediate outward Cal when Christ appeared to him in that glorious and terrible form Acts 26. 13. At mid-day O King I saw in the way not in the heart or â— in the way saw a light from heaven above the brightness of the Sun the light in the Quakers I am sure would be seen by any who are not bodily blind if it were such shining round about me then it could not be a light only within and them that journeyed with me if it had not been without him they could not have seen it Verse 14. I heard a Voice speaking unto me not within me I am Jesus Chap. 10. Ver. 22. Jesus of Nazareth and I am sure the light within is not of Nazareth These things are enough to prove the Apostles had all of them an outward Call or a Call from Christ without them to their Ministry and Apostleship and that the Quakers Apostleship and inspired Ministry is far from Apostolical They were all such as had seen and conversed with § 2 the Lord Jesus in an outward
in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his 1 Cor. 3. 16. So that every Babe in Christ hath the Spirit of Christ in its saving manifestations and opperations or effects though but a few were immediately inspired And God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets c. Are all Apostles are all Prophets are all Teachers 1 Cor. 12. 28 29. The Apostle Paul doth plainly express this specifical § 3 difference or difference in the very kind of the Spirits teachings in and to his own person But she is happier if she so abide after my judgment and I think also that I have the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 7. 40. The Apostle doth in the case there agitated give his advice as a Saint who had the Spirit of God in the same kind of enlightning which other Saints had or all the Saints had but in an eminent measure yet this enlightning and teaching of the Spirit was not by way of immediate and Apostolical inspiration but by enlightning his judgment and enabling his natural faculty of discerning to pierce into and rightly decide the difference For if the Apostle had received what he here expressed by Divine inspiration or the Spirit of the Lord immediately inspiring it would have been not only unnecessary but very much injurious to the infallibility and authority of the Spirit of God to have made his judgment bear a part with it Yea it had been an usurping on the Divine Spirit which an exercisâ— of our judging faculty concerning its truth or falshood must needs be where it is evident that the Spirit of God doth its part by way of immediate inspiration to which ready and full credit ought to be given without hesitation Characters of Divine Apostolical Inspirations SECT V distinguishing them from all other Instructions That Divine inspiration whereby the Apostles and Prophets as such were illuminated came in without the use of the bodily senses as râ—ceptive o◠〈◊〉 outward Objects and carrying them to the rational and considering faculties to make conclusions from â—â—em and this is properly immediate Divine inspiration But Divine Truths received by the Saints as Saints ordinarily are received by such means as are Objects to the bodily senses as significative sounds to the ear visible Objects to the eye c. let the Quakers or any other shew me if they can that the knowledg of God comes ordinarily to men by any other way without these Faith comes by hearing that is ordinarily for a Babe may have the habits of saving faith whose hearing serves litle to that purpose or by reading that knowledg of God which the Heathen had or might have had without the Word revealed handed to them as to us it was by considering the works of God's Creation and Providence which were the Book wherein God wrote to them many Lessons concerning him and their duty So that in few words persons being illuminated by inspiration it was first within them others have it first from without them at least in the premises from whence the understanding assisted by God infers Truths The great Objection of the Quakers against the § 2 later Position is from this Scripture Rom. 1. 19 20. because that which may he known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them for the invisible things of him c. The words in them in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are either in or among them the later sense is to me the most probable because that while the far greater part of the Gentile-world were so bruitish that they little regarded or understood any thing of God but were so besotted with sensuality that they understood and minded nothing but what might gratifie a blind and impetuous appetite some among them whose intellects were better imployed came by the knowledge of excellent things concerning God which they not only taught but left in writing as a witness to Posterity But to put all out of doubt the 20 verse speaks what § 3 I affirm plainly For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead c. Here you have an account what may be known of God by the Heathen who had neither revelation immediate to themselves nor handed to them from others by the Word heard or read viz. the eternal power and Godhead and that which they were condemned for ver 26. was not for not knowing or practising what had relation to the Mediator or not believing the word of promise which never was within the reach of their ears but for their miscarriages against God the Creator whom they might and ought to have known and acknowledged God is in his Essential Being the Invisible God but he was manifest among them How From the Creation of the World by the things that are made Take another Text for the confirmation of my Exposition of this Act. 14. 17. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons c. They were not without witness concerning the Divine Being and Attributes of Mercy and Goodness yet if the Rain and fruitful Seasons were without them the Witness was without them before it was within them But for the Quakers pretences of their conceits of § 4 Divine things to be by immediate inspiration of the Spirit to them when we hear of Pagans and Heathen who never had the least notice of or from the Scripture talk of Jesus Christ a Crucified Redeemer and the Promises and Covenant of God we may a little listen to them but for a people who live where the Scriptures are so much known to talk Scripture-phrases and Gospel-phrases and then tell us they had it all by Divine Revelation immediate to themselves is as ungrateful and foolish as for those who were born and bred in England and have learned their Mother-tongue from their Childhood after 30 or 40 years to affirm they learned every word of it by immediate Inspiration or could have known it as perfectly if man had never taught them while in the mean time those forreign Languages they never heard spoken they can neither speak nor understand one sentence of if it would save the world Again Those Gospel-illuminations for the matter § 5 which are by immediate inspiration are beyond the utmost reach of our natural faculties of the mind though sanctified to attain by their improvement and therefore it is said to be 2 Tim. 3. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Divinely inspired It is not produced in the exercise of the Rational Faculties the Soul is purely passive or receptive therein and is to those Illuminations as the Wax is to the Seal according to 2 Pet. 1. 21. For the Prophesie came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 acted carried Some of them viz. the Prophetical part were so far from being attained by the use of Natural Faculties though sanctified that their very wills which are the first movers even in intelligent Agents did not ordinarily so much as direct their understandings to the finding out the Truths which were revealed to them but when their thoughts in their present posture had no tendency to any such particular things no more than a man in a deep sleep they were then moved by the H. Ghost that whereas ordinarily they are fixed and bent to such or such ends by the humane will here the Divine will takes its place and doth all And for those Historical parts of the Scripture § 6 as of the Creation Fall of Man written by Moses c. and the Doctrinal parts written by the Apostles c. although the things in general might be the scope and aim of their intentions yet the Gale by which they were driven steadily and infallibly was not the utmost of their natural and sanctified and highest improved faculties but the supernatural guidance of the Divine Spirit whose product was like it self without the least stain or spot of humane frailty and wâ—aâ—ness Whereas that illumination of the Spirit which in the kind of it is common to all Saints flows in by the Lords blessing on the improvement of their understandings and judgments whether on Creation Providence or matter divinely revealed without them originally viz. that contained in the Scripture which although their faith be resolved into and determined by yet the highest pitch of their spiritual understanding is raised by a right and sanctified ratiocination from those principles comparing spiritual things with spiritual And experience teacheth that though an idle Loyterer may grow giddy with empty swimming notions which are rather the disease of a spiritual pride and intoxication yet God doth mostly if not only bless those with high and solid illuminations who humbly wait on him and beg the concourse and assistance of the Father of Lights and Spirit of Truth That God doth bless in such ways to the such § 7 illuminations of the Spirit is clear from this Scripture Heb. 5. 12 14. For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk c. It was their sin which was rebuked as the cause of their ignorance and what that should be but their slothful unfaithfulness in the use of advantages I know not But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age this must not be understood of number of days but measure of knowledge even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil They were thus illuminated by the Spirit in the way of the use and exercise of their sanctified Natural Faculties and the Ordinances of God for that end If any Quaker shall say True we are illuminated not by Study and poring as they call it on the Scripture or any thing else but have our knowledge without such carnal toil and the wisdom of the flesh and therefore it is by inspiration immediate Let such know that they must shew somewhat more than palpable errour gross ignorance and unparallel'd confidence e're they gain credit with any but those simple ones in a silly sense who believe every word Pro. 14. 15. §. 9. A third Difference is that Apostolical illuminations and immediately inspired are not habitual they are not the more constant frame of the soul but have their fluxes not as Springs or running Rivers or Tydes which have their ebbings and flowings yet the Chanel alway plentifully supplied but as bourns and flouds that sometimes rise high yet the grounds they cover for a while are sometimes and ordinarily a long time dry and no appearance remaining of those inundations The Apostles and Prophets had not such a Well and Spring of this sort as alway run or out of which they might ordinarily give advice and teachings of this kind Whereas the Spirits most ordinary illuminations common to all Saints do in their several degrees and measures in dwell in their souls and are as qualities adhering to their subjects their minds and faculties being so united to them as Sugar being melted in the Wine its sweetness is constant and abiding thereby And hence it was that the Apostles though they could alway teach from the habits of light and knowledge they were blessed with yet in some cases at some times could not speak as inspired by the Holy Ghost witness Paul who in the body of his Epistle to the Corinthians makes this distinction 1 Cor. 7. 6 12. to the end of the Chapter But I speak this by permission ver 6. but to the rest speak I not the Lord ver 12. Now concerming Virgins I have no commandment of the Lord yet I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful 25. But she is happier if she so abide in my judgment and I think also that I have the Spirit of God The same Apostle gives instruction concerning the Choice of Bishops that they be such as are apt to teach 1 Tim. 3. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The word signifies both the habit or faculty and also a promptitude and readiness to imploy it And to Timothy to be instant in season and out 2 Tim. 4. 2. of season that is not only at necessary times in a constant course but occasionally and he could not so preach the Word as became it and an Evangelist but from habitual illumination Mat 13. 52. Then said he unto them Therefore every Scribe which is instructed to the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an Housholder which bringeth forth of his Treasure things new and old A fourth Difference the inspiration of the Spirit § 10 doth not grow and increase gradually and according to time and industry Samuel had as elegant and powerful an inspiration or revelation when a Child as when he was old And the Apostles on the sudden at the effusion of the Spirit in that way of ministration had as eminent inspirations as ever afterward But the illumination wherewith God doth usually by the efficiency of his Spirit bless his people doth ordinarily grow at least is capable of it Some to whom John writes were grown to be Fathers For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers Heb. 5. That is ye might have grown to such a degree of il 〈…〉 nation if you had stood in the way wherein the Spirit of God doth usually bless therewith as to have been able to teach others Yea the Lord Jesus Christ himself as man did increase gradually in these habitual illuminations Luke 2. 45 46 47. Jesus grew in wisdome and instature And that it was meant of divine light oâ— light in
endeavour it in your places and as God hath given you the means it will not be your sin much less your condemnation that you do not know it all Sure there are many Babes in Christs Family yet they are Children and all are first Babes and that would be a Monster never yet seen in the Church of Christ a new-born Babe knowing the mind of God contained in the Scripture as fully as the most serious Christians of the longest standing Jesus Christ himself grew in wisdom and in stature and I intreat you be content to leave a little of the mind of God to be found out in the Scripture by the Generations to come If you mean our knowledg of the mind of the Spirit is uncertain so far as it is necessary for our living in an acceptable mâ—nner to God soberly righteously and godly in this present world and to attain Heaven at last it is a great mistake for if pride lust and idleness stand not in our way there is no person that hath a few grains of reason but may understand so much of the mind of God by the Scripture as is necessary for him to know to his Eternal Salvation But if you talk of the Scriptures being a dead Letter § 9 and not moving and teaching with a voice or impulse without our reading praying and applying it in the Lords strength you talk at a strange random as if God had given us our eyes and brams only to look after the world and the things thereof but in the knowledge of God we must be meerly passive A KEY TO THE QUAKERS Usurped and to most Unintelligible PHRASES THere is not any thing in the Quakers Method of delu ding which doth more tend to the insnaring of unwary Souls than their asserting their False Antichristian and Anti-Scriptural Tenets under Scripture-words and Phrases and in those very terms wherein are expressed the Truths of God while in the mean time they mean nothing less than their true import and what people who are not well acquainted with their Tenets suppose them to mean By this Artifice they beget a good Opinion of themselves and Errours with too many and by degrees so vitiate their Principles that in a short time they are prepared to imbrace the grossest Errours bare-faced I shall therefore as a work of no small use to such who are attempted by them or who have a Call or opportunity to deal with them for their convincing or confuting or the securing others who are in danger by them give you a true and candid account of their sense and meaning of a multitude of Scripture and Religious Phrases which they utter and apply to their falshoods and also of their new-coyn'd Words and Phrases which are more peculiar to their Sect and Notions I dispose them Alphabetically for their more easie finding on any occasion A. Above NOt in locality but excellency so Christ and Heaven they say are above i. e. excellent and may therefore be nothing but what is within them The Anointing The Light within Christ the Spirit essentially Assembling Meeting in Spirit Assurance What they feel in themselves not what they believe from the Scripture the inward witness viz. experience teachings of the light within B. Babylon All the Ordinances Worship Faith Obedience that have any thing of a form or visible in them or that are gathered from the written Word or pretended to be so Baptism Not any thing by Water but the Spirit i. e. the Quakers Spirit to an obedience and devotedness to the light within and inspirations and immediate teachings Blasphemy To speak against the light within every man to be Christ and God and what they hold it to be Blind Not to acknowledge the light within to be Christ not to know him by immediate imspiration The Blood of Christ The Life of Christ i. e. the power of the light in them The Spiritual Blood which they say came down from Heaven and was part of a Spiritual Body which Christ brought with him from thence which dwelt for a while in the Man Jesus who died at Jerusalem Salvation purifying reconciling by the Blood of Christ Not by the Blood of Christ shed on the Cross but by the Blood of the Spiritual Body of flesh blood and bones which they say Christ descended in which is in every Quaker as really as in the Man that was the Son of Mary and so Salvation is by no other blood but what is in themselves The Body of Christ Not that which was crucified without the Gates of Jerusalem in Judea but the spiritual Body aforesaid which they say took up its Habitation and Tabernacled in the Body of Jesus the Son of Mary and so the Body of Christ is as much in them as it was in him Bondage Not only our selves in bondage to sin but the light within the seed of God or Christ being in bondage under the disobedience of men Born again Regeneration Perfect obedience to the light within as Christ and God Comprehending Brain A large understanding or a desire of Knowledge by the use of the Rational Faculty C. Call The motions of the Light Christ in the Conscience Christ Not the Man Christ Jesus the Son of Mary which the Godhead assumed and united to its self in one person but the light within every man a Christ that had nothing of Adams Nature whose Body now in being was not created or had a beginning in time which was never visible to the bodily eye Not in any respect distinct from God the Father and God the Holy Ghost Christ in the Saints Not Christ without them an Object of the faith and love within them but his very Being his Divinity his Soul and his Body consisting of spiritual Flesh Blood and Bones not his Image and Likness but the self-same in his Being and Essence Christs coming In the Spirit or his spiritual coming into his people i. e. no other but the prevailing motions of the light within or by inspiration The Command in Spirit By immediate inspiration and motion Comprehension Fleshly Comprehensions That Opinion or Belief which is grounded on a rational demonstration though from the written Word of God Carnal All things of a Religious concern which we are not enlightned about and moved to by immediate inspiration yea whatever hath a form or is visible to the bodily eye Fleshly Conceivings Those Opinions or expressions whose beginning and birth are in the humane faculties very great weakness if not sin and unbelief contrary to the assured and undoubted dictates of the Infallible Light and Spirit within them Condemnation The reproofs and sentencings of the light in the Conscience Conversion A full obedience to the light in the Conscience a total freedom from the prevailing of any sin such a state as the Disciples of Christ had not attained when Christ was crucified nor Paul when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans Crucifying of Christ Not that crucifying on the Cross of Wood but a
light within They put to their meanings Expounding or giving the sense of the Scripture however true in its self if not by immediate meer Divine Revelation In the Meekness In the light within Christ which is meekness in the abstract and between whom and their spirits there is no distinction Ministers of the Everlasting Gospel Both men and women Ministers among the Quakers who declare from immediate inspiration not from the Letter of the Scripture Ministers of Antichrist Babylon Idol-Shepherds All such who have a mediate Call from man or preach from the Letter of the Scripture Ministration of the Spirit The immediate teachings and motions of the Spirit exclusive of all forms in worship the will though sanctified in chusing and all premeditation and acting by the prescription of the written Word Miracles Sometimes Miracles in Spirit invisible to bodily senses or humane understanding The Star of the Morning the Morning of the first day Christ the light within Moved by the Holy Ghost An inward immediate impulse of the light and power within From the Mouth of God Immediate teachings from the light within excluding all other Mysteries of the Kingdom Mysteries of God Such things as the faculties of man have no power to understand or express no not from or by the Scripture such things as are only sensâ—ted in the experience An allegorizing the Scripture N Natural man Every man that is not a Quaker The Natural man Every thing in man which is distinct from God or the light within The New man Christ the light within considered essentially They did by Nature the things contained in the Law By the new Nature which is Christ the light contained in the Law within the heart which is also Christ the light O Obedience of Christ What is done by men by the power life and strength of the light within them Obedience in Spirit Wrought by immediate impulses of the Spirit The Kingdome of God cometh not with observation The light within and its prevalencie which they call and that only the Kingdom of God is not obtained any way by the study or consideration of the Scripture or any thing without us Observers of times Such as keep any certain days as separated to holy use as the Lords-day or such as propose an hour or two to be spent in the Worship and Ordinances of God or any time with limitation Christ the Offering The light within Offeringâ— up of Christ The light within disobeyed or contesting with the lusts yea or the right reason of men Officers of the Church Invisible Officers and Overseers who do all their work in Spirit Gods Off-spring A part and measure of the very being of God continuing to be in a degree as good and divine as God himself The Souls and Spirits at least of the Quakers which they say came out of God The Old man All that is disobedient or not conformable to their light within One-ness with God Christ Spirit Not relative nor by love or faith or Mystical Membership but such an oneness as leaves no room for distinction between God Christ the Spirit and such whom they say are one with Christ Openings of Life Springings of Life Sudden workings to action or impressions on the mind and affections proceeding from within of their own accord and motion Overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of his Testimony All amounts but to an obedience to the light within which Smith saith was the Lamb of God whom John bid the Jews behold and the force of the light and life within which with them is the blood i. e. the life of the Lamb. P Put Christ to pain Resisting the motions of the light within The painted Whore Not only the Papals with their irreligious Pomp but all the good words thoughts and actions of any sort of men who derive them not from the immediate teachings and motions of the light within yea all forms of Worship according with the Precepts and Examples of the Scripture and they are with them the most painted who come nearest to the Scripture as a Rule The People of God They and none but they who profess the light within every man to be Christ the only Saviour and Teacher and give up themselves to its conduct as such Perfect Perfection Not that which is sincere or a perfection of parts or sanctification throughout in part but a being without sin in the least remains or stains of it Persecution Not only a penalty or hurt inflicted on their Bodies or Estates but also a speaking or writing against their Principles in the most purely rational and Scriptural Authority The seed in Prison and Captivity and Bondage The light within not obeyed as Christ and God Pictures and Images Not only those Images and Pictures that to the bodily eye represent Christ or God or the Saints and are adored with Religious Worship but all Worship Opinions Actions Words that are in imitation of the Examples and in obedience to the Precepts contained in the Scripture Men-pleasâ—rs They who comply with men though in things not only lawful but also to edification Pollutions of the world Not only things in themselves sinful as drunkenness swearing lying c. but also whatever Customs they dislike and decline as Cuffs Ribands putting off the Hat signs of respect c. which they say are from the Devil All recreations as Bowling Ringing though used seasonably and moderately The Power of God The Light within the Christ within Praying in Spirit Secretly or inwardly not with the voice by the immediate impulses of the light and power within without the exercise of so much as the conceptions of man Prayer Christ the light within is sometimes by them so called The presence of the Lord. The powerful influences and impressions of the light within either to terrour or peace and joy The pride of Man A not submitting to their light and especially receiving tokens of respect and wearing Ribands Cuffs and Lace The Priests A word of scorn put on all indifferently who are separated to the work of the Gospel-Ministry by men or that receive maintenance for their work The Worlds Professors All that are not Quakers Formal hypocritical Professors All that walk in the Ordinances of Christ commanded or prescribed in the Scripture or in the order of the Gospel Spirit of Prophecy Immediate impulses and inspirations False Prophets All that act not by immediate Revelation Prophecying falsly How true soever in it self if not from their spirit Publicans and Sinners All that are not Quakers Walking in the pure Walking after the dictates of the light within Purifying the heart by the Bloud of Christ Acting and being disposed according to inward motions by the light and life of the Christ within them Q Quenching the Spirit Resisting the motions of the Light within Quickned in the Life Stirred up by the power within R Raised to life Conversion to Quakerism Ravening brain Studying and following after Divine Knowledge or the knowledge
of the Church meeting together in their respective places do set and keep the affairs of it in good order beware of admitting or encouraging such as are weak and of little faith to take such trust upon them for by hearing things disputed that are doubtful such may be hurt themselves and may hunt the Truth not being grown into a good understanding to judge of things Therefore we exhort That you who have received a ture sense of things be diligent in the Lord's business and keep the Meetings as to him that all may be kept pure and clean according to that of God which is just and equal We also advise That not any be admitted to order Publick business of the Church but such as have felt in a measure of the Universal Spirit of Truth which seeks the destruction of none but the general good of all and especially of those that love it who are of the Houshold of Faith So dear Friends and Brethren believing that your souls will be refreshed in the sense of our spirits and integrity towards God at the reading of these things as ours were while we sate together at the opening of them and that you will be one with us on the behalf of the Lord and his precious Truth against those who would limit the Lord to speak without Instruments or by what Instruments they list and reject the counsel of the Wise-men and the testimony of the Prophets which God sanctified and sent among you in the day of his love when you were gathered and would not allow him liberty in and by his Servants to appoint time and place wherein to meet together to wait upon and worship him according as he requireth in Spirit and calling it Formal and the Meeting of man We say believing that you will have Fellowship with us herein as we have with you in the truth we commit you to God and the Word of life which hath been preached to you from the beginning which is neither limited to place nor time nor persons but hath power to limit us to each as pleaseth him that you with us and we with you may be built up in our most holy faith and be preserved to partake of the Inheritance which is heavenly amongst all them that are sanctified Richard â—arnsworth Alexander Parker George Whitehead Josiah Coale John Whitehead Thomas Loe Stephen Crispe Thomas Green John Moone Thomas Briggs James Parkes It will not be lost-labour to give my Reader an Account of the occasions of this Testimony and of those things contained in it which are of special remark The first and chief Principle which the Quakers cried up and endeavoured to obtrude on all they attempted to draw off from the common Principles of the Christian Religion and to prâ—selyte to themselves was That every man hath a light in him which is no less than Christ and the Spirit Christ the Word of God the Life the Power c. and that this Light is sufficient to lead into the knowledge of all Truth and to move men by its Power to the compleat and perfect Obedience And as upon this Principle they did and do discard the Scriptures from being a Rule of Faith and Life and from bearing the name of the Word of God So many of them believed it as rationally followed That all their Ministry and ordered Meetings to declare what they called their Testimony was not only superfluous but also a contradiction to their main Principle which is indeed rightly inferred Another Principle grounded on the former Foundation was To exclude all Forms of Worship Order or Discipline and every one to be left to his own proper liberty to meet or not to meet to speak or be silent as he or she should be guided by his or her private Light c. But the practices which suited to this Principle as it rendred its Professors discordant and contrary to each other and ridiculous to Observers So also it deprived their Heads and Leaders of that Denomination which was as ambitiously sought by them as by any Sect-Masters heretofore Upon these Considerations those who were chief in esteem and interest among them began to impose upon the rest what they pretended was by the Spirit dictated to them although it did not meet with the same inward relishes and sentiments of the rest Many of the Quakers who kept to their first Principle were hereat greatly offended and made opposition against those Obtrusions as Tyrannical and subverting their Foundation One of whom was the Author of that large Letter of Complaint published in a little Piece entituled THE SPIRIT OF THE HAT Muclow In which may be seen the main Grounds of difference between the Ruling and Non-Conforming Quakers and as well penn'd as was ever any thing by a Quaker But to reconcile these Impositions with the Principle of the Sufficiency and Divinity of the Light within every man the Imposers pretend That the Light of the Body i e. Such who bear the sway can taste and discern what is from the true Light in any and therefore what answers not to that Discerning-Spirit in the Body is to be exploded as not from the true Principle In this Testimony alias The Quakers Canons and Constitutions I shall remark these following particulars 1. That in the Title it is ordered to be read in all their Meetings and kept by them as a Testimony Which are Priviledges that the Scriptures obtain not with them 2. That the Subscribers and those others who joyned with them in their Convocations pretend to have met by the Operation of the Spirit and to have had in that Negotiation the presence of the Lord with them and that hereupon they ground the following Dictates and Impositions 3. That although they take it so grievously that they should be accounted no Christians by us yet they own no other to be the Church of Christ but themselves and have the Charity to reckon of all others as Without and as Heathen and Infidels among which sort they are to be numbered whom they Excommunicate 4. That notwithstanding their former decrying a stated and ordained Ministry Rule and Dignities in the Church as Tyrannical and Antichristian they have now a Ministry Rulers Dignities Offices and Dominions erected among themselves as necessary to the subsisting of their Fellowship And affirm That it is abominable Pride for any particular not to submit to the judgment given by them called The judgment of the Body 5. That although they have with their Authors the Romists and Jesuites reproached the holy Scriptures as a lame and insufficient Rule yea as no Rule Countenancing this their Distraction from the diversities of Opinions Parties and Factions which are found among those who own it for their Rule yet they themselves for all the All-sufficiency of their Light within have Doubts Discords and Factions among themselves and each pretending the Light for its Authority So that their pretended Remedy is an early breeder of those Diseases for which
they boasted of it as an Infallible Cure 6. That therefore they now reduce the Light within each particular under the Superintendency of that they call the Light in the Body or Church of Christ which is no other than the Dictates and Impositions of those among them who assume that name and have the greatest interest to maintain it 7. That while they disown the Scriptures or Written Word to be a Rule of Faith and for tryal of Doctrines and Practices affirming the Spirit to be the only Rule they set up the Doctrines of GOOD ANCIENT FRIENDS i. e. of James Naylor who was bored thorow the Tongue for Blasphemy George Fox Edw Burroughs and such Wretches in its stead To which all must be Consentaneous or be condemned and by which their Ecclesiastical Censures must be passed 8. That the Faith they pretend to adhere unto claims no longer standing in this Testimony than good ancient Friends and what was delivered to the Authors of this Testimony I suppose by the foresaid good ancient Friends 9. That as great Disturbers and Contemners of Christian Congregations Ministry and Forms of Worship as they have been they having now set up such-like things of their own cannot digest the contempt and neglect of them from those Quakers who according to their Fundamental Principle oppose that among themselves which they all condemned in others 10. That to difference their Ministry Worship Meetings and Appointments of time to that end from theirs whom they condemn they father all on the Spirit of God calling themselves only its Instruments 11. That among the Quakers those who dissent from the Ruling party are as little endured as Dissenters among any whom they charge with Antichristianity and Oppression And upon persisting in their Non-conformity to the Dictates and Impositions of those who will call themselves the Church are ejected out of their Ministry Rule Office Dominion and Membership and shut out from having any thing to do in their Church-affairs yea and persecuted too so far as to be kept under with the power of God which is a Sentence that hath in it without their help an inexplicable as well as an unlimited sense 12. That they admit of none to their Debates about their more private and offensive Principles and ordering of their Ecclesiastical matters but such as they have made sure of and have well digested their Tenets or as they phrase it have a good understanding and true sense of things and are felt in a measure of the Vniversal Spirit 13. That the Counsel given by the leading Quakers is by them said to be the Counsel of the Wise-men and the Prophets 14. The Authoritative and Magisterial stile in which they express these Canons scil We declare and testifie We testifie in the Name of the Lord We warn and charge you 15. That they are very industrious for the suppressing of all Prints and Writings that have an ill Aspect on their Persons or Principles though published by Quakers No wonder then that their Votaries will not or dare not take the liberty of reading those Books which are published for their Conviction by professed Friends to their Souls who are as professed Adversaries to their Soul-destroying Opinions and Practices 16. 〈◊〉 their way of Licensing Books of theirs to be printed permits none to pass the Press but such as have the Approbation of the Tryers as they believe will answer the Witness of God i e. the Light which is the Quakers God and Guide even in their Adversaries From which it may be inferred That not only the corrupt Opinions but also all other Weaknesses and Extravagancies contained in their Books printed according to their Order may be fixed on not only their particular Authors but also on the Body of the Quakers and the Spirit by which they are led 17. That in all the matters contained in this Paper they ground not any Advice Counsel Charge or Determination on the Scriptures nor make any mention of their Direction or Authority while the Witness of God in Friends and the Doctrines of good ancient Friends are again and again made the Proofs and Tests of their proceeds By which 't is easily understood of what value or use the Scriptures are in their esteem It is not without ground of more than a Suspicion that the hand of the Jesuite hath been laying a Popish Plot in the business of Quakerism And although I was sometime as far from entertaining that Opinion as most I have found that in their Concerns which hath forced me into a strong Presumption of the truth of it And the more I understand them the more I am of that mind especially when I consider That the nearer they approach to any form the more of the Image of that Man of Sin appears upon them It was a cunning Artifice of Satan in his first Attempts by by his Quaking Instruments to draw them off from the Yoke of Christ in his Word and Ordinances by asserting That every man had a sufficient Light and Motion within himself which if heeded would be more effectual to render them perfect than all the Precepts and Rules in the Bible by which Pride Idleness and Libertinism is exceedingly gratified And when they were sufficiently distasted at and hardned against the holy Laws and Ordinances of Christ beyond hope of return then to fall on hammering those Bonds of his own to put upon them and frame them for his farther designs Wherein that Scripture is sadly verified by them While they promise them liberty they themselves are the servants of corruption c. 2 Pet. 2. 19 c. In my Book entituled Quakerism no Christianity I gave a large account of the Quakers building their Babes on the same Foundations on which Popery as such is foun 〈…〉 viz. Contempt of the Scriptures pretences of Infallibility 〈…〉 t immediate Inspirations vid. Chap. 4. Sect. 7. and Chap. 12. Sect. 2. Those instances I produced in them had chiefly a relation to their Doctrines and Enthusiasm I shall now add some remarkable parts of their Discipline Order and Rule wherein they symbolize with Rome no less than in the former 1. Do the Papists pretend themselves to be the only Church and all other Professors of the Christian Religion to be Heretick The Quakers call themselves only the Body the Church of Christ and all others Antichristian Heathen and Infidels 2. Do the Papists by their little Juncto's which they call General Councils make Laws Canons and Constitutions beside and contrary to the Scriptures and impose them on their Members as of Divine Authority So do the Quakers 3. Do the Papists admit none into their Councils but such as are in Unity with their Church and acknowledg the Pope the Roman Head Neither will the Quakers admit any though professed Quakers into their Councils or to order any thing in their Church-affairs who are Dissenters from the Ruling party are not in Vnity with the Body or that comply not with George Fox the
Quakers Pope 4. Do the Popish Councils with or without the Pope pretend the Spirit to be present with them and its Authority for all their Determinations to be Infallible Wherein do the Quakers differ from the same Arrogancy when they affirm themselves to meet by the Operation of the Spirit of Truth That the presence of the Lord is with them in their Confulâ—s and then testifie and impose them in the name of the Lord 5. Do the Romists call the Pope or the Pope with his Conventicle of the Prelates the Church and impose their Sentiments and Determinations as the mind and Laws of the Church The Quakers are herein not a hairs-breadth differing from them For that which they call the Light and Sense of the Body and its Determinations is no other than the Dictates and Opinions of George Fox and some of the Leading Quakers which yet are imposed on the rest of the Quakers as the Light of the Body or of the Church of Christ 6. Do the Papists obtrude a submission of the private Sentiments and Opinions of any of their Members to the Determination of the Pope or Pope and Council So do the Quakers requiring That no mans particular Opinion do lift up it self against the Light of the Body but be determined thereby and acquiesce therein 7. Do the Papists reject the Scriptures from being their Rule while they advance Traditions in their rooms The Quakers have gone beyond them who give not that Authority to the Scriptures which the Papists allow them and to over-match the Popish Traditions bring in the Doctrine of Good ancient Friends as their Rule while the Scriptures are denied that Preferment 8. For Implicite Faith the Quakers are no way inferiour to the most strict Votaries of Rome The pretended Light and Inspiration of their Leaders they have a swallow for that a Monster as big as a Whale will pass without haesitation And that these pretended Inspirations are indeed from the Spirit of God they have no other proof but the Opinion of their Infallibility or the Miracles in Spirit which George Fox talks of which are as indemonstrable as the other 9. The continual Sacrifice of Christ in the Popish Mass hath a good Preparative in that Principle of the Quakers That Christ in them doth offer up himself a living Sacrifice to God for them by which the wrath of God is appeased towards them 'T is but removing the invisible Sacrifice from the dark and close corner within to the Altar in some visible sign 't is all one Which may in time appear as agreeing to the light as W. Penn's Ceremony of keeping the Hat off in Prayer doth fitly signifie the Veil removed from their hearts It would yet seem a lame Comparison between the Papists and Quakers if among the Quakers there be no Idols nor yet the Image of the Pope the greatest Idol of all the rest But the Jesuites and Factors of Rome have not been such unskilful Artists and unfaithful Servants to their Master as to do their work so imperfectly 10. If the Light within be not God as certainly it is not then do they professedly give Divine Worship to a Creature or to an Imagination of their own framing And if the Souls and Spirits of men are God or a part of God and of his Being by their Principles which are as truly their Principles as words can express then they are Idolaters with a witness 11. But the Romists give Divine Worship to Saints which is not as most believe the Quakers Idolatry If I do not prove them herein to overmatch them I am greatly mistaken and whether I am or not I will leave it to my Readers judgment The Quakers Worship as they profess is inward Worship which all confess to be the most excellent part of Worship And therefore if they affirm Worship to be given to those whom they put in the room of Saints it must be acknowledged that they worship them though their bodies bow not down to them They profess to worship those who are sprung from the noble gentle Seed and that with Divine Worship and to bow down to the lowest appearances of Christs Light and Spirit Yea George Fox tells us That not to worship Christ in them is to worship Men Devils or Angels This kind of Idolatry may explain the mystery of the Quakers looking so devoutly for a considerable season in each others faces when they meet continuing all the while in a deep silence And there are sufficient witnesses living of the bodily and visible Worship which James Naylor received from divers of them Herein they exceed the Papists Idolatry in the number of their Idols being all that have Christ in them or that are sprung from the noble gentle Seed viz. All thorow Quakers And in the quality of their Idol-Saints for in the room of S. Peter Paul the Virgin Mary are William George c. who are as like to those Saints as the blacker sort of white Devils And also in point of Time for the Papists worship their Saints after their death but the Quakers worship theirs while living See Quakerism no Christianity Chap. 16. for a fuller proof of this 12. To find a Pope or somewhat like him among the Quakers we need seek no further than George Fox who is among them a Pope and more than a Pope His Supremacy among the Quakers is sufficiently known among them and by some lamented But I shall descend to some particulaâ— instances in which George Fox equals or out-does the Pope in his Papal Arrogance and Blasphemy I could produce woful instances from the hand of credible Reports but I shall decline them and present you with a Letter to him from Josiah Coale one of the Quakers chief Ministers which contains a Map of a world of Blasphemies in a small room This Letter I had out of the Quakers Registry it being there preserved as a Testimony of the greatness of George Fox And as bad as it is I having printed it in my Vindication William Penn undertakes twice in print to vindicate every line of it DEar George Fox Who art the Father of many Nations whose Life reached thorow us thy Children even to the Isles afar off To the begetting of many again unto a lively Hope for which Generations to come shall call thee Blessed whose being and habitation is the power of the Highest in which thou rules and governs in Righteousness and thy Kingdom is established in peace and the encrease thereof is without end Doth the Pope pretend that from Peter's Chair Ministers were sent out to convert all those Nations who professed or do profess the Christian Religion Such an one is George Fox said to be for he is called The Father of many Nations and indeed of almost all who are Quakers who with them are the only Christians Doth the Pope pretend to be Christs Vicar and clothed with his power So is it pretended of George that his Habitation is in the power
the present posture of the Quakers Religion as may render it no great strain to jump into it when-ever they find it their interest For why should it be thought unreasonable that they should rather choose to submit their particular Sentiments to the Determinations of a Pope and Council who pretend to the Spirits guidance infallibly therein than to the Determinations of George Fox and his silly Adherents called the Body who can give no better assurance of their Infallibility or common Reason either than mere pretences mounted on confident Ignorance and Arrogancy Especially considering that such a change will better bear the fine affected Mystery of being felt in a measure of the Vniversal Spirit which seems to be no other than the so-much vaunted Universality of Rome cast in the Canting Mould of the Quakers Phraseology Besides they will then have the Accession of the numerous Auxiliaries of Rome not needing to be so straitned and put to their shifts as now by laying the weight of their yet unformed Cause on so many Equivocations and thin Subterfuges defended by only two or three unskilful and unwary Patrons And what if they shall think meet to embrace the Traditions of Rome instead of THE DOCTRINES OF GOOD ANCIENT FRIENDS I am sure it would be short of a Miracle And the things being the same in Substance why should a mere verbal difference be a Gulph unpâ—ssable And if many of the more devout sort of Quakers should be loth to part with their Darling Singularities and Morosities If Rome be pleased so far to indulge to them as to afford them a Dispensation till time and other things have weaned them it is not the first time she hath been so kind a Mother However if they will but own the Roman Head as far as they now own George Fox they may have their Religion with all or most of its other Disorders and be owned good Catholicks of the Foxonian Order and George Fox Sainted to boot for his good service I desire the Quakers to be but so just to themselves as to consider whether what hath been said do not at least call them to a suspicion that their Leaders are rowing towards Tybur whatever face they put upon it And what an exchange they have made in rejecting the Scriptures from being their Rule taking at length the Impositions of men in its room which are so much the more wicked and blasphemous as they lay them to the Spirit of God as their Father and so much the more dangerous as the Opinion these men have obtained among them will render it neither pleasant nor credible for them now to question any thing they say or reject any thing they impose A Summary of the Capital Errours and Blasphemies of the Quakers Concerning the Godhead THey deny a Trinity of distinct Persons to subsist in the Godhead They own the Father Son and Holy Ghost to be God under those distinct terms yet deny either of them to have any relation or property incommunicable to each other They divide the Divine Being and Godhead into measures and parts Concerning the Scriptures They hold That the Scriptures are not the Word of God and that Christ only is the Word of God That much of them were the Words of God but those things are not now the words of God That a great part of the Scriptures were the words of wicked men and the Devil therefore cannot be the Words of God Not considering those parts of the Scriptures to be the Historical Word or Words of God containing in them a Divine Truth of History That the Scriptures are not a Rule of faith and life That not any part of the Scripture hath Authority to oblige us to any matter of faith or practice unless it be dictated to us or inspired into us by the Spirit immediately as the Prophets Apostles and Penmen of the Scriptures received it That those who determine their faith and practice by the Scripture are begotten into the words without the life and power That he that preaches the Doctrines of the Apostles and Prophets expressed in the Scriptures not having them by Inspiration as they and yet calls them the Word or Words of the Lord tells lies is a Thief and a Robber stealing the Prophets words c. and runs into other mens lines and labours That to follow the examples of the Church in those things which were commanded to them and practised by them under the Gospel or New-Testament-Administration is to commit Idolatry and to offend God by making to our selves Graven Images and Likenesses That to own and embrace the Scriptures for our Rule is Idolatry placing them in the room of Christ the Light within Concerning Christ. They hold That the Son of God is Christ and also that the Father or the Spirit is Christ as well as he That God or the Godhead only is the Christ That Christ is not of the Humane Nature or Man according to Adam's nature That the Body of Jesus the Son of Mary which died on the Cross without the Gates of Jerusalem was never nor is not an Essential Constitutive part of the Christ of God That the aforesaid Body is not now glorified and in Heaven and that it is not now alive That Christ was never seen with bodily eyes That Christ never died in a proper sense he being only God and so immortal That God is now manifested in the flesh as he was in the Son of Mary above 1600 year since That Christ hath Manhood but is not a Man of our nature That there is a heavenly Body of Christ consisting of Spiritual flesh blood and bones which came down from Heaven and dwelt in the Body that was born of the Virgin Mary and dwells now at least in every Quaker That every man hath a Light in him which is Christ the Eternal Word of God Concerning Christianity They hold That the Quakers only are true Christians and own the true Christ and all who own not and submit not unto the Light within as Christ are Infidels That those whom we call the Heathen have somewhat of Christianity because they have some justice and common naural Vertues although they believed not on Jesus the Son of Mary nor have any knowledg of him nor make any Profession of him to be their Lord and Saviour Concerning the Soul of man They hold That the Souls of men are a part of the Being of God of his very Life and Substance came out of God are no Creatures are Infinite in themselves and shall return into God again Concerning Redemption They hold That Christ came to Redeem the Seed which is no other but Christ himself That Christ before man's Conversion is the lost in man That the Redemption by Christ is to obedience to the Light within and thereby to Peace and Righteousness That we are not redeemed by what was done and suffered by the Son of Mary above 1600 years since and without us in respect of place That Christ
abhor a Competition between Jesus Christ and G. Fox And what the Lord and Master did in this case so did his servants the Apostles as I might instance abundantly I will direct you only to Peters Sermons Acts 2. I need not instance in any more He that hath read the Scriptures may easily furnish himself And who can doubt but they who made use of the Letter of the Scriptures for evidence of what in their Ministry they preached or writ were Ministers of the Letter as well as of the Spirit And moreover if we consider the letter of the § 3 Scripture to be the letter of the Spirit written by its direction and to express in its kind the mind of the Spirit This Querie of George Fox may be turned upon himself thus and how can ye be Ministers of the Spirit if ye be not Ministers of the Letter also The latter part of his Sentence is a higher Demonstration § 4 of the fallibility of his Chair And how can they but delude people who are not infallible True indeed if they did perswade people that they could not in any thing be mistaken or be ignorant but seeing only the Quakers pretended Ministry and the Pope of Rome do assume this to themselves they only are in a necessity of deluding the people for our parts who live in all manner of pride as the Quakers by their spirit of Infallibility do charge us we are not yet come up to their Perfection for we freely acknowledge that we may erre in Doctrine and do erre in Practice which we bewail before God and men and also that the people may not be deluded by us we desire them and charge them not to pin their Faith on our sleeves but repair to the Law and to the Testimony and search the Scriptures try whether the things we affirm be so or no And if we speak contrary to the Mind of God there expressed to reject our Doctrine and also that they follow our Example no further then we follow Christ even that Man Christ Jesus who was for a time on Earth but is now in Heaven But what do you think of the Holy Apostles were § 5 they universally infallible could not they erre if you say so Paul will convict you of errour in his charging Peter none of the least of the Apostles with erring and in something deluding the people Gal. 2. 12 13 14. Peter dissembled the truth in practising the Mosaical distinction of Jews and Gentiles and separating from the believing Gentiles as unclean And the other Jews yea and Barnabas also was carried away with his dissimulation But then you will say how can we be sure that what they wrote and taught was truth I answer that although they might in some things be carried away by temptation as Peter was in that case yet their doctrine which they professed to be from the Lord and by the Inspiration of God could not admit of erring or fallibility and that not because they had an habitual infallibility in all things but because of the love of God to his people the regard of his honour and the firmness of his Promises which he made to them those especially John 14. 26. But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you John 16. 13. Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come Now these Promises being made to the Apostles for furnishing them with ability for their work as Apostles they may be concluded to be infallibly guided by the Spirit but in other things though by their eminent habitual grace they were not likely to fail as others who were not cloathed with such a measure and degree as they yet it was more then possible that they should fail but according to G. Fox's infallibility and without limitation the Apostles themselves could not but delude the People But to conclude this particular of Infallibility § 6 take beside what hath been said one considerable proof of their non-attainment of Infallibility and that is the most grosly absurd Exposition they give of the Scriptures See what follows with the eyes of Christian men We are accused that we judge people It is written the Saints shall judge the world an infallible proof as if it were a Command or Prophecy of the Saints i. e. the Quakers calling men all to nought how serious so ever who are not professedly conducted and saved by the light within but he goes on more and more infallibly And for Judgement am I come into the World saith Christ Parnel shield of the truth P. 33. As if Christs coming into the World sixteen hundred years ago were to the end that they might pass their rash Censures freely But he grows still And where Christ ruleth in his Saints he judgeth the world as Paul witnessed It is no more I but Christ in me Where Paul witnessed this such a Spirit of discerning as they tell us of must find out for the Scripture hath nothing like it only in two places It is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth Rom. 7. 17. in me But I am sure Sin and Christ are two things Ye not I but Christ liveth in me But that was not Gal. 2. 20. to censure others but to comfort Paul under the hard censures and usages of others But the passage of coming into the World for Judgment brings into my minde one remarkable Expositor It is a right and sound doctrine to preach him as he is the light of Humphrey Smith the true and everlasting rule c. p 29. p. 32. the World and lighteth every man that cometh into the world But what world is this This is the great Prophet who is come into the World which is set in the heart Eccles 3. 11. which is in the midst out of which Moses saith the Lord would raise up a Prophet Lev. 8. 15. which Prophet being come he saith I am come a Light into the World John 1. 12. and 12. 35 36 46. The World being set in the heart there is the light of him who saith I am the light So that with him the World is the heart Christs coming into the World is his comeing into the heart and as he came into the world the heart so he is also raised up out of the world the heart but how like such a Prophet is to Moses I should too much suspect your understanding if I should trouble you with my sense he that is declined as far as dotage may perceive it without a Guide as also the gross darkness of this Expositor in the rest Let us see what sound Exposition the great Lanthorn § 7 of the Quakers gives for I
all his Vagaries who hath the faculty only to the stupidly ignorant Fallere mille modis nâ—c non intexere fraudes In the winding up of your intangled bottom you frame an Objection thus Object 1. Though you have said a great deal to Page 37. prove that Christians should have an infallible Spirit in general Yet you prove nothing distinctly but confound a Judge Rule and Guide together Habemus confitentem reum Least you eat your words I shall put good proof § 2 of the truth of your confession upon Record You say in your answer to your own Objection That to me there is no more difference then essentially there can be in the Wisdom Justice and Holiness of God They are so interwovâ—n that the one goes not without the other P. 17. 6 Thus it is in being a Judge Rule and Guide c. What would you say of a man that should affirm his brains heart and lungs being essential to the life of the body and so interwoven that the one goes not without the other are but one and the same thing the one cannot live and be in good state without the other and therefore they are but one and the same thing without difference or distinction And the man suppose John-a-Nokes should upon this ground when he hath a Delirium or Vertigo diseases seated in the brain be very busie to enquire what is good for the Pthysick or Cough of the Lungs or palpitation of the heart but being rebuked for his impertinencies should reply they cannot be one without the other They are essential to the body of man its perfection therefore what is said of the one may be said of the other and what is good against the Pthysick or Cough is good must be good for a Vertigo or Delirium Let me advise you next time you write to frame no Objections against your self unless you shall have learned better to solve them A second Objection you frame thus But at this § 3. Page 38. rate you utterly contemn and seclude the Scriptures as having no part nor portion in being a Rule Judge or Guide to Christians I would your whole book had consisted of Objections for you have spoken more truth of your own framing in two Objections than in most of your affirmations You attempt to solve this with much the like success as the other you praise the Scriptures and hug them hugely till you have reduced them to much like the shadow of the true Rule And then you illustrate the sense of their Authority in these very words He that is so inward with a Prince as to know vivâ voce what his mind is heeds not so much the same when he meets it in print because in print as because he hath received a more living touch and sensible impression from the Prince himself to whose secrets he is privy And this the Scriptures teach us to believe is a right Christian state and priviledge For said the Apostle we have the mind of Christ and the secrets of God are with them that fear him And guide me by thy counsel and bring me to thy glory What Friends but when they read this Princely § 4 flourish but will conclude not only that he hath done it neatly but hit the Nail o' th' head full and spoken their minds e'n as right as if he had been inspir'd by them all and no doubt he shall be their White Boy for all his defects who strokes them so finely and advances them to such a singular Dignity of privacy and inwardness with God that not only his revealed will in print is known by them in a more honourable and immediate way but also his secrets which never stooped so low as to be wrapt in letters Here we have as in a glass W. P.'s Opinion of the immediate teachings of the Spirit to be not only above his teachings by the Scripture as to have a thing whispered in the ear from the Princes own mouth doth excel any Narrative by a Declaration but also so much above them that he who enjoys this favour which must still be no other but a Quaker heeds not so much the same in print How much just not at all For if this viva vox more living touch and sensible impression do not put Authority into them they are but meer Cyphers And if this living touch c. as he believes be without or contrary to the Scripture 't is all as good and Authentick It is upon my Spirit is of much more Divine Obligation than it is written But Mr. Pen That the Scriptures teach us to believe this is a right Christians state and priviledge is a hard-hearted saying The Scripture knows nothing of it nor could I ever yet have a proof that any of you all ever heard the Voice of God as vivâ voce is to be understood and I am very well satisfied the Quakers may be mistaken if they should presume they did ever since some of them took Paul Hobsons mumbling through a Trunk and a hole in the wall to be the voice or the Lord. But that this should be the state of a right Christian wo worth the days past for so many Ages wherein among all professed Christians but now and then one were in this state and that but a little while e're their folly appeared to all men only now and then the Papists had a Job to do for which a viva vox was a fit pretence But you have little Charity in unchristianing all the § 5 world whose very state is not according to these Characters A man in the dark especially if his fancy be strong is full of Visions which have no other being than his imagination affords them this appears to be your state and the part you are acting I shall in short consider your warrants which you § 6 annex to your rare Harangue For said the Apostles we have the mind of Christ Sure he had a good part of it by Tradition from the other Apostles who were Christs Witnesses of what he said and did and we have it in the Scripture And the Secrets of God are with them that fear him But where did the Apostle say this 'T is no matter if it was not the Apostle Paul it was the Apostle David and that 's as good Psa 25. 14. Nay it is all one if it had been the Apostle G. Fox or the Apostle W. Pen whose words and writings are of Prophetical and Apostolical Authority and may be numbred among the Scriptures as well as Pauls or Davids or any other witness your audacious lines put in a different letter to be so understood You say but the Scriptures are herein fulfilled the holy way the vulturous eye did never see Pag. 84. and that same ravenous Spirit after knowledge our adversary must come to know judged c. It is further to be considered that the words you quote out of the Scripture you pervert and the sense also
for secret you put secrets for Lord you put God For the latter you 'l say it is one and the same sense for the Lord is God and God is the Lord But here you are too bold for all that God hath more names in Scripture than one and if the varying had nothing of significancy the Wisdom of God would not have so expressed himself but to put secrets for secret mars the sense But you 'l say not the truth Yes verily the truth in this place for this Text doth not say so and to say it saith and the Apostle saith what they say not is an untruth and if I greatly mistake not the words that follow and he will shew them his Covenant are interpretative of the word secret For indeed though the matter and Surface of the Covenant be obvious to every common intelligence yet the necessity worth a considerable part of the sense but especially the faith interest and well-grounded comfort of it are the secrets which this one great secret the Covenant contains and this Scripture speaks of imparting to those who fear the Lord yet it excludes not external means And guide me by thy counsel What is this to oppose § 8 or exclude Gods guidance by his written or printed word Have I not written to thee excellent Pro. 22. 20. things in counsels and knowledge Sure these were then a fit Guide as Gods means But verily there Vitia nostra quae amamus defendimus malumus ea excusare quam excutere Sen. Ep. 117. appears such a Spirit of slumber idleness and worse in your labours as if you gloried in a careless or designed perverting the Scriptures both for sense words and form and to vindicate the same of G. Fox by the Authority of your like Crimes or greater The Text saith Thou shalt guide me c. which expresses his Faith in Gods promises but you turn it into a prayer Guide me c. I had almost forgotten a main consideration in § 9 your flourish about immediate teachings viz. â—e meets it in print because in print you here insinuate Psa 73. 20. the formal cause of our respects to the written word or printed to be its being in print and that there lyes the difference between you and us Not so good Mr. Pen the beam in our eyes is not so big Neither are we inclined to that piece of superstition for then no sooner you could get your conceits in print but immediately we must hugg them and get the second impression in our hearts without more a do for they are in print But if you would know the Truth and speak it of us the next time you have occasion it is this We value not the sense for the prints sake but the print for the sense sake and the blessings that attends that way of conveying the holy and revealed Will of God And so much to correct your vapour which may do you good if you have so much good nature left as is able to work with it And now Mr. Pen to shut up this discourse I shall SECT IX shew you your face in the glass of sense if you think your eyes worth the using to that end If you had dress'd your self by the glass of the Scripture at this coming abroad you had certainly been free of these spots Foul Epithets as knave pupy fool rascal loggerhead Pag 7 Cheat. This you say was the language of your adversaries small Cryer but as you call it of a loathsome scent so you blow it on the Author of the book within five lines tryers of other mens spirits who have so little proof of the knowledg of their own as to be wanting in the alphabet or first principles of common civility This is not fair to charge him with anothers faults But compare this Civility of yours with your own thus far this impertinent man To all this I say Pag. III. he obtâ—udes an arrant lie upon our very senses Wretched scribler how idle frivolous and how very troublesome is he with his how ridiculâ—us remarks If you are not guilty of the obtrusion you impute to § 2 your adversary and that frequently and apparently I cannot read and transcribe english But this I take the trouble of to let the world know that W. Pen will daub his adversary and that Per fas per nefas and like one greedy of victory Aut inveniam aut faciam You will find him in faults or make gross ones and charge upon him G. Fox he thinks has miscited a Scripture ergo he is Pag 4. an Impostor and the Quakers a pack of Hereticks It is after this lofty manner of disputing c. I never read a more confident untruth The Authors Argument is too large to transcribe here Your adversary saith some of you excell in many Pag 1. things which are in themselves good and laudable You say If we excel in all things as he confesseth Pag. 10 which is to say that there are but few things wherein we done 't transcend all others and you direct us to page the first where we may prove your falsifying Your adversary saith it is rare with him For to Pag. 1. use any text and not abuse it You say A few Scriptures he mostly confesseth that but one of us hath miscited either in reference to a disorderly quotation of the words or unsuitable application of them you know he pretends to deal but with G. Fox's abuses Your Adversary saith And indeed I have found Pag 2. it very fruitless to deal with you by way of reason and Scripture and Page 3. I will not now deal with you so much by Arguments drawn from reason or Scripture and depending purely on the understanding and mind c. You say He promiseth for the future to avoid the use Pag 13. of both Scripture and reason and direct to Page 2. I could produce in your Spirit of Truth many more And acter calumniare aliquâ—d adherebit such falsities in point of fact and you saying Page 1. You carefully perused the Book you prove your self to be more than a meer careless even a wilful transgressor But if this be your way of answering your adversaries and throwing contempt and reproach upon § â— them 't is not possible for any to escape your hardest 〈◊〉 And I am perswaded you are secure of your 〈◊〉 considering what is objected against your principles and practices of a Religious concern by any of your 〈◊〉 writings or you would not thus adventure y 〈…〉 â—â—putation with them I would desire you if you will hereafter pretend to be 〈…〉 swerer you would be more solid and rational then when you find your adversaries appealing to the light within you to judg whether G. Fox have rightly transcribed the texts of Scripture he pretends to use which may be done with a little measure of natural light and common sense to conclude P. 77. 78. with a high
Moses and other Prophets were seized with at the appearance of God The Truth No other but Christ the light within Speaking Truth Truly When it is spoken from immediate inspiration and motion of the Spirit but however true without these it is falsly spoken Witnessing to the Truth Declaring or suffering for the light within and its dictates V The flesh of the Vail The Body wherein Christ dwelt and tabernacled which for a while he took of the Virgin Mary but at the death of that left it no body knows where The Vail is over them The belief of the Man Christ Jesus which was of our Nature to be the Christ and now existing in Heaven in that body of flesh of our Nature which he took of the Virgin Mary The Vessel The Body wherein for a while Christ dwelt also our bodies Victory over the devil sin flesh world Perfection in this life resulting from the travail of the light within In the Vnbelief Not acknowledging the light within to be the only Teacher and Saviour whatever the faith and life otherwise may be The Vncircumcised and Vnclean All that are not Quakers Vngodly The same Vnlearned and without Vnderstanding To be without the light within its teachings and immediate Revelations The Voice of the Lord. The secret immediate lively touches and teachings within W Hirelings serving for Wages Ministers who receive maintenance little less then Robbery at least very Jewish and Antichristian Wait on the light Desisting from a search after Truth by any external means and passively attending to the motions and teachings within Watch to the light To be so listning and attentive to the inward teachings as not either to let slip any of its motions or reject them Blind Watch-men Those Ministers who see and warn by Scripture-light and not their light within Watch to the Morning To be diligent to observe and improve the first breakin gs forth of the power of the light within The Way CHRIST The way of Truth Those into which they are led by the pure light within The Whore of Babylon All forms of Worship visible Worship all that is believed or practiced from the written Word Will of God The Commands from within from the light Will of Man Will of the Flesh All that we chuse by the direction of the understanding or in which the humane faculties have any thing to do Will-worship Whatever Worship is not from the motions of the light within Children of Wisdom The Quakers born to the light within We Witness We experience we speak it from the testimony and feeling of the light and motions within And Pen saith This is right witnessing to witness what they experience But they that testifie what they believe from the Scriptures and right rational demonstrations go by hear say and reports but cannot witness it The Word The Word of God The Word of the Lord. No other but Christ the Eternal God The secrets of the Work of God The inward power and motions neither wrought nor perceived by or with the use of the humane understanding and will Righteousness of Works Whatever man hath any hand in or doth chuse The World All that are not Quakers Worship in Spirit Not the Worship where the heart and will goes along with the outward appearance but what is from the motions of the light within Wrath of God Day of Wrath. The inward judgings and terrours by the Light Christ within and that in this world The Writings when spoken diminishingly The Scriptures or written Word I have the Witness of my Conscience that I have not in this Key in any measure abused or wronged the Quakers but have declared what in their Writings and Verbal Converse I have found to be true and could have proved by particular instances but for being too large They who weigh what is written in the Body of the Book may find satisfaction in the most if not all of them THE CONCLVSION I Have not in this Treatise dealt with the more minute and light Errours and Absurdities of the Quakers because they would amount to too large a Volume for this Subject and I love not to Tythe Mint Annis and Cummin where weightier matters call forth my thoughts Where the Lord shall make what hath been written convincing and effectual those Superstructures and Appendices of the conceit of Perfection denying the sober use of Civil Ceremonies unnecessary scrupling at modest Ornaments Pedantick Words Phrases and Gestures obstinate Jewish and Ceremonious respect to this or that place for Worship and a multitude more will quickly and easily dissolve of themselves I doubt not but all whose Judgments are not in § 2 captivity to the silliest Errours will conclude with me that Quakerism is no Christianity yea Not consistent with Christianity being no more capable of dwelling together in one Breast than light and darkness in their absolute and supreme Dominion I am perswaded that all who have honest meanings among the Quakers little think that in turning to Quakerism they turn Christianity out of doors yet it is a truth a sad truth that calls for more serious notice than themselves or most others afford it who profess and that sincerely a love to Truth and Souls My greatest discouragement in writing this Treatise § 3 was from the sense of the Quakers being out of the reach of Scripture and Reason to almost or altogether a Spiritual Delirium Yet I was not without some encouragement from my hopes that the Lord would bless it to the informing and securing of many whose feet are yet out of their snare I have not a little been amazed to read in their Authors such Expressions as prompt us to divest our selves of being men that we may be Christians As if Rational and Spiritual God and the Scriptures Understanding and Christianity were mortal Foes I intended a Chapter by it self to demonstrate Quakerism to be no Christianity from its excluding right Reason any thing called Reason from having to do in the search after Christianity its Choice Defence or Approbation I care not if I collect a few for my Readers satisfaction § 4 Smith's Prim. pag. 56. Quest How do you manifest this inward foundation which you say is Christ to be the true and only foundation which God hath laid Answ From the feeling we have of it by which we know that it is sure in us and from the sure and certain knowledge which we have of it in the feeling we manifest it from its own Nature and Being to its own Nature and Being You may here perceive what a reasonable Religion the Quakers is whose demonstration is nothing else but sense and feeling and this sense and feeling nothing is capable of but the very nature and being of this Foundation He proceeds further pag. 65. Quest And can § 5 none have true Faith unto Salvation and Life Eternal but such as are of your Opinion Answ We are not in any Opinion but in the principle of Life by which we are