unmoveable foundation of all Christian faith which argument when well weighed I hope will have weight with all sorts of Christians and it is this That which all Professors of Christianity of whatsoever kind are forced ultimately to recur unto when pressed to the last That for and because of which all other foundations are recommended and accounted worthy to be believed and without which they are granted to be of no weight at all must needs be the only most true certain and unmovable foundation of all Christian Faith But inward immediate objective revelation by the Spirit is that which all Professors of Christianity of whatsoever kind are forced ultimately to recur unto c. Therefore c. The Proposition is so evident that it will not be denyed The assumption shall be proved by parts And first as to Papists they place their foundation in the judgment of the Church and Tradition If we press them to say why they believe as the Church doth Their answer is because the Church is always led by the infallible Spirit So here the leading of the Spirit is the utmost foundation Again If we ask them why we ought to trust Tradition They answer Because these Traditions were delivered us by the Doctors and Fathers of the Church which Doctors and Fathers by the Revelation of the Holy Ghost commended the Church to observe them Here again all ends in the Revelation of the Spirit And for the Protestants and Socinians both which acknowledg the Scriptures to be the foundation and rule of their Faith the one is subjectively influenced by the Spirit of God to use them the other as manageing them with and by their own Reason Ask both or either of them why they trust in the Scriptures and take them to be their Rule Their answer is Because we have in them the mind of God delivered unto us by those to whom these things were inwardly immediately and objectively revealed by the Spirit of God And not because this or that man wrote them but because the Spirit of God dictated them It is strange then that men should render that so uncertain and dangerous to follow upon which alone the certain ground and foundation of their own faith is Built Or that they should shut themselves out from that Holy Fellowship with God which only is enjoyed in the Spirit in which we are commanded both to walk and live If any reading these things find themselves moved by the strength of these Scripture arguments to assent and believe such Revelations necessary and yet find themselves strangers to them which as I observed in the beginning is the cause that this is so much gain-said and contradicted Let them know that it is not because it is ceased to become the priviledge of every Christian that they do not feel it but rather because they are not so much Christians by Nature as by Name and let such know that the secret Light which shines in the heart and reproves unrighteousness is the small beginnings of the Revelation of God's Spirit which was first sent into the world to reprove it of Sin John 16.8 And as by forsaking Iniquity thou com'st to be acquainted with that Heavenly voice in thy heart thou shalt feel as the Old man the Natural man that savoureth not the things of God's Kingdom is put off with his evil and corrupt affections and Lusts I say thou shalt feel the New Man the Spiritual birth and Babe raised which hath its Spiritual Sences and can see feel taste handle and smell the things of the Spirit but till then the knowledg of things Spiritual is but as an historical Faith but as the description of the Light of the Sun or of curious Colours to a blind man who though of the largest capacity cannot so well understand it by the most acute and lively description as a child can by seeing them So neither can the natural man of the large capacity by the best words even Scripture words so well understand the Mysteries of God's Kingdom as the least and weakest child who tasteth them by having them revealed inward and objectively by the Spirit Wait then for this in the small Revelation of that pure Light which first reveals things more known and as thou becom'st fitted for it thou shalt receive more and more and by a living experience easily refute their Ignorance who ask how dost thou know that thou art acted by the Spirit of God which will appear to thee a question no less ridiculous then to ask one whose eyes are open how he knows the Sun shines at Noon-day and though this be the surest and certainest way to answer all objections yet by what is above written it may appear that the mouths of all such opposers as deny this Doctrine may be shut by unquestionable and unanswerable reasons The Third Proposition Concerning the Scriptures From these Revelations of the Spirit of God to the Saints have proceeded the Scriptures of Truth which contain I. A faithful historical account of the actings of Gods People in divers ages with many singular and remarkable Providences attending them II. A Prophetical account of several things whereof some are already past and some yet to come III. A full and ample account of all the chief Principles of the Doctrine of Christ held forth in divers precious Declarations Exhortotions and Sentences which by the moving of God's Spirit were at several times and upon sundry occasions spoken and written unto some Churches and their Pastors Nevertheless because they are only a Declaration of the Fountain and not the Fountain it self therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and Knowledg nor yet the adequate primary Rule of Faith and manners Yet because they give a true and faithful Testimony of the first Foundation they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule subordinate to the Spirit from which they have all their excellency and certainty for as by the inward Testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them so they testifie that the Spirit is that Guide by which the Saints are led into all Truth therefore according to the Scriptures the Spirit is the First and Principal Leader Seeing then that we do therefore receive and believe the Scriptures because they proceeded from the Spirit for the very same reason is the Spirit more Originally and Principally the Rule according to that received Maxime in the Schools Propter quod unumquodque est tale iliud ipsum est magis tale That for which a thing is such the thing it self is more such § I. THe former part of this Proposition though it needs no Apology for it yet it is a good Apology for us and will help to sweep away that among many other Calumnys wherewith we are often loaded as if we were vilifiers and deniers of the Scriptures for in that which we affirm of them it doth appear at what high rate we value them accounting them without all
sees meet whether they be a prescribed Form as a Liturgy or Prayers conceived extemporally by the natural strength and faculty of the mind they are all but Superstitions Will-worship and abominable Idolatry in the sight of God which are to be denyed rejected and separated from in this day of his Spiritual arising however it might have pleased him who winked at the times of Ignorance with a respect to the simplicity and integrity of some and of his own innocent Seed which lay as it were buried in the hearts of Men under the mass of Superstition to blow upon the dead and dry bones and to raise some breathings and answer them and that until the day should more clearly dawn and break forth The Twelfth Proposition Concerning Baptism As there is one Lord and one Faith so there is one Baptism which is not the putting away the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good Conscience before God by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and this Baptisme is a Pure and Spiritual thing to wit the Baptism of the Spirit and fire by which we are buried with him that being washed and purged from our sins we may walk in newness of Life of which the Baptism of John was a figure which was commanded for a time and not to continue for ever as to the Baptism of Infants it is a meer humane Tradition for which neither Precept nor Practice is to be found in all the Scripture The Thirteenth Proposition Concerning the Communion or participation of the body and blood of Christ. The Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is inward and Spiritual which is the participation of his flesh and blood by which the inward mâ—n is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ dwells of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with his Disciples was a figure which they even used in the Church for a time who had received the substance for the cause of the weak even as abstaining from things strangled and from blood the washing one anothers feet and the anointing of the sick with Oyl all which are commanded with no less authority and solemnity than the former yet seeing they are but the shaddows of better things they cease in such as have obtained the Substance The Fourteenth Proposition Concerning the Power of the Civil Magistrate in matter purely religious and pertaining to the Conscience Since God hath assumed to himself the power and Dominion of the Conscience who alone can rightly instruct and govern it therefore it is not lawful for any whatsoever by vertue of any Authority or Principality they bear in the Government of this World to force the Consciences of others and therefore all Killing Banishing Fining Imprisoning and other such things which men are afflicted with for the alone exercise of their Conscience or difference in Worship or Opinion proceedeth from the Spirit of Cain the murtherer and is contrary to the Truth providing always that no Man under the pretence of Conscience prejudice his Neighbour in his Life or Estate or do any thing destructive to or inconsistent with human Society in which case the Law is for the transgressor and Justice is to be administred upon all without respect of Persons The Fifteenth Proposition Concerning Salutations and Recreations c. Seeing the chief end of all Religion is to redeem Man from the Spirit and vain Conversation of this World and to lead into inward communion with God before whom if we fear always we are accounted happy therefore all the vain customs and habits thereof both in word and deed are to be rejected and forsaken by those who come to this fear such as the taking off the Hat to a Man the bowings and cringings of the Body and such other Salutations of that kind with all the foolish and superstitious formalities attending them all which Man has invented in his degenerate state to feed his pride in the vain pomp and glory of this World as also the unprofitable Plays frivolous Recreations Sportings and Gaming 's which are invented to pass away the pretious time and divert the mind from the witness of God in the heart and from the living sense of his fear and from that Evangelical Spirit wherewith Christians ought to be leavened and which leads into sobriety gravity and Godly fear in which as we abide the blessing of the Lord is felt to attend us in these actions which we are necessarily engaged in order to the taking care for the sustenance of the outward man AN APOLOGY For the true CHRISTIAN DIVINITY The first Proposition Seeing the heighth of all happiness is placed in the true knowledg of God this is Life eternal to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent the true and right understanding of this foundation and ground of knowledg is that which is most necessary to be knâ—wn and believed in the first place HE that desireth to acquire any art or science seeketh first those means by which that art or science is obtained If we ought to do so in things Natural and Earthly how much more then in Spiritual In this affair then should our inquiry be the more diligent because he that errs in the entrance is not so easily reduced again into the right way he that misseth his road from the beginning of his Journey and is deceived in his first Marks at his first seting forth the greater his Mistake is the more difficult will be his Entrance into the right way Thus when a Man first proposeth to himself the knowledg of God from a sense of his own unworthiness and from the great weariness of his mind occasioned by the secret checks of his Conscience and the tender yet real glances of Gods Light upon his Heart the earnest desires he has to be redeemed from his present trouble and the fervent breathings he has to be eased of his disordered Passions and Lusts and to find quietness and peace in the certain knowledg of God and in the assurance of his love and good will towards him makes his heart tender and ready to receive any Impression and so not having then a distinct discerning through forwardness embraceth any thing that brings present ease If either through the reverence he bears to certain persons or from the secret inclination to what doth comply with his natural Disposition he fall upon any Principles or Means by which he apprehends he may come to know God and so doth center himself it will be hard to remove him thence again how wrong soever they may be For the first anguish being over he becomes more hardy and the Enemy being near creates a false peace and a certain confidence which is strengthened by the minds unwillingness to enter again into new doubtfulness or the former anxiety of a search This sufficiently verified in the example of the Pharisees and Jewish Doctors who most of all resisted Christ disdaining to be esteemed ignorant
life eternal with it therefore I have affirmed and that truely that this knowledg is no otherways attained and that none have any true ground to believe they have attained it who have it not by this revelation of Gods Spirit The certainty of which truth is such that it hath been acknowledged by some of the most refined and famous of all sorts of Professors of Christianity in all ages who being truly upright-hearted and earnest seekers of the Lord however stated under the disadvantages and epidemical errors of their several sects or ages the true seed in them hath been answered by Gods love who hath had regard to the Good and hath had of his elect ones among all who finding a distast and disgust in all other outward means even in the very principles and precepts more particullary relative to their own forms and societies have at last concluded with one voice that there was no true knowledg of God but that which is revealed inwardly by his own Spirit whereof take these following testimonies of the Ancients 1. It is the inward Master saith Augustin that teacheth it is Christ that teacheth it is inspiration that teacheth where this inspiration and unction is wanting it is in vain that words from without are beaten in And therefore for he that created us and redeemed us and called us by faith and dwelleth in us by his Spirit unless he speaketh unto you inwardly it is needless for us to cry out 2. There is a difference faith Clemens Alexandrinus betwixt that which any one saith of the Truth and that which the Truth it self interpreting it self saith A conjecture of Truth differeth from the Truth it self a similitude of a thing differeth from the thing it self it is one thing that is acquired by exercise and discipline and another thing which by power and faith Lastly the same Clemens saith Truth is neither hard to be arrived at nor is it impossible to apprehend it for it is most nigh unto us even in our houses as the most wise Moses hath insinuated 3. How is it saith Tertullian that since the Devil always worketh and stirreth up the mind to iniquity that the work of God should either cease or desist to act Since for this end the Lord did send the Comforter that because human weakness could not at once bear all things knowledg might be by little and little directed formed and brought to perfection by the holy Spirit that Vicar of the Lord. I have many things yet saith he to speak unto you but ye can not as vet bear them but when that Spirit of Truth shall come he shall lead you into all Truth and shall teach you these things that are to come But of his works we have spoken above What is then the administration of the Comforter but that discipline be derived and the Scriptures revealed c. 4. The Law saith Hierom is spiritual and there is need of a revelation to understand it And in his epistle 150 to Hedibia question 11. he saith the whole epistle to the Romans needs an interpretation it being involved in so great obscuritys that for the understanding thereof we need the help of the Holy Spirit who through the Apostle dictated it 5. So great things saith Athanasius doth our Saviour daily he draws unto piety perswades unto vertue teaches immortality excites to the desire of heavenly things reveals knowledg from the Father inspires power against death and shews himself unto every one 6. Gregory the Great upon these words he shall teach you all things saith that unless the same Spirit sit upon the heart of the hearer in vain is the discourse of the doctor let no man then ascribe unto the man that teacheth what he understands from the mouth of him that speaketh for unless he that teacheth be within the tongue of the Doctor that 's without laboureth in vain 7. Cyrillas Alexandrinus plainly affirmeth that men know that Jesus is the Lord by the Holy Ghost no otherwise than they who tast honey know that it is sweet even by its proper quality 8. Therefore saith Bernard we daily exhort you Brethren by speech that ye walk the ways of the heart and that your Souls be always in your hands that he may hear what the Lord saith in you And again upon these words of the Apostle Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord with which threefold vice saith he all sorts of religious men are less or more dangerously affected because they do not so diligently attend with the ears of the heart to what the Spirit of Truth which flatters none inwardly speaks This was the very basis and main foundation upon which the primitive Reformers walked Luther in his book to the Nobility of Germany saith This is certain that no man can make himself a Doctor of the holy Scripture but the holy Spirit alone And upon the Magnificat he saith No man can rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he immediately receive it from the Holy Spirit neither can any one receive it from the Holy Spirit except he find it by experience in himself and in this experience the Holy Ghost teacheth as in his proper school out of which school nothing is taught but meer talk Philip Melanchton in his Annotations upon the 6. of John Who hear only an outward and bodily voice hear the creature but God is a Spirit and is neither discerned nor known nor heard but by the Spirit and therefore to hear the voice of God to see God is to know and hear the Spirit by the Spirit alone God is known and perceived Which also the more serious to this day do acknowledg even all such who satisfie themselves not with the superfice of Religion and use it not as a cover or art Yea all these who apply themselves effectually to Christianity and are not satisfied until they have found its effectual work upon their hearts redeeming them from Sin do feel that no knowledge effectually prevails to the producing of this but that which proceeds from the warm influence of God's Spirit upon the heart and from the comfortable shinings of his Light upon their understanding and therefore to this purpose a late modern Author saith well videlicer Doctor Smith of Cambridge in his select discourses To seek our Divinity meerly in Books and Writings is to seek the living among the dead we do but in vain many times seek God in these where his Truth is too often not so much enshrined as entombed Intra te quaere Deum seek God within thine own Soul he is best discerned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plotinus phraseth it by an intellectual touch of him We must see with our eyes and hear with our ears and our hands must handle the Word of Life to express it in St. John 's words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The Soul it self hath its sense as well as the Body And therefore David
above intimated will appear The same argument will hold as to the other branch of the position That it is not the primary adequade rule of faith and manners thus That which is not the rule of my faith in believing the Scriptures themselves is not the primary adequate rule of faith and manners But the Scripture is not nor can it be the rule of that faith by which I believe them c. Therefore c. But as to this part we shall produce divers arguments hereafter as to what is affirmed That the Spirit and not the Scriptures is the rule it is largely handled in the former proposition the sum whereof I shall subsume in one argument thus If by the Spirit we can only come to the true knowledge of God If by the Spirit we be to be led into all truth and so be taught of all things Then the Spirit and not the Scriptures is the foundation and ground of all Truth and knowledg and the primary rule of faith and manners But the first is true Therefore also the last Next the very nature of the Gospel it self declareth that the Scriptures cannot be the only and chief rule of Christians else there should be no difference betwixt the Law and the Gospel As from the nature of the New Covenant by divers Scriptures described in the former Proposition is proved But besides those which are before mentioned herein doth the Law and the Gospel differ in that the Law being outwardly written brings under condemnation but hath not life in it to save whereas the Gospel as it declares and makes manifest the evil so it being an inward powerful thing also gives power to obey and deliver from the evil Hence it is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is glad tidings the Law or Letter which is without us kills but the Gospel which is the inward Spiritual Law gives life for it consists not so much in words as in vertue Wherefore such as comes to know it and be acquainted with it come to feel greater power over their iniquities than all outward Laws or Rules can give them Hence the Apostle concludes Rom. 6.14 Sin shall not have dominion over you For ye are not under the Law but under Grace This Grace then that is inward and not an outward Law is to be the Rule of Christians hereunto the Apostle commends the Elders of the Church saying Acts 20.32 And now Brethren I commend you to God and to the Word of his Grace which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all those that are sanctified He doth not commend them here to outward laws or writings but to the Word of Grace which is inward even the Spiritual Law which makes free as he elsewhere affirms Rom. 8.2 The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death This Spiritual Law is that which the Apostle declares he preached and directed people unto which was not outward as Rom. 10.8 is manifest where distinguishing it from the Law he saith The Word is nigh thee in thy heart and in thy mouth and this is the Word of Faith which we preach From what is above said I argue thus The principal Rule of Christians under the Gospel is not an outward letter nor law outwardly written and delivered but an inward Spiritual Law ingraven in the heart the Law of the Spirit of Life the Word that is nigh in the heart and in the mouth But the letter of the Scripture is outward of it self a dead things a meer declaration of good things but not the things themselves Therefore it is not nor can be the chief or principle rule of Christians § III. Thirdly That which is given to Christians for a Rule and Guide must needs be so full as it may clearly and distinctly guide and order them in all things and occurences that may fall out But in that there are many hundred of things with a regard to their circumstances particular Christians may be concerned in for which there can be no particular Rule had in the Scriptures Therefore the Scriptures cannot be a Rule to them I shall give an instance in two or three particulars for to prove this Proposition It is not to be doubted but some men are particularly called to some particular Services there being not found in which though the act be no general positive duty yet in so far as it may be required of them is a great sin to omit for as much God is zealous of his Glory and every act of Disobedience to his will manifested is enough not only to hinder one greatly from that Comfort and inward Grace which otherwise they might have but also bringeth Condemnation As for instance Some are called to the Ministry of the Word Paul saith there was a necessity upon him to preach the Gospel wo unto me if I preach not If it be necessary that there be now Ministers of the Church as well as then then there is the same necessity upon some more than upon others to occupy this place which necessity as it may be incumbent upon particular persons the Scripture neither doth nor can declare If it be said that the qualifications of a Minister are found in the Scripture and by applying these qualifications to my self I may know whether I be fit for such a place or no. I answer The qualifications of a Bishop or Minister as they are mentioned both in the Epistle to Tim. and Tit. are such as may be found in a private Christian yea which ought in some measure to be in every true Christian so that that giveth a man no certainty every pacity to an office giveth me not a sufficient call to it Next again By what Rule shall I judg if I be so qualified how do I know that I am sober meek holy harmless Is not the Testimony of the Spirit in my Conscience that which must assure me hereof And suppose that I was quallified and called yet what Scripture Rule shall inform me whether it be my duty to preach in this or that place in France or England Holland or Germany whether I shall take up my Time in Confirming the Faithful reclaiming Hereticks or Converting Infidels as also in Writing Epistles to this or that Church The general Rules of the Scripture viz. to be diligent in my duty to do all to the Glory of God and for the good of his Church can give me no light in this thing Seeing two different things may both have a respect to that way yet may I commit a great error and offence in doing the one when I am called to the other If Paul when his Face was turned by the Lord toward Jerusalem had gone back to Achaia or Macedonia he might have supposed he could have done God more acceptable service in Preaching and Confirming the Churches than in being shut up in Prison in Judea but would God have been pleased
can draw near to the Lord with boldness and know their acceptance in and by him in whom and in as many as are found in him the Father is well-pleased The Eighth Proposition Concerning Perfection In whom this Pure and Holy Birth is fully brought forth the Body of Death and Sin comes to be Crucified and removed and their hearts united and subjected to the Truth so as not to obey any Suggestions or Temptations of the Evil One to be free from actual sinning and transgressing of the Law of God and in that respect perfect yet doth this perfection still admit of a growth and there remaineth always in some part a possibility of sinning where the mind doth not most diligently and watchfully attend unto the Lord. § I. SInce we have placed Justification in the Revelation of Jesus Christ formed and brought forth in the Heart there working his works of Righteousness and bringing forth the Fruits of the Spirit The question is how far he may prevail in us while we are in this Life or we over our Souls Enemies in and by his strength Those that plead for Justification wholly without them meerly by imputative Righteousness denying the necessity of being cloathed with real and inward Righteousness do consequently affirm that it is impossible for a man even the best of men to be free of sin in this life which they say no man ever was but on the contrary that none can neither of himself nor by any Grace received in this life O! wicked saying against the power of God's Grace Keep the Commandments of God perfectly but that every man doth break the Commandments in Thought Word and Deed. Whence they also affirm as was a little before observed That the very best actions of the Saints their Prayers their Worships are impure and polluted We on the contrary though we freely acknowledg this of the Natural Faln man in his first state whatever his profession or pretence may be so long as he is unconverted and unregenerate yet we do believe that those in whom Christ comes to be formed and the new man brought forth and born of the incorruptible Seed as that birth and man in union therewith naturally doth the will of God so it is possible so far to keep to it as 〈◊〉 to be found daily Transgressors of the Law of God And for 〈…〉 stating of the controversie let it be considered 〈…〉 that we place not this possibility in man 's own will and 〈…〉 is a man the Son of faln Adam or as he is in his natural state however wise or knowing or however much endued with a notional and literal knowledg of Christ thereby endeavouring a conformity to the letter of the Law as it is outward Secondly that we attribute it wholly to man as he is born again renewed in his mind raised by Christ knowing Christ alive reigning and ruling in him and guiding and leading him by his Spirit and revealing in him the Law of the Spirit of Life which not only manifests and reproves sin but also gives power to come out of it Thirdly that by this we understand not such a perfection as may not daily admit of a growth and consequently mean not as if we were to be as Pure Holy and Perfect as God in his Divine Attributes of Wisdom Knowledg and Purity but only a perfection proportionable and answerable to man's measure whereby we are kept from transgressing the Law of God and enabled to answer what he requires of us even as he that improved his Two Talents so as to make Four of them perfected his work and was so accepted of his Lord as to be caled a good and faithful Servant nothing less than he that made his Five Ten. Even as a little Gold is perfect gold in its kind as well as a great mass and a Child hath a perfect body as well as a man though it daily grow more and more Thus Christ is said Luke 2.52 to have increased in Wisdom and Stature and in favour with God and man though before that time he had never sinned and was no doubt perfect in a true and proper sense Fourthly though a man may witness this for a season and therefore all ought to press after it yet we do not affirm but those that have attained it in a measure may by the wiles and temptations of the Enemy fall into iniquity and lose it sometimes if he be not watchful and diligently attend not to that of God in the heart And we doubt not but many good and holy men who hath not arrived to everlasting life have had divers ebbings and flowings of this kind for though every sin weaken a man in his Spiritual condition yet it doth not so as to destroy him altogether or render him uncapable of rising again Lastly though I affirm that after a man hath arrived to such a condition in which a man may not sin he yet may sin I will nevertheless not deny but there may be a state attainable in this life in which to do Righteousness may become so natural to the Regenerate Soul that in the stability of this condition they cannot sin Others may perhaps speak more certainly of this state as having arrived to it For me I shall speak modestly as acknoâ—ledging my self not to have arrived at it yet I dare not deny it for that it seems so positively to be asserted by the Apostle in these words 1 John 3.9 He that is born of God sinneth not neither can he because the Seed of God remaineth in him The Controversie being thus stated which will serve to obviate objections I shall proceed first to shew the absurdity of that Doctrine that pleads for sin for term of life even in the Saints Secondly prove this Doctrine of perfection from many pregnant Testimonies of the Holy Scripture And lastly answer the arguments and objections of our opposers § III. First then this Doctrin viz. that the Saints nor can nor ever will be free of sinning in this life is inconsistent with the Wisdom of God and with his glorious Power and Majesty Who is of purer Eyes than to behold Iniquity who having purposed in himself together to him that should worship him and be witnesses for him on earth a chosen people doth also no doubt sanctifie and purifie them For God hath no delight in iniquity but abhors transgression and though he regard man in transgression so far as to pitty him and afford him means to come out of it yet he loves him not neither delights in him as he is joyned thereunto Wherefore if man must alwaies be joyned to sin then God should alwaies be at a distance with them as it is written Isa. 59.2 Your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his Face from you whereas on the contrary the Saints are said to partake even while here of the Divine Nature 2 Pet. 1.4 and to be one spirit with the Lord 1 Cor.
the apostasie if we did not this way stand immoveable to the Truth revealed but should join with them both our testimony for God would be weakned and lost and it would be impossible steadily to propagate this worship in the world whose progress we dare neither retard nor hinder by any act of ours though therefore we shall lose not only worldly honour but even our lives And truly many Protestants through their unsteadiness in this thing for politick ends complying with the popish abominations have greatly scandalized their profession and hurt the reformation as appeared in the Example of the Elector of Saxony who in the Convention at Ausburg in the year 1530. being commanded by the Emperor Charles the Fifth to be present at the Mass that he might carry the Sword before him according to his place which when he justly scrupled to perform his Preachers taking more care for their Princes Honour than for his Conscience perswaded him that it was lawful to it against his Conscience which was both a very bad Example and great scandal to the Reformation and displeased many as the Author of the History of the Council of Trent in his first book well observes But now I hasten to the objection of our adversaries against this method of praying Obj. § XXV First They object that if such particular influences were needful to outward acts of worship then they should also be needful to inward acts as to wit desire and love God But this is absurd Therefore also that from whence it follows I answer that which was said in the state of the controversie cleareth this because as to those general duties Answ. there never wants an influence so long as the day of a man's visitation lasteth during which time God is alwaies near to him and wrestling with him by his Spirit to turn him to himself so that if he do but stand still and cease from his evil thoughts the Lord is near to help him c. But as to the outward acts of Prayer they need a more special motion and influence as hath been proved Secondly they object that it might be also alledged Obj. that men ought not to do moral duties as Children to honour their Parents men to do right to their neighbours except the Spirit moved them to it I answer there is a great difference betwixt these general duties betwixt man and man Answ. and the particular express acts of worship towards God the one is meerly Spiritual and commanded by God to be performed by his Spirit the other answer their end as to them whom they are immediatly directed to and concern though done from a meer natural principle of self-love even as beasts have natural affections one to another and therefore may be thus performed though I shall not deny but that they are not works accepted of God or beneficial to the Soul but as they are done in the fear of God and in blessing in which his Children do all things and therefore are accepted and blessed in whatsoever they do Thirdly they object Obj. that if a wicked man ought not to pray without a motion of the Spirit because his Prayer would be sinful neither ought he to plough by the same reason because the ploughing of the wicked as well as his praying is sin This objection is of the same nature with the former Answ. and therefore may be answered the same way seeing there is a great difference betwixt natural acts such as eating drinking sleeping and seeking for sustenance for the body which things Man hath common with Beasts and Spiritual acts And it doth not follow because man ought not to go about Spiritual acts without the Spirit that therefore he may not go about natural acts without it The analogy holds better thus and that for the proof of our affirmation that as man for the going about natural acts need his natural Spirit so to perform Spiritual acts he needs the Spirit of God That the natural acts of the wicked and unregenerate are sinful is not denied though not as in themselves but in so far as man in that state is in all things reprobated in the sight of God Fourthly they object that wicked men may according to this doctrin Obj. forbear to pray for years together alledging they want a motion to it Answ. I answer the false pretences of wicked men do nothing invalidate the truth of this doctrin for at that rate there is no doctrin of Christ which men might not turn by That they ought not to pray without the Spirit is granted but then they ought to come to that place of watching where they may be capable to feel the Spirits motion They sin indeed in not praying but the cause of this sin is their not watching so their neglect proceeds not from this doctrin but from their disobedience to it seeing if they did pray without this it would be a double sin and no fulfilling of the command to pray nor yet would their Prayer without this Spirit be useful unto them and this our Adversaries are forced to acknowledg in another case for they say It is a duty incumbent on Christians to frequent the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper as they call it Yet they say No man ought to take it unworthily yea they plead that such as find themselves unprepared must abstain and therefore do usually excommunicate them from the Table Now though according to them it be necessary to partake of this Sacrament yet it is also necessary that those that do it do first examine themselves lest they eat and drink their own condemnation and though they reckon it sinful for them to forbear yet they account it more sinful for them to do it without this examination Fifthly they object Acts 8.22 where Peter commanded Simon Magus Obj. that wicked Sorcerer to pray from thence inferring that wicked men may and ought to pray Answ. I answer that in the citing of this place as I have often observed they omit the first and chiefest part of the verse which is thus Acts 8. verse 22. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee So here he bids him first repent now the least measure of true Repentance cannot be without somewhat of that inward retirement of the mind which we speak of and indeed where true repentance goeth first we do not doubt but the Spirit of God will be near to concur with and influence such to pray to and call upon God Obj. And Lastly they object that many Prayers begun without the Spirit have proved effectual and that the Prayers of wicked men have been heard and found acceptable as Achab's Answ. This objection was before solved for the acts of God's compassion and indulgence at sometimes and to some persons upon singular extraordinary occasions are not be a rule of our actions For if we should make that the measure of our obedience great inconveniencies
would follow as is evident and will be acknowledged by all Next we do not deny but wicked men are sensible of the motions and operations of God's Spirit often-times before their day be expired from which they may at times pray acceptably not as remaining altogether wicked but as entring into Piety from whence they afterwards fall away § XXVI As to the singing of Psalms there will not be need of any long discourse for that the case is just the same as in the two former of Preaching and Prayer We confess this to be a part of God's Worship and very sweet and refreshful when it proceeds from a true sense of God's love in the heart and arises from the divine influence of the Spirit which leads Souls to breath forth either a sweet Harmony or words suitable to the present condition whether they be words formerly used by the Saints and recorded in Scripture such as the Psalmes of David or other words as were the Hymns and Songs of Zacharias Simeon and the Blessed Virgin Mary But as for the formal customary way of singing it hath in Scripture no foundation nor any ground in true Christiansty yea besides all the abuses incident to prayer and preaching it hath this more peculiar that often times great and horrid lies are said in the sight of God for all manner of wicked prophane People take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of Blessed David which are not only false as to them but also as to some of more sobriety who utter them forth as where they will sing sometimes Psal. 22.14 my heart is like Wax it is melted in the midst of my Bowels and verse 15. My strength is dried up like a Pot-sheard and my Tongue cleaveth to my Jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of Death And Psal. 6.6 I am weary with my groaning all the night make I my Bed to swim I water my Couch with my Tears And many more which those that speak know to be false as to them And sometimes will confess just after in their Prayers that they are guilty of the Vices opposite to those Vertues which but just before they have asserted themselves endued with Who can suppose that God accepts of such jugling And indeed such singing doth more please the carnal ears of men than the pure ears of the Lord who abhors all Lying and Hypocrisie That singing then that pleaseth him must proceed from that which is PVRE in the Heart even from the Word of Life therein in and by which richly dwelling in us Spiritual Songs and Hymns are returned to the Lord according to that of the Apostle Col. 3.16 But as to their artificial Musick either by Organs or other instruments or voice we have neither example nor precept for it in the New Testament § XXVII But lastly the great advantage of this true Worship of God which we profess and practice is that it consisteth not in man's Wisdom Arts or Industry neither needeth the Glory Pomp Riches nor Splendor of this World to beautifie it as being of a Spiritual and Heavenly nature and therefore too simple and contemptible to the natural mind and will of man that hath no delight to abide in it because he finds no room there for his imaginations and inventions and hath not the opportunity to gratifie his outward and carnal Senses so that this form being observed is not like to be long kept pure without the Power For it is of it self so naked without it that it hath nothing in it to invite and tempt men to dote upon it further than it is accompanied with the Power Whereas the Worship of out Adversaries being performed in their own wills is self-pleasing as in which they can largely exercise their natural parts and invention and as to most of them having somewhat of an outward and worldly splendor delectable to the carnal and worldly Senses they can pleasantly continue it and satisfie themselves though without the Spirit and Power which they make no ways essential to the performance of their Worship and therefore neither wait for nor expect it § XXVIII So that to conclude the Worship Preaching Praying and Singing which we plead for is such as proceedeth from the Spirit of God and is always accompanyed with its influence being begun by its motion and carried on by the power and strength thereof and so is a Worship purely Spiritual such as the Scripture holds forth Joh. 4.23 24. 1 Cor. 14.15 Eph. 6.18 c. But the Worship Preaching Praying and Singing which our Adversaries plead for and which we oppose is a Worship which is both begun carried on and concluded in man's own natural will and strenghth without the motion or influence of God's Spirit which they judg they need not wait for and therefore may be truly acted both as to the matter and manner by the wickedest of men Such was the Worship and vain Oblations which God always rejected as appears from Isa. 66.3 Jer. 14.12 c. Isa. 1.13 Prov. 15.29 John 9.31 The Twelfth Proposition Concerning Baptism As there is one Lord and one Faith so there is one Baptism which is not the putting away the Filth of the Flesh but the answer of a good Conscience before God by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and this Baptism is a Pure and a Spiritual thing to wit the Baptism of the Spirit and Fire by which we are buried with him that being washed and purged from our sins we may walk in newness of Life of which the Baptism of John was a Figure which was commanded for a time and not to continue for ever as to the Baptism of Infants it is a meer humane Tradition for which neither Precept nor Practice is to be found in all the Scripture § I. I Did sufficiently demonstrate in the explanation and probation of the former Proposition how greatly the Professors of Christianity as well Protestants as Papists were degenerated in the matter of Worship and how much strangers to and averse from that true and acceptable Worship that is performed in the Spirit of Truth because of man's natural propensity in his faln state to exalt his own inventions and to intermix his own work and product in the Service of God and from this root sprung all the Idle Worships Idolatries and numerous Superstitious Inventions among the Heathens For when God in condescension to his chosen People the Jews did prescribe to them by his Servant Moses many Ceremonies and Observations as Types and Shaddows of the Substance which in due time was to be revealed which consisted for the most part in washings outward purifications and cleansings which were to continue until the time of the Reformation until the Spiritual Worship should be set up and that God by the more powerful pouring forth of his Spirit and guiding of that Anoynting which was to lead his Children into all Truth and teach them to Worship him in a way more Spiritual and acceptable
is the Vanity and Superfluity of Apparel in which first two things are to be considered the condition of the Person and the Country he lives in We shall not say that all Persons are to be cloathed alike because it will perhaps neither sute their Bodies not their Estates And if a man be cloathed soberly and without superfluity tho they may be finer than that which his servant is cloathed with we shall not blame him for it The abstaining from superfluities which his condition and education hath accustomed him to may be in him a greater act of Mortification than the abstaining from finer cloaths in the servant who never was accustomed to them As to the Countrey what it naturally produces may be no vanity to the inhabitants to use or what is commonly imparted to them by way of exchange seeing it is without doubt that the Creation is for the use of man So where Silk abounds it may be worn as well as Wool and were we in those Countreys or near unto them where Gold or Silver were as Common as Iron or Brass the one might be used as well as the other The iniquity lies then here First when from a lust of vanity and desire to adorn themselves Men and Women not content with what their condition can bear or their countrey easily affords do stretch to have things that from their rarity and the price that 's put upon them seem to be pretious and so feed their lust the more and this all sober men of all sorts will readily grant to be evil Secondly when men are not content to make a true use of the Creation whether the things be fine or course and do not satisfie themselves with what need and conveniency calls for but adds thereunto things meerly superfluous such as is the use of Ribbons and Lace and much more of that kind of stuff as painting the Face platting the Hair which are the fruits of the faln lustful and corrupt nature and not of the new Creation as all will acknowledge And though sober men among all sorts will lay that it were better these things were not yet will they not reckon them unlawful and therefore do admit the use of them among their Church-members But we do account them altogether unlawful and unsuitable to Christians and that for these reason First the use of Cloaths came originally from the fall if man had not faln it appears he would not have needed them But this miserable state made them necessary in two respects 1. To cover his nakedness 2. To keep him from the cold which is both the proper and principle use of them Now for man to delight himself in that which is the first fruit of his iniquity and is the consequence of sin can be no waies lawful for him so to extend things beyond their real use or to superadd things wholly superfluous is a manifest abuse of the Creation and therefore not lawful to Christians Secondly those that will needs so adorn themselves in the use of their Cloaths as to beset them with things having no real use or necessity but meerly for ornament's sake do openly declare that the end of it is either to please their lust for which end these things are chiefly invented and contrived or otherwise to gratifie a vain proud and ostentive mind and it is obvious these are their general ends in so doing Yea we see how easily men are puff'd up with their Garments and how proud and vain they are when adorned to their mind Now how far these things are below a true Christian and how unsuitable it needs not great probation Hereby those that love to be gaudy and superfluous in their Cloaths shew they concern themselves little with Mortification and Self-denial and that they mind to beautifie their Bodies more than their Souls which proves they mind little upon Mortality and so certainly are more nominal than real Christians Thirdly the Scripture severely reproves such practices both commending and commanding the contrary as Isa. 3. how severely doth the Prophet reprove the Daughters of Israel for their tinkling Ornaments their Cauls and their round Tiars their Chains and Bracelets c. And yet is it not strange to see Christians allow themselves in these things from whom a more strict and exemplary conversation is required Christ desires us not to be anxious about our Cloathing Matth. 6.25 And to shew the vanity of such as glory in the splendor of their Cloathing tells them that even Solomon in all his Glory was not to be compared to the Lilly of the Field which to day is and to morrow is cast into the Oven But surely they make small reckoning of Christs words and doctrin that are so curious in their Cloathing and so industrious to deck themselves and so earnest to justifie it and so mad when they are reproved for it the Apostle Paul is very positive in this respect 1 Tim. 2.8 9.10 I will therefore in like manner also that Women adorn themselves in modest Apparel with shamefac'dness and sobriety not with broidered Hair or Gold or Pearls or costly Aray But which becometh Women professing godliness with good works To the same purpose saith Peter 1 Pet. 3.3 4. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of platting the Hair and wearing of Gold or of putting on of Apparel But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit c. Here both the Apostles do very positively and expressly assert two things First That the adorning of Christian Women of whom it is particularly spoken I judge because that Sex is most naturally inclined to that vanity and that it seems that Christian men in those daies deserved not in this respect so much to be reproved ought not to be outward nor consist in the Apparel Secondly that they ought not to use the platting of the Hair or Ornaments c. which was at that time the custom of the Nations But is it not strange that such as make the Scripture their rule and pretend they are guided by it should not only be so frequently and ordinarily in the use of these things which the Scripture so plainly condemns but also should allow themselves in so doing For the Apostles not only commend the forbearance of these things as an attainment commendable in Christians but condemn the use of them as unlawful and yet may it not seem more strange that in contradiction to the Apostles Doctrin as if they had resolved to slight their testimony they should condemn those that out of Conscience apply themselves seriously to follow it as if in so doing they were singular proud or superstitious This certainly betokens a sad Apostasie in those that will be accounted Christians that they are so offended with those that love to follow Christ and his Apostles in denying of and departing from the lying vanities of this perishing world and so doth
The Second Proposition Concerning Immediate Revelation Seeing no man knoweth the Father but the Son and he to whom the Son revealeth him and seeing the Revelation of the Son is in and by the Spirit therefore the Testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been is and can be only revealed who as by the moving of his own Spirit converted the Chaos of this World into that wonderful order wherein it was in the beginning and created Man a living Soul to rule and govern it so by the Revelation of the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the Sons of Men both Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles which Revelations of God by the Spirit whether by outward voices and appearances Dreams or inward objective manifestations in the heart were of old the formal object of their Faith and remaineth yet so to be since the object of the Saints Faith is the same in all ages though set forth under divers Administrations Moreover these divine inward Revelations which we make absolutely necessary for the building up of true Faith neither do nor can ever contradict the outward Testimony of the Scriptures or right and found Reason Yet from hence it will not follow that these Divine Revelations are to be subjected to the examination either of the outward Testimony of the Scriptures or of the natural reason of Man as to a more noble or certain rule or touchstone for this Divine Revelation and inward Illumination is that which is evident and clear of it self forceing by its own evidence and clearness the well disposed understanding to assent irresistibly moving the same thereunto even as the common Principles of natural Truths move and incline the mind to natural assent Such as are these that the whole is greater than the part that two contradictory sayings cannot be both true or false which is also manifest according to our adversaries Principle who supposing the possibility of inward Divine Revelations will nevertheless confess with us that neither Scripture nor found Reason will contradict it and yet it will not follow according to them that the Scripture or found Reason should be subjected to the examination of the Divine Revelations in the Heart The Third Proposition Concerning the Scriptures From these Revelations of the Spirit of God to the Saints have proceeded the Scriptures of Truth which contain 1. A faithful Historical Account of the Actings of God's People in divers Ages with many singular and remarkable Providences attending them 2. A Prophetical Account of several things whereof some are already past and some yet to come 3. A full and ample account of all the chief Principles of the Doctrine of Christ held forth in divers pretious declarations exhortations and sentences which by the moving of God's Spirit were at several times and upon sundry occasions spoken and written unto some Churches and their Pastors Nevertheless because they are only a Declaration of the Fountain and not the Fountain it self therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and Knowledge nor yet the adequate primary Rule of Faith and Manners Nevertheless as that which giveth a true and faithful Testimony of the first Foundation they are and may be esteemed a secondary Rule subordinate to the Spirit from which they have all their excellency and certainty for as by the inward Testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them so they testifie that the Spirit is that guide by which the Saints are led into all Truth Therefore according to the Scriptures the Spirit is the first and principle Leader And seeing we do therefore receive and believe the Scriptures because they proceeded from the Spirit therefore also the Spirit is more originally and principally the Rule according to that received maxim in the Schools Propter quod unumquodque est tale illud ipsum est magis tale Englished thus That for which a thing is such that thing it self is more such The Fourth Proposition Concerning the Condition of Man in the fall All Adam's Posterity or Mankind both Jews and Gentiles as to the first Adam or earthly man is fallen degenerated and dead deprived of the sensation or feeling of this inward Testimony or Seed of God and is subject unto the power nature and Seed of the Serpent which he sows in mens hearts while they abide in this natural and corrupted State from whence it comes that not their words and deeds only but all their imaginations are evil perpetually in the sight of God as proceeding from this depraved and wicked Seed Man therefore as he is in this state can know nothing aright yea his thoughts and conceptions concerning God and things Spiritual until he be disjoyned from this evil Seed and united to the Divine Light are unprofitable both to himself and others Hence are rejected the Socinian and Pelagian Errors in exalting a Natural Light as also the Papists and most of Protestants who affirm that Man without the true Grace of God may be a true Minister of the Gospel Nevertheless this Seed is not imputed to Infants until by transgression they actually joyn themselves therewith for they are by Nature the children of Wrath who walk according to the Power of the Prince of the Air The Fifth and Sixth Proposition Concerning the Vniversal Redemption by Christ and also the Saving and Spiritual Light wherewith every Man is enlightened The Fifth Proposition God out of his Infinite love who delighteth not in the death of a sinner but that all should live and be saved hath so loved the world that he hath given his only Son a Light that whosoever believeth in him should be saved who enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world and maketh manifest all things that are reproveable and teacheth all temperance righteousness and godliness and this Light enlighteneth the hearts of all in a day in order to Salvation if not resisted Nor is it less universal than the seed of sin being the purchase of his death who tasted death for every Man For as in Adam all die even so in Christ all shall be made alive The Sixth Proposition According to which principle or Hypothesis all the Objections against the universality of Christ's death are easily solved neither is it needful to recur to the Ministry of Angels and those other miraculous means which they say God makes use of to manifest the Doctrine and History of Christ's passion unto such who living in those places of the world where the outward preaching of the Gospel is unknown have well improved the first and common Grace For hence it well follows that as some of the old Philosophers might have been saved so also may now some who by Providence are cast into those remote parts of the world where the knowledg of the History is wanting be made partakers of the Divine Mystery if they receive and resist not that Grace a manifestation whereof is given
when he would teach us to know what the Divine Goodness is calls not for speculation but sensation Taste and see how good the Lord is That is not the best and truest knowledg of God which is wrought out by the labour and sweat of the Brain but that which is kindled within us by an heavenly warmth in our Hearts And again there is a knowledg of the Truth as it is in Jesus as it is in a Christ-like nature as it is in that sweet mild humble and loving Spirits of Jesus which spreads it self like a Morning-star upon the spirits of good men full of Light and Life It profits little to know Christ himself after the flesh but he gives his Spirit to good men that searcheth the deep things of God And again it is but thin airy knowledg that is got by meer speculation which is usher'd in by Syllogisms and demonstrations but that which springs forth from true goodness is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Origen speaketh it brings such a Divine Light to the Soul as is more clear and convincing than any demonstration § III. That this certain and undoubted method of the true knowledg of God hath been brought out of use hath been none of the least devices of the Devil to secure mankind to his kingdom For after the light and glory of the Christian Religion had prevailed over a good part of the World and dispelled the thick mists of the heathenish Doctrine of the plurality of Gods he that knew there was no probability of deluding the World any longer that way did then puff man up with a false knowledg of the true God setting him on work to seek God the wrong way and perswading him to be content with such a knowledg as was of his own acquiring and not of God's teaching And this device hath proved the more successful because accommodated to the natural and corrupt spirit and temper of man who above all things affects to exalt himself in which exaltation as God is most greatly dishonoured so therein the Devil hath his end who is not anxious how much God be acknowledged in words provided himself be but always served he matters not how great and high speculations the natural man entertains of God so long as he serves his lusts and passions and is obedient to his evil suggestions and temptations Thus Christianity is become an art acquired by humane science and industry as any other art and science is and men have not only assumed unto themselves the name of Christians but even have procured to be esteemed as masters of Christianity by certain artificial tricks though altogether strangers to the Spirit and Life of Jesus But if we shall make a right definition of a Christian according to the Scripture videlicer that he is one that hath the Spirit and is led by it How many Christians yea and of these great Masters and Doctors of Christianity so accounted shall we justly divest of that noble title If then such as have all the other means of knowledg and are sufficiently learned therein whether it be the letter of the Scripture the traditions of Churches the works of Creation and Providence whence they are able to deduce strong and undeniable arguments which may be true in themselves are not yet to be esteemed Christians according to the certain and infallible definition above-mentioned And if the inward and immediate Revelation of Gods Spirit in the Heart in such as have been altogether ignorant of some and but very little skilled in others of these means of attaining knowledg hath brought them to Salvation Then it will necessarily and evidently follow that inward and immediate Revelation is the only sure and certain way to attain the true and saving knowledge of God But the first is true Therefore the last Now as this Argument doth very strongly conclude for this way of knowledge and against such as deny it so herein it is the more considerable because the Propositions from which it is deduced are so clear that our very Adversaries cannot deny them For as to the first it is acknowledged that many learned men may be and have been damned And as to the second who will deny but many illeterate men may be and are saved Nor dare any affirm that none come to the knowledge of God and Salvation by the inward Revelation of the Spirit without these outward means unless they be also so bold as to exclude Abel Seth Noah Abraham Job and all the Holy Patriarchs from true Knowledge and Salvation § IV. I would however not be understood as if hereby I excluded those other means of Knowledge from any use or service to Man it is far from me to judge as in the next Proposition concerning the Scriptures shall more plainly appear The question is not what may be profitable or helpful but what is absolutely necessary Many things may contribute to further a work which yet are not that main thing that makes the work go on The sum then of what is said amounts to this that where the true inward Knowledge of God is through the Revelation of his Spirit there is all neither is there any absolute necessity of any other But where the best highest and most profound Knowledge is without this there is nothing as to the obtaining the great End of Salvation This Truth is very effectually confirmed by the first part of the Proposition it self which in few words comprehendeth divers unquestionable Arguments which I shall in brief subsume First That there is no knowledge of the Father but by the Son Secondly That there is no knowledge of the Son but by the Spirit Thirdly That by the Spirit God hath alwayes revealed himself to his Chilldren Fourthly That these Revelations were the formal Object of the Saints Faith And Lastly That the same continueth to be the Object of the Saints Faith to this day Of each of these I shall speak a little particularly and then proceed to the latter part § V. As to the first viz. That there is no Knowledge of the Father but by the Son it will not need much probation being founded upon the plain words of Scripture and is therefore a fit medium to draw the rest of our Assertions from For the infinite and most wise God who is the Foundation Root and Spring of all Operation hath wrought all things by his Eternal Word and Son This is that WORD that was in the beginning with God and was God by whom all things were made and without whom was not any thing made that was made This is that Jesus Christ by whom God created all things by whom and for whom all were created that are in Heaven and in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers Col. 1.16 Who therefore is called the first born of every Creature Col. 1.15 As then that infinite and incomprehensible Fountain of Life and Motion operateth in the Creatures by his
to offer him up not doubting but God was able to raise him from the dead of whom it is said that in Isaac shall thy Seed be called And last of all In that he rested in the Promise that his Seed should possess the Land wherein himself was but a Pilgrim and which to them was not to be fulfilled while divers Ages after The object of Abrahams Faith in all this was no other but inward and immediate Revelation or God signifying his will unto him inwardly and immediately by his Spirit But because in this part of the Proposition we made also mention of external Voices Appearances and Dreams in the alternative I think also fit to speak hereof what in that respect may be objected to wit Obj. That those who found their Faith now upon immediate and objective Revelation ought to have also outward Voices or Visions Dreams or appearances for it It is not denyed but God made use of the Ministry of Angels who in the appearance of men spake outwardly to the Saints of old and that he did also reveal some things to them in Dreams and Visions none of which we will affirm to be ceased so as to limit the power and liberty of God in manifesting himself towards his Children But while we are considering the object of Faith we must not stick to that which is but circumstantially and accidently so but to that which is universally and substantially so Next again we must distinguish betwixt that which in it self is subject to doubt and delusion and therefore is received for and because of another and that which is not subject to any doubt but is received simply for and because of it self as being prima veritas the very first and original Truth Let us then consider how or how far these outward voices appearances and dreams were the object of the Saints faith was it because they were simply voices appearances or dreams nay certainly we know and they were not ignorant that the Devil can form a sound of words and convey it to the outward ear That he can easily deceive the outward senses by making things to appear that are not Yea do we not see by daily experience that the Juglers and Mountebancks can do as much as all that by their Legerdemain God forbid then that the Saints faith should be founded upon so fallacious a foundation as man's outward and fallible senses What made them then give credit to these visions eertainly nothing else but the secret testimony of Gods Spirit in their hearts assuring them that the voices dreams and Visions were of and from God Abraham believed the Angels but who told him that these men were Angels we must not think his faith then was built upon his outward senses but proceeded from the secret perswasion of Gods Spirit in his heart This then must needs be acknowledged to be originally and principally the object of the Saints faith without which there is no true and certain faith and by which many times faith is begotten and strenthenged without any of these outward or visible helps As we may observe in many passages of the Holy Scripture where it is only mentioned and God said c. And the word of the Lord came unto such and such saying c. But if any one should pertinaciously affirm that this did import an outward audible voice to the carnal ear I would gladly know what other argument such a one could bring for this his affirmation saving his own simple conjecture It is said indeed the Spirit witnesseth with our Spirit but not to our outward ears Rom. 8.16 and seeing the Spirit of God is within us and not without us it speaks to our Spiritual and not to our bodyly ear Therefore I see no reason where it 's so often said in Scripture the Spirit said moved hindered called such or such a one to do or forbear such or such a thing that any have to conclude that this was not an inward voice to the ear of the Soul rather than an outward voice to the bodyly ear If any be otherwise minded let them if they can produce their arguments and we may further consider of them From all then which is above declared I shall deduce an argument to conclude the probation of this assertion thus That which any one firmly believes as the ground and foundation of his hope in God and life Eternal is the formal object of his faith But the inward and immediate revelation of God's Spirit speaking in and unto the Saints was by them believed as the ground and foundation of their hope in God and life eternal Therefore these inward and immediate revelations were the formal object of their faith § IX That which now cometh under debate is what we have asserted in the last place to wit That the same continueth to be the object of the Saints faith unto this day Many will agree to what we said before who differ from us herein There is nevertheless a very firm argument confirming the truth of this assertion included in the Proposition it self to wit That the object of the Saints faith is the same in all ages though held forth under divers administrations Which I shall reduce to an argument and prove thus First Where the Faith is one the object of the Faith is one But the Faith is one Therefore c. That the Faith is one is the express words of the Apostle Eph. 4.5 who placeth the one Faith with the one God importing no less than that to affirm two faiths is as absurd as to affirm two Gods Moreover if the Faith of the Ancients were one and the same with ours i. e. agreeing in substance therewith and receiving the same definition it had been impertinent for the Apostle Heb. 11. to have illustrated the definition of our faith by the examples of that of the Ancients or to go about to move us by the example of Abraham if Abraham's faith were different in nature from ours Nor doth hence any difference arise because they believe in Christ with respect to his appearace outwardly as future and we as already appeared For nor did they then so believe in him to come as not to feel him present with them and witness him near seeing the Apostle saith they all drank of that spiritual Rock which followed them which Rock was Christ Nor do we so believe concerning his appearance past as not also to feel and know him present with us and to feed upon him except Christ saith the Apostle be in you ye are reprobates so that both our faith is one terminating in one and the same thing And as to the other part or consequence of the antecedent to wit that the object is one where the faith is one the Apostle also proveth it in the forecited Chapter where he makes all the Worthys of old examples to us Now wherein are they imitable but because they believed in God and what was the object of their Faith
Apostle reckoneth no man a Christian. If any man saith he have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his These words immediately follow those above-mentioned out of the Epistle to the Romans but ye are not in the Flesh if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you The context of which sheweth that the Apostle reckoneth it the main token of a Christian both positively and negatively For in the former verses he sheweth how the carnal mind is enmity against God and that such as are in the Flesh cannot please him Where subsuming he adds concerning the Romans that they are not in the Flesh if the Spirit of God dwell in them What is this but to affirm that they in whom the Spirit dwells are no longer in the Flesh nor of those who please not God but are become Christians indeed Again In the next verse he concludes negatively that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his that is he is no Christian. He then that acknowledges himself ignorant and a stranger to the inward in being of the Spirit of Christ in his Heart doth thereby acknowledge himself to be yet in the carnal mind which is enmity to God to be yet in the Flesh where God cannot be pleased and in short whatever he may otherwayes know or believe of Christ or however much skilled or acquainted with the Letter of the Holy Scripture not yet to be notwithstanding all that attained to the least desire of a Christian yea not once to have embraced the Christian Religion For take but away the Spirit and Christianity remains no more Christianity than the dead Carcass of a Man when the Soul and Spirit is departed remains a man which the living can no more abide but to bury out of their sight as a noisome and useless thing however acceptable it hath been when actuated and moved by the Soul Lastly Whatsoever is Excellent whatsoever is Noble whatsoever is Worthy whatsoever is Desireable in the Christian Faith is ascribed to this Spirit without which it could no more subsist than the outward World without the Sun Hereunto have all true Christians in all Ages attributed their Strength and Life It is by this Spirit that they avouch themselves to have been converted to God to have been redeemed from the World to have been strengthened in their Weakness comforted in their Afflictions confirmed in their Temptations imboldened in their Suffering and triumphed in the midst of all their Persecutions Yea The Writings of all true Christians are full of the great and notable things which they all affirm themselves to have done by the Power and Vertue and Efficacy of the Spirit of God working in them It is the Spirit that quickeneth Joh. 6.63 It was the Spirit that gave them utterance Act. c. 2.4 It was the Spirit by which Stephen spake That the Jews were not able to resist Acts 6.10 It is such as walk after the Spirit that receive no condemnation Rom. 8.1 It is the Law of the Spirit that makes free ver 2. It is by the Spirit of God dwelling in us that we are redeemed from the Flesh and from the carnal mind v. 9. It is the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us that quickneth our mortal Bodies v. 11. It is through this Spirit that the deeds of the Body are mortified and Life obtained ver 13. It is by this Spirit that we are adopted and cry ABBA Father v. 15. It is this Spirit that beareth witness with our Spirit that we are the Children of God v. 16. It is this Spirit that helpeth our infirmities and maketh intercession for us with grâ—anings which cannot be uttered 26. It is by this Spirit that the glorious things which God hath laid up for us which neither outward Ear hath heard nor outward Eye hath seen nor the Heart of Man conceived by all his Reasonings are revealed unto us 1 Cor. 2.9 10. It is by this Spirit that both Wisdom and Knowledg and Faith and Miracles and Tongues and Prophesies are obtained 1 Cor. 12.8 9 10. It is by this Spirit that we are all baptized into one Body v. 13. In short what things relating to the Salvation of the Soul and to the Life of a Christian is rightly performed or effectually obtained without it And what shall I more say For the time would fail me to tell of all those things which the Holy Men of Old have declared and the Saints of this day do witness themselves to enjoy by the vertue and power of this Spiritual dwelling in them Truely my Paper could not contain those many Testimonies whereby this Truth is confirmed wherefore besides what is above mentioned out of the Fathers whom all pretend to reverence and these of Luther and Melancthon I shall deduce yet one observable Testimony out of Calvin because not a few of the followers of his Doctrine do refuse and deride and that as it is to be feared because of their own Non-experience thereof this way of the Spirit 's in-dwelling as uncertain and dangerous that so if neither the Testimony of the Scripture nor the sayings of others nor right reason can move them they may at least be reproved by the words of their own Master who saith in the third book of his Institutions cap. 2. on this wise But they alledg it is a bold presumption for any one to pretend to an undoubted knowledg of God's will which saith he I should grant unto them if we should ascribe so much to our selves as to subject the incomprehensible counsel of God to the rashness of our understandings But while we simply say with Paul that we have received not the Spirit of this World but the Spirit which is of God by whose teaching we know those things that are given us of God What can they prate against it without reproaching the Spirit of God For if it be a horrible Sacriledg to accuse any Revelation coming from him either of a lye of uncertainty or ambiguity in asserting its certainty wherein we do offend But they cry out that it is not without great temerity that we dare so boast of the Spirit of Christ. Who would believe that the sottishness of these men were so great who would be esteemed the masters of the world that they should so fail in the first Principles of Religion Verily I could not believe it if their own writings did not testify so much Paul accounts those the Sons of God who are acted by the Spirit of God but these will have the Children of God acted by their own Spirits without the Spirit of God He will have us call God Father the Spirit dictating that term unto us which only can witness to our Spirits that we are the Sons of God These tho they cease not to call upon God do nevertheless demit the Spirit by whose guiding he is rightly to be called upon He denies them to be the Sons of God or the Servants of Christ who are
Covenant with them saith the Lord My Spirit that is upon thee and my words which I have put into thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed saith the Lord from henceforth and for ever By the latter part of this is sufficiently expressed the perpetuity and continuance of this Promise It shall not depart saith the Lord from henceforth and for ever In the former part is the promise it self which is the Spirit of God being upon them and the words of God being put into their mouths First this was immediate for there is no mention made of any medium he saith not I shall by the means of such and such writings or books convey such and such words into your mouths but my words I even I saith the Lord shall put into your mouths Secondly this must be objectively for the words put into your mouth are the object presented by him He saith not th◠words which ye shall see written my Spirit shall only enlighten your understandings to assent unto but positively my words which I have put into thy mouth c. From whence I argue thus Upon whomsoever the Spirit remaineth alwaies and putteth words into his mouth him doth the Spirit teach immediately objectively and continually But the Spirit is alwaies upon the Seed of the Righteous and putteth words into their mouths neither departeth from them Therefore the Spirit teacheth the Righteous immediately obejectively and continually Secondly the nature of the New Covenant is yet more amply expressed Jer. 31.33 which is again repeated and reasserted by the Apostle Heb. 8.10 in these words For this is the Covenant that I will make with the House of Israel in those days saith the Lord I will put my Laws into their minds and write them in their hearts and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a People And they shall not teach every man his Neighbour and every man his Brother saying Know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest The object here is God's Law placed in the heart and written in the mind from whence they become God's People and are brought truly to know him In this then is the Law distinguished from the Gospel The Law before was outward written in Tables of stone but now it is inward written in the heart Of old the People depended upon their Priests for the knowledg of God but now they have all a certain and sensible knowledg of him concerning which Augustin speaketh well in his book De Litera Spiritu from whom Aquinas first of all seems to have taken occasion to move this question Whether the New Law be a written Law or an implanted Law Lex scripta vel Lex indita which he thus resolves affirming that the New Law or the Gospel is not properly a Law written as the Old was but Lex indita an implanted Law and that the Old Law was written without but the New Law is written within on the Table of the Heart How much then are they deceived who instead of making the Gospel preferable to the Law have made the condition of such as are under the Gospel far worse for no doubt it is a far better and more desirable thing to converse with God immediately than only mediately as being a higher and more glorious Dispensation And yet these men acknowledg that many under the Law had immediate converse with God whereas they now cry it is ceased Again Under the Law there was the Holy of Holys into which the High-Priest did enter and received the word of the Lord immediately from betwixt the Cherubins so that the People could then certainly know the mind of the Lord but now according to these mens judgment we are in a far worse condition having nothing but the outward letter of the Scripture to guess and divine from concerning one verse of which scarce two can be found to agree But Jesus Christ hath promised us better things though many are so unwise not to believe him even to guide us by his own unerring Spirit and hath rent and removed the vail whereby not only one and that once a year may enter but all of us at all times have access unto him as often as we draw near unto him with pure hearts He reveals his will to us by his Spirit and writes his Laws in our Hearts These things then being thus premised I argue Where the Law of God is put into the mind and written in the heart there the object of Faith and revelation of the knowledg of God is inward immediate and objective But the Law of God is put into the mind and written in the heart of every True Christian under the new Covenant Therefore the object of Faith and Revelation of the knowledg of God to every True Christian is inward immediate and objective The assumption is the express words of Scripture The Proposition then must needs be true except that which is put into the mind and written in the heart were either not inward not immediate or not objective which is most absurd § XII The third Argument is from these words of John 1 John 2. ver 27. But the Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but the same Anointing teacheth you of all things and is Truth and no Lye and even as it hath taught you ye shall abide in him First This could not be any special peculiar or extraordinary priviledg but that which is common to all the Saints it being a general Epistle directed to all them of that Age. Secondly the Apostle proposeth this Anointing in them as a more certain Touch-stone for them to discern and try Seducers by even then his own writings for having in the former verse said that he had written some things to them concerning such as seduced them he begins the next verse but the Anointing c. and ye need not that any man teach you c. which infers that having said to them what can be said he refers them for all to the inward Anointing which teacheth all things as the most firm constant and certain Bull-wark against all Seducers And Lastly that it is a lasting and continuing thing the Anointing which abideth if it had not been to abide in them it could not have taught them all things neither guided them against all hazard From which I argue thus He that hath Anointing abiding in him which teacheth him all things so that he needs no man to teach him hath an inward and immediate Teacher and hath some things inwardly and immediately revealed unto him But the Saints have such an Anointing Therefore c. I could prove this Doctrine from many more places of Scripture which for brevitys sake I omit and now come to the second part of the Proposition where the objections usually formed against
deceit or equivocation the most excellent Writings in the World to which not only no other Writings are to be preferr'd but even in divers respects not comparable thereunto For as we freely acknowledg that their Authority doth not depend upon the approbation or Canons of any Church or Assembly so neither can we subject them to the faln corrupt and defiled reason of man and therein as we do freely agree with the Protestants against the error of the Romanists so on the other hand we cannot go the length of such Protestants as make their Authority to depend upon any vertue or power that is in the Writings themselves but we desire to ascribe all to that Spirit from which they proceeded We confess indeed there wants not a Majestie in the Stile a coherence in the parts a good scope in the whole but seeing these things are not discerned by the Natural but only by the Spiritual man it is the Spirit of God that must give us that belief of the Scriptures which may satisfie our Consciences Therefore the chiefest among Protestants both in their particular Writings and publick Confessions are forced to acknowledg this Hence Calvin though he saith he is able to prove that if there be a God in Heaven these writings have proceeded from him yet he concludes another knowledg to be necessary Insti lib. 1. cap. 7. Sect. 4. But if saith he we respect the Consciences that they be not daily molested with doubts and they stick not at every Scruple it is requisite that this perswasion which we speak of be taken higher than humane Reason Judgment or conjectures to wit from the secret Testimony of the Holy Spirit And again To those that ask that we prove unto them by Reason that Moses and the Prophets were Inspired of God to speak I answer that the Testimony of the Holy Spirit is more excellent than all reason And again let this remain a firm Truth that he only whom the Holy Ghost hath perswaded can repose himself on the Scripture with a true certainty And lastly this then is a judgment which cannot be begotten but by a Heavenly Revelation c. The same is also affirmed in the first publick Confession of the French Churches published in the Year 1559. Art 4. We know these books to be Canonick and the most certain Rule of our Faith not so much by the common accord and consent of the Church as by the Testimony and inward perswasion of the Holy Spirit Thus also in the 5 Article of the Confession of faith of the Churches of Holland confirmed by the Synod of Dort We receive these books only for holy and canonick not so much because the Church receives and approves them as because the Spirit of God renders witness in our hearts that they are of God And lastly The Divines so called at Westminster who began to be afraid of and guard against the Testimony of the Spirit because they perceived a dispensation beyond that which they were under beginning to dawn and to eclipse them yet could they not get by this tho they have laid it down neither so clearly distinctly nor honestly as they that went before It is in these words chap. 1. sect 5. Nevertheless our full perswasion and assurance of the infallible Truth thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our heart By all which it appeareth how necessary it is to seek the certainty of the Scriptures from the Spirit and no where else The infinit janglings and endless contests of those that seek their authority elsewhere do witness to the Truth hereof For the Antients themselves even of the first Centuries were not as one among themselves concerning them while some of them rejected Books which we approve and others of them approved those which some of us reject It is not unknown to such as are in the least acquainted with Antiquity what great contests are concerning the second Epistle of Peter that of James the second and third of John and the Revelations which many even very Antient deny to have been written by the beloved Disciple and Brother of James but by another of that name What should then become of Christians if they had not received that Spirit and those Spiritual senses by which they know how to discern the true from the false It 's the priviledg of Christ's Sheep indeed that they hear his voice and refuse that of a stranger which priviledg being taken away we are left a prey to all manner of wolves § II. Tho then we do acknowledg the Scriptures to be a very heavenly and Divine writing the use of them to be a very comfortable and necessary to the Church of Christ and that we also admire and give praise to the Lord for his wonderful Providence in preserving these writings so pure and uncorrupted as we have them through so long a night of Apostasy to be a testimony of his Truth against the wickedness and abominations even of these whom he made instrumental in preserving them so that they have kept them to be a witness against themselves yet we may not call them the principal fountain of all Truth and knowledg nor yet the first adequate rule of Faith and manners because the principal fountain of Truth must be the Truth it self i. e. that whose certainty and authority depends not upon another When we doubt of the streams of any river or flood we recur to the fountain it self and having found it there we sist we can go no further because there it springs out of the bowels of the Earth which are inscrutable Even so the writing and sayings of all men we must bring to the Word of God I mean the Eternal Word and if they agree hereunto we stand there for this Word always proceedeth and doth eternally proceed from God in and by which the unsearchable wisdom of God and unsearchable counsel and will conceived in the heart of God is revealed unto us that then the Scripture is not the principal ground of faith and knowledg as it appears by what is above spoken so it is provided in the latter part of the Proposition which being reduced to an argument runs thus That the certainty and authority whereof depends upon another and which is received as Truth because of its proceeding from another is not to he accounted the principal ground and origin of all Truth and knowledg But the Scriptures authority and certainty depends upon the Spirit by which they were dictated and the reason why they were received as Truth is because they proceeded from the Spirit Therefore they are not the principal ground of Truth To confirm this argument I added the School Maxim Propter quod unumquodque est tales illud ipsum est magis tale Which Maxim tho I confess it doth not hold universally in all things yet in this it both doth and will very well hold as by applying it as we have
cannot suppose them without some rule and means of knowledg seeing it is expresly affirmed They shall all be taught of God Joh. 6.45 And they shall know me from the least to the greatest Heb. 8.11 But secondly Though we were rid of this difficulty how many illeterate and yet good men are there in the Church of God who cannot read a Letter in their own Mothers Tongue Which imperfection though it be inconvenient I cannot tell whether we may safely affirm it to be sinful these can have no immediate Knowledg of the rule of their Faith So their Faith must needs depend upon the credit of other mens Reading or relating it unto them where either the altering adding or omitting of a little word may be a foundation in the poor hearer of a very dangerous mistake whereby he may either continue in an iniquity ignorantly or believe a lie confidently As for Example the Papists in all their Catechisms and publick Exercises of Examination towards the People have boldly cut away the second Command because it seems so expresly to hit against their Adoration and use of Images Whereas many of these People in whom by this omission this false Opinion is fostered are under a simple impossibility or at least a very great difficulty to be outwardly informed of this abuse But further suppose all could read the Scriptures in their own Language where is there one of a thousand that hath that through knowledge of the original Languages in which they are written so as in that respect immediately to receive the benefit of them Must not all these here depend upon the honesty and faithfulness of the Interpreters Which how uncertain it is for a man to build his Faith upon the many Corrections Amendments and various Essays which even among Protestants have been used whereof the latter hath constantly blamed and corrected the former as guilty of Defects and Errors doth sufficiently declare And that even the last Translations in the vulgar Languages needs to be corrected as I could prove at large were it proper in this place learned men do confess But last of all there is no less difficulty even occurs to these skilled in the Original Languages who cannot so immediately receive the mind of the Authors in these Writings as that their Faith doth at least obliquely depend upon the honesty and credit of the Transcribers since the Original Copies are granted by all not to be now extant Of which Transcribers Jerome in his time complained saying that they wrote not what they found but what they understood And Epiphanius saith that in the good and correct Copies of Luke it was written that Christ wept and that Irenaeus doth cite it but that the Catholicks blotted it out fearing least Hereticks should have abused it Other Fathers also declare that whole verses were taken out of Mark because of the Manichees But further the various lections of the Hebrew Character by reason of the Points which some plead for as coaevous with the first writings which others with no less probability alledg to be a later invention the disagreement of divers citations of Christ and the Apostles with those passages in the Old Testament they appeal to the great controversie among the Fathers whereof some highly approve the Greek Septuagint decrying and rendring very doubtful the Hebrew Copy as in many vitiated and altered by the Jews other some and particularly Jerom exalting the certainty of the Hebrew and rejecting yea even deriding the History of the Septuagint which the primitive Church chiefly made use of and some Fathers that lived centuries before them affirmed to be a most certain thing Add the many various lections in divers copys of the Greek and the great alterations among the Fathers of the first three Centuries who had greater opportunity to be better informed than we can now lay claim to concerning the books to be admitted or rejected as is above observed I say all these and much more which might be alledged puts the minds even of the Learned into infinite doubts scruples and inextricable difficulties Whence we may very safely conclude that Jesus Christ who promised to be always with his Children to lead them into all Truth to guard them against the devices of the Enemy and to establish their Faith upon an unmoveable Rock left them not to be principally ruled by that which was subject in it self to many uncertainties and therefore he gave them his Spirit as their Principal Guide which neither moths nor time can wear out nor transcribers nor translators corrupt which none are so young none so illiterate none in so remote a place but they may come to be reached and rightly informed by it Through and by the clearness which that Spirit gives us it is that we are only best rid of those difficulties that occur to us concerning the Scriptures The real and undoubted experience whereof I my self have been a witness of with great admiration of the love of God to his children in these latter days For I have known some of my Friends who profess the same faith with me faithful servants of the most High God and full of the Divine knowledg of his Truth as it was immediately and inwardly revealed to them by the Spirit from a true and living experience Who not only were ignorant of the Greek and Hebrew but even some of them could not read their own vulgar Language who being pressed by the adversaries with some citations out of the English Translation and finding them to disagree with the manifestation of Truth in their hearts have boldly affirmed the Spirit of God never said so and that it was certainly wrong for they did not believe that any of the Holy Prophets or Apostles had ever written so which when I on this account seriously examined I really found to be errors and corruptions of the Translators Who as in most translations do not so much give us the genuine significations of the words as strain them to express that which comes nearest with that opinion and notion they have of Truth And this seemed to me to sute very well with that saying of Augustin Epist. 19. ad Hen. Tom. 2. fol. 14. after he has said that he gives only that honour to those books which are called Canonical as to believe that the Authors thereof did in writing not err He adds and if I shall meet with any thing in these writings that seemeth repugnant to Truth I shall not doubt to say that either the volume is faulty or erroneous that the expounder hath not reached what was said or that I have in no wise understood it So that he supposes that in the transcription and translation there may be errors § V. If it be then asked me whether I think hereby to render the Scripture altogether uncertain or useless I answer not at all The proposition it self declares what esteem I have for them and provided that to the Spirit from which they came be but
granted that place the Scriptures themselves give it I do freely concede to the Scripture the second place even whatsoever they say of themselves Which the Apostle Paul chiefly mentions in two places Rom. 15.4 Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope 2 Tim. 3.15 16 17. The Holy Scriptures are able to make wise unto Salvation through Faith which is in Christ Jesus All Scripture given by inspiration from God is profitable for correction for instruction in righteousness that the Man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto every good work For tho God do principally and chiefly lead us by his Spirit yet he sometimes conveys his comfort and consolation to us through his Children whom he raises up and inspires to speak or write a word in season whereby the Saints are made instruments in the hand of the Lord to strengthen and encourage one another which do also tend to perfect and make them wise unto Salvation and such as are led by the Spirit cannot neglect but do natural love and are wonderfully cherished by that which proceedeth from the same Spirit in another because such mutual emanations of the heavenly Life tend to quicken the mind when at any time it is overtaken with heaviness Peter himself declares this to have been the end of his writing 2 Pet. 1.12 13. Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you alwaies in remembrance of those things tho ye know them and be established in the present Truth Yea I think it meet as long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up by putting you in remembrance God is Teacher of his People himself and there is nothing more express than that such as are under the New Covenant they need no man to teach them yet it was a fruit of Christ's Ascension to send Teachers and Pastors for perfecting of the Saints So that the same work is ascribed to the Scriptures as to Teachers the one to make the man of God perfect the other for the perfection of the Saints As then Teachers are not to go before the teaching of God himself under the New Covenant but to follow after it neither are they to rob us of that great priviledg which Christ hath purchased unto us by his Blood so neither is the Scripture to go before the teaching of the Spirit or to rob us of it Secondly God hath seen meet that herein we should as in a looking glass see the conditions and experiences of the Saints of old that finding our experience answer to theirs we might thereby be the more confirmed and comforted and our hope strengthened of obtaining the same end that observing the Providences attending them seeing the snares they were liable to and beholding their deliverances we may thereby be made wise unto Salvation and seasonably reproved and instructed in righteousness This is the great work of the Scriptures and their service to us that we may witness them fulfilled in us and so discern the stamp of God's Spirit and ways upon them by the inward acquaintance we have with the same Spirit and work in our hearts The prophecys of the Scripture are also very comfortable and profitable unto us as the same Spirit inlightens us to observe them fulfilled and to be fulfilled For in all this it is to be observed that it is only the Spiritual Man that can make a right use of them they are able to make the man of God perfect so it is not the natural Man and whatsoever was written aforetime was written for our comfort our that are the believers our that are the Saints concerning such the Apostle speaks for as for the other the Apostle Peter plainly declares that the unstable and unlearned wrest them to their own destruction these were they that were unlearned in the Divine and heavenly learning of the Spirit not in humane and School Literature of which we may safely presume that Peter himself being a Fisher-man had no great skill for it may with great probability yea certainly be affirmed that he had no knowledg of Aristotles Logick which both Papists and Protestants now degenerating from the simplicity of Truth make hand-maid of Divinity as they call it and a necessary introduction to their carnal natural and humane Ministry By the infinite obscure labours of which kind of men mixing in their heathenish stuff the Scripture is rendred at this day of so little service to the simple People whereof if Jerom complained in his time now twelve hundred years ago Hieron Ep. 134. ad Cypr. tom 3. saying It is wont to befall the most part of learned Men that it is harder to understand their expositions than the things which they go about to expound what may We say then considering those great heaps of commentarys since in ages yet far more corrupted § VI. In this respect above mentioned then we have shown what service and use the Holy Scriptures as managed in and by the Spirit are of to the Church of God wherefore we do account them a secondary rule Moreover because they are commonly acknowledged by all to have been written by the dictates of the Holy Spirit and that the errors which may be supposed by the injury of times to have slipt in are not such but that there is a sufficient clear Testimony left to all the essentials of the Christian faith we do look upon them as the only fit outward judg of Controversies among Christians and that whatsoever doctrine is contrary unto their Testimony may therefore justly be rejected as false And for our parts we are very willing that all our Doctrines and Practices be tryed by them which we never refused nor ever shall in all controversies with our adversaries as the Judg and Test. We shall also be very willing to admit it as a positive certain Maxim That whatsoever any do pretending to the Spirit which is contrary to the Scriptures be accounted and reckoned a delusion of the Devil For as we never lay claim to the Spirit 's leadings that we may cover our selves in any thing that is evil so we know that as every evil contradicts the Scriptures so it doth also the Spirit in the first place from which the Scriptures came and whose motions can never contradict one another though they may appear sometimes to be contradictory to the blind Eye of natural Man as Paul and James seem to contradict one another Thus far we have shown both what we believe and what we believe not concerning the Holy Scriptures hoping we have given them their due place But since they that will needs have them to be the only certain and principal Rule want not some shew of arguments even from the Scripture it self though it no where call it self so by which they labour to prove their Doctrin I shall briefly lay them down by way of Objections and answer them before I make an end of this
to be pressed as a Cart under sheaves and Christ is said to be slain and crucified And on the contrary as this Seed is received in the heart and suffered to bring forth its natural and proper effect Christ comes to be formed and raised of which the Scripture makes so much mention calling it the New Man Christ within the hope of Glory This is that Christ within which we are heard so much to speak and declare of every where preaching him up and exhorting People to believe in the Light and obey it that they may come to know Christ in them to deliver them from all sin But by this we do not at all intend either to equal our selves to that Holy Man the Lord Jesus Christ who was born of the Virgin Mary in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwell bodily nor to destroy the reality of his present Existence so neither do we as some have falsly caluminated us For though we affirm that Christ dwells in us yet not immediately but mediately as he is in that Seed which is in us whereas he to wit the Eternal Word which was with God and was God dwelt immediately in that Holy Man He then is as the Head and we as the Members he the Vine and we the Branches Now as the Soul of Man dwells otherwayes and in a far more immediate manner in the Head and in the Heart than in the Hands or Legs And as the Sap Vertue and Life of the Vine lodgeth far otherwise in the Stock and Root than in the Branches so God dwelleth otherwise in the Man Jesus than in us We also freely reject the Heresie of Appollonarius who denyed him to have any Soul but said the Body was only acted by the God-head As also the error of Eutyches who made the Manhood to be wholly swallowed up of the Godhead wherefore as we believe he was a true and real man so we also believe that he continues so to be glorified in the Heavens in Soul and Body by whom God shall judge the World in the great and general day of Judgment § XIV Thirdly We understand not this Seed Light or Grace to be an accident as most men ignorantly do but a real Spiritual Substance which the Soul of man is capable to feel and apprehend from which that real Spiritual inward Birth in Believers arises called the New Creature the new Man in the Heart This seems strange to carnal minded men because they are not acquainted with it but we know it and are sensible of it by a true and certain experience though it be hard for man in his natural wisdom to comprehend it until he come to feel it in himself and if he should holding it in the mear notion it would avail him little Yet we are able to make it appear to be true and that our Faith concerning it is not without a solid ground for it is in and by this inward and substantial Seed in our Hearts as it comes to receive nourishment and to have a birth or geniture in us that we come to have those Spiritual Senses raised by which we are made capable of tasting smelling seeing and handling the things of God For a man cannot reach unto those things by his natural Spirit and Senses as is above declared Next we know it to be a Substance because it subsists in the hearts of wicked men even while they are in their wickedness as shall be hereafter proved at large Now no accident can be in a subject without it give the subject it s own denomination as where whiteness is in a subject there the subject is called white So we distinguish betwixt Holiness as it is an accident which denominates man so as the Seed receives a place in him and betwixt this Holy substantial Seed which many times lies in man's heart as a naked grain in a stony ground So also as we may distinguish betwixt Health and Medicine Health cannot be in the Body without the Body be called Healthful because Health is an accident but Medicine may be in a Body that is most unhealthful for that it is a substance And as when a Medicine begins to work the Body may in some respect be called healthful and in some respect unhealthful so we acknowledg as this Divine Medicine receives place in Mans Heart it may denominate him in some part holy and good though there remain yet a corrupted unmortified part or some part of the evil humours unpurged out for where two contrary accidents are in one subject as Health and Sickness in a Body the subject receives its denomination from the accident which prevails most so many Men are called Saints good and Holy Men and that truly when this Holy Seed hath wrought in them in a good measure and hath somewhat leavened them into its Nature though they may be yet liable to many infirmities and weaknesses yea and to some iniquities For as the seed of sin and ground of corruption yea and the capacity of yielding thereunto and sometimes actual falling doth not denominate a good and holy man impious so neither doth the Seed of Righteousness in evil men and the possibiliâ—y of their becoming one with it denominate them good or holy § XV. Fourthly We do not hereby intend any wayes to lessen or derogate from the Atonement and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ But on the contrary do magnifie and exalt it For as we believe all those things to have been certainly transacted which are recorded in the Holy Scriptures concerning the Birth Life Miracles Sufferings Resurrection and Ascension of Christ so we do also believe that it is the duty of every one to believe it to whom it pleases God to reveal the same and to bring them the knowledg of it yea we believe it were damnable unbelief not to believe when so declared but to resist that Holy Seed which as minded would lead and incline every one to believe it as it is offered unto them though it revealeth not in every one the outwardly and explicit knowledg of it nevertheless it alwayes assenteth to it ubi declaratur where it is declared Nevertheless as we firmly believe it was necessary that Christ should come that by his Death and Sufferings he might offer up himself a Sacrifice to God for our sins who his own self bore our sins in his own Body on the Tree so we believe that the remission of sins which any partake of is only in and by vertue of that most satisfactory Sacrifice and no otherwise For it is by the obedience of that One that the Free-gift is come upon all to justification for we affirm that as all men partake of the Fruit of Adam's Fall in that by reason of that evil Seed which through him is communicated unto them they are prone and inclined unto evil though thousands of thousands be ignorant of Adam's Fall neither ever knew of the eating of the forbidden Fruit so also many may come to feel
and rule man in things Natural For as God gave two great Lights to rule the outward World the Sun and Moon the greater Light to rule the Day and the lesser Light to rule the Night So hath he given Man the Light of his Son a Spiritual Divine Light to rule him in the things Spiritual and the light of Reason to rule him in things Natural And even as the Moon borrows her Light from the Sun so ought Men if they would be rightly and comfortably ordered in natural things to have their Reason inlightned by this Divine and pure Light Which inlightned Reason in those that obey and follow this true Light we confess may be useful to man even in Spiritual things as it is still subservient and subject to the other even as the animal life in man regulated and ordered by his Reason helps him in going about things that are rational We do further rightly distinguish this from man's natural Conscience for Conscience being that in man which ariseth from the natural faculties of man's Soul may be defiled and corrupted it is said expresly of the Impure Tit. 1.15 That even their mind and conscience is defiled But this Light can never be corrupted nor defiled neither did it ever consent to evil or wickedness in any for it is said expresly that it makes all things manifest that are proveable Eph. 5.13 and so is a faithful witness for God against every unrighteousness in Man Now Conscience to define it truely comes from conscire and is that knowledg which ariseth in man's heart from what agreeth contradicteth or is contrary to any thing believed by him whereby he becomes conscious to himself that he transgresseth by doing that which he is perswaded he ought not to do So that the mind being once blinded or defiled with a wrong belief there ariseth a conscience from that belief which troubles him when he goes against it As for Example a Turk who hath possess'd himself with a false belief that it is unlawful for him to drink Wine if he do it his conscience smites him for it But though he keep many Concubines his conscience troubles him not because that his judgment is already defiled with a false Opinion that is lawful for him to do the one and unlawful to do the other Whereas if the Light of Christ in him were minded it would reprove him not only for committing Fornication but also as he became obedient thereunto inform him that Mahomet is an Impostor as well as Socrates was informed by it in his day of the falsity of the Heathens Gods So if a Papist eat Flesh in Lent or be not dilligent enough in adoration of Saints and Images or if he should contemn Images his Conscience would smite him for it because his judgment is already blinded with a false belief concerning these things whereas the Light of Christ never consented to any of those Abominations Thus then man's Natural Conscience is sufficiently distinguished from it for Conscience followeth the judgment doth not inform it But this Light as it is received removes the blindness of the judgment opens the understanding and rectifies both the Judgment and Conscience So we confess also that Conscience is an excellent thing where it is rightly inform'd and inlightened Whereof some of us have fitly compared it to a Lanthorn and the Light of Christ to the Candle A Lanthorn is useful when a clear Candle burns and shines in it but otherwise of no use To the Light of Christ then in the Conscience and not to man 's Natural Conscience it is that we continually commend men this not that is it which we preach up and direct people to as to a most certain Guide unto Life Eternal Lastly this Light Seed c. appears to be no power or natural faculty of man's mind because a man that 's in his health can when he pleases stir up move and exercise the Faculties of his Soul he is absolute master of them and except there be some Natural cause or impediment in the way he can use them at his pleasure But this Light and Seed of God in man he cannot move and stir up when he pleaseth but it moves blows and strives with man as the Lord seeth meet For though there be a possibility of Salvation to every man during the day of his Visitation yet cannot a man at any time when he pleaseth or hath some sense of his misery stir up that Light and Grace so as to procure to himself tenderness of heart but he must wait for it which comes upon all at certain times and seasons wherein it works powerfully upon the Soul mightily tenders it and breaks it at which time if man resist it not but close with it he comes to know Salvation by it Even as the Lake of Bethsaida did not cure all those that washed in it but such only as washed first after the Angel had moved upon the Waters so God moves in love to mankind in this Seed in his heart at some singular times setting his Sins in order before him and seriously inviting him to repentance offering to him remission of Sins and Salvation which if man accept of he may be Saved Now there is no man alive and I am confident there shall be none to whom this Paper shall come who if they will deal faithfully and honestly with their own hearts will not be forced to acknowledg but they have been sensible of this in some measure less or more which is a thing that man cannot bring upon himself with all his pains and industry This then O Man and Woman is the day of God's gracious Visitation to thy Soul which thou shalt be happy for ever if thou resist not This is the day of the Lord which as Christ saith is like the Lightening which shineth from the East unto the West And the Wind or Spirit which blows upon the heart and no man knows whither it goes nor whence it comes § XVII And lastly this leads me to speak concerning the manner of this Seed or Lights operation in the Hearts of all men which will shew yet more manifestly how we differ vastly from all those that exalt a natural power or light in man and how our Principle leads above all others to attribute our whole Salvation to the meer Power Spirit and Grace of God To them then that ask us after this manner How do ye differ from the Pelagians and Armenians For if two men have equal sufficient Light and Grace and the one be saved by it and the other not is it not because the one improves it the other not is not then the will of man the cause of the one's Salvation beyond the other I say to such we thus answer that as the Grace and Light in all is sufficient to save all and of its own Nature would save all so it strives and wrestles with all for to save them he that resists its striving is the cause of his
and whereof he was a Minister is one and the same is not far off but nigh in the heart and in the Mouth which done he frameth as it were the objection of our adversaries in the 12 and 15 verses How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard How shall they hear without a Preacher This he answers in the 18 verse saying But I say have they not heard Yes verily their sound went forth into all the Earth and their words unto the end of the World insinuating that this Divine Preacher hath sounded in the ears and hearts of all men for of the outward Apostles that saying was not true neither then nor many hundred years after yea for ought we know there may be yet great and spatious Nations and Kingdoms who never have heard of Christ nor his Apostles as outwardly This inward and Powerful Word of God is yet more fully described in the Epistle to the Hebrews c. 4. v. 12 13. For the Word of God is quick and sharper than a two-edged Sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of Soul and Spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart The vertues of this Spiritual Word are here enumerated it is quick because it searches and tries the hearts of all no man's heart is exempt from it for the Apostle gives this reason of its being so in the following verse but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do And there is not any creature that is not manifest in his sight Tho this ultimately and mediately be referr'd to God yet nearly and immediately it relates to the Word or Light which as hath been before proved is in the hearts of all else it had been improper to have brought it in here The Apostle shewes how every intent and thought of the heart is discerned by the Word of God because all things are naked before God which imports nothing else but it is in and by this Word whereby God sees and discerns mans thoughts and so must needs be in all men because the Apostle saith there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight This then is that faithful Witness and Messenger of God that bears witness for God and for his righteousness in the hearts of all men For he hath not left man without a witness Act. 14.17 and he is said to be given for a Witness to the people Isa. 55.4 And as this Word beareth witness for God so it is not placed in men only to condemn them for as he is given for a Witness so saith the Prophet He is given for a Leader and a Commander The Light is given that all through it may believe Joh. 1.7 For faith cometh by hearing and hearing by this word of God which is placed in mans heart both to be a Witness for God and to be a means to bring man to God through faith and repentance It is therefore powerful that it may divide betwixt the Soul and the Spirit It is like a two-edged Sword that it may cut off iniquity from him and separate betwixt the precious and the vile and because mans heart is cold and hard like Iron naturally therefore hath God placed this Word in him which is said to be like a Fire and like a Hammer Jer. 23.29 that like as by the heat of the Fire the iron of its own nature cold is warmed and by the strength of the Hammer is softned and framed according to the mind of the worker so the cold and hard Heart of Man is by the vertue and powerfulness of this Word of God near and in the Heart as it resists not warmed and softned and received a Heavenly and Coelestial Impression and Image The most part of the Fathers have spoken at large touching this Word Seed and Light and saving Voice calling all unto Salvation and able to save Clemens Alexandrinus saith lib. 2. Stromat The Divine Word hath oried calling all knowing well those that will not obey And yet because it is in our power either to obey or not to obey that none may have a preâ—â—xt of ignorance it hath made a righteous call and requireth but that which is according to the ability and strength of every one The self same in his warning to the Gentiles For as saith he that Heavenly Ambassador of the Lord the Grace of God that brings Salvation hath appeared unto all c. This is the new Song coming and manifestation of the Word which now shews it self in us which was in the beginning and was first of all And again Hear therefore ye that are a far off hear ye who are near the word is hid from none the Light is common to all and shineth to all There is no darkness in the World let us hasten to Salvation to the New birth that we being many may be gathered into the One alone love Ibid. he saith that there is infused unto all but principally into those that are trained up in Doctrine a certain Divine Influence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And again he speaks concerning the innate Witness worthy of belief which of it self doth plainly chuse that which is most honest And again he saith that it is not impossible to come unto the Truth and lay hold of it seeing it is most near to us in our own houses as the most wise Moses declareth living in three parts of us viz. in our hands in our mouth and in our heart this saith he is a most true badg of the Truth which is also fulfilled in three things namely in Councel in Action in Speaking And again he saith also unto the unbelieving Nations Receive Christ receive Light receive Sight to the and thou maist rightly know both God and man The Word that hath inlightned us is more pleasant than Gold and the stone of great value And again he saith let us receive the Light that we may receive God let us receive the Light that we may be the Schollars of the Lord. And again he saith to those Infidel Nations The Heavenly Spirit helpeth thee resist and flee Pleasure Again lib. Strom. 5. he saith God forbid that man be not a partaker of Divine Aquaintance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who in Genesis is said to be a partaker of Inspiration And Paed. lib. 1 cap. 3. there is saith he some lovely and some desirable thing in man which is called the in breathing of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The same man lib. 10. Strom. directeth men unto the Light and Water in themselves who have the Eye of the Soul darkned or dimmed through evil up bringing and learning let them enter in unto their own domestick light or unto the Light which is in their own House 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto the Truth which manifests accurately and clearly these things that have been written Justin Martyr in his first Apology saith that the Word which
many more such expressions that might be gathered out of their writings shew they were not without a sense of this loss Also they had a knowledg and discovery of Jesus Christ inwardly as a remedy in them to deliver them from that evil seed and the evil inclinations of their own hearts though not under that particular denomination Some called him a Holy Spirit as Seneca Epist. 41. who said There is a Holy Spirit in us that treateth us as we treat him Cicero calleth an inuate Light in his Book de Rublica cited by Lactantius 6. Instit. where he calls this Right Reason given unto all constant and eternal calling unto duty by commanding and deterring from deceit by forbidding Adding that it cannot be abrogated neither can any be free'd from it neither by Senat nor People that it is one Eternal and the same alwayes to all Nations so that there is not one at Rome and another at Athens who so obey it not must flee from himself and in this is greatly tormented although he should escape all other punishment Plotinus also calls him Light saying that as the Sun cannot be known but by its own Light so God cannot be known but with his own Light and as the Eye cannot see the Sun but by receiving its Image so Man cannot know God but by receiving his Image and that it behoved Man to come to purity of Heart before he could know God calling him also Wisdom a name frequently given him in Scripture See Prov. 1.20 to the end and Prov. 8 9.34 Where Wisdom is said to cry intreat and invite all to come unto her and learn of her And what is this Wisdom but Christ Hence such as came among the Heathen to forsake Evil and cleave to Righteousness were called Philosophers that is lovers of Wisdom They knew this Wisdom was nigh unto them and that the best knowledg of God and Divine Mysteries was by the Inspiration of the Wisdom of God Phocylides affirmed that the Word of the Wisdom of God was best His words in the Greek are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And much more of this kind might be instanced by which it appears they knew Christ and by his working in them were brought from unrighteousness to righteousness and to love that Power by which they felt themselves redeemed so that as saith the Apostle they shew the work of the Law written in their Hearts and did the things contained in the Law and therefore as all doers of the Law are were no doubt justified and saved thus by the Power of Christ in them And as this was the Judgment of the Apostle so was it of the primitive Christians Hence Justyn Martyr stuck not to call Socrates a Christian saying that all such as lived according to the Divine Word in them which was in all men were Christians such as Socrates and Heraclitus and others among the Greeks c. That such as live with the Word are Christians without fear or anxiety Clemens Alexandrinus saith Apol. 2. Strom. lib. 1. That this Wisdom or Philosophy was necessary to the Gentiles and was their School-master to lead them unto Christ by which of old the Greeks were justified Nor do I think saith Augustin in his Book of the City of God lib. 18. cap. 47 that the Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto God but the Israelites Upon which place Lodovicus Vives saith that thus the Gentiles not having a Law were a Law unto themselves and the Light of so living in the Gift of God and proceeds from the Son of whom it is written that he inlighteneth every man that cometh into the World Augustin also testifies in his Confessions lib. 7. cap. 9. That he had read in the writings of the Platonists though not in the very same words yet that which by many and multiplied reasons did perswade that in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God this was in the beginning with God by which all things were made and without which nothing was made that was made In him was Life and the Life was the Light of Men and the Light shined in the Darkness and the Darkness did not comprehend it And albeit the Soul gives testimony concerning the Light yet it is not the Light but the Word of God for GOD is the true LIGHT which inlighteneth every man that cometh into the World and so repeats to the 14 verse of the 1 chapter of John adding these things have I there read Yea there is a Book translated out of the Arabick which gives an account of one Hai Ebn Yokdan who without converse of man living in an Island alone attained to such a profound knowledg of God as to have immediate converse with him and to affirm that the best and most certain knowledg of God is not that which is attained by premisses premised and conclusions deduced but that which is enjoyed by conjunction of the mind of man with the Supream Intellect after the mind is purified from its corruptions and is separated from all bodily Images and is gathered into a profound stilness § XXVIII Seeing then it is by this inward Gift Grace and Light that both these that have the Gospel preached unto them come to have Jesus brought forth in them and to have the saving and sanctified use of all outward helps and advantages and also by this same Light that all may come to be saved and that God calls invites and strives with all in a day and saveth many to whom he hath not seen meet to conveigh this outward knowledg therefore we having the experience of the inward and powerful work of this Light in our Hearts even Jesus revealed in us cannot cease to proclaim the day of the Lord that it is arisen in it crying out the woman of Samaria Come and see One that hath told me all that ever I have done Is not this the Christ That others may come and feel the same in themselves and may know that that little small thing that reproves them in their Hearts however they have despised it and neglected it is nothing less than the Gospel preached in them Christ the Wisdom and Power of God being in and by that Seed seeking to save their Souls Of this Light therefore Austin speaks in his Confessions lib. 11. cap. 9. In this beginning O God! thou madest the Heaven and the Earth in thy Word in thy Son in thy Vertue in thy Wisdom wonderfully saying and wonderfully doing who shall comprehend it who shall declare it What is that which skineth in unto me and smites my Heart without hurt at which I both tremble and am inflamed I tremble in so far as I am unlike unto it and I am inflamed in so far as I am like unto it It is Wisdom which shineth in unto me and dispelleth my cloud which had again cover'd me after I was departed from that Darkness and rampier of my punishments And again he saith lib. 10. cap. 27. It is
by some citations out of them hereafter to be mentioned will appear though this Doctrine hath not since the Apostacy so far as ever I could observe been so distinctly and evidently held forth according to the Scriptures Testimony as it hath pleased God to reveal it and preach it forth in this day by the witnesses of his Truth whom he hath raised to that end Which Doctrine though it be briefly held forth and comprehended in the Thesis it self yet I shall a little more fully explain the state of the Controversie as it stands betwixt us and those that now oppose us § III. First then as by the explanation of the former Thesis appears we renounce all natural power and ability in our selves in order to bring us out of our lost and faln condition and first Nature and confess that of our selves we are able to do nothing that is good so neither can we procure remission of sins or justification by any act of our own so as to merit it or draw it as a debt from God due unto us but we acknowledg all to be of and from his Love which is the original and fundamental cause of our acceptance Secondly God manifested this love towards us in the sending of his Beloved Son the Lord Jesus Christ into the world who gave himself for us an Offering and a Sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour and having made peace through the blood of his Cross that he might reconcile us unto himself and by the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot unto God and suffered for our sins the Just for the unjust that he might bring us unto God Thirdly then forasmuch as all men who have come to man's estate the Man Jesus only excepted have sinned therefore all have need of this Saviour to remove the Wrath of God from them due to their offences in this respect he is truly said to have born the Iniquities of us all in his Body on the Tree and therefore is the Only Mediator having qualified the Wrath of God towards us so that our former sins stand not in our way being by vertue of his most satisfactory Sacrifice removed and pardoned Neither do we think that remission of sins is to be expected sought or obtained any other way or by any works or Sacrifice whatsomever though as has been said formerly they may come to partake of this remission that are ignorant of the History So then Christ by his death and sufferings hath reconciled us to God even while we are Enemies that is he offers reconciliation unto us we are put into a capacity of being reconciled God is willing to forgive us our iniquities and to accept us as is well expressed by the Apostle 2 Cor. 5.19 God was in Christ reconciling the World unto himself not imputing their trespasses unto them and hath put in us the Word of Reconciliation And therefore the Apostle in the next verses treats them in Christs stead to be reconciled to God intimating that the Wrath of God being removed by the obedience of Christ Jesus he is willing to be reconciled unto them and ready to remit the sins that are past if they repent We consider then our Redemption in a two fold respect or state both which in their own Nature are perfect though in their application to us the one is not nor cannot be without respect to the other The first is the Redemption performed and accomplished by Christ for us in his Crucified Body without us The other is the Redemption wrought by Christ in us which no less properly is called and accounted a Redemption than the former The first then is that whereby man as he stands in the fall is put into a capacity of Salvation and hath conveighed unto him a measure of that Power Vertue Spirit Life and Grace that was in Christ Jesus which as the free Gift of God is able to counter-ballance overcome and root out the Evil Seed wherewith we are naturally as in the fall leavened The second is that whereby we witness and know this pure and perfect Redemption in our selves purifying cleansing and redeeming us from the power of Corruption and bringing us into unity Favour and Friendship with God By the first of these two we that are lost in Adam plunged in the bitter and corrupt Seed unable of our selves to do any good thing but naturally joyned and united to evil forward and propense to all iniquity servants and slaves to the Power and Spirit of Darkness are notwithstanding all this so far reconciled to God by the death of his Son while Enemies that we are put into a capacity of Salvation having the glad tidings of the Gospel of peace offered unto us and God is reconciled unto us in Christ calls and invites us to himself in which respect we understand these Scriptures He stew the enmity in himself He loved us first seeing us in our blood he said unto us live he who did not sin his own self bare our sins in his own Body on the Tree and he died for our sins the just for the unjust By the second we witness this capacity brought into act whereby receiving and not resisting the purchase of his death to wit the Light Spirit and Grace of Christ revealed to us we witness and possess a real true and inward Redemption from the power and prevalency of sin and so come to be truly and really redeemed justified and made righteous and to a sensible union and friendship with God Thus he died for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and thus we know him and the Power of his Resurrection and the fellowship of his Sufferings being made conformable to us This last follows the first in order and is a consequence of it proceeding from it as an effect from its cause So as none could have enjoyed the last without the first had been such being the will of God so also can none now partake of the first but as he witnesseth the last Wherefore as to us they are both causes of our Justification The first the procuring efficient the other the formal cause Fourthly we understand not by this Justification by Christ barely the good works even as wrought by the Spirit of Christ for they as Protestants truly affirm are rather an effect of Justification than the cause of it But we understand the formation of Christ in us Christ born and brought forth in us from which good works as naturally proceed as Fruit from a Fruitful Tree It is this inward Birth in us bringing forth Righteousness and Holyness in us that doth Justâ—fie us which having removed and done away the contrary Nature and Spirit that did bear rule and bring condemnation now is in dominion over all in our hearts Those then that come to know Christ thus formed in them do enjoy him wholly and undivided who is The LORD our RIGHTEOVSNESS Jer. 23.6 This is to be cloathed with Christ and to have put
he were really unjust Now this word justifie formed or from justice or just doth beyond all question signifie a making just it being nothing else but a composition of the Verb facio and the Adjective justus which is nothing else than thus justifico i. e. justum facio to make just and justified of justus and fio as justus fio I become just justificatus i. e. justus factus I am made just Thus also is it with Verbs of this kind as sanctifico from sanctus holy and facio honorifico from honos and facio sacrifico from sacer and facio all which are still understood of the Subject really and truly endued with that vertue and quality from which the verb is derived Therefore as none are said to be Sanctified that are really unholy while they are such so neither can any be truly said to be Justified while they actually remain unjust Only this Verb Justifie hath in a Metaphorical and Figurative sense been otherwaies taken to wit in a Law sense as when a man really guilty of a crime is freed from the punishment of his sin he is said to be justified that is put in the place as if he were just For this use of the word hath proceeded from that true supposition that none ought to be acquitted but the innocent Hence also that manner of speaking I will Justifie such a man or I will justifie this or that is used from the supposition that the Person and thing is really justifiable And where there is an error and abuse in the matter so farr there is also in the expression This is so manifest and apparent that Paraeus a chief Protestant and a Calvinist also in his opinion acknowledges this We never at any time said saith he nor thought that the Righteousness of Christ was imputed to us that by him we should be named formally just and be so as we have divers times already shewed for that would no less soundly sight with right reason than if a guilty man absolved in Judgment should say that he himself were formally just by the clemency of the Judg granting him his Life Now is it not strange that men should be so facile in a matter of so great concernment as to build the stress of their acceptance with God upon a meer borrowed and metaphorical signification to the excluding or at least esteeming that not necessary without which the Scripture saith expresly no man shall ever see God For if Holyness be requisite and necessary of which this is said then must good works also unless our Adversaries can shew us a Holy man without good works But moreover Justified in this Figurative sense is used for approved and indeed for the most part if not always in Scripture when the word justifie is used it is taken in the worst part that is that as the use of the word that way is an usurpation so it is spoken of such as usurp the thing to themselves while it properly doth not belong unto them as will appear to those that will be at the pains to examine these places Exod. 23.7 Job 9.20 27 5. Prov. 17.15 Isa. 5.23 Jer. 3.11 Ezech. 16.51 52. Luke 10.29 16 15. which are all spoken of men justifying the wicked or of wicked men justifying themselves that is approving themselves in their wickedness If it be at any time in this signification taken in good part it is very seldom comparatively and that so obvious and plain by the context as leaves no scruple But the question is not so much the use of the word where it is passingly or occasionally used as where the very Doctrine of Justification is handled Where indeed to mistake it viz. in its proper place so as to content our selves with an imaginary Justification while God requires a real is of most dangerous consequence for the disquisition of which let it be considered that in all these places to the Romans Corinthians Gallatians and elsewhere where the Apostle handles this Theam the word may be taken in its own proper signification without any absurdity as where it is often asserted in the above mentioned Epistles to the Romans and Gallatians that a man cannot be justified by the Law of Moses nor by the works of the Law There is no absurdity nor danger in understanding it according to its own proper signification to wit that a man cannot be made just by the Law of Moses seeing this so well agrees with that saying of the same Apostle that the Law makes nothing perfect And also where it is said We are Justified by Faith it may very well be understood of being made just seeing it is also said that Faith purifies the heart and no doubt the pure in heart are just and the Just live by Faith Again where it is said We are justified by Grace We are justified by Christ We are justified by the Spirit it is no ways absurd to understand it of being made just seeing by his Spirit and Grace he doth make men just But to understand it universally the other way meerly for acceptance and imputation would infer great absurdities as may be proved at large but because I judged it would be acknowledged I forbear at present for brevities sake But further in the most weighty places where this word justifie is used in Scripture with an immediate relation to the Doctrine of Justification our Adversaries must needs acknowledg it to be understood of making just and not barely in the legal acceptation as first in that of the 1 Cor. 6.11 But ye are Washed but ye are Sanctified but ye are Justified as I before have proved which also many Protestants are forced to acknowledg Neither decide we saith Thysius because of the most great and strict connexion that Justification doth sometimes seem also to comprehend Sanctification as a consequence as in Rom. 8.30 Tit. 3.7 1 Cor. 6.11 And such sometimes were ye but ye are washed c. Zanchus having spoken concerning this sense of Justification adds saying There is another signification of the word viz. for a man from unjust to be made just even as Sanctified signifies from unholy to be made holy In which signification the Apostle said in the place above cited and such were some of you c. that is of unclean ye are made holy and of unjust ye are made just by the Holy Spirit for Christ's sake in whom ye have believed Of this signification is that Rev. 22.11 Let him that is just be just still that is really from just become more just even as from unjust he became just And according to this signification the Fathers and especially Augustine have interpreted this word Thus far he H. Bullinger on the same place 1 Cor. 6. speaketh thus By divers words saith he the Apostle signifies the same thing when he saith ye are Washed ye are Sanctified ye are Justified Secondly In that excellent saying of the Apostle so much observed Rom. 8.30 Whom he
called them he also justified and whom he justified them he also glorified This is commonly called the golden chain as being acknowledged to comprehend the method and order of Salvation And therefore if justified were not understood here in its proper signification of being made just sanctification would be excluded out of this chain And truly it is very worthy of observation that the Apostle in this succinct and compendious account makes the word justified to comprehend all betwixt calling and glorifying thereby clearly insinuating that the being really righteous is that only medium by which from our calling we pass to glorification All for the most part do acknowledg the word to be so taken in this place and not only so but most of those who oppose are forced to acknowledg that as this is the most proper so the most common signification of it thus divers famous Protestants do acknowledg We are not saith D. Chamierus such impertinent esteemers of words as to be ignorant nor yet such importunat Sophists as to deny that the words of Justification and Sanctification do infer one another ye we know that the Saints are chiefly for this reason so called because that in Christ they have received remission of sins and we read in the Revelation Let him that is just be just still which cannot be understood except of the fruit of inherent righteousness Nor do we deny but perhaps in other places they may be promiscuously taken especially by the Fathers I take saith Beza the name of Justification largely so as it comprehends whatsoever we acquire from Christ as well by imputation as by the efficacy of the Spirit in sanctifying us So likewise is the word of Justification taken Rom. 8.30 Melancthon saith that to be justified by Faith signifies in Scripture not only to be pronounced just but also of unrighteous to be made righteous Also some chief Protestants though not so clearly yet in part hinted at our Doctrin whereby we ascribe unto the Death of Christ remission of Sins and the work of Justification unto the Grace of the Spirit acquired by his Death Martinus Boraeus explaining that place of the Apostle Rom. 4.25 Who was given for our sins and rose again for our justification saith There are two things beheld in Christ which are necessary to our justification the one is his death the other is his arising from the dead By his death the sins of this world behoved to be expiated By his rising from the dead it pleased the same goodness of God to give the Holy Spirit whereby both the Gospel is believed and the Righteousness lost by the fault of the first Adam is restored And afterwards he saith The Apostle expresseth both parts in these words Who was given for our sins c. In his Death is beheld the satisfaction for sin in his Resurrection the gift of the Holy Spirit by which our Justification is perfected And again the same man saith elsewhere Both these kinds of Righteousness are therefore contained in Justification neither can the one be separate from the other So that in the definition of Justification the merit of the blood of Christ is included both with the remission of sins and with the gift of the Holy Spirit of Justification and Regeneration Martinus Bucerus saith Seeing by one sin of Adam the world was lost the Grace of Christ hath not only abolished that one sin and death which came by it but hath together taken away those infinite sins and also led into full justification as many as are of Christ so that God now not only remits unto them Adam 's sin and their own but also gives them therewith the Spirit of a solid and perfect Righteousness which renders us conform unto the Image of the First begotten And upon these words by Jesus Christ he saith We alwaies judg that the whole benefit of Christ tends to this that we might be strong through the gift of Righteousness being rightly and orderly ordained with all vertue that is restored to the Image of God And lastly William Forbes our Countrey man Bishop of Edinburgh saith Whensoever the Scripture makes mention of the Justification before God as speaketh Paul and from him besides others Augustin it appears that the word justify necessarily signifies not only to pronounce just in a Law sense but also really and inherently to make just because that God doth other waies justifie a wicked man than earthly Judges For he when he justifies a wicked or unjust man doth indeed pronounce him as these also do but by pronouncing him just because his judgment is according to Truth he also makes him really of unjust to become just And again the same man upon the same occasion answering the more rigid Protestants who say that God first justifies and then makes just he adds But let them have a care least by too great and empty subtilty unknown both to the Scripture and the Fathers they lessen and diminish the weight and dignity of so great and divine a benefit so much celebrated in the Scripture to wit justification of the wicked For if to the formal reason of justification of the ungodly doth not at all belong his justification so to speak i. e. his being made righteous then in the Justification of a sinner although he be Justifyed yet the stain of sin is not taken away but remains the same in his Soul as before Justification And so dotwithstanding the benefit of Justification he remains as before unjust and a sinner and nothing is taken away but the guilt and obligation to pain and the offence and enmity of God through non imputation But both the Scriptures and Fathers do affirm that in the Justification of a sinner their sins are not only remitted forgiven covered not imputed but also taken away blotted out cleansed washed purged and very far removed from us as appears from many places of the Holy Scriptures The same Forbes shews us at length in the following chapter that this was the confessed judgment of the Fathers out of the writings of those who hold the contrary opinion some whereof out of him I shall note as first Calvin saith that the judgment of Austin or at least his manner of speaking is not throughout to be received who although he took from man all praise of righteousness and ascribed all to the Grace of God yet he refers Grace to Sanctification by which we are regenerate through the Spirit unto newness of life Chemnitius saith that they do not deny but that the Fathers take the word justifie for renewing by which works of righteousness are wrought in us by the Spirit And pag. 130. I am not ignorant that the Fathers indeed often use the word justifie in this signification to wit of making just Zanchius saith that the Fathers and chiefly Austin interpret the word justifie according to this signification to wit of making just so that according to them to he justified
was no other than of unjust to be made just through the Grace of God for Christ. He mentioneth more but this may suffice to our purpose § VIII Having thus sufficiently proved that by justification is to be understood a really being made righteous I do boldly affirm and that not only from a notional knowledg but from a real inward experimental feeling of the thing that the immediate nearest or formal cause if we must in condescendence to some use this word of a man's justification in the sight of God is the revelation of Jesus Christ in the Soul changing altering and renewing the mind by whom even the Author of this inward work thus formed and revealed we are truly justified and accepted in the sight of God For it is as we are thus covered and cloathed with him in whom the Father is alwaies well pleased that we may draw near to God and stand with confidence before his throne being purged by the blood of Jesus inwardly poured into our Souls and cloathed with his Life and Righteousness therein revealed And this is that order and method of Salvation held forth by the Apostle in that Divine saying Rom. 5.10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his Life For the Apostle first holding forth the reconciliation wrought by the death of Christ wherein God is near to receive and redeem man holds forth his Salvation and Justification to be by the Life of Jesus Now that this Life is an inward Spiritual thing revealed in the Soul whereby it is renewed and brought forth out of death where it naturally has been by the fall and so quickned and made alive unto God The same Apostle shews Eph. 2.5 Even when we were dead in sins and trespasses he hath quickened us together in Christ by whose Grace ye are saved and hath raised us up together Now this none will deny to be the inward work of renovation and therefore the Apostle gives that reason of their being saved by Grace which is the inward Vertue and Power of Christ in the Soul but of this place more hereafter Of the Revelation of this inward Life the Apostle also speaketh 2 Cor. 4.10 That the Life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our Bodies and ver 11. That the Life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal Flesh. Now this inward Life of Jesus is that whereby as is before observed he saith We are saved Secondly That it is by this revelation of Jesus Christ and the new Creation in us that we are justified doth evidently appear from that excellent saying of the Apostle included in the Proposition it self Tit. 3.5 according to his mercy he hath saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost c. Now that whereby we are saved that we are also no doubt justified by which words are in this respect synonimous Here the Apostle clearly ascribes the immediate cause of Justification to this inward work of Regeneration which is Jesus Christ revealed in the Soul as being that which formerly states us in a capacity of being reconciled with God the washing or regeneration being that inward Power and Vertue whereby the Soul is cleansed and cloathed with the Righteousness of Christ so as to be made fit to appear before God Thirdly This Doctrin is manifest from 2 Cor. 13.5 Examine your own selves whether ye be in the faith prove your own selves know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates First it appears here how earnest the Apostle was that they should know Christ in them so that he presses this exhortation upon them and inculcates it three times Secondly he makes the cause of reprobation or not-justification the want of Christ thus revealed and known in the Soul whereby it necessarily follows by the rule of contraries where the parity is alike as in this case it is evident that where Christ is inwardly known there the persons subjected to him are approved and justified For there can be nothing more plain than this that if we must know Christ in us except we be reprobates ortunjustified persons that if we know him in us we are not reprobates and consequently justified ones Like unto this is that other saying of the same Apostle Gal. 4.19 My little Children of whom I travel in Birth again until Christ be formed in you and therefore the Apostle terms this Christ within the hope of Glory Col. 1.27.28 Now that which is the hope of Glory can be no other than that which we immediately and most nearly relie upon for our Justification and that whereby we are really and truly made Just. And as we do not hereby deny but the Original and Fundamental cause of our Justification is the Love of God manifested in the appearance of Jesus Christ in the flesh who by his Life Death Sufferings and Obedience made a way for our Reconciliation and became a Sacrifice for the remission of sins that are past and purchased unto us this Seed and Grace from which this birth arises and in which Jesus Christ is inwardly received formed and brought forth in us in his own pure and Holy Image of Righteousness by which our Souls live unto God ond are cloathed with him and have put him on even as the Scripture speaks Eph. 4.23 24. Gal. 3.27 We stand justified and saved in and by him and by his Spirit and Grace Rom. 3.24 1 Cor. 6.11 Tit. 3.7 So again reciprocally we are hereby made partakers of the fulness of his merits and his cleansing blood is near to wash away every sin and infirmity and to heal all our back-slidings as often as we turn towards him by unfeigned Repentance and become renewed by his Spirit Those then that find him thus raised and ruling in them have a true ground of hope to believe that they are Justified by his Blood But let not any deceive themselves so as to foster themselves in a vain hope and confidence that by the Death and Sufferings of Christ they are Justified so long as sin lies at their door Gen. 4. v. 7. Iniquity prevails and they remain yet unrenewed and unregenerate lest it be said unto them I know you not Let that saying of Christ be remembred not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter but he that doth the will of my Father Matth. 7.21 To which let these excellent sayings of the beloved Disciple be added Little Children let no man deceive you he that doth Righteousness is Righteous even as he is Righteous He that committeth sin is of the Devil because if our heart condemn us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things 1 Joh. 3.7 20. Many Famous Protestants bear witness to this inward Justification by Christ inwardly revealed and formed in man as 1. M. Borrhaeus In the Imputation saith he wherein Christ
is ascribed and imputed to Believers for Righteousness the merit of his Blood and the Holy Ghost given unto us by Vertue of his merits are equally included And so it shall be confessed that Christ is our Righteousness as well from his Merit Satisfaction and Remission of sins obtained by him as from the gifts of the Spirit of Righteousness And if we do this we shall consider whole Christ proposed to us for our Salvation and not any single part of him The same man pag. 169. In our Justification then Christ is considered who breaths and lives in us to wit by his Spirit put on by us concerning which putting on the Apostle saith Ye have put on Christ. And again pag. 171. We endeavour to treat in Justification not of part of Christ but him wholly in so far as he is our Righteousness every way And a little after as then blessed Paul in our Justification when he saith whom he Justified them he Glorified comprehends all things which pertains to our being reconciled to God the Father and our renewing which fits us for attaining unto glory such as Faith Righteousness Christ and the Gift of Righteousness exhibited by him whereby we are regenerated to the fulfilling of the Justification which the Law requires so we also will have all things comprehended in this cause which are contained in the recovery of Righteousness and Innocency And pag. 181. The form saith he of our Justification is the Divine Righteousness it self by which we are formed just and good This is Jesus Christ who is esteem'd our Righteousness partly from the forgiveness of sins and partly from the renewing and the restoring of that integrity which was lost by the fault of the first Adam so that his New and Heavenly Adam being put on by us of which the Apostle saith Ye have put on Christ ye have put him on I say as the form so the Righteousness Wisdom and Life of God So also affirmeth Claudius Alberius Inuncanus see his Orat. Apodeict Lausaniae excus 1587. orat 2. pag. 86 87. Zuinglius also in his Epistle to the Princes of Germany as cited by Himelius c. 7. p. 60. saith That the Sanctification of the Spirit is true Justification which alone suffices to Justifie Essius upon 1 Cor. 6.11 saith Lest Christian Righteousness should be thought to consist in the washing alone that is in the remission of sins he addeth the other degree or part but ye are sanctified that is ye have attain'd to purity so that ye are now truly Holy before God Lastly expressing the sum of the benefit received in one word which includes both the parts But ye are Justified the Apostle adds in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ that is by his merits and in the Spirit of our God that is the Holy Spirit proceeding from God and communicated to us by Christ. And lastly Richard Baxter a Famous English Preacher who yet liveth in his Book called Aphorisms of Justification pag. 80. saith that some ignorant wretches gnash their Teeths at this Doctrine as if it were flat Popery not understanding the Nature of the Righteousness of the New Covenant which is all out of Christ in our selves though wrought by the Power of the Spirit of Christ in us § IX The third thing proposed to be considered is concerning good Works their necessity to Justification I suppose there is enough said before to clear us from any imputation of being Popish in this matter But if it be queried Whether we have not said or will not affirm that a man is justified by Works Quest. I answer I hope none need neither ought to take offence if in this matter we use the plain Language of the Holy Scripture Answ. which saith expresly in answer hereunto Jam. 2.24 Ye see then how that by works a man is Justified and not by Faith only I shall not offer to prove the Truth of this saying since what is said in this Chapter by the Apostle is sufficient to convince any man that will read and believe it I shall only from this derive this one argument If no man can be Justified without Faith and no Faith be living nor yet available to Justification without works then works are necessary to Justification But the First is true Therefore also the Last For this Truth is so apparent and evident in the Scriptures that for the proof of it we might transcribe most of the precepts of the Gospel I shall instance a few which of themselves do so clearly assert the thing in question that they need no commentary nor further demonstration And then I shall answer the objections made against this which indeed are the arguments used for the contrary opinion Heb. 12.14 Without Holyness no man shall see God Matth. 7.21 Not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but he that doth the will of my Father which is in Heaven Joh. 13.7 If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them 1 Cor. 7.19 Circumcision is nothing and Vncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments of God Rev. 22.14 Blessed are they that do his Commandments that they may have right to the Tree of Life and through the Gates may enter into the City and many more that might be instanced from all which I thus argue If those only can enter into the Kingdom that do the will of the Father If those be accounted only the wise builders and happy Arg. that do the sayings of Christ if no observation avail but only the keeping of the Commandments and if they be blessed that do the Commandments and thereby have right to the Tree of Life and entrance through the gate into the City then works are absolutely necessary to Salvation and Justification But the First is true And therefore also the Last The consequence of the antecedent is so clear and evident that I think no man of sound reason will call for a proof of it Obj. § X. But they object that works are not necessary to Justification First because of that saying of Christ Luk. 17.10 When ye shall have done all these things that are commanded you say We are unprofitable Servants c. Answ. Answer as to God we are indeed unprofitable for he needeth nothing neither can we add any thing unto him but as to our selves we are not unprofitable else it might be said that it is not profitable for a man to keep God's Commandments which is most absurd and would contradict Christ's Doctrine throughout Doth not Christ Matth. 5. through all those beatitudes pronounce men blessed for their Purity for their Meekness for their Peaceableness c. And is it not then that for which Christ pronounceth men blessed profitable unto them Moreover Matth. 25.21 23. doth not Christ pronounce the men good and faithful Servants that improved their Talents Was not their doing of that then profitable unto them and verse 30. It is said of him
that hid his Talent and did not improve it Cast ye the unprofitable Servant into utter darkness If then their not improving of the Talent made the man unprofitable and he was therefore cast into utter darkness it will follow by the Rule of Contraries so far at least that the improving made the other profitable seeing if our Adversaries will allow us to believe Christ's Words this is made a reason and so at left a cause instrumental of their acceptance Well done good and faithful Servant thou hast been faithful over a few things I will make thee ruler over many things enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Obj. Secondly they object those sayings of the Apostle where he excludes the deeds of the Law from Justification as first Rom. 3.20 because by the deeds of the Law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight And ver 28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by Faith without the deeds of the Law Answ. Answ. We have shewn already what place we give to works even to the best of works in justification and how we ascribe its immediate and formal cause to the worker brought forth in us but not to the works But in answer to this objection I say there is a great difference betwixt the works of the Law and those of Grace or of the Gospel The first are excluded the second not but are necessary The first are those which are performed in man's own will and by his strength in a conformity to the outward Law and Letter and therefore are men's own imperfect works or works of the Law which makes nothing perfect And to this belong all the Ceremonies Purifications Washings and Traditions of the Jews The second are the works of the Spirit of Grace wrought in the Heart wrought in conformity to the Inward and Spiritual Law which works are not wrought in man's will nor by his power and ability but in and by the Power and Spirit of Christ in us and therefore are pure and perfect in their kind as shall hereafter be proved and may be called Christ's works for that he is the immediate author and worker of them Such works we affirm absolutely necessary to justification so that a man cannot be justified without them and all faith without them is dead and useless as the Apostle James saith Now that such a distinction is to be admitted and that the works excluded by the Apostle in the matter of Justification are of the first kind will appear if we consider the occasion of the Apostle mentioning this as well here as throughout in his Epistle to the Galatians where he speaks of this matter and to this purpose at large which was this That whereas many of the Gentiles that were not of the Race nor Seed of Abraham as concerning the Flesh were come to be converted to the Christian Faith and believe in him some of those that were of the Jewish Proselites thought to subject the faithful and believing Gentiles to the legal Ceremonies and Observations as necessary to their Justification This gave the Apostle Paul occasion at length in his Epistle to the Romans Galatians and elsewhere to shew the use and tendency of the Law and of its works and to contradistinguish them from the Faith of Christ and Righteousness thereof shewing how the former was ceased and become ineffectual the other remaining and yet necessary And that the works excluded by the Apostle are of this kind of works of the Law appears by the whole strain of his Epistle to the Galatians chap. 1 2 3 and 4. for after in the 4 chapter he upbraideth them for their returning unto the observation of daies and times and that in the beginning of the 5 chapter he sheweth them their folly and the evil consequence of adhering to the Ceremonies of Circumcision then he adds v. 6. For in Christ Jesus neither Circumcision nor Vncircumcision availeth but Faith which worketh by love and thus he concludes again chap. 6. v. 15. For in Christ Jesus neither Circumcision availeth nor Vncircumcision but a new Creature From which places appeareth that distinction of works aforementioned whereof the one is excluded the other necessary to Justification For the Apostle sheweth here that Circumcision which word is often used to comprehend the whole Ceremonies and legal Performances of the Jews is not necessary nor doth avail Here are then the works which are excluded by which no man is justified but Faith which worketh by love but the new Creature this is that which availeth which is absolutely necessary for Faith that worketh by love cannot be without works for as is said in the same 5 chapter v. 22. Love is a work of the Spirit Also the New Creature if it avail and be necessary cannot be without works seeing it is natural for it to bring forth works of Righteousness Again that the Apostle no waies intends to exclude such good works appears in that in the same Epistle he exhorts the Galatians to them and holds forth the usefulness and necessity of them and that very plainly c. 6. v. 7 8 9. Be not deceived saith he God is not mocked for what soever man soweth that shall he also reap for he that soweth to the Flesh shall of the Flesh reap Corruption but he that soweth in the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap Life everlasting And let us not be weary of well doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not Doth it not hereby appear how necessary the Apostle would have the Galatians know that he esteemed good works to be to wit not the outward testimony and tradition of the Law but the fruits of the Spirit mentioned a little before by which Spirit he would have them to be led and walk in those good works As also how much he ascribed to these good works by which he affirms Life Everlasting is reaped Now that cannot be useless to man's Justification which capaciates him to reap so rich a harvest But lastly for a full answer to this objection and for the establishing of this Doctrin of good works I shall instance another saying of the same Apostle Paul which our adversaries also in the blindness of their minds make use of against us to wit Tit. 3.5 Not by works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost It is generally granted by all that saved is here all one as if it had been said justified Now there are two kinds of works here mentioned one by which we are not saved that is not justified and another by which we are saved or justified The first the works of Righteousness which we have wrought that is which we in our first faln nature by our own strength have wrought our own legal performances and therefore may truly and properly be called ours whatever specious appearances they may seem to have And that it must needs
such as their Converting of the Nations to the Christian Faith their gathering of the Churches their Writing of the Holy Scriptures yea and their Offering up and Sacrificing of their Lives for the Testimony of Jesus What may our Adversaries think of this Argument whereby it will follow that the Holy Scriptures whose perfection and excellency they seem so much to magnifie are proved to be impure and imperfect because they came through impure and imperfect Vessels It appears by the confessions of Protestants that the Fathers did frequently attribute unto works of this kind that Instrumental work which we have spoken of in Justification albeit some ignorant persons cry out it is Popery and also divers and that Famous Protestants do of themselves confess it Amandus Polanus in his Symphonia Catholica cap. 27. de remissione peccatorum pag. 651. places this These as the common opinion of Protestants most agreeable to the Doctrine of the Fathers We obtain the remission of sins by Repentance Confession Prayers and Tears proceeding from Faith but do not merit to speak properly and therefore we obtain remission of sins not by the merit of our Repentance and Prayers but by the mercy and goodness of God Innocentius Gentiletus a Lawyer of great same among Protestants in his examin of the Council of Trent pag. 66 67. of Justification having before spoken of Faith and Works adds these words But seeing the one cannot be without the other we call them both conjunctly instrumental causes Zanchius in his 5 book De Natura Dei saith We do not simply deny that good works are the cause of Salvation to wit the instrumental rather than the efficient cause which they call sine qua non And afterwards Good Works are the instrumental cause of the possession of Life Eternal for by these as by a means and a lawful way God leads unto the possession of Life Eternal G. Amesius saith that our obedience albeit it be not the principal and meritorius cause of Life Eternal is nevertheless a cause in some respect administring helping and advancing towards the possession of the life Also Richard Baxter in the book above cited pag. 155. saith that we are justified by works in the same kind of causality as by Faith to wit as being both causes sine qua non or conditions of the New Covenant on our part requisite to Justification And pag. 195. he saith It is needless to teach any Schollar who hath read the Writings of Papists how this Doctrine differs from them But lastly because it is fit here to say something of the merit and reward of works I shall add something in this place of our sense and belief concerning that matter we are far from thinking or believing that man merits any thing by his works from God all being of Free Grace and therefore do we and always have denyed that Popish notion of meritum excondigno nevertheless we cannot deny but that God out of his infinite goodness wherewith he hath loved mankind after he communicates to him his Holy Grace and Spirit doth according to his own will recompence and reward the good works of his Children and therefore this merit of congruity or reward in so far as the Scripture is plain and positive for it we may not deny neither wholly reject the word in so far as the Scripture makes use of it For the same Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies merit is also in those places where the Translators express it worth or worthy as Matth. 3.8 1 Thess. 2.12 2 Thess. 1.5 8. concerning which Richard Baxter saith in the above cited book pag. 8. But in a larger sense as promise is an Obligation and the thing promised is said to be debt so the performers of the conditions are called worthy and that which they perform Merit although properly all be of Grace and not of Debt Also those who are called the Fathers of the Church frequently used this word of merit whose sayings concerning this matter I think not needful to insert because it is not doubted but evident that many Protestants are not averse from this word in the sense that we use it The Apology for the Augustine Confession Art 20. hath these words We agree that works are truly meritorius not of remission of sins or Justification but they are meritorious of other rewards Corporal and Spiritual which are indeed as well in this Life as after this Life And further Seeing works are a certain fulfilling of the Law they are rightly said to be meritorious it is rightly said that a reward is due to them In the acts of the conference of Oldenburgh the Electoral Divines pag. 110 265. say In this sense our Churches also are not averse from the word merit used by the Fathers neither therefore do they defend the Popish Doctrine of merit G. Vossius in his Theological These concerning the merits of good works saith We have not adventured to condemn the word merit wholly as being that which both many of the Ancients use and also the reformed Churches have used in their confessions Now that God judgeth and accepteth men according to their works is beyond doubt to those that seriously will read and consider these Scriptures Matth. 17.26 Rom. 2.6 7 10. 2 Cor. 5.10 Ja. 1.25 Heb. 10.35 1 Pet. 1.17 Rev. 22.12 § XIII And to conclude this Theam let none be so bold as to mock God supposing themselves justified and accepted in the sight of God by vertue of Christ's Death and Sufferings while they remain unsanctified and unjustified in their own Hearts and polluted in their Sins lest their hope prove that of the Hypocrite which perisheth Neither let any foolishly imagine that they can by their own works or by the performance of any Ceremonies or Traditions or by the giving of Gold or Money or by afflicting their bodies in Will-worship and voluntary humility or foolishly striving to conform their way to the outward Letter of the Law flatter themselves that they merit before God or draw a debt upon him or that any man or men have Power to make such kind of things effectual to their Justification lest they be found foolish boasters and strangers to Christ and his Righteousness indeed But blessed for ever are they that having truly had a sense of their own unworthyness and sinfulness and having seen all their own endeavours and performances fruitless and vain and beheld their own emptyness and the vanity of their vain Hopes Faith and Confidence while they remained inwardly pricked pursued and condemned by God's Holy Witness in their Hearts and so having applyed themselves thereto and suffered his Grace to work in them are become changed and renewed in the Spirit of their minds past from death to Life and know Jesus arisen in them working both the will and the deed and so having put on the Lord Jesus Christ in effect are cloathed with him and partake of his Righteousness and Nature such
Truth we affirm is advanced Yet nevertheless for the further evidencing of it I shall proceed to the second thing proposed by me to wit to prove this from several Testimonies of the Holy Scriptures § VIII And first I prove it from the peremptory positive command of Christ and his Apostles seeing this is a maxime ingraven in every mans heart naturally that no man is bound to that which is impossible since then Christ and his Apostles have commanded us to keep all the Commandments and to be perfect in this respect it is possible for us so to do Now that this is thus commanded without any commentary or consequence is evidently apparent from these plain Testimonies Matth. c. 5. v. 48.7.21 Joh. 13.17 1 Cor. 7.19 2 Cor. 13.11 1 John c. 2. v. 3 4 5 6. c. 3. v. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10. These Scriptures intimate a positive command for it they declare the absolute necessity of it and therefore as if they had purposely been written to answer the objections of our Opposers they shew the folly of those that will esteem themselves Children or Friends of God while they do otherwise Secondly it is possible because we receive the Gospel and Law thereof for that effect and it 's expresly promised to us as we are under Grace as appears by these Scriptures Rom. 6.14 Sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the Law but under Grace and Rom. 8.3 For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the Flesh God sending his own Son c. That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us c. For if this were not a condition both requisite necessary and attainable under the Gospel there were no difference betwixt the bringing-in of a better hope and the Law which made nothing perfect neither betwixt those which are under the Gospel or who under the Law enjoyed and walked in the Life of the Gospel and meer Legalists Whereas the Apostle throughout that whole sixth to the Romans argues not only the possibility but necessity of being free from sin from their being under the Gospel and under Grace and not under the Law and therefore states himself and those to whom he wrote in that condition in these verses 2 3 4 5 6 7. and therefore in the 11 12 13.16 17 18 verses he argues both the possibility and necessity of this freedom from sin almost in the same manner we did a little before and the 22 he declares them in measure to have attained this condition in these words But now being made free from sin and become Servants to God ye have your Fruit unto Holiness and the end everlasting Life And as this perfection or freedom from sin is attained and made possible where the Gospel and inward Law of the Spirit is received and known so the ignorance hereof has been and is an occasion of opposing this Truth For man not minding the Light and Law within his heart which not only discovers sin but leads out of it and so being a stranger to the new Life and Birth that is born of God which naturally doth his will and cannot of its own nature transgress the Commandments of God doth I say in his natural state look at the Commandments as they are without him in the letter and finding himself reproved and convicted is by the letter killed but not made alive So man finding himself wounded and not applying himself inwardly to that which can heal labours in his own will after conformity to the Law as it is without him which he can never obtain but finds the more he wrestles the more he falleth short So this is the Jew still in effect with his carnal Commandment with the Law without in the first covenant state which makes not the comers thereunto perfect as pertaining to the Conscience Heb. 9.9 though they may have here a notion of Christianity and an external Faith in Christ. This hath made them strain and wrest the Scriptures for an imputative Righteousness wholly without them to cover their impurities and this hath made them imagine an acceptance with God possible though they suppose it impossible ever to obey Christ's Commands But alas O deceived Souls that will not avail in the day wherein God will judge every man according to his works whether good or bad It will not save thee to say it was necessary for thee to sin daily in thought word and deed for such as do so have certainly obeyed unrighteousness And what is provided for such but tribulation and anguish indignation and wrath even as glory honour and peace immortality and Eternal Life to such as have done good and patiently continued in well doing So then if thou desirest to know this perfection and freedom from sin possible for thee turn thy mind to the Light and Spiritual Law of Christ in the heart and suffer the reproofs thereof bear the judgment and indignation of God upon the unrighteous part in thee as therein it is revealed which Christ hath made tollerable for thee and so suffer judgment in thee to be brought forth in victory and thus come to partake of the fellowship of Christ's sufferings and be made conformable unto his death that thou maist feel thy self crucified with him to the world by the power of his Cross in thee so that that life that sometimes was alive in thee to this world and the love and lusts thereof may die and a new Life be raised by which thou maist live hence forward to God and not to or for thy self and with the Apostle thou maist say Gal. 2.20 It is no more I but Christ alive in me and then thou wilt be a Christian indeed and not in name only as too many are Then thou wilt know what it is to have put off the old man with his deeds who indeed sins daily in thought word and deed and to have put on the New Man that is renewed in Holiness after the Image of him that hath created him Eph. 4.24 and thou wilt witness thy self to be Gods workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works and so not to sin alwaies And to this New Man Christs yoak is easie and his burthen is light though it be heavy to the old Adam yea the Commandments of God are not unto this grievous For it is his meat and drink to be found fulfilling the will of God Lastly this perfection or freedom from sin is possible because many have attained it according to the express Testimony of the Scripture Some before the Law and some under the Law through witnessing and partaking of the benefit and effect of the Gospel and much more many under the Gospel As first it is written of Enoch Gen. 5.22 24 that he walked with God which no man while sinning can nor doth the Scripture record any feeling of his It is said of Noah Gen. 6.9 and of Job 1.8 and of Zacharias and Elizabeth
Luke 1.6 that they were perfect But under the Gospel besides that of the Rom. above mentioned see what the Apostle saith of many Saints in general Eph. 2.4 5 6. But God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he hath loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickned us together with Christ by Grace ye are saved And hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus c. I judg while they were sitting in these heavenly places they could not be daily sinning in Thought Word and Deed neither were all their works which they did there as filthy rags or as a menstruous Garment See what is further said to the Hebrews 12.22 23. Spirits of just men made perfect And to conclude let that of the Revelation 14. 1 2 3 4 5. be considered Where though their being found without fault be spoken in the present time yet is it not without respect to their innocency while upon earth and their being redeemed from among men and no guile found in their mouth is expresly mentioned in the time past But I shall proceed now in the third place to answer the objections which indeed are the arguments of our opposers § IX I shall begin with their chief and great argument which is the words of the Apostle Obj. 1. Joh. 1.8 If we say that we have no sin we decieve our selves and the Truth is not in us This they think invincible Answ. But is it not strange to see men so blinded with partiality How many Scriptures tenfold more plain do they reject and yet stick so tenaciously to this that can receive so many answers As first If we say we have no sin c. will not import the Apostle himself to be included Sometimes the Scripture useth this manner of expression when the person speaking cannot be included which manner of speech the Grammarians call Metaschematismos Thus Ja. 3.9 10. speaking of the Tongue saith therewith bless we God and therewith curse we men adding these things ought not so to be who from this will conclude that the Apostle was one of those cursers But secondly this objection hitteth not the matter he saith not we sin daily in Thought Word and Deed far less that the very good works which God works in us by his Spirit are sin yea the next verse clearly shews that upon confession and repentance we are not only forgiven but also cleansed He is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness Here is both a forgiveness and removing of the guilt and a cleansing or removing of the filth for to make forgiveness and cleansing to belong both to the removing of the guilt as there is no reason for it from the text so it were a most violent forcing of the words and would imply a needless tautology The Apostle having shewn how that not the guilt only but even the filth also of sin is removed subsumes his words in the time past in the 10 verse If we say we have not sinned we make him a liar Thirdly as Augustine well observed in his exposition upon the Epistle to the Galatians It is one thing not to sin another thing not to have sin The Apostles words are not If we say we sin not o◠commit not sin daily but if we say we have no sin And betwixt these two there is a manifest difference for in respect all have sinned as we freely acknowledg all may be said in a sense to have sin Again sin may be taken for the seed of sin which may be in those that are redeemed from actual sinning but as to the temptations and provocations proceeding from it being resisted by the servants of God and not yielded to they are the Devils sin that tempteth not the man's that is preserved Fourthly this being considered as also how positive and how plain once again the same Apostle is in the very same Epistle as in divers places above cited is it equal or rational to strain this one place presently after so qualified and subsumed in the times past to contradict not only other positive expressions of his but the whole tendency of his Epistle and of the rest of the holy commands and precepts of the Scripture Secondly Their second Objection is from two places of Scripture much of one signification The one is 1 Kings 8.46 Obj. For there is no man that sinneth not The other is Eccles. 7.20 for there is not a just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not I answer first These affirm nothing of a daily and continual sinning Answ. so as never to be redeemed from it but only that all have sinned or that there is none that doth not sin though not always so as never to cease to sin and in this lies the question Yea in that place of the Kings he speaks within two verses of the returning of such with all their Souls and Hearts which implies a possibility of leaving off sin Secondly there is a respect to be had to the seasons and dispensations for if it should be granted that in Solomon's time there was none that sinned not it will not follow that there are none such now or that it is a thing is not now attainable by the Grace of God under the Gospel for a non esse ad non posse non valet sequela And lastly this whole objection hangs upon a false interpretation for the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be read in the potential mood Thus There is no man who may not sin as well as in the Indicative so both the old Latin Junius and Tremellius and Vatablus have it and the same word is so used Psal. 119.11 I have hid thy Word in my Heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say that I may not sin against thee in the potential mood and not in the indicative as it is in the English which being more answerable to the universal scope of the Scriptures the testimony of the Truth and the sense almost of all Interpreters doubtless ought to be so understood and the other interpretation rejected as spurious Thirdly they object some expressions of the Apostle Paul Obj. Rom. 7.19 for the good that I would I do not but the evil which I would not that I do And ver 24. O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death I answer This place infers nothing unless it were apparent that the Apostle here were speaking of his own condition Answ. and not rather in the person of others or what he himself had sometimes born which is frequent in Scripture as in the case of cursing in James before mentioned But there is nothing in the text that doth clearly signify the Apostle to be speaking of himself or of a condition he was then under or was always to be under yea on the contrary in the former Chapter as afore is
at large shewn he declares they were dead to sin demanding how such should yet live any longer therein Secondly it appears that the Apostle only personated one not yet come to a Spiritual condition in that he saith verse 14. but I am carnal sold under sin Now is it to be imagined that the Apostle Paul as to his own proper condition when he wrote that Epistle was a carnal man who in the 1 chapter testifies of himself that he was separated to be an Apostle capable to impart to the Romans Spiritual gifts and chapter 8. ver 2. that the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death so then he was not carnal And seeing there are Spiritual men in this life as our adversaries will not deny and is intimated through this whole 8 chapter to the Romans it will not be denyed but the Apostle was one of them So then as his calling himself carnal in the 7 chap. can not be understood of his own proper state neither can the rest of what he speaks there of that kind be so understood yea after ver 24. where he makes that exclamation he adds in the next verse I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord signifying that by him he witnessed deliverance and so goeth on shewing how he had obtained it in the next Chapter viz. 8. v. 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ And verse 37. But in all these things we are more than conquerors And in the last verse nothing shall be able to separate us c. But whereever there is a continuing in sin there there is a separation in some degree seeing every sin is contrary to God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. a transgression of the Law 1 Joh. 3.4 and whoever committeth the least sin is overcome of it and so in that respect is not a conqueror but conquered This condition then which the Apostle plainly testified he with some others had obtained could not consist with continual remaining and abiding in sin Obj. Fourthly they object the faults and sins of several eminent Saints as Noah David c. Answ. I answer that doth not at all prove the case for the question is not whether good men may not fall into sin which is not denyed but whether it be not possible for them not to sin It will not follow because these men sinn'd that therefore they were never free of sin but always sinned For at this rate of arguing it might be urged according to this rule contrariorum par ratio i. e. the reason of contraries is alike that if because a good man hath sinned once or twice he can never be free from sin but must always be daily and continually a sinner all his life long then by the rule of Contraries if a wicked man have done good once or twice he can never be free from righteousness but must always be a righteous man all his life time which as it is most absurd in it self so it is contrary to the plain testimony of the Scripture Ezech. 33.12 to the 18. Lastly they object that if perfection or freedom from sin be attainable this will render mortification of sin useless and make the blood of Christ of no service to us neither need we any more pray for forgiveness of sins I answer I had almost omitted this objection Answ. because of the manifest absurdity of it for can mortification of sin be useless where the end of it is obtained seeing there is no attaining of this perfection but by mortification doth the hope and belief of overcoming render the fight unnecessary Let rational men judge which hath most sense in it to say as our adversaries do It is necessary that we fight and wrestle but we must never think of overcoming We must resolve still to be overcome Or to say Let us fight because we may overcome Whether do such as believe they may be cleansed by it or those that believe they can never be cleansed by it render the Blood of Christ most effectual If two men were both grievously diseased and applyed themselves to a Physician for remedy which of those do most commend the Physician and his cure he that believeth he may be cured by him and as he feels himself cured confesseth that he is so and so can say This is a skilful Physician this is good Medicine behold I am made whole by it or he that never is cured nor ever believes that he can so long as he lives As for praying for forgiveness we deny it not for that all have sinned and therefore all need to pray that their sins past may be blotted out and that they may be daily preserved from sinning And if hoping or believing to be made free from sin hinders praying for forgiveness of sin it would follow by the same inference that men ought not to forsake murther adultery or any of these gross evils seeing the more men are sinful the more plentiful occasion there would be of asking forgiveness of sin and the more work for mortification But the Apostle hath sufficiently refuted such sin-pleasing cavils in these words Rom. 6.1 2. Shall we continue in sin that Grace may abound God forbid But lastly it may be easily answered by a retorsion to those that press this from the words of the Lords prayer forgiven us our debts that this militates no less against perfect justification than against perfect sanctification For if all the Saints the least as well as the greatest be perfectly justified in that very hour wherein they are converted as our adversaries will have it then they have remission of sins long before they dye May it not then be said to them What need have ye to pray for remission of sin who are already justified whose sins are long ago forgiven both past and to come § X. But this may suffice concerning this possibility Jerom speaks clearly enough lib. 3. adver Pelagium This we also say that a man may not sin if he will for a time and place according to his bodily weakness so long as his mind is intent so long as the cords of the cythar relax not by any vice and again in the same book which is that that I said that it is put in our power to wit being helped by the grace of God either to sin or not to sin For this was the error of Pelagius which we indeed reject and abhor and which the Fathers deservedly withstood that man by his natural strength without the help of Gods grace could attain to that state so as not to sin And Augustin himself a great opposer of the Pelagian heresie did not deny this possibility as attainable by the help of God's grace as in his book de Spiritu litera cap. 2. and his book de natura gratia against Pelagius cap. 42.50 60 63 de gestis concilii Palaestini cap. 7. 2. and de
would affirm it never attainable then should there never be a place known by the Saints in this world wherein they might be free of doubting and despair Which as it is most absurd in it self so it is contrary to the manifest experience of thousands Thirdly God hath given to many of his Saints and children and is ready to give unto all a full and certain assurance that they are his and that no power shall be able to pluck them out of hand But this assurance would be no assurance if those who are so assured were not established and confirmed beyond all doubt and hesitation If so then surely there is no possibility for such to miss of that which God hath assured them of And that there is such assurance attainable in this life the Scripture abundantly declareth both in general and as to particular persons As first Rev. 3. v. 12. him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go no more out c. which containeth a general promise unto all Hence the Apostle speaks of some that are sealed 2 Cor. 1.22 Who hath also sealed us and given the earnest of his Spirit in our hearts Wherefore the Spirit so sealing is called the earnest or pledge of our inheritance Eph. 1.13 In whom ye were sealed by the holy Spirit of Promise And therefore the Apostle Paul not only in that of the Romans above nored declareth himself to have attained that condition but 2 Tim. 4.7 he affirmeth in these words I have fought a good fight c. which also many good men have and do witness And therefore as there can be nothing more manifest than that which the manifest experience of this time sheweth and therein is found agreeable to the experience of former times so we see there have been both of old and of late that have turned the Grace of God into wantonness that have faln from their faith and integrity thence we may safely conclude such a falling away possible We also see that some of old and of late have attained a certain assurance sometime before they departed that they should inherit eternal life and have accordingly dyed in that good hope Of and concerning whom the Spirit of God testified That they are saved Wherefore we also see that such a state is attainable in this life from which there is not a falling away For seeing the Spirit of God did so testifie it was not possible that they should perish concerning whom he who cannot lye thus bare witness The Tenth Proposition Concerning the Ministry As by this Light or Gift of God all true knowledge in things Spiritual is received and revealed so by the same as it is manifested and received in the heart by the strength and power thereof every true Minister of the Gospel is ordained prepared and supplyed in the work of the Ministry and by the leading moving and drawing hereof ought every Evangelist and Christian Pastor to be led and ordered in his labour and work of the Gospel both as to the place where as to the persons to whom and as to the time wherein he is to minister Moreover who have this authority may and ought to preach the Gospel though without hamane Commission or Literature as on the other hand who want the Authority of this Divine Gift however learned or authorized by the Commission of Men and Churches are to be esteemed but as deceivers and not true Ministers of the Gospel Also who have received this holy and unspotted Gift as they have freely received it so are they freely to give it without hire or bargaining far less to use it as a Trade to get Money by yet if God hath called any one from their Employments or Trades by which they acquire their Lively-hood it may be lawful for such according to the liberty which they feel given them in the Lord to receive such temporals to wit what may be needful for them for meat and clothing as are given them freely and cordially by those to whom they have communicated Spirituals § I. HItherto I have treated of those things which relate to the Christian Faith and Christians as they stand each in his private and particular condition and how and what way every man may be a Christian indeed and so abide Now I come in order to speak of those things that relate to Christians as they are stated in a joynt fellowship and Communion and come under a visible and outward society which society is called the Church of God and in Scripture compared to a body and therefore named the Body of Christ. As then in the natural body there be divers members all concurring to the common end of preserving and confirming the whole body so in this Spiritual and mystical Body there are also divers according to the different measures of Grace and of the Spirit diversly administred unto each member and from this diversity ariseth that distinction of persons in the visible Society of Christians as of Apostles Pastors Evangelists Ministers c. That which in this Proposition is proposed is What makes or constitutes any a Minister of the Church what his qualifications ought to be and how he ought to behave himself But because it may seem somewhat preposterous to speak of the distinct Offices of the Church until something be said concerning the Church in general though nothing positively be said of it in the Proposition yet as here implied I shall briefly premise something thereof and then proceed to the particular members of it § II. It is not in the least my design to meddle with those tedious and many controversies wherewith the Papists and Protestants do tear one another concerning this thing but only according to the Truth manifested to me and revealed in me by the testimony of the Spirit according to that proportion of wisdom given me briefly to hold forth as a necessary introduction both to this matter of the Ministry and of Worship which followeth those things which I together with my Brethren do believe concerning the Church The Church then according to the grammatical signification of the word as it is used in the Holy Scripture signifies an assembly or gathering of many into one place for the Substantive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 comes from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I call out of and originally from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I call and indeed as this is the grammatical sense of the word so also it is the real and proper signification of the thing the Church being no other thing but the society gathering or company of such as God hath called out of the World and worldly Spirit to walk in his LIGHT and LIFE The Church then so designed is to be considered as it comprehends all that are thus called and gathered truly by God both such as are yet in this inferiour World and such as having already laid down the earthy Tabernacle are passed into their
heavenly Mansions which together do make up the one Catholick Church concerning which there is so much controversie out of which Church we freely acknowledge there can be no Salvation because under this Church and its denomination are comprehended all and as many of whatsoever Nation Kindred Tongue or People they be though outwardly strangers and remote from those who profess Christ and Christianity in words and have the benefit of the Scriptures as become obedient to the holy Light and Testimony of God in their hearts so as to become sanctified by it and cleansed from the evils of their wayes For this is the Universal or Catholick Spirit by which many are called from all the four corners of the earth and shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob. By this the secret Life and Vertue of Jesus is conveyed into many that are afar off even as by the blood that runs into the Veins and Arteries of the Natural Body the Life is conveyed from the Head and Heart unto the extremest parts There may be members therefore of this Catholick Church both among Heathens Turks Jews and all the several sorts of Christians Men and Women of integrity and simplicity of Heart who though blinded in something in their understanding and perhaps burthened with the Superstitions and formality of the several Sects in which they are ingrossed yet being upright in their Hearts before the Lord chiefly aiming and labouring to be delivered from iniquity and loving to follow righteousness are by the secret touches of this Holy Light in their Souls inlivened and quickened thereby secretly united to God and there through become true members of this Catholick Church Now the Church in this respect hath been in being in all generations for God never wanted some such witnesses for him though many times slighted and not much observed by this World And therefore this Church though still in being hath been oftentimes as it were Invisible in that it hath not come under the observation of the men of this World being as saith the Scripture Jer. 3.14 One of a City and two of a Family And yet though the Church thus considered may be as it were hid from wicked men as not then gathered into a visible fellowship yea and not observed even by some that are members of it yet may there notwithstanding many belong to it as when Elias complained he was left alone 1 Kings 19.18 God answered unto him I have reserved to my self seven thousand men who have not bowed their knees to the Image of Baal whence the Apostle argues Rom. 11. the being of a remnant in his day § III. Secondly the Church is to be considered as it signifies a certain number of persons gathered by Gods Spirit and by the testimony of some of his servants raised up for that end unto the belief of the true Principles and Doctrines of the Christian Faith who through their hearts being united by the same love and their understanding informed in the same Truths gather meet and assemble together to wait upon God to worship him and to bear a joynt testimony for the Truth against Error suffering for the same and so becoming through this fellowship as one family and houshold in certain respects do each of them watch over teach instruct and care for one another according to their several measures and attainments Such were the Churches of the Primitive time gathered by the Apostles whereof we have divers mentioned in the Holy Scriptures And as to the visibility of the Church in this respect there hath been a great interruption since the Apostles days by reason of the apostasie as shall hereafter appear § IV. To be a member then of the Catholick Church there is need of the inward calling of God by his Light in their Heart and a being leavened into the nature and Spirit of it so as to forsake unrighteousness and be turned to righteousness and in the inwardness of the mind to be cut out of the wild-Olive-tree of our own first faln nature and ingrafted into Christ by his Word and Spirit in the heart And this may be done in those who are strangers to the History God not having pleased to make them partakers thereof as in the V. and VI. Propositions hath already been proved To be a member of a particular Church of Christ as this inward work is indispensibly necessary so is also the outward profession of and belief in Jesus Christ and those holy Truths delivered by his Spirit in the Scriptures seeing the testimony of the Spirit recorded in the Scriptures doth answer the testimony of the same Spirit in the heart even as face answereth face in a glass Hence it follows that the inward work of Holiness and forsaking iniquity is necessary in every respect to the being a member in the Church of Christ and that the outward profession is necessary to be a member of a particular gathered Church but not to the being a member of the Catholick Church yet it is absolutely necessary where God affords the opportunity of knowing it the outward testimony is to be believed where it is presented and revealed the summ whereof hath upon other occasions been already proved § V. But contrary hereunto the Devil that worketh and hath wrought in the mystery of iniquity hath taught his followers to affirm That no man however holy is a member of the Church of Christ without the outward profession and that he be initiated thereunto by some outward Ceremonies And again That men who have this outward Profession though inwardly unholy may be members of the true Church of Christ yea and ought to be so esteemed This is plainly to put Light for Darkness and Darkness for Light as if God had a greater regard to words than actions and were more pleased with vain professions than with real holiness But these things I have sufficiently refuted heretofore Only from hence let it be observed that upon this false and rotten foundation Antichrist hath builded his Babylonish Structure and the anti-Christian Church in the apostasie hath hereby reared her self up to that heighth and grandeur she hath attained so as to exalt herself above all that is called God and sit in the Temple of God as God For the particular Churches of Christ gathered in the Apostles dayes soon after beginning to decay as to the inward Life came to be over-grown with several Errors and the hearts of the professors of Christianity to be leavened with the old Spirit and conversation of the World Yet it pleased God for some Centuries to preserve that life in many whom he emboldened with zeal to stand and suffer for his Name through the ten Persecutions But these being over the meekness gentleness love long-suffering goodness and temperance of Christianity came to be lost For after that the Princes of the earth came to take upon them that Profession and that it ceased to be a reproach to be a Christian but rather became a means to
preferment men became such by birth and education and not by conversion and renovation of Spirit then there was none so vile none so wicked none so profane who became not a member of the Church And the Teachers and Pastors thereof becoming the Companions of Princes and so being enriched by their benevolence and getting vast treasures and Estates became puffed up and as it were drunken with the vain pomp and glory of this World and so marshalled themselves in manifold orders and degrees not without innumerable contests and alterations who should have the Precedency So the vertue life substance and kernel of the Christian Religion came to be lost and nothing remained but a shaddow and image which dead image or carcass of Christianity to make it take the better with the superstitious multitude of Heathens that became engrossed in it not by any inward conversion of their hearts or by becoming less wicked or superstitious but by a little change in the object of their superstition not having the inward ornament and life of the Spirit became decked with many outward and visible orders and beautified with the gold silver precious stones and the other splendid ornaments of this perishing world so that this was no more to be accounted the Christian Religion and Christian Church notwithstanding the outward profession than the dead body of man is to be accounted a living man which however cunningly embalmed and adorned with ever so much gold or silver or most precious stones or sweet ointments is but a dead body still without sense life or motion For that Apostat Church of Rome has introduced no less ceremonies and superstitions into the Christian profession than was either among Jews or Heathens and that there is and hath been as much yea and more pride covetousness unclean lust luxury fornication profanity and atheism among her teachers and chief Bishops as ever was among any sort of people none need doubt that have read their own authors to wit Platina and others Now though Protestants have reformed from her in some of the most gross points and absurd doctrines relating to the Church and Ministery yet which is to be regretted they have but lopt the branches but retain and plead earnestly for the same root from which these abuses have sprung so that even among them though all that mass of superstition ceremonies and orders be not again established yet the same pride covetousness and sensuality is found to have overspread and leavened their Churches and Ministery and the life power and vertue of true religion is lost among them and the very same death barrenness dryness and emptyness is found in their ministery so that in effect they differ from Papists but in form and some ceremonies being with them apostatized from the life and power the true primitive Church and her Pastors were in so that of both it may be said truly without breach of charity that having only a form of godliness and many of them not so much as that they are deniers of yea enemies to the power of it And this proceeds not simply from their not walking answerable to their own principles and so degenerating that way which also is true but which is worse their setting down to themselves and adhering to certain principles which naturally as a cursed fruit bring forth these bitter fruits these therefore shall afterwards be examined and refuted as the contrary positions of truth in the Proposition are explained and proved For as to the nature and constitution of a Church abstract from their disputes concerning its constant visibility infallibility and the primacy of the Church of Rome the Protestants as in practice so in principles differ not from Papists for they ingross within the compass of their Church whole Nations making their infants members of it by sprinkling a little water upon them so that there is none so wicked or profane who is not a fellow-member no evidence of holiness being required to constitute a member of the Church and look through the Protestant Nations and there shall no difference appear in the lives of the generality of the one more than of the other but he who ruleth in the children of disobedience reigning in both so that the reformation through this defect is but in holding some less gross errors in the notion but not in having the heart reformed and renewed in which mainly the life of Christianity consisteth § VI. But the Popish errors concerning the ministry which they have retained are most of all to be regretted by which chiefly the life and power of Christianity is barred out among them and they kept in death barrenness and dryness there being nothing more hurtful than an error in this respect for where a false and corrupt ministry entreth all other manner of evils follows upon it according to that Scripture adage like people like priest For by their influence instead of ministring life and righteousness they minister death and iniquity The whole back-slidings of the Jewish congregations of old is hereto ascribed The leaders of my people have caused them to err The whole writings of the Prophets are full of such complaints and for this cause under the New Testament we are so often warned and guarded to beware of false Prophets and false Teachers c. What may be thought then where all as to this is out of order where both the foundation call qualifications maintenance and whole discipline is different from and opposite to the ministry of the primitive Church yea and necessarily tends to the shutting out a Spiritual ministry and the in-bringing and establishing a carnal This shall appear by parts § VII That then which comes first to be questioned in this matter is concerning the Call of a Minister to wit what maketh or how cometh a man to be a Minister Quest. Pastor or Teacher in the Church of Christ. We answer by the inward power and vertue of the Spirit of God For as saith our proposition Answ. having received the true knowledg of things Spiritual by the Spirit of God without which they cannot be known and being by the same in measure purified and sanctified he comes thereby to be called and moved to minister to others being able to speak from a living experience of what he himself is a witness and therefore knowing the terror of the Lord he is fit to perswade men c. 2 Cor. 5.11 and his words and ministery proceeding from the inward power and vertue reaches to the heart of his hearers and makes them approve of him and be subject unto him Our adversaries are forced to confess that this were indeed desirable and best but this they will not have to be absolutely necessary I shall first prove the necessity of it and then shew how much they err in that which they make more necessary than this Divine and Heavenly call First That which is necessary to make a man a Christian Arg. so as without it he cannot
all have in a measure but we understand men that are gracious leavened by it into the nature thereof so as thereby to bring forth these good Fruits of a blameless conversation and of justice holiness patience and temperance which the Apostle requires as necessary in a true Christian Bishop and Minister Thirdly they object the example of the false Prophets of the Pharisees and of Judas But first as to the false Prophets there can nothing be more foolish and ridiculous as if because there were false Prophets truely false without the Grace of God therefore Grace is not necessary to a true Christian Minister Indeed if they had proven that true Prophets wanted this Grace they had said something But what have false Prophets common with true Ministers but that they pretend falsely that which they have not And because false Prophets want true Grace will it therefore follow that true Prophets ought not to have it or need it not yea doth it not much rather follow that they ought to have it that they may be true and not false The example of the Pharisees and Priests under the Law will not answer to the Gospel times because God set apart a particular Tribe for that Service and particular Families to whom it belonged by a lineal Succession and also their service and work was not purely Spiritual but only the performance of some outward and carnal observations and ceremonies which were but a shadow of the Substance that was to come and therefore their work made not the comers thereunto perfect as pertaining to the Conscience seeing they were appointed only according to the Law of a carnal commandment and not according to the power of an endless life Notwithstanding as in the figure they behoved to be without blemish as to their outward man and in the performance of their work they behoved to be washed and purified from their outward pollutions so now under the Gospel times the Ministers in the anti-type must be inwardly without blemish in their Souls and spirits being as the Apostle requires blameless and in their work and service must be pure and undefiled from their inward pollutions and so clean and holy that they may offer up Spiritual Sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 2.5 As to Judas the season of his ministry was not wholly Evangelical as being before the work was finished and while Christ himself and his Disciples were yet subject to the Jewish Observances and Constitutions and therefore his Commission as well as that which the rest received with him at that time was only to the House of Israel Matth. 10.5 6. which made that by vertue of that Commission the rest of the Apostles were not impowered to go forth and preach after the Resurrection until they had waited at Jerusalem for the pouring forth of the Spirit So that it appears Judas's ministry was more Legal than Evangelical Secondly Judas's Case as all will acknowledge was singular and extraordinary he being immediately called by Christ himself and accordingly furnished and impowered by him to preach and do miracles which immediate Commission our Adversaries do not so much as pretend to and so fall short of Judas who trusted in Christs Words and therefore went forth and preached without Gold or Silver or Scrip for his Journey giving freely as he had freely received which our Adversaries will not do as hereafter shall be observed Also that Judas at that time had not the least measure of Gods Grace I have not as yet heard proved But is it not sad that even Protestants should lay aside the eleven good and faithful Apostles and all the rest of the holy Disciples and Ministers of Christ and betake them to that one of whom it was testified that he was a devil for a pattern and example to their Ministry Alas it is to be regretted that too many of them resemble this pattern over much Obj. Another Objection is usually made against the necessity of Grace that in case it were necessary then such as wanted it could not truly administer the Sacraments and consequently the people would be left in doubts and infinite scruples as not knowing certainly whether they had truly received them because not knowing infallibly whether the administrators were truly gracious men But this objection hitteth not us at all because the nature of that Spiritual and Christian Worship Answ. which we according to the truth plead for is such as is not necessarily attended with these carnal and outward institutions from the administring of which the objection ariseth and so hath not any such absurdity following upon it as will afterwards more clearly appear § XVIII Though then we make not humane Learning necessary yet we are far from excluding true learning to wit that learning which proceedeth from the inward teachings and instructions of the Spirit whereby the Soul learneth the secret wayes of the Lord becomes acquainted with many inward travels and exercises of the mind and learneth by a living experience how to overcome evil and the temptations of it by following the Lord and walking in his Light and waiting dayly for wisdom and knowledge immediately from the revelation thereof and so layeth up these heavenly and Divine Lessons in the good treasure of the heart as honest Mary did the sayings which she heard and things which she observed and also out of this Treasure of the Soul as the good Scribe brings forth things new and old according as the same Spirit moves and gives a true liberty and as need is for the Lords glory whose the Soul is and for whom and with an eye to whose glory she which is the Temple of God learneth to do all things This is that good learning which we think necessary to a true Minister by and through which learning a man can well instruct teach and admonish in due season and testifie for God from a certain experience as David did Solomon and the holy Prophets of old and the blessed Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ Who testified of what they had seen heard felt and handled of the Word of Life 1 Joh. 1.1 ministring the Gift according as they had received the same as good Stewards of the manifold Grace of God and preached not the uncertain rumors of others by hear-say which they had gathered meerly in the comprehension while they were strangers to the thing in their own experience in themselves as to teach people how to believe while themselves were unbelieving or how to overcome sin while themselves are slaves to it as all ungracious men are or to believe and hope for an eternal reward which themselves have not as yet arrived at c· § XIX But let us examine this Literature which they make so necessary to the being of a Minister as in the first place the knowledge of the Tongues at least of the Latine Greek and Hebrew The reason for this is that they may read the Scriptures which is their only
Rule in the original languages and thereby be the more capable to comment upon it and interpret it c. That also which made this knowledge be the more prized by the Primitive Protestants was indeed that dark Barbarity that was over the world in the centuries immediately preceeding the reformation the knowledge of the tongues being about that time until it was even then restored by Erasmus and some others almost lost and extinct And this barbarity was so much the more abominable that the whole worship and prayers of the people was in the Latine tongue and among that vast number of Priests Monks and Fryers scarce one of a thousand understood his breviary or that mass that he daily read and repeated The Scriptures being not only to the people but to the greater part of the Clergy even as to the literal knowledge of it as a sealed book I shall not at all discommend the zeal that the first Reformers had against this Babylonish darkness nor their pious endeavours to translate the Holy Scriptures but I do truly believe according to their knowledge that they did it candidly and therefore to answer the just desires of those that desire to read them and for other very good reasons as maintaining a commerce and understanding among divers nations by these common languages and other of that kind we judge it necessary and commendable there be publick Schools for the teaching and instructing youth as are inclinable thereunto in the languages And although that Papal ignorance deserved justly to be abhorred and abominated we see nevertheless that the true reformation consists not in that knowledge because although since that time the Papists stirred up through emulation of the Protestants have more applied themselves unto literature and it now more flourisheth in their Universities and Cloysters than before especially in the Ignatian or Jesuitick Sect they are as far now as ever from a true reformation and more obdured in their pernicious doctrines But all this will not make this a necessary qualification to a minister far less a more necessary qualification than the Grace of God and his Spirit because the Spirit and Grace of God can make up this want in the most rustick and ignorant But this knowledge can no ways make up the want of the Spirit in the most learned and eloquent For all that which man by his own industry learning and knowledge in the languagues can interpret of the Scriptures or find out is nothing without the Spirit he cannot be certain of it and may still miss of the sense of it but a poor man that knoweth not a letter when he heareth the Scriptures read by the same Spirit he can say this is true and by the same Spirit he can understand open and interpret it if need be yea he finding his condition to answer the condition and experience of the Saints of old knoweth and possesseth the Truths there delivered because they are sealed and witnessed in his own heart by the same Spirit And this we have plentiful experience of in many of those illiterate men whom God hath raised up to be ministers in his Church in this day so that some such by his Spirit have corrected some of the errors of the Translators as in the third Proposition concerning the Scriptures I before observed Yea I know my self a poor shoe-maker that cannot read a word who being assaulted with a false citation of Scripture from a publick Professor of Divinity before the Magistrate of a City when he had been taken preaching to some few that came to hear him I say I know such a one and he yet liveth who though the Professor who also is esteemed a learned man constantly asserted his saying to be a Scripture sentence yet affirmed not through any certain letter knowledge he had of it but from the most certain evidence of the Spirit in himself that the Professor lyed and that the Spirit of God never said any such thing as the other affirmed and the Bible being brought it was found as the poor shoe-maker had said § XX. The second part of their Literature is Logick and Philosophy an art so little needful to a true minister that if one that comes to be a true minister hath had it it is safest for him to forget and lose it for it is the root and ground of all contention and debate and the way to make a thing a great deal darker than clearer For under the pretence of regulating man's Reason into a certain order and rules that he may find out as they pretend the Truth it leads into such a labyrinth of contention as is far more fit to make a Sceptick than a Christian far less a minister of Christ yea it often hinders man from a clear understanding of things that his own Reason would give him and therefore through its manifold rules and divers inventions it often gives occasion for a man that hath little reason foolishly to speak much to no purpose Seeing a man that is not very wise may notwithstanding be a perfect Logician and then if ye would make a man a fool to purpose that is not very wise do but teach him Logick and Philosophy and whereas before he might have been fit for something he shall then be good for nothing but to speak non-sence for these notions will so swim in his head that they will make him extreamly busy about nothing The use that wise men and solid make of it is to see the emptiness thereof therefore saith one It is an art of contention and darkness by which all other sciences are rendered more obscure and harder to be understood If it be urged that thereby the Truth may be maintained and confirmed and Hereticks confuted I answer the Truth in men truly rational Answ. needeth not the help thereof and such as are obstinate this will not convince for by this they may learn twenty tricks and distinctions how to shut out the Truth and the Truth proceeding from an honest heart and spoken forth from the Vertue and Spirit of God will have more influence and take sooner and more effectually than by a thousand demonstrations of Logick as that Heathen Philosopher acknowledged who disputing with the Christian Bishops in the Council of Nice was so subtile that he could not be overcome by them but yet by a few words spoken by a simple old rustick was presently convinâ—ed by him and converted to the Christian Faith and being inquired how he came to yield to that ignorant Old Man and not to the Bishops he said that they contended with him in his own way and he could still give words for words but there came from the Old Man that vertue which he was not able to resist This secret vertue and power ought to be the Logick and Philosophy wherewith a true Christian minister ought to be furnished and for which they need not be beholden to Aristotle As to natural Logick by which rational
men without that art and rules or sophistical learning deduce a certain conclusion out of true Propositions which scarce any man of Reason wants we deny not the use of it and I have sometimes used it in this Treatise which also may serve without that Dialectical art As for the other part of Philosophy which is called Moral or Ethicks it is not so necessary to Christians who have the rules of the Holy Seriptures and the Gift of the Holy Spirit by which they can be much better instructed The Physical and Metaphysical part may be reduced to the arts of Medicine and the Mathematicks which have nothing to do with the essence of a Christian Minister And therefore the Apostle Paul who well understood what was good for Christian Ministers and what hurtful thus exhorted the Colossians Col. 2.8 Beware lest any man spoil you through Philosophy and vain deceit And to his beloved Disciple Timothy he writes also thus 1 Tim. 6.20 O Timothy keep that which is committed to thy trust avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsly so called § XXI The third and main part of their literature is School Divinity a monster made up betwixt some Scriptural notions of Truth and the Heathenish terms and maximes being as it were the Heathenish Philosophy Christianized or rather the literal external knowledge of Christ Heathenized it is man in his first faln natural state with his devilish wisdom pleasing himself with some notions of Truth and adorning them with his own serpentine and worldly wisdom because he thinks the simplicity of the Truth too low and mean a thing for him and so despiseth that simplicity wheresoever it is found that he may set up and exalt himself puffed up with this his monstrous birth it is the devil darkening obscuring and veiling the knowledge of God with his sensual and carnal wisdom that so he may the more securely deceive the hearts of the simple and make the Truth as it is in it self despicable and hard to be known and understood by multiplying a thousand hard and needless questions and endless contentions and debates all which whoso perfectly knoweth he is not a whit less the servant of sin than he was but ten times more in that he is exalted and proud of iniquity and so much the further from receiving understanding or learning the Truth as it is in its own naked simplicity because he is full learned rich and wise in his own conceit and so those that are most skilled in it wear out their day and spend their precious time about the infinite and innumerable questions they have feigned and invented concerning it A certain learned man called it a two-fold discipline as of the race of the centaurs partly proceeding from Divine sayings partly from Philosophical reasons A thousand of their questions they confess themselves to be no ways necessary to Salvation and yet many more of them they could never agree upon but are and still will be in endless janglings about them The Volumes that have been written about it a man in his whole age though he lived very old could scarce read and when he has read them all he has but wrought himself a great deal more vexation and trouble of Spirit than he had before These certainly are the words multiplied without knowledge by which counsel hath been darkened Job c. 38. v. 2. They make the Scripture the text of all this Mass and it 's concerning the sense of it that their voluminous debates arise But a man of a good upright heart may learn more in half an hour and be more certain of it by waiting upon God and his Spirit in the heart than by reading a thousand of their Volumes which by filling his head with many needless imaginations may well stagger his faith but never confirm it and indeed those that give themselves most to it are most capable to fall into error as appeareth by the example of Origen who by his learning was one of the first that falling into this way of interpreting the Scriptures wrote so many Volumes and in them so many errors as very much troubled the Church Also Arius led by this curiosity and humane scrutiny despising the simplicity of the Gospel fell into his error which was the cause of that horrible Heresie which so much troubled the Church methinks the simplicity plainness and brevity of the Scriptures themselves should be a sufficient reproof for such a science and the Apostles being honest plain illeterate men my be better understood by such kind of men now than with all that mass of scholastick stuff which neither Peter nor Paul nor John ever thought of § XXII But this invention of Satan wherewith he began the Apostasie hath been of dangerous consequence for thereby he at first spoiled the simplicity of Truth by keeping up the Heathenish learning which occasioned such uncertainty even among those called Fathers and such debate that there are few of them to be found who by reason of this mixture do not only frequently contradict one another but themselves also And therefore when the Apostasie grew greater he as it were buried the Truth with this vail of darkness wholly shuting out people from true knowledg and making the learned so accounted busie themselves with idle and needless questions while the weighty Truths of God were neglected and as it were went into desuetude Now though the grossest of these abuses be swept away by Protestants yet the evil root still remains and is nourished and upheld and upon the growing hand that this science is kept up and deemed necessary for a Minister for while the pure learning of the Spirit of Truth is despised and neglected and made ineffectual man 's faln earthly wisdom is upheld and so in that he labours and works with the Scriptures being out of the Life and Spirit those that wrote them were in by which they are rightly understood and made use of And so he that is to be a Minister must learn this art or trade of merchandizing with the Scriptures and be that which the Apostle would not be to wit a trader with them 2 Cor. 2.17 That he may acquire a trick from a verse of Scripture by adding his own barren notions and conceptions to it and his uncertain conjectures and what he hath stoln out of Books for which end he must have of necessity a good many by him and may each Sabbath day as they call it or oftner make a Discourse for an hour long and this is called the preaching of the word whereas the Gift Grace and Spirit of God to teach open and instruct and to preach a word in season is neglected and so man's arts and parts and knowledg and wisdom which is from below set up and established in the Temple of God yea and above the little Seed which in effect is Antichrist working in the Ministry and so the Devil may be as good and able a Minister as the
another retaining nothing but the name and that also unjustly Secondly from this distinction of Laity and Clergy this abuse also follows that good honest mechanick men and others who have not learned the art and trade of Preaching and so are not licentiated according to these rules they prescribe unto themselves such I say being possessed with a false opinion that it is not lawful for them to meddle with the Ministry nor that they are any ways fit for it because of the defect of that Literature do thereby neglect the Gift in themselves and quench many times the pure breathings of the Spirit of God in their hearts which if given way to might have proved much more for the edification of the Church than many of the conned Sermons of the learned And so by this means the Apostles command and advice is slighted who exhorteth 1 Thess. 5.19 20. Not to quench the Spirit nor despise Prophecying And all this is done by men pretending to be Christians who glory that the first Preachers and Propagators of their Religion were such kind of plain mechanick men and illiterate And even Protestants do no less than Papists exclude such kind of men from being Ministers among them and thus limit the Spirit and Gift of God though their Fathers in opposition to Papists asserted the contrary and also their own Histories declare how that kind of illiterate men did without learning by the Spirit of God greatly contribute in divers places to the Reformation By this it may appear that as in calling and qualifying so in preaching and praying and the other particular steps of the Ministry every true Minister is to know the Spirit of God by its vertue and life to accompany and assist him But because this relates to worship I shall speak of it more largely in the next Proposition which is concerning Worship The last thing to be considered and inquired into is concerning the maintainance of a Gospel Minister But before I proceed I judg it fit to speak something in short concerning the preaching of Women and so declare what we hold in that matter Seeing Male and Female are one in Christ Jesus and that he hath given his Spirit no less to one than to the other when God moveth by his Spirit in a Woman we judg it no waies unlawful for her to preach in the Assemblies of Gods People Neither think we that of Paul 1 Cor. 14.34 to reprove the inconsiderate and talkative Women among the Corinthians who ttoubled the Church of Christ with their unprofitable questions or that 1 Tim. 2.11 that all Women ought to learn in silence not usurping authority over the man any waies repugnant to this Doctrin because it 's clear that women have prophesied and preached in the Church else had the saying of Joel been badly applied by Peter Acts 2.17 And seeing Paul himself in the same Epistle to the Corinthians giveth rules how women should behave themselves in their publick preaching and praying it would be a manifest contradiction if that place were otherwaies taken in a larger sense and the same Paul speaks of a Woman that laboured with him in the work of the Gospel And it is written that Phillip had four Daughters that prophesied and lastly it hath been observed that God hath effectually in this day converted many Souls by the ministry of Women and by them also frequently comforted the Souls of his Children which manifest experience puts the thing beyond all controversie but now I shall proceed to speak of the maintainance of Ministers § XXVIII We freely acknowledg as the Proposition holds forth that there is an obligation upon such to whom God sends or among whom he raiseth up a Minister that if need be they minister to his necessities Secondly that it is lawful for him to receive what is necessary and convenient To prove this I need not insist for our adversaries will readily grant it to us for the thing we affirm is that this is all that these Scripture testimonies relating to this thing do grant Gal. 6.6 1 Cor. 9.11 12 13 14. 1 Tim. 5.16 That which we then oppose in this matter is first that it should be constrained and limited Secondly that it should be superfluous chargeable and sumptuous And thirdly the manifest abuse hereof of which I shall also briefly treat As to the first our adversaries are forced to recur to the Example of the Law a refuge they use in defending most of their errors and superstitions which are contrary to the nature and purity of the Gospel They say God appointed the Levites the tithes Obj. therefore they belong also to such as minister in holy things under the Gospel I answer all that can be gathered from this is that as the Priests had a maintainance allowed them under the Law Answ. so also the ministers and preachers under the Gospel which is not denyed but the comparison will not hold that they should have the very same since first there is no express Gospel command for it neither by Christ nor his Apostles Secondly the parity doth no waies hold betwixt the Levites under the Law and the preachers under the Gospel because the Levites were one of the tribes of Israel and so had a right to a part of the inheritance of the land as well as the rest of their brethren and having none had this alloted to them in lieu of it Next the tenth of the tithes was only allowed to the Priests that served at the Altar the rest being for the Levites and also to be put up in Store-houses for entertaining of Widows and Strangers But these Preachers notwithstanding they inherit what they have by their Parents as well as other men yet claim the whole tithes allowing nothing either to widow or stranger But as to the tithes I shall not insist because divers have clearly and learnedly treated of it apart and also divers Protestants do confess them not to be jure Divino and the parity as to the quota doth not hold but only in general as to the obligation of a maintainance Which maintainance though the hearers be obliged to give and fail of their duty if they do not yet that it ought neito be received nor yet forced I prove because Christ when he sent forth his Apostles said Freely ye have received freely give Mat. 10.8 and they had liberty to receive Meat and Drink from such as offered them to supply their need Which shews that they were not to seek or require any thing by force or to stint or make a bargain before hand as the Preachers as well among Papists as Protestants do in these daies who will not preach to any until they be sure first of so much a year but on the contrary these were to do their duty and freely to communicate as the Lord should order them what they had received without seeking or expecting a reward The answer of this given by Nicolaus Arnoldus Exercit. Theolog Sect. 42.43
and no man here limits the Spirit of God nor bringeth forth his own conned and gathered stuff but every one puts that forth which the Lord puts into their hearts and it 's uttered forth not in man's will and wisdom but in the evidence and demonstration of the Spirit and of Power Yea though there be not a word spoken yet is the true Spiritual Worship performed and the body of Christ edified yea it may and hath often faln out among us that divers meetings have past without one word and yet our Souls have been greatly edified and refreshed and our hearts wonderfully overcome with the secret sense of God's Power and Spirit which without words hath been ministred from one Vessel to another This is indeed strange and incredible to the meer natural and carnally-minded man who will be apt to judg all time lost where there is not something spoken that 's obvious to the outward senses and therefore I shall insist a little upon this subject as one that can speak from a certain experience and not by meer hear-say of this Wonderful and Glorious Dispensation which hath so much the more of the Wisdom and Glory of God in it as it 's contrary to the Nature of man's Spirit Will and Wisdom § VII As there can be nothing more opposite to the Natural will and wisdom of man than this silent waiting upon God so neither can it be obtained not rightly comprehended by man but as he layeth down his own wisdom and will so as to be content to be throughly subject to God And therefore it was not preached nor can be so practised but by such as find no outward ceremony no observations no words yea not the best and purest words even the words of Scripture able to satisfie their weary and afflicted Souls because where all these may be the life power and vertue which make such things effectual may be wanting Such I say were necessitate to cease from all outwards and to be silent before the Lord and being directed to that inward principle of Life and Light in themselves as the most excellent Teacher which can never be removed into a corner came thereby to be learned to wait upon God in the measure of Life and Grace received from him and to cease from their own forward words and actings in the natural willing and comprehension and feel after this inward Seed of Life that as it moveth they may move with it and be acted by its power and influenced whether to pray preach or sing And so from this principle of man's being silent and not acting in the things of God of himself until thus acted by God's Light and Grace in the heart did naturally spring that manner of sitting silent together and waiting together upon the Lord. For many thus principled meeting together in the pure fear of the Lord did not apply themselves presently to speak pray or sing c. being afraid to be found acting forwardly in their own wills but each made it their work to retire inwardly to the measure of Grace in themselves not being only silent as to words but even abstaining from all their own Thoughts Imaginations and Desire so watching in a holy dependence upon the Lord and meeting together not only outwardly in one place but thus inwardly in One Spirit and in One Name of Jesus which is his Power and Vertue They come thereby to enjoy and feel the arisings of this Life which as it prevails in each particular becomes as a stood of refreshment and overspreads the whole meeting for man and man's part and wisdom being denyed and chained down in every individual and God exalted and his Grace in dominion in the heart thus his Name comes to be One in all and his Glory breaks forth and covers all and there is such a holy aw and reverence upon every Soul that if the natural part should arise in any or the wise part or what is not one with the Life it would presently be chained down and judged out And when any are through the breaking forth of this power constrained to utter a sentence of exhortation or praise or to breath to the Lord in Prayer then all are sensible of it for the same Life in them answers to it as in water face answereth to face This is that Divine and Spiritual Worship which the World neither knoweth nor understandeth which the Vultures Eye seeth not into Yet many and great are the advantages which my Soul with many others hath tasted of hereby and which would be found of all such as would seriously apply themselves hereunto For when People are gathered thus together not meerly to hear men nor depend upon them but all are inwardly taught to stay their minds upon the Lord and wait for his appearance in their hearts thereby the forward working of the Spirit of man is stayed and hindred from mixing it self with the Worship of God and the form of this Worship is so naked and void of all outward and worldly splendor that all occasion for man's wisdom to be exercised in that superstition and idolatry hath no lodging here and so there being also an inward quietness and retiredness of mind the Witness of God ariseth in the heart and the Light of Christ shineth whereby the Soul cometh to see its own condition And there being many joyned together in this same work there is an inward travel and wrestling and also as the measure of Grace is abode in an overcoming of the power and spirit of darkness and thus we are often greatly strengthned and renewed in 〈…〉 of our minds without a word and we enjoy and possess the 〈…〉 and Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ by which our inward than is nourished and fed Which makes us not to dote upon outward Water and Bread and Wine in our Spiritual things Now as many thus gathered together grow up in the strength power and vertue of Truth and as Truth comes thus to have victory and dominion in their Souls then they receive an utterance and speak steadily to the edification of their Brethren and the pure Life hath a free passage through them and what is thus spoken edifieth the body indeed Such is the evident certainty of that Divine strength that is communicated by thus meeting together and waiting in silence upon God that sometimes when one hath come in that hath been unwatchful and wandring in his mind or suddenly out of the hurry of outward business and so not inwardly gathered with the rest so soon as he retires himself inwardly this Power being in a good measure raised in the whole meeting will suddenly lay hold upon his Spirit and wonderfully help to raise up the good in him and beget him into the sense of the same Power to the melting and warming of his heart even as the warmth would take hold upon a man that is cold coming into a stove or as a flame will lay
natural will in its own proper motions crucified that God may both move in the act and in the will the Lord chiefly regards this profound Subjection and Self-denial For some men please themselves as much and gratifie their own sinful wills and humors in high and curious speculations of Religion affecting a name and reputation that way or because those things by Custom or otherways are become pleasant and habitual to them though not a whit more regenerated or inwardly Sanctified in their Spirits as others gratifie their Lusts in actions of Sensuality and therefore both are alike hurtful to men and sinful in the sight of God it being nothing but the meer fruit and effect of man's natural and unrenewed will and spirit Yea should one as many no doubt do from a sense of sin and fear of punishment seek to terrifie themselves from sin by multiplying Thoughts of Death Hell and Judgment and by presenting to their Imaginations the Happyness and Joys of Heaven and also by multiplying Prayer and other Religious Performances as these things could never deliver him from one Iniquity without the secret and inward Power of God's Spirit and Grace so would they signifie no more than the Fig-leaves wherewith Adam thought to cover his nakedness and seeing it is only the product of man's own natural will proceeding from a self-love and seeking to save himself and not arising purely from that Divine Seed of Righteousness which is given of God to all for Grace and Salvation it is rejected of God and no ways acceptable unto him since the natural man as natural while he stands in that state is with all his arts parts and actings reprobated by him This great duty then of waiting upon God must needs be exercised in man's denying self both inwardly and outwardly in a still and meer dependence upon God in abstracting from all the Workings Imaginations and Speculations of his own mind that being emptyed as it were of himself and so throughly crucified to the natural products thereof he may be fit to receive the Lord who will have no Co-partner nor Co-rival of his Glory and Power And man being thus stated the little Seed of Righteousness which God hath planted in his Soul and Christ hath purchased for him even the measure of Grace and Life which is burthened and crucified by man's natural Thoughts and Imaginations receives a place to arise and becometh a holy Birth and geniture in man and is that Divine Air in and by which man's Soul and Spirit comes to be leavened And by waiting therein he comes to be accepted in the sight of God to stand in his presence hear his voyce and observe the motions of his Holy Spirit And so man's place is to wait in this and as hereby there are any objects presented to his mind concerning God or things relating to Religion his Soul may be exercised in them without hurt and to the great profit both of himself and others because those things have their rise not from his own will but from God's Spirit And therefore as in the arisings and movings of this his mind is still to be exercised in thinking and meditating so also in the more obvious acts of Preaching and Praying And so it may hence appear we are not against Meditation as some have sought falsly to infer from our Doctrine but we are against the Thoughts and Imaginations of the natural man in his own will from which all Errors and Heresies concerning the Christian Religion in the whole World have proceeded But if it please God at any time when one or more are waiting upon him not to present such objects as gives them occasion to exercise their minds in Thoughts and Imaginations but purely to keep them in this Holy dependence and as they persist therein to cause his secret refreshment and the pure incomes of his Holy Life to flow in upon them then they have good reason to be content because by this as we know by good and blessed experience the Soul is more strengthened renewed and confirmed in the Love of God and armed against the power of sin than any way else this being a fore-tast of that real and sensible enjoyment of God which the Saints in Heaven daily possess which God frequently affords to his Children here for their comfort and encouragement especially when they are assembled together to wait upon him § XI For there are two contrary Powers or Spirits to wit the Power and Spirit of this World in which the Prince of Darkness bears rule and over as many as are acted by it and work from it and the Power or Spirit of God in which God worketh and beareth rule and over as many as act in and from it So whatever be the things that a man thinketh of or acteth in however Spiritual or Religious as to the Notion or form of them so long as he acteth and moveth in the natural and corrupt Spirit and Will and not from in and by the Power of God he sinneth in all and is not accepted of God For hence both the ploughing and praying of the Wicked is sin as also whatever a man acts in and from the Spirit and Power of God having his understanding and will influenced and moved by it whether it be Actions Religious Civil or even Natural he is accepted in so doing in the sight of God and is blessed in them From what is said it doth appear how frivolous and impertinent their objection is that say they wait upon God in praying and preaching since waiting doth of it self imply a passive dependence rather than an acting and since it is and shall yet be more shewn that Preaching and Praying without the Spirit is an offending of God not a waiting upon him and that Praying and Preaching by the Spirit presupposes necessarily a silent waiting for to feel the motions and influence of the Spirit to lead thereunto And lastly that in several of these places where praying is commanded as Matth. 26.41 Mark 13.33 Luke 21.36 1 Pet. 4.7 watching is specially prefixed as a previous preparation thereunto So that we do well and certainly conclude that since waiting and watching is so particularly commanded and recommended and this cannot be truly performed but in this inward silence of the mind from men's own Thoughts and Imaginations this silence is and must necessarily be a special and principal part of God's Worship § XII But Secondly The excellency of this silent waiting upon God doth appear in that it is impossible for the Enemy viz. the Devil to counterfeit it so as for any Soul to be deceived or deluded by him in the exercise thereof Now in all other matters he may mix himself in with the natural mind of man and so by transforming himself he may deceive the Soul by busying it about things perhaps innocent in themselves while yet he keeps them from beholding the Pure Light of Christ and so from knowing distinctly his duty and doing of it For
that envious Spirit of man's Eternal Happyness knoweth well how to accomodate himself and fit his snares for all the several dispositions and inclinations of men if he find one not fit to be engaged with gross Sins or Worldly Lusts but rather averse from them and Religiously inclined he can fit himself to beguile such an one by suffering his Thoughts and Imaginations to run upon Spiritual matters and so hurry them to work act and meditate in their own wills for he well knoweth that so long as self bears rule and the Spirit of God is not the principal and chief Actor man is not put out of his reach so therefore he can accompany the Priest to the Altar the Preacher to the Pulpit the Zealot to his Prayers yea the Doctor and Professor of Divinity to his Study and there he can chearfully suffer him to labour and work among his Books yea and help him to find out and invent subtle distinctions and quiddities by which both his mind and others through him may be kept from heeding God's Light in the Conscience and waiting upon him There is not any exercise whatsoever wherein he cannot enter and have a chief place so as the Soul many times cannot discern it except in this alone for he can only work in and by the natural man and his Faculties by secretly acting upon his Imaginations and desires c. And therefore when he to wit the natural man is silent there he must also stand And therefore when the Soul comes to this silence and as it were is brought to nothingness as to her own workings then the Devil is shut out for the Pure Presence of God and shining of his Light he cannot abide because so long as a man is thinking and meditating as of himself he cannot be sure but the devil is influencing him therein but when he comes wholly to be silent as the Pure Light of God shines in upon him then he is sure that the Devil is shut out for beyond the imaginations he cannot go which we often find by sensible experience For he that of old is said to have come to the gathering together of the Children of God is not wanting to come to our Assemblies and indeed he can well enter and work in a meeting that 's silent only as to words either by keeping the minds in various thoughts and imaginations or by stupifying them so as to overwhelm them with a spirit of heavynses and sloathfulness but when we retire out of all and are returned in both by being diligent and watchful upon the one hand and also silent and retired out of all our thoughts upon the other as we abide in this sure place we feel our selves out of his reach yea often-times the Power and Glory of God will break forth and appear just as the bright Sun through many Clouds and Mists to the dispelling of that Power of Darkness which will also be sensibly felt seeking to cloud and darken the mind and wholly to keep it from purely waiting upon God § XIII Thirdly The excellency of this Worship doth appear in that it can neither be stopped nor interrupted by the malice of Men or Devils as all other can Now interruptions and stoppings of Worship may be understood in a twofold respect either as we are hindered from meeting as being outwardly by violence separated one from another or when permitted to meet together as we are interrupted by the Tumult Noise and Confusion which such as are malitious may use to molest or distract us Now in both these respects this Worship doth greatly overpass all others for how far soever People be separate or hindred from coming together yet as every one is inwardly gathered to the measure of Life in himself there is a secret unity and fellowship enjoyed which the Devil and all his Instruments can never break or hinder But Secondly it doth as well appear as to these molestations which occur when we are met together what advantage this True and Spiritual Worship gives us beyond all others seeing in despite of a thousand interruptions and abuses one of which were sufficient to have stopped all other sorts of Christians we have been able through the Nature of this Worship to keep it uninterrupted as to God and also at the same time to shew forth an example of our Christian Patience towards all even often-times to the reaching and convincing of our opposers for there is no sort of Worship used by others which can subsist though they be permitted to meet unless they be either authorized and protected by the Magistrate or defend themselves with the Arm of Flesh but we at the same time exercise Worship towards God and also patiently bear the reproaches and ignominies which Christ Prophesied should be so incident and frequent to Christians for how can the Papists say their Mass if there be any there to disturb and interrupt them Do but take away the Mass-book the Calice the Host or the Priest's Garments yea do but spill the Water or the Wine or blow out the Candles a thing quickly done and the whole business is marred and no Sacrifice can be offered Take from the Lutherans or Episcopalians their Liturgy or Common Prayer Book and no service can be said Remove from the Calvinists Arminians Socinians Independants or Anabaptists the Pulpit the Bible and the Hour-glass or make but such a noise as the Voice of the Preacher cannot be heard or disturb him but so before he come or strip him of his Bible and his Books and he must be dumb for they all think it an Heresie to wait to speak as the Spirit of God giveth utterance and thus easily their whole Worship may be marred But when People meet together and their Worship consisteth not in such outward acts and they depend not upon any ones speaking but meerly sit down to wait upon God and to be gathered out of all visibles and to feel the Lord in Spirit none of these things can hinder them of which we may say of a truth we are sensible witnesses for when the Magistrates stirred up by the malice and envy of our opposers have used all means possible and yet in vain to deter us from meeting together and that openly and publickly in our own hired Houses for that purpose both Death Banishments Imprisonments Finings Beatings Whippings and other such Devilish Inventions have proved ineffectual to terrifie us from our Holy Aâ—â—â—…blies I say and we having thus often-times purchased our Liberty to meet by deep sufferings our opposers have then taken another way by turning in upon us the worst and wickedest People yea the very off scourings of men who by all manner of inhumane beastly and bruitish behaviour have sought to provoke us weary us and molest us but in vain It would be almost incredible to declare and indeed a shame that among many men pretending to be Christians it should be mentioned what things of this kind mens eyes have seen
consisting in outward observations to be performed by man at set times or opportunities which he can do in his own will and by his own natural strength for else it would not differ in matter but only in some circumstances from that under the Law Next as for a reason of this Worship we need not to give any other and indeed none can give a better than that which Christ giveth which I think should be sufficient to satisfie every Christian to wit GOD is a SPIRIT and they that Worship him must Worship him in Spirit and in Truth As this ought to be received because it is the words of Christ so also it is founded upon so clear a demonstration of Reason as sufficiently evidenceth its verity For Christ excellently argues from the analogy that ought to be betwixt the Object and the Worship directed thereunto God is a Spirit Therefore he must be Worshipped in Spirit This is so certain that it can suffer no contradiction Arg. yea and this analogy is so necessary to be minded that under the Law when God instituted and appointed that Ceremonial Worship to the Jews because that Worship was outward that there might be an analogy he saw it necessary to condescend to them as in a special manner to dwell betwixt the Cherubims within the Tabernacle and afterwards to make the Temple of Jerusalem in a sort his habitation and cause something of an outward Glory and Majesty to appear by causing Fire from Heaven to consume the Sacrifices and filling the Temple with a Cloud through and by which mediums visible to the outward Eye he manifested himself proportionably to that outward Worship which he had commanded them to perform So now under the New Covenant he seeing meet in his Wisdom to lead his Children in a path more Heavenly and Spiritual and in a way both more easie and familiar and also purposing to disappoint carnal and outward observations that his may have an Eye more to an inward Glory and Kingdom than to an outward he hath given us for an example hereof the appearance of his Beloved Son the Lord Jesus Christ who instead that Moses delivered the Israelites out of their outward Bondage and by outwardly destroying their Enemies hath delivered and doth deliver us by suffering and dying by the hands of his Enemies thereby Triumphing over the Devil and his and our inward Enemies and delivering us therefrom he hath also instituted an Inward and Spiritual Worship so that God now tieth not his People to the Temple of Jerusalem nor yet unto outward Ceremonies and Observations but taketh the heart of every Christian for a Temple to dwell in and there immediately appeareth and giveth him directions how to serve him in any outward acts Since as Christ argueth God is a Spirit he will now be worshipped in the Spirit where he reveals himself and dwelleth with the contrite in heart Now since it is the heart of man that now is become the Temple of God in which he will be worshipped and no more in particular outward Temples since as Blessed Stephen said out of the Prophet to the Professing Jews of old the Most High dwelleth not in Temples made with hands as before the Glory of the Lord descended to fill the outward Temple it behoved to be purified and cleansed and all polluted stuff removed out of it yea and the place for the Tabernacle was overlaid with Gold the most pretious clean and clearest of all metals so also before God be worshipped in the inward Temple of the heart it must also be purged of its own filth and all its own thoughts and imaginations that so it may be fit to receive the Spirit of God and to be acted by it and doth not this directly lead us to that inward silence of which we have spoken and exactly pointed out And further This Worship must be in Truth intimating that this Spiritual Worship thus acted is only and properly a true Worship as being that which for the reasons above observed can not be counterfeited by the Enemy nor yet performed by the Hypocrite § XVI And though this Worship be indeed very different from the divers established invented Worships among Christians and therefore may seem strange to many yet hath it been testified of commended and practised by the most Pious of all sorts in all ages by many evident Testimonies might be proved so that from the professing and practicing thereof the name of Mysticks hath arisen as of a certain Sect generally commended by all whose Writings are full both of the explanation and of the commendation of this sort of worship where they plentifully assert this inward introversion and abstraction of the mind as they call it from all Images and Thoughts and the prayer of the will yea they look upon this as the heighth of Christian perfection so that some of them though professed Papists do not doubt to affirm that such as have attained this method of Worship or are aiming at it as in a Book called Sancta Sophia put out by the English Benedictines Printed at Doway anno 1657. Tract 1. Sect. 2. cap. 5. Need not nor ought to trouble or busie themselves with frequent and unnecessary Confessions with exercising corporal labours and austerities the using of Vocal Voluntary Prayers the hearing of a number of Masses or set Devotions or exercises to Saints or Prayers for the Dead or having solicitous and distracting cares to gain Indulgences by going to such and such Churches or adjoyning ones self to confraternities or intangling ones self with Vows and Promises because such kind of things hinder the Soul from observing the Operations of the Divine Spirit in it and from having liberty to follow the Spirit whether it would draw her And yet who knows not but that in such kind of observations the very substance of the Popish Religion consisteth Yet nevertheless it appears by this and many other passages which out of their Mystik writers might be mentioned how they look upon this Worship as excelling all other and that such as arrived hereunto had no absolute need of the others yea see the Life of Balthazar Alvares in the same Sancta Sophia Tract 3. Sect. 1. cap. 7. such as tasted of this quickly confessed that the other Forms and Ceremonies of Worship were useless as to them neither did they perform them as things necessary but meerly for order or examples sake and therefore though some of them were so overclouded with the common darkness of their profession yet could they affirm that this Spiritual Worship was still to be retained and sought for though there be a necessity of omitting their outward Ceremonies Hence Bernard as in many other places so in his Epistle to one William Abot of the same order saith Take heed to the Rule of God the Kingdom of God is within you and afterwards saying that rheir outward orders and rules should be observed he adds But otherwise when it shall happen that none
thou determine not precisely to speak what before thou hast meditated whatsoever it be for though it be lawful to determine the Text which thou art to expound yet not at all the interpretation lest if thou so dost thou take from the Holy Spirit that which is his to wit to direct thy speech that thou mayst Prophecy in the Name of the Lord denuded of all Learning Meditation and Experience and as if thou hadst studied nothing at all committing thy heart thy tongue and thy self wholly unto his Spirit and trusting nothing to thy former studying or meditation but saying with thy self in great confidence of the Divine Promise the Lord will give a word with much power unto those that preach the Gospel But above all things be careful thou follow not the manner of Hypocrites who have written almost word by word what they are to say as if they were to repeat some Verses upon a Theatre having learned all their Preaching as they do that act Tragedies and afterwards when they are in the place of Prophecying pray the Lord to direct their tongue but in the mean time shutting up the way of the Holy Spirit they determine to say nothing but what they have written O unhappy kind of Prophets yea and truly cursed which depend not upon God's Spirit but upon their own Writings or meditation Why pray'st thou to the Lord thou false Prophet to give thee his holy Spirit by which thou mayst speak things profitable and yet thou repellest the Spirit why preferrest thou thy meditation or study to the Spirit of God otherwise why committest thou not thy self to the Spirit § XIX Secondly this manner of preaching as used by them considering that they also affirm that it may be and often is performed by men who are wicked or void of true Grace cannot only not edifie the Church beget or nourish true Faith but is destructive to it being directly contrary to the Nature of the Christian and Apostolick Ministry mentioned in the Scriptures For the Apostle preached the Gospel not in the wisdom of words lest the Cross of Christ should be of none effect 1 Cor. 1.17 But this preaching not being done by the actings and movings of God's Spirit but by man's invention and eloquence in his own will and through his natural and acquired parts and learning is in the wisdom of words and therefore the Cross of Christ is thereby made of none effect The Apostles speech and preaching was not with inticing words of man's wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power That the Faith of their Hearers should not stand in the Wisdom of men but in the Power of God 1 Cor. 2 3 4 5. But this preaching having nothing of the Spirit and Power in it both the Preachers and Hearers confessing they wait for no such thing nor yet are often-times sensible of it must needs stand in the enticing words of man's wisdom since it is by the meer wisdom of man it is sought after and the meer strength of man's eloquence and enticing words it is uttered and therefore no wonder if the Faith of such as hear and depend upon such Preachers and Preachings stand in the wisdom of men and not in the Power of God The Apostles declared that they spake not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost teacheth 1 Cor. 2.13 But these Preachers confess that they are strangets to the Holy Ghost his motions and operations neither do they wait to feel them and therefore they speak in the words which their own natural wisdom and learning teacheth them mixing them in and adding them to such words as they steal of the Scripture and other Books and therefore speak not what the Holy Ghost teacheth Thirdly this is contrary to the method and order of the primitive Church mentioned by the Apostle 1 Cor. 14.30 c. where in Preaching every one is to wait for his Revelation and to give place one unto another according as things are revealed But here there is no waiting for a revelation but the Preacher must speak and not that which is revealed unto him but what he hath prepared and premeditated before hand Lastly by this kind of preaching the Spirit of God which should be the chief instructor and teacher of God's people and whose influence is that only which makes all preaching effectual and beneficial for the edifying of Souls is shut out and man's natural wisdom learning and parts set up and exalted which no doubt is a great and chief reason why the preaching among the generality of Christians is so unfruitful and unsuccessful yea according to this Doctrine the Devil may preach and ought to be heard also seeing he both knoweth the Truth and hath as much eloquence as any But what avails excellency of speech if the demonstration and Power of the Spirit be wanting which toucheth the Conscience We see that when the Devil confessed to the Truth yet Christ would have none of his testimony And as these pregnant testimonies of the Scripture do prove this part of preaching to be contrary to the Doctrin of Christ so do they also prove that of ours before affirmed to be conform thereunto § XX. But if any object after this manner Have not many been benefited yea and both converted and edified by the Ministry of such as have premiditated their preachings yea and hath not the Spirit often concurred by its divine influence with preaching thus premeditated so as they have been powerfully born in upon the Souls of the hearers to their advantage I answer though that be granted which I shall not deny it will not infer that the thing was good in it self more than because Paul was met with by Christ to the converting of his Soul riding to Damascus to persecute the Saints that he did well in so doing neither particular actions nor yet whole congregations as we above observed are to be measured by the acts of God's condescension in times of ignorance But besides it hath often times faln out that God having a regard to the simplicity and integrity either of the preacher or hearers hath faln in upon the heart of a Preacher by his power and holy influence and thereby hath led them to speak things which were not in his premeditated discourse and which perhaps he never thought of before and those passing ejaculations and unpremeditated but living exhortations have proved more beneficial and refreshful both to preacher and hearers than all their premeditated Sermons But all that will not allow them to continue in these things which in themselves are not approved but contrary to the practice of the Apostles when God is raising up a people to serve him according to the primitive purity and spirituality yea such acts of God's condescension in times of darkness and ignorance should ingage all more and more to follow him according as he reveals his most perfect and spiritual way § XXI Having hitherto spoken of Preaching
now it is fit to speak of Praying concerning which the like controversie ariseth Our adversaries whose Religion is all for the most part outside and such whose acts are the meer product of man's natural will and abilities as they can preach so can they pray when they please and therefore have their set particular prayers I meddle not with the controversies among themselves concerning this some of them being for set prayers as a liturgy others for such as are ex tempore conceived it suffices me that all of them agree in this that the motions and influence of the Spirit of God are not necessary to be previous thereunto and therefore they have set times in their publick worship as before and after preaching and in their private devotion as morning and evening and before and after meat and other such occasions at which they precisely set about the performing of their prayers by speaking words to God whether they feel any motion or influence of the Spirit or not so that some of the chiefest have confessed that they have thus prayed without the motions or assistance of the Spirit acknowledging that they sinned in so doing yet they said they look upon it as their duty to do so though to pray without the Spirit be sin We freely confess that Prayer is both very profitable and a necessary duty commanded and fit to be practised frequently by all Christians but as we can do nothing without Christ so neither can we pray without the concurrence and assistance of his Spirit But that the state of the Controversie may be the better understood let it be considered First that Prayer is twofold inward and outward Inward Prayer is that secret turning of the mind towards God whereby being secretly touched and awakened by the Light of Christ in the Conscience and so bowed down under the sense of its iniquities unworthiness and misery it looks up to God and joining issue with the secret shinings of the Seed of God it breaths towards him and is constantly breathing forth some secret desires and aspirations towards him It is in this sense that we are so frequently in Scripture commanded to pray continually Luke 18.1 1 Thes. 5.17 Eph. 6.18 Luke 21.36 Which cannot be understood of outward Prayer because it were impossible that men should be alwaies upon their knees expressing words of prayer and this would hinder them from the exercise of those duties no less positively commanded Outward Prayer is when as the Spirit being thus in the exercise of inward retirement and feeling the breathing of the Spirit of God to arise powerfully in the Soul receives strength and liberty by a superadded motion and influence of the Spirit to bring forth either audable sighs groans or words and that either in publick assemblies or in private or at meat c. As then inward prayer is necessary at all times so so long as the day of every man's visitation lasteth he never wants some influence less or more for the practice of it Because he no sooner retires his mind and considers himself in God's presence but he finds himself in the practice of it The outward exercise of Prayer as needing a greater and superadded influence and motion of the Spirit as it cannot be continually practised so neither can it be so readily so as to be effectually performed until his mind be sometime acquainted with the inward therefore such as are dilligent and watchful in their minds and much retired in the exercise of this inward Prayer are more capable to be frequent in the use of the outward because that this Holy Influence doth more constantly attend them and they being better acquainted with and accustomed to the motions of God's Spirit can easily perceive and discern them and indeed as such who are most diligent have a near access to God and he taketh most delight to draw them by his Spirit to approach and call upon him So when many are gathered together in this watchful mind God doth frequently pour forth the Spirit of Prayer among them and stir them thereunto to the edifying and building up of one another in love But because this outward Prayer depends upon the inward as that which must follow it and cannot be acceptably performed but as attended with a superadded influence and motion of the Spirit therefore cannot we prefix set times to pray outwardly so as to lay a necessity to speak words at such and such times whether we feel this heavenly influence and assistance or no for that we judg were a tempting of God and a coming before him without due preparation We think it fit for us to present our selves before him by this inward retirement of the mind and so to proceed further as his Spirit shall help us and draw us thereunto and we find that the Lord accepts of this yea and seeth meet sometimes to exercise us in this silent place for the tryal of our patience without allowing us to speak further that he may teach us not to rely upon outward performances or satisfie our selves as too many do with the saying of our Prayers and that our dependence upon him may be the more firm and constant to wait for the holding out of his Scepter and for his allowance to draw near unto him and with greater freedom and enlargement of Spirit upon our hearts towards him yet nevertheless we do not deny but sometimes God upon particular occasions very suddenly yea upon the very first turning-in of the mind may give power and liberty to bring forth words or acts of outward Prayer so as the Soul can scarce discern any previous motion but the influence and bringing forth thereof may be as it were simul semel nevertheless that saying of Bernard is true that All Prayer is tepid which hath not an inspiration preveening it Though we affirm that none ought to go about Prayer without this motion yet we do not deny but such sin as neglect Prayer but their sin is in that they come not to that place where they may feel that that would lead them thereunto And therefore we question not but many through neglect of this inward watchfulness and retiredness of mind miss many precious opportunities to Pray and thereby are guilty in the sight of God yet would they sin if they should set about the act until they first felt the influence For as he grosly offends his Master that lyeth in his Bed and sleeps and neglects to do his Masters business yet if such a one should suddenly get up without puting on his Cloaths or taking along with him those necessary tools and instruments without which he could not possibly work should forwardly fall a doing to no purpose he would be so far thereby from repairing his former fault that he would justly incur a new censure and one that is careless and otherwaies busied may miss to hear one speaking unto him or even not hear the Bell of a Clock though striking hard
by him so may many through negligence miss to hear God often-times calling upon them and giving them access to pray unto him yet will not that allow them without this liberty in their own wills to fall to work And lastly though this be the only true and proper method of Prayer as that which is alone acceptable to God yet shall we not deny but he often-times answered the Prayers and concurred with the desires of some especially in times of darkness who have greatly erred herein so that some that have sit down in formal Prayers tho far wrong in the matter as well as manner without the assistance or influence of God's Spirit yet have found him to take occasion therethrough to break in upon their Souls and wonderfully tender and refresh them yet as in preaching and elsewhere hath afore been observed that will not prove any such practices or be a just let to hinder any from coming to practice that pure Spiritual and acceptable Prayer which God is again restoring and leading his people into out of all superstitious and meer empty formalities The state of the controversie and our sense thereof being thus clearly stated will both obviate many objections and make the answer to others more brief and easie I shall first prove this Spiritual Prayer by some short considerations from Scripture and then answer the Objections of our Opposers which will also serve to refute their method and manner thereof § XXII And first that there is a necessity of this inward retirement of the mind as previous to prayer that the Spirit may be felt to draw thereunto appears for that in most of those places where Prayer is commanded watching is prefixed thereunto as necessary to go before as Matth. 24.42 Mark 13.33.14.38 Luke 21.36 from which it is evident that this watching was to go before prayer Now to what end is this watching or what is it but a waiting to feel God's Spirit to draw unto prayer that so it may be done acceptably For since we are to pray alwaies in the Spirit and cannot pray of our selves without it acceptably this watching must be for this end recommended to us as preceeding prayer that we may watch and wait for the seasonable time to pray which is when the Spirit moves thereunto Secondly this necessity of the Spirit moving and concurrence appears abundantly from that of the Apostle Paul Rom. 8.26.27 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit it self maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because he maketh intercession for the Saints according to the will of God Which first holds forth the incapacity of men as of themselves to pray or call upon God in their own wills even such as have received the faith of Christ and are in measure sanctified by it as was the Church of Rome to whom the Apostle then wrote Secondly It holds forth that which can only help and assist men to pray to wit the Spirit as that without which they cannot do it acceptably to God nor beneficially to their own Souls Thirdly The manner and way of the Spirits intercession with sighs and groans which are unutterable And Fourthly That God receiveth graciously the prayers of such as are presented and offered unto himself by the Spirit knowing it to be according to his will Now it cannot be conceived but this order of prayer thus asserted by the Apostle is most consistent with those other testimonies of scripture commending and recommending to us the use of prayer From which I thus argue If man know not how to pray neither can do it without the help of the Spirit then it is to no purpose for him but altogether unprofitable to pray without it But the first is true Therefore also the last Thirdly This necessity of the Spirit to true Prayer appears from Eph. 6.18 and Jude 20. where the Apostle commands to pray alwaies in the Spirit and watching thereunto which is as much as if he had said that we were never to pray without the Spirit or watching thereunto And Jude sheweth us that such prayers as are in the Holy Ghost only tend to the building up of our selves in our most holy faith Fourthly The Apostle Paul saith expresly 1 Cor. 12.3 that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost If then Jesus cannot be thus rightly named but by the Holy Ghost far less can he be acceptably called upon Hence the same Apostle declares 1 Cor. 14.15 that he will pray with the Spirit c. A clear evidence that it was none of his method to pray without it But Fifthly all prayer without the spirit is abomination such as are the prayers of the wicked Prov. 28.9 and the confidence that the Saints have that God will hear them is if they ask any thing according to his will 1 Joh. 5.14 So if the prayer be not according to his will there is no ground of confidence that he will hear Now our adversaries will acknowledg that prayers without the spirit are not according to the will of God and therefore such as pray without it have no ground to expect an answer for indeed to bid a man pray without the spirit is all one as to bid one see without eyes work without hands or go without feet And to desire a man to fall to prayer ere the spirit in some measure less or more move him thereunto is to desire a man to see before he open his eyes or to walk before he rise up or to work with his hands before he move them § XXIII But lastly from this false opinion of praying without the Spirit and not judging it necessary to be waited for as that which may be felt to move us thereunto hath proceeded all the superstition and idolatry that is among those called Christians and those many abominations wherewith the Lord is provoked and his Spirit grieved so that many deceive themselves now as the Jews did of old thinking it sufficient if they pay their daily Sacrifices and offer their customary Oblations from thence thinking all is well and creating a false peace to themselves as the Whore in the Proverbs because they have offered up their Sacrifices of Morning and Evening Prayers And therefore it 's manifest that their constant use of things doth not a whit influence their lives and conversations but they remain for the most part as bad as ever yea it is frequent both among Papists and Protestants for them first to leap as it were out of their vain light and profane conversations at their set hours and seasons and fall to their customary devotion and then when it is scarce finished and the words to God scarce out the former profane talk comes after it so that the same wicked profane spirit of this world acts them in both
If there be any such thing as vain Oblations or Prayers that are abomination which God heareth not as is certain there are and the Scripture testifies Isa. 66.3 Jer. 14.12 certainly such Prayers as are acted in man's will and by his own strength without God's Spirit must be of that number § XXIV Let this suffice for probation Now I shall proceed to answer their objections when I have said something concerning joyning in prayer with others Those that pray together with one accord use not only to concur in their spirits but also in the gesture of their body which we also willingly approve of It becometh those who approach before God to pray that they do it with bowed knees and with their heads uncovered which is our practice Obj. But here ariseth a controversie Whether it be lawful to join with others by those external signs of reverence albeit not in heart who pray formally nor waiting for the motion of the Spirit nor judging it necessary Answ. We answer Not at all and for our testimony in this thing we have suffered not a little for when it hath faln out that either accidentally or to witness against their worship we have been present during the same and have not found it lawful for us to bow with them thereunto they have often persecuted us not only with reproaches but also with stroaks and cruel beatings for this cause they use to accuse us of pride profanity and madness as if we had no respect or reverence to the worship of God and as if we judged none could pray or were heard of God but our selves Unto all which and many more reproaches of this kind we answer briefly and modestly that it sufficeth us that we are found so doing neither through Pride nor Madness nor Prophanity but meerly lest we should hurt our Consciences the reason of which is plain and evident for since our Principle and Doctrine obligeth us to believe that the Prayers of those who themselves confess they are not acted by the Spirit are abominations how can we with a safe Conscience joyn with them Obj. If they urge that this is the heighth of uncharitableness and arrogancy as if we judged our selves always to pray by the Spirits motion but they never as if we were never deceived by Praying without the motions of the Spirit and that they were never acted by it seeing albeit they judg not the motion of the Spirit always necessary they confess nevertheless that it is very profitable and comfortable and they feel it often influencing them which that it sometimes falls out we cannot deny Answ. To all which I answer distinctly if it were their known and avowed Doctrine not to Pray without the motion of the Spirit and that seriously holding thereunto they did not bind themselves to Pray at certain prescribed times precisely at which times they determine to Pray though without the Spirit then indeed we might be accused of uncharitableness and pride if we never joyned with them and if they so taught and practised I doubt not but it should he lawful for us so to do unless there should appear some manifest and evident hypocrisie and delusion But seeing they profess that they pray without the Spirit and seeing God hath perswaded us that such Prayers are abominable how can we with a safe Conscience joyn with an abomination That God sometimes condescends to them we do not deny albeit now when the Spiritual Worship is openly proclaimed and all are invited unto it the case is otherwise than those old times of Apostasie and Darkness and therefore albeit any should begin to pray in our presence not expecting the motion of the Spirit yet if it manifestly appear that God in condescension did concur with such a one then according to God's will we should not refuse to joyn also but this is rare lest thence they should be confirmed in their false Principle And albeit this seem hard in our profession nevertheless it is so confirmed by the Authority both of Scripture and right Reason that many convinced thereof have embraced this part before other among whom is memorable of late Years Alexander Skein a Magistrate of the City of Aberdeen a man very modest and very averse from giving offence to others who nevertheless being overcome by the Power of Truth in this matter behoved for this cause to separate himself from the publick Assemblies and Prayers and joyn himself unto us Who also gave the reason of his change and likewise succinctly but yet substantially comprehended this controversie concerning Worship in some short questions which he offered to the publick Preachers of the City which I think meet to insert in this place 1. Whether or not should any act of God's Worship be gone about without the motions leadings and actings of the Holy Spirit 2. If the motions of the Spirit be necessary to every particular duty whether should he be waited upon that all our acts and words may be according as he gives utterance and assistance 3. Whether every one that bears the name of a Christian or professes to be a Protestant hath such an uninterrupted measure thereof that he may without waiting go immediately about the duty 4. If there be an indisposition and unfitness at some times for such exercises at lest as to the Spiritual and lively performances thereof whether ought they to be performed in that case and at that time 5. If any duty be gone about under pretence that it is in obedience to the external command without the Spiritual Life and Motion necessary whether such a duty thus performed can in Faith be expected to be accepted of God and not rather reckoned as a bringing of strange Fire before the Lord seeing it is performed at best by the strength of natural and acquired parts and not by the strength and assistance of the Holy Ghost which was typified by the Fire that came down from Heaven which alone behoved to consume the Sacrifice and no other 6. Whether duties gone about in the meer strength of natural and acquired parts whether in publick or private be not as really upon the matter an image of man's invention as the popish worship though not so gross in the outward appearance And therefore whether it be not as real superstition to countenance any worship of that nature as it is to countenance popish worship though there be a difference in the degree 7. Whether it be a ground of offence or just scandal to countenance the worship of those whose professed principle it is neither to speak for edification nor to pray but as the Holy Ghost shall be pleased to assist them in some measure less or more without which they rather chuse to be silent than to speak without this influence Unto these they answered but very coldly and faintly whose answers likewise long ago he refuted Seeing then God hath called us to his spiritual worship and to testifie against the humane and voluntary worships of
really did administer the baptism of water did in so doing not administer the Baptism of Christ so that if there be now but one Baptism as we have already proved we may safely conclude that it is that of the Spirit and not of water else it would follow that the One baptism which now continues were the baptism of water i. e. John's baptism and not the baptism of the Spirit i. e. Christs which were most obsurd If it be said further that though the Baptism of John before Christs was administred was different from it as being the figure only Obj. yet now that both it as the figure and that of the Spirit as the substance is necessary to make up the one baptism I answer this urgeth nothing unless it be granted also that both of them belong to the essence of Baptism Answ. so that Baptism is not to be accounted as truly administred where both are not which none of our adversaries will acknowledg but on the contrary account not only all those truly baptized with the Baptism of Christ who are baptized with water tho they be uncertain whether they be baptized with the Spirit or not but they even account such truly baptized with the baptism of Christ because sprinkled or baptized with water though it be manifest and most certain that they are not baptized with the Spirit as being enemies thereunto in their heart by wicked works So here by their own confession baptism with water is without the Spirit Wherefore we may far safer conclude that the baptism of the Spirit which is that of Christ is and may be without that of Water as appears in that Acts 11. where Peter testifies of these men that they were baptized with the Spirit though not then baptized with Water and indeed the controversie in this as in most other things stands beiwixt us and our opposers in that they not only often times prefer the form and shadow to the power and substance by denominating persons as inheritors and possessors of the thing from their having the form and shadow though really wanting the power and substance and not admitting those to be so denominated who have the power and substance if they want the form and shadow This appears evidently in that those truly baptized with the one baptism of Christ who are not baptized with the Spirit which in Scripture is particularly called the Baptism of Christ if they be only baptized with Water which themselves yet confess to be but the shaddow or figure And moreover in that they account not those who are surely baptized with the Baptism of the Spirit baptized neither will they have them so denominate unless they be also sprinkled with or dipped in Water But we on the contrary do alwaies prefer the power to the form the substance to the shaddow and where the Substance and Power is we doubt not to denominate the Person accordingly though the form be wanting and therefore we alwaies seek first and plead for the Substance and Power as knowing that to be indispensable necessary though the form sometimes may be dispensed with and the figure or tipe may cease when the Substance and Anti-tipe comes to be enjoyed as it doth in this case which shall hereafter be made appear § IV. Fourthly that the one Baptism of Christ is not a washing with Water appears from 1 Pet. 3.21 The like figure whereunto even Baptism doth also now save us not the putting away of the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good Conscience towards God by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So plain a definition of Baptism is not in all the Bible and therefore seeing it is so plain it may well be preferred to all the coined definitions of the School-men The Apostle tells us first negatively what it is not viz. Not a putting away of the filth of the flesh then surely it is not a washing with Water since that is so Secondly he tells us affirmatively what it is viz. the answer of a good Conscience towards God by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ where affirmatively defines it to be the answer or confession as the Syriak version hath it of a good Conscience Now this answer cannot be but where the Spirit of God hath purified the Soul and the fire of his judgment hath burned up the unrighteous nature and those in whom this work is wrought may be truly said to be baptized with the baptism of Christ i. e. of the Spirit and of Fire Whatever way then we take this definition of the Apostle of Christ's baptism it confirmeth our sentence for if we take the first or negative part viz. that it is not a puting away of the filth of the Flesh then it will follow that water-baptism is not it because that is a puting away of the filth of the Flesh. If we take the second and affirmative definition to wit that it is the answer or confession of a good Conscience c. then Water-baptism is not it since as our Adversaries will not deny Water-baptism doth not alwaies imply it neither is it any necessary consequence thereof Moreover the Apostle in this place doth seem especially to guard against those that might esteem Water-baptism the true baptism of Christ because lest by the Comparison induced by him in the preceeding verse betwixt the Souls that were saved in Noah's Ark and us that are now saved by Baptism lest I say any should have thence hastily concluded that because the former were saved by water this place must needs be taken to speak of Water-baptism to prevent such a mistake he plainy affirms that it â—s not that but another thing He saith not that it is the Water or the putting away of the filth of the Flesh as accompanyed with the answer of a good Conscience whereof the one viz. the Water is the Sacramental Element administred by the Minister and the other the Grace or thing signified conferred by Christ but plainly that it is not the puting away c. than which there can be nothing more manifest to men unprejudicate and judicious Moreover Peter calls this here which saves the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Anti-type or the thing figured whereas it is usually translated as if the like figure did now save us thereby insinuating that as they were saved by water in the Ark so are we now by Water baptism But this interpretation crosseth his sense he presently after declaring the contrary as hath above been observed and likewise it would contradict the opinion of all out opposers For Protestants deny it to be absolutely necessary to Salvation And though Papists say none are saved without it yet in this they admit an exception as of Martyrs c. and they will not say that all that have it are saved by Water-baptism for seeing we are saved by this baptism as those that were in the Ark were saved by Water and that all those that were in the Ark were saved by water it
Water-baptism Thirdly that Baptism which Christ commanded his Apostles was such that as many as were therewith Baptized Arg. did put on Christ. But this is not true of Water-baptism Therefore c. Fourthly the Baptism commanded by Christ to his Apostles was not John's Baptism But Baptism with Water was John's Baptism Therefore c. But first they alledg that Christ's Baptism though a Baptism with Water did differ from John 's because John only Baptized with Water unto Repentance but Christ commands his Disciples to Baptize in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost reckoning that in this form there lieth a great difference betwixt the Baptism of John and that of Christ. I answer as to that John's Baptism was unto Repentance Answ. the difference lieth not there because so is Christ's also for our adversaries will not deny but that adult persons that are baptized ought ere they be admitted to it to repent and confess their sins yea and that Infants with a respect to and consideration of their Baptism ought to repent and confess So that the difference lieth not here since this of repentance and confession agrees as well to Christ's as to John's Baptism But in this our Adversaries are divided for Calvin will have Christ's and John's to be all one Inst. lib. 4. cap. 15. Sect. 7 8. Yet they do differ and the difference is in that the one is by water the other not c. Secondly as to what Christ saith in commanding them to baptize in the Name of the Father Son and Spirit I confess that states the difference and it is great but that lies not only in admitting water-baptism in this different form by a bare expressing of these words for as the Text saith no such thing neither do I see how it can be inferred from it For the Greek is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is into the Name now the Name of the Lord is often taken in Scripture for something else than a bare sound of words or literal expression even forhis Vertue and Power as may appear from Psal. 54.3 Cant. 1.3 Prov. 18.10 and in many more Now that the Apostles were by their Ministry to baptize the Nations into this Name Vertue and Power and that they did so is evident by these Testimonies of Paul above-mentioned where he saith that as many of them as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ this must have been a baptizing into the Name i. e. Power and Vertue and not a meer formal expression of words adjoyned with Water-baptism because as hath been above observed it doth not follow as a natural or necessary consequence of it I would have those who desire to have their Faith built upon no other foundation than the Testimony of God's Spirit and Scriptures of Truth throughly to consider whether there can be any thing further alledged for this interpretation than what the prejudice of Education and Influence of Tradition hath imposed perhaps it may stumble the unwary and inconsiderate Reader as if the very Character of Christianity were abolished to tell him plainly that this Scripture is not to be understood of Baptizing with Water and that this form of Baptizing in the Name of Father Son and Spirit hath no warrant from Matth. 28. c. For which besides the reason taken from the signification of the Name as being the Vertue and Power above expressed let it be considered that if it had been a form prescribed by Christ to his Apostles then surely they would have made use of that form in the administring of Water-baptism to such as they baptized with Water but though particular mention be made in divers places of the Acts who were baptized and how and though it be particularly expressed that they baptized such and such as Acts 2.41.8.12 13 38.9.18.10.48.16.15.18.8 yet there is not a word of this form and in two places Acts 8.16.19.5 it is said of some that they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus by which it yet more appears that either the author of this History hath been very defective who having so often occasion to mention this yet omiteth so substantial a part of Baptism which were to accuse the Holy Ghost by whose guidance Luke wrote it or else that the Apostle did no waies understand that Christ by his Commission Matth. 28. did injoyn them such a form of Water-baptism seeing they did not use it and therefore it is safer to conclude that what they did in administring Water-baptism they did not by vertue of that commission else they would have so used it for our adversaries I suppose would judge it a great Heresie to administer Water-baptism without that or only in the Name of Jesus without mention of Father or Spirit as it is expresly said they did in the two places above cited Secondly they say if this were not understood of Water-baptism it would be a tautology and all one with teaching I say nay baptizing with the Spirit is somewhat further then teaching or informing the understanding for it imports a reaching to and melting the heart whereby it is turned as well as the understanding informed besides we find often in the Scripture that teaching and instructing are put together without any absurdity or needless tautology and yet these two have a greater affinity than teaching and baptizing with the Spirit Thirdly they say Baptism in this place must be understood with Water because it is the action of the Apostles Obj. and so cannot be the Baptism of the Spirit which is the work of Christ and his Grace not of man c. I answer Baptism with the Spirit though not wrought without Christ and his Grace is instrumentally done by men fitted of God Answ. for that purpose and therefore no absurdity follows that Baptism with the Spirit should be expressed as the action of the Apostles for though it be Christ by his Grace that gives Spiritual Gifts yet the Apostle Rom. 1.11 speaks of his imparting to them Spiritual Gifts and he tells the Corinthians that he had begotten them through the Gospel 1 Cor. 4.15 and yet to beget people to the Faith is the work of Christ and his Grace not of men to convert the heart is properly the work of Christ and yet the Scripture often times ascribes it to men as being the instruments And since Paul's commission was to turn People from Darkness to Light though that be not done without Christ co-operating by his Grace so may also baptizing with the Spirit be expressed as performable by man as the instrument though the work of Christ's Grace be needful to concur thereunto so that it is no absurdity to say that the Apostles did administer the Baptism of the Spirit Lastly they say that since Christ saith here that he will be with his Disciples to the end of the world therefore Water-baptism must continue so long Answ. If he had been speaking here of Water-baptism then that might have been urged
the coming of John and that the Ceremony received that Name from the Nature of the practice as used both by the Jews and by John Yea we find that Christ and his Apostles frequently make use of these terms to a more Spiritual signification Circumcision was only used and understood among the Jews to be that of the flesh But the Apostle tells us of the Circumcision of the Heart and Spirit made without hands So that though Baptism was used among the Jews only to signifie a washing with water yet both John Christ and his Apopostles speak of a being Baptized with the Spirit and with Fire which they make the peculiar baptism of Christ as contradistinguished from that of water which was John's as is above shewn So that tho Baptism among the Jews was only understood of water yet among Christians it is very well understood of the Spirit without water as we see Christ and his Apostles Spiritually to understand things under the terms of what had been shadows before Thus Christ speaking of his body though the Jews mistook him said he would destroy this Temple and build it again in three days and many more that might be instanced But if the Etymology of the word should be tenaciously adhered to it would militate against most of our Adversaries as well as against us for the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Immergo that is to plunge and dip in and that was the proper use of Water-baptism among the Jews and also by John and the primitive Christians who used it whereas our Adversaries for the most part only sprinkle a little water upon the Fore-head which doth not at all answer to the word baptism Yea those of old among Christians that used Water-baptism thought this dipping and plunging so needful that they thus dipped Children And forasmuch as it was judged that it might prove hurtful to some weak constitutions sprinkling to prevent that hurt was introduced yet then it was likewise appointed that such as were only sprinkled and not dipped should not be admitted to have any office in the Church as not being sufficiently baptized So that if our Adversaries will stick to the word they must alter their method of sprinkling Fifthly they object John 3.5 Obj. Except a man be born again of Water and of the Spirit c. hence inferring the necessity of Water-baptism as well as of the Spirit But if this prove any thing Answ. it will prove Water-baptism to be of absolute necessity and therefore Protestants rightly affirm when this is urged upon them by Papists to evince the absolute necessity of Water baptism that water is not here understood of outward water but mystically of an inward cleansing and washing even as where Christ speaks of being baptized with fire it is not to be understood of outward material Fire but only of purifying by a metonymie because to purifie is a proper effect of Fire as to wash and make clean is of Water where it can as little be so understood as where we are said to be saved by the washing of Regeneration Tit. 3.5 Yea Peter saith expresly in the place often cited as Calvin well observes that the Baptism which saves is not the puting away of the filth of the flesh so that since water cannot be understood of outward water this can serve nothing to prove Water baptism If it be said that Water imports here necessitatem praecepti though not medii Obj. Answ. I answer that is first to take it for granted that outward Water is here understood the contrary whereof we have already proved Next Water and the Spirit are placed here together Except a man be born of Water and the Spirit where the necessity of the one is urged as much as of the other Now if the Spirit be absolutely necessary so will also Water and then we must either say that to be born of the Spirit is not absolutely necessary which all acknowledg to be false or else that water is absolutely necessary which as Protestants we affirm and have proved is false else we must confess that Water is not here understood of outward Water For to say that when Water and the Spirit are placed here just together and in the same manner though there be not any difference or ground for it visible in the Text or deduceable from it that the necessity of water is here praecepti but no medii but the necessity of the Spirit is both medii and praecepti is indeed confidently to affirm but not to prove Obj. Sixthly and lastly they object that the baptism of water is a visible sign or badge to distinguish Christians from Infidels even as Circumcision did the Jews I answer This saith nothing at all unless it be proved to be a necessary precept Answ. or part of the New Covenant Dispensation it not being lawful to us to impose outward Ceremonies and Rites and say they will distinguish us from Infidels Circumcision was positively commanded and said to be a seal of the first Covenant but as we have already proved that there is no such command for Baptism so there is not any word in all the New Testament calling it a badg of Christianity or seal of the New Covenant and therefore to conclude it is so because Circumcision was so unless some better proof be alledged for it is miserably to beg the question The professing of Faith in Christ and a holy life answering thereunto is a far better badg of Christianity than any outward washing which yet answers not to that of Circumcision since that affixed a Character in the flesh which this doth not so that a Christian is not known to be a Christian by his being Baptized especially when he was a Child unless he tell them so much and may not the professing Faith in Christ signifie that as well I know there are divers of those called Fathers that speak much of Water-baptism calling it Character Christianitatis but so did they also of the sign of the Cross and other such things justly rejected by Protestants For the mystery of iniquity which began to work even in the Apostles days soon spoiled the simplicity and purity of the Christian Worship so that not only many Jewish Rites were retained but many heathenish Customs and Ceremonies introduced into the Christian Worship as particularly that word Sacrament so that it is great folly especially for Protestants to plead any thing of this from Tradition or Antiquity for we find that neither Papists nor Protestants use these Rites exactly as the Antients did who in such things not walking by the most certain Rule of God's Spirit but doting too much upon outwards were very uncertain for most of them all in the primitive time did wholly plunge and dip those they Baptized which neither Papists nor Protestants do yea several of the Fathers accused some as Hereticks in their days for holding some Principles common with Protestants concerning it as particularly Augustin doth the
time went back from him and walked no more with him I doubt not but that there are many also at this day professing to be the Disciples of Christ that do as little understand this matter as those did and are as apt to be offended and stumble at it while they are gazing and following after the outward Body and look not to that by which the Saints are daily fed and nourished For as Jesus Christ in obedience to the will of the Father did by the eternal Spirit offer up that body for a propitiation for the remission of sins and finished his testimony upon earth thereby in a most perfect example of patience resignation and holyness that all might be made partakers of the feuit of that Sacaifice So hath he likewise poured forth into the hearts of all men a measure of that Divine Light and Seed wherewith he is cloathed that thereby reaching unto the Consciences of all he may raise them up out of death and darkness by his Life and Light and thereby may be made partakers of his body and therethrough come to have fellowship with the Father and with the Son § III. If it be asked how Quest. and after what manner man comes to partake of it and to be sed by it I answer in the plain and express words of Christ I am the Bread of Life saith he he that cometh to me shall never hunger Answ. he that believeth in me shall never thirst and again for my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed So whosoever thou art that askest this question or readest these lines whether thou accountest thy self a Believer or really feelest by a certain and sad experience that thou art yet in the unbelief and findest that the outward body and flesh of Christ is so far from thee that thou canst not reach it nor feed upon it yea though thou hast often swallowed down and taken in that which the Papists have perswaded thee to be the real Flesh and Blood of Christ and hast believed it to be so though all thy senses told thee the contrary or being a Luthenan hast taken that bread in and with and under which the Lutherans have assured thee that the flesh and blood of Christ is or being a Calvinist hast partaken of that which the Calvinists say though a figure only of the Body gives them that take it a real Participation of the Body Flesh and Blood of Christ though they neither know how nor what way I say if for all this thou findest thy Soul yet barren yea hungry and ready to starve for want of something thou longest for Know that that Light that discovers thy Iniquity to thee that shews thee thy barrenness thy nakedness thy emptyness is that body that thou must partake of and feed upon but that till by forsaking iniquity thou turnest to it comest unto it receivest it though thou mayst hunger after it thou canst not be satisfied with it for it hath no communion with darkness nor canst thou drink of the Cup of the Lord and the Cup of devils and be partaker of the Lord's Table and the Table of Devils 1 Cor. 10.21 But as thou sufferest that small Seed of Righteousness to arise in thee and to be formed into a birth that new substantial birth that 's brought forth in the Soul naturally feeds upon and is nourished by this spiritual body yea at this outward birthlives not but as it sucks in breath by the outward elementary air so this new birth lives not in the Soul but as it draws in and breaths by that spiritual air or vehicle and as the outward birth cannot subsist without some outward body to feed upon some outward flesh and some outward drink so neither can this inward birth without it be fed by this inward flesh and blood of Christ which answers to it after the same manner by way of analogy And this is most agreeable to the Doctrine of Christ concerning this matter for as without outward food the natural body hath not life so also saith Christ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you And as the outward body eating outward food lives thereby so Christ saith that he that eateth him shall live by him So it is this inward participation of this inward man of this inward and Spiritual body by which man is united to God and has fellowship and communion with him He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood saith Christ dwelleth in me and I in him This cannot be understood of outward eating of outward Bread and as by this the Soul must have fellowship with God so also in so far as all the Saints are partakers of this one body and one blood they come also to have a joynt Communion Hence the Apostle 1 Cor. 10.17 in this respect saith that they being many are one bread and one body and to the wise among the Corinthians he saith the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ. This is the True and Spiritual Supper of the Lord which men come to partake of by hearing the voice of Christ and opening the door of their hearts and so letting him in in the manner abovesaid according to the plain words of the Scripture Rev. 3.20 Behold I stand at the door and knock if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come into him and will Sup with him and he with me So that the Supper of the Lord and the Supping with the Lord and partaking of his Flesh and Blood is no ways limited to the Ceremony of breaking Bread and drinking Wine at particular times but is truly and really enjoyed as often as the Soul retires into the Light of the Lord and feels and partakes of that Heavenly Life by which the inward Man is nourished which may be and is often witnessed by the Faithful at all times though more particularly when they are Assembled together to wait upon the Lord. § IV. But what confusion the professors of Christianity have run into concerning this matter is more than obvious who as in most other things they have done for want of a true Spiritual understanding have sought to tie this Supper of the Lord to that ceremony used by Christ before his Death of breaking Bread and drinking Wine with his Disciples And though they for most part agree in this general yet how do they contend and debate one against another How strangely are they pinched pained and straitned to make this Spiritual mystery agree to that Ceremony And what monstruous and wild opinions and conceivings have they invented to inclose or affix the Body of Christ to their Bread and Wine From which opinion not only the greatest and fiercest and most hurtful contests both among the Professors of Christianity in general and among Protestants in particular have arisen but also such absurdities irrational and blasphemous
that they shun to witness for Christ for fear of hurt to themselves lest they mistake them As for that private meeting of the Disciples we have only an account of the matter of fact but that suffices not to make of it a president for us and mens aptness to imitate them in that which for ought we know might have been an act of weakness and not in other things of the contrary nature shews that it is not a true zeal to be like those Disciples but indeed a desire to preserve themselves which moves them so to do Lastly as to that of Paul's being conveyed out of Damascus the case was singular and is not to be doubted but it was done by a special allowance from God who having designed him to be a principal Minister of his Gospel saw meet in hss Wisdom to disoppoint the wicked council of the Jews But our adversaries have no such pretext for fleeing whose fleeing proceeds from self preservation not from immediate revelation And that Paul made not this the method of his proceedure appears in that at another time notwithstanding the perswasion of his Friends and certain Prophecys of his sufferings to come he would not be disswaded to go up to Jerusalem which according to the fore-mentioned rule he should have done But lastly to conclude this matter Glory to God and our Lord Jesus Christ that now these twenty five years since we were known to be a distinct and separate People hath given us faithfully to suffer for his Name without shrinking or fleeing the Cross and what liberty we now enjoy it is by his Mercy and not by an outward working or procuring of our own but 't is he has wrought upon the hearts of our opposers nor was it any outward interest hath procured it unto us but the testimony of our harmlesness in the hearts of our Superiors for God hath preserved us hitherto in the patient suffering of Jesus that we have not given away our cause by persecuting any which few if any Christians that I know can say Now against our unparalleled yet innocent and Christian cause our malicious enemies have nothing to say but that if we had Power we would do so likewise This is a piece of meer unreasonable malice and a priviledg they take to judg of things to come which they have not by immediate revelation and surely it is the greatest heighth of harsh judgment to say men would do contrary to their professed Principle if they could who have from their practice hitherto given no ground for it and wherein they only judg others by themselves such conjectures cannot militate against us so long as we are innocent And if ever we prove guilty of persecution by forcing other men by corporal punishment to our way then let us be judged the greatest of Hypocrites and let not any spare to persecute us AMEN saith my Soul The Fifteenth Proposition Concerning Salutations and Recreations c. Seeing the chief end of all Religion is to redeem men from the Spirit and vain conversation of this World and to lead into inward communion with God before whom if we fear always we are accounted happy therefore all the vain customs and habits thereof both in word and deed are to be rejected and forsaken by those who come to this fear such as the taking off the Hat to a man the bowings and cringings of the body and such other Salutations of that kind with all the foolish and superstitious formalities attending them all which man has invented in his degenerate state to feed his Pride in the vain pomp and glory of this world as also the unprofitable Plays frivolous Recreations Sportings and Gaming 's which are invented to pass away the precious time and divert the mind from the witness of God in the heart and from the living sense of his fear and from that Evangelical Spirit wherewith Christians ought to be leavened and which leads into sobriety gravity and godly fear in which as we abide the blessing of the Lord is felt to attend us in those actions which we are necessarily ingaged in order to the taking care for the sustenance of the outward man § I. HAving hitherto treated of the Principles of Religion both relating to Doctrine and Worship I am now to speak of some practices which have been the product of this Principle in those Witnesses whom God hath raised up in this day to testifie for his Truth It will not a little commend them I suppose in the judgment of sober and judicious men that taking them generally even by the Confession of their Adversaries they are found to be free of those Abominations which abound among other Professors such as are Swearing Drunkenness Whoredom Riotousness c. And that generally the very coming among this People doth naturally work such a change so that many vitious and profane persons have been known by coming to this Truth to become sober and vertuous and many light vain and wanton ones to become grave and serious as our adversaries dare not deny yet that they may not want something to detract us for cease not to accuse us for those things which when found among themselves they highly commend thus our gravity they call sullenness our seriousness melancholly our silence sottishness Such as have been vitious and profane among them but by coming to us have left off those evils lest they should commend the truth of our profession they say that whereas they were profane before they are become worse in being hypocritical and spiritually proud If any before dissolute and profane among them by coming to the Truth with us become frugal and diligent then they will charge them with covetousness And if any eminent among them for seriousness piety and discoveries of God come unto us then they will say they were always subject to melancholly and to enthusiasm though before when among them it was esteem'd neither melancholly nor enthusiasm in an evil sense but Christian gravity and Divine revelation Our boldness and Christian suffering the call obstinacy and pertinacy though half as much if among themselves they would account Christian courage and nobility And though thus by their envy they strive to read all relating to us backwards counting these things vice in us which in themselves they would extol as vertues yet hath the strength of Truth extorted this confession often from them that we are generally a pure and clean people as to the outward conversation But this they say is but in policy to commend our heresie But such policy it is say I as Christ and his Apostles made use of and all good Christians ought to do yea so far hath Truth prevailed by the purity of his followers that if one that is called a Quaker do but that which is common among them as to laugh and be wanton speak at large and keep not his word punctually or be overtaken with hastyness or anger they presently say O!
visitation in which it is possible for them to be saved 83 84 98 99 100 101 102. the testimony of Cyrill concerning this thing 102. it is explained what is understood and not understood by this day 86. to some it may be longer to others shorter 86. many may out-live this their day of Visitation after which there is no possibility of Salvation to them 86. some examples are alledged 87. the objections and those places of Scripture which others abuse to prove that God incites men necessarily to sin are easily solved if they be applyed to these men after the time of their visitation is past 87 97 98. there is given to every one a measure of the Light Seed Grace and Word of God whereby they can be saved 83 84 97 102 to 112. which is also confirmed by the Testimonies of Cyrill and others 106 107 108 110 111. what that Light is see Light many tho ignorant of the outward history yet have been sensible of the loss that came by Adam which is confirmed by the Testimonies of Plato and others 124 125. many have known Christ within as a remedy to redeem them tho not under that denomination witness Seneca Cicero and others 124 125. yet all are obliged to believe the outward history of Christ to whom God bringeth the knowledg of it 89. Reformation wherein it is not plac'd 188. Mechanick men have contributed much to it 218. what hath been pernicious to it 310. Relation see Quakers Religion the Christian Religion see Christianity how it is made odious to Jews Turks and Heathens 309. Remonstrants of Holland see Arminians Redemption they deny absolute Reprobation 30. how we differ from them 95. they exalt too much the natural power and free will of man and what they think of the Saving Light 114 115. their worship can easily be stopped 251. Reprobation see also Redemption what absolute Reprobation is is described 68 69. its doctrin is horrible impious and blasphemous 69 73 74. it is also so called by Lucas Osiander 81. 't is a new doctrine and Augustin laid the first foundation thereof which Dominicus Calvin and the Synod of Dort maintained 69 80 81. also Luther whom notwithstanding Lutherans afterwards deserted 80 81. it is injurious to God and makes him the author of sin proved by the sayings of Calvin Beza Zanchius Paraeus Martin Zwinglius and Piscator 70 71. it makes the Preaching of the Gospel a meer mock and illusion 71 it makes the coming of Christ and his propitiatory Sacrifice to have been a testimony of God's wrath 72 73. it is injurious to mankind and makes his condition worse than the condition of Devils Beasts Jews under Pharaoh and the same which the Poets applied to Tantalus 72 73. Revelation God alwaies manifested himself by the revelations of the Spirit 3 11 12 34. they are made several waies 3. they have been alwaies the formal object of Faith and so remain 3 13 to 24. and that not only subjectively but also objectively 23 24 25 26. they are simply necessary unto true Faith 3 28 36. they are not uncertain 27 28 29. yea it is horrible sacriledge to accuse them of uncertainty 22. the examples of the Anabaptists of Munster do not a whit weaken this doctrin 29 31 33 34 41. they can never contradict the holy Scripture nor sound Reason 3 34 50 51. they are evident and clear of themselves nor need they anothers Testimony 3 35 36. they are the only sure certain and unmoveable foundation of all Christian Faith 36 37. carnal Christians judge them nothing necessary yea they are hissed out by the most part of men 3. of old none were esteemed Christians save those that had the Spirit of Christ but now adaies he is termed an Heretick who affirms that he is led by it 3 4. the Testimonies of some concerning the necessity of these Revelations 5 6 7 21 22. by whose and what devices they have been brought out of use 83. Revenge see War 379 380. Rule of Faith and manners see Scripture Rustick the poor Rustick's answer given to the proud Prelat 195. he brought a Philosopher unto the Christian Faith 209. S Sabbath 234 235. Sacraments of their number nature c. how much contention there hath been and that the word Sacrament is not found in Scripture but borrowed from the Heathens 278 301. its definition will agree to many other things 279. whether they confer Grace 328 329. Salvation without the Church there is no Salvation 181. Samaria the woman of Samaria 313. Sanctification see Justification Saxony the Elector of Saxony of the scandal he gave to the Reformation by being present at the Mass 272. Sceptick 208 School without the School of Christ nothing is learned but meer talk and a shaddow of Knowledge 4 5 6. whether publick Schools be necessary 207. Scriptures of Truth whence they proceeded and what they contain 38. they are a declaration of the Fountain and not the Fountain it self 38. they are not to be esteemed the adequate primary rule of Faith and manners but a secondary and subordinate to the Spirit and why 38 to 57 199. their certainty is only known by the Spirit 38.39 143. they testifie that the Spirit is given to the Saints for a Guide 38 48 49 52 53 54 55. their authority depends not upon the Church or Council nor upon their intrinsick vertue but upon the Spirit nor is it subjected to the corrupt reason of men but to the Spirit 38 50. the testimonies of Calvin the French Churches the Synod of Dort and the Divines of Great Britain at Westminster concerning this thing 39 40. the contentions of those that seek the certainty of the Scriptures from something else than the Spirit 39 40. divers Opinions of the Fathers so called concerning some Books 39 40. concerning the taking away and the corruption of some places the Translation Transcription and various Lections of the Hebrew Character and of the Greek Books the Interpretation of the Septuagint concerning the Hebrew Books and of admitting or rejecting some Books 47 48 49. of the difficulty in their explanation 50 51. Augustin's judgment concerning the Authors of the Canonick Books and concerning the Transcription and Interpretation 49. the use of them is very profitable and comfortable 41 49. the unlearned and unstable abuse them 50. there is no necessity of believing the Scripture to be a filled up Canon 55. many Canonick Books through the injury of time lost 55. whether it can be proved by Scripture that any Book is Canonical 55 56. they were sometime as a Sealed Book 207. to understand them there is need of the help and revelation of the Holy Spirit 5 6 no man can make himself a Doctor of them but the Holy Spirit 6. Sest the Ignatian Sect loveth literature 207. they call those that are sent unto India Apostles 217. Seed of Righteousness 247. the seed of sin see sin Redemption Self-Denial 247. Semi-Pelagians their Axiom Facienâ—â— quod in
se est Deus non denegat gratiam Servant whether it be lawful to say I am your humble Servant 358. Servetus 345. Shoe-maker he disputes with the Professor 208 Silence see Worship Simon Magus 222 Sin see Adam Justification it shall not have dominion over the Saints 42. the seed of sin is transmitted from Adam unto all men but it is imputed to none no not to Infants except they actually joyn with it by sinning 57 58 64 65 66. and this seed is often called Death Original sin Of this phrase the Scripture makes no mention 66. by vertue of the Sacrifice of Christ we have remission of sins 90 132. forgiveness of sin among the Papists 129. a freedom from actual sin is obtained both when and how and that many have attained unto it 160 to 174 every sin weakens a man in his Spiritual condition but doth not destroy him altogether 161. it is one thing not to sin another thing not to have sin 170. whatsoever is not done through the Power of God is sin 249. Singing of Psalms 275. Socinians see natural light their rashness is reproved 19. they think Reason is the chief rule and guide of Faith 19 30. albeit many have abused Reason yet they do not say that any ought not to use it and how ill they argue against the inward and Immediate Revelations of the Holy Spirit 29 30 31. yet they are forced ultimately to recur unto them 36. they exalt too much their natural power and what they think of the Saving Light 115. their worship can easily be stopped 92. Son of God see Christ Knowledge Revelation Soul the Soul hath its senses as well as the body 7. by what it is strengthened and fed 248 311. Spirit the Holy Spirit see Knowledg Communion Revelation Scriptures Unless the Spirit sit upon the heart of the hearer in vain is the Discourse of the Doctor 6 16. the Spirit of God knoweth the things of God 11. without the Spirit none can say that Jesus is the Lord 6 11 12. he rested upon the Seventy Elders and others 14. he abideth with us for ever 18 19. he teacheth and bringeth all things to remembrance and leads into all Truth 19 20 23 24 25 38. he differs from the Scriptures 19 20. he is God 19. he dwelleth in the Saints 19 20 21 22 23. without the Spirit Christianity is no Christianity 20 30 40 whatsoever is to be desired in the Christian Faith is ascribed to him 19 20. by this Spirit we are turned unto God and we triumph in the midst of Persecutions 21. he quickens c. 21 22. an observable Testimony of Calvin concerning the Spirit 22 23 39 40. it is the Fountain and Origin of all Truth and right reason 34 35. it gives the belief of the Scriptures which may satisfie our Consciences 39. his Testimony is more excellent than all reason 39. he is the chief and principal Guide 46. he reasoneth with and striveth in men 98. those that are led by the Spirit love the Scriptures 50 183 184. he is as it were the Soul of the Church and what is done without him is vain and impious 208. he is the Spirit of order and not of disorder 213. such as the Spirit sets apart to the Ministry are heard of their Brethren 214. it is the earnest of our inheritance 237. Spiritual iniquities 243 244. spiritual discerning 336. Stephen spake by the Spirit 21. Suffering How Paul filled up that which was behind of the afflictions of Christ. How any is made partaker of the Sufferings of Christ and conformable to his Death 168 169. Superstition 231 232. whence superstitions sprung 244 277 300. Supper see Communion Bread it was of old administred even to little Children and Infants 3.7 T Tables 323. Talent one Talent is not at all unsufficient of it self The Parable of the Talents 101 102 107. those that improved their Talents well are called good and faithful Servants 152. he that improved well his two Talents was nothing less accepted than he that improved his five 161. Talk see Plays Taulerus was instructed by the poor Laik 200. he tasted of the love of God 237. Testimony see Spirit Theseus his Boat 219 Thomas a Kempis 236. Tithes were assigned to the Levites but not to the Ministers of this day 220 221. Titles it is not at all lawful for Christians to use those Titles of Honour Majesty c. 352 354 to 360 388. Tongue the knowledge of tongues is laudable 200 206 207. Tradition how unsufficient it is to decide 30. it is not a sufficient ground for Faith 329. Translations see Bible Truth there is a difference betwixt what one saith of the Truth and that which the Truth it self interpreting it self saith 6. Truth is not hard to be arrived at but is most nigh 6. Turks among them there may be Members of the Church 182 183. V Vespers 236. Voices outward Voices see Faith Miracles W War that it is not lawful for Christians to resist evil nor wage War 352. 380 to 389. Washing of Feet 212 213. William Barclay 342. Woman a Woman can Preach 214 220. Luther also 303. Word the Eternal Word is the Son It was in the beginning with God and was God it is Jesus Christ by whom God created all things 10 87. what Augustin read in the writings of the Platonists concerning this Word 126. Works are either of the Law or of the Gospel 152. see Justification Worship what the true and acceptable worship to God is and how it is offered and what the superstitious and abominable is 231 c. the true worship was soon corrupted and lost 231 232. concerning the worship done in the time of the Apostasie 235 267. of what worship is here handled and of the difference of t he worship of the Old and New Covenant 232 233 252 253 254. the true Worship is neither limitted to times places nor persons and it is explained how this is to be understood 231 233 234 258 259 266 267 289 290. concerning the Lord's-day and the daies upon which Worship is performed 234 235. of the Publique and Silent Worship and its excellency 236 to 261. of Preaching 260 261 262 263 264. of Prayer 264 to 276. of singing of Psalms and Musick 275. what sort of Worship the Quakers are for and what sort their adversaries 276. FINIS John 17.3 Matth. 11.27 Joh. 16.13 Rom. 8.14 Rom. 5.12 15. Eph. 2.1 Ezek. 18.23 Esa. 49.6 John 3.16.1.19 Tit. 2.11 Eph. 5.13 Heb. 2.9 1 Cor. 15.22 1 Cor. 12.7 Heb. 2.9 Tit. 3.5 Rom. 6.14 Rom. 8.13 Rom. 6.2 18 1 John 3.6 1 Tim. 1.6 Heb. 6.4 5 6. Mat. 10. Ezek. 13. Matt. 10.20 Acts 2.4.18.5 John 3.6 4.21 Judges 19. Acts 17.23 Eph. 4.5 1 Pet 3.21 Rom. 6.4 Gal. 3.27 Col. 2.12 Joh. 3.30 1 Cor. 1.17 1 Cor. 10.16 17. Joh. 6.32 33 55. 1 Cor. 5.8 Acts 15 20 Joh. 13 14. Ja. 5.14 Luc. 9.55 56. Matt. 7.12 29. Tit. 3.10 Eph. 5.11 1 Pet 1.14
6.17 now no unclean thing can be so It is expresly written that there is no communion betwixt Light and Darkness 2 Cor. 6.14 But God is Light and every sin is darkness in a measure What greater stain then can there be than this upon God's Wisdom as if he had been wanting to prepare a means whereby his Children might perfectly serve and worship him or had not provided a way whereby they might serve him in any thing but that they must withal still serve the devil no less yea more than himself For he that sinneth is the servant of sin Rom. 6.16 and every sin is an act of service and obedience to the devil So then if the Saints sin daily in thought word and deed yea if the very service they offer to God be sin surely they serve the devil more than they do God For besides that they give the devil many intire services without mixture of the least grain to God they give God not the least service in which the devil hath not a large share and if their prayers and all their spiritual performances be sinful the devil is as much served by them in these as God and in most of them much more Since they confess that many of them are performed without the leadings and influence of God's Spirit Now who would not account him a foolish master among men who being able to do it and also desirous that it might be so yet would not provide away whereby his Children and Servants might serve him more intirely than his avow'd enemy or would not guard against their serving of him but be so imprudent and unadvised in his contrivance that whatever way his Servants and Children served him they should no less yea often much more serve his enemy What may we then think of that Doctrin that would infer this folly upon the Omnipotent and only Wise GOD. § IV. Secondly It is inconsistent with the Justice of God For since he requires purity from his Children and commands them to abstain from every iniquity so frequently and precisely as shall hereafter appear and since his wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men it must needs follow that he hath capacitated man to answer his will or else that he requires more than he has given power to perform which is to declare him openly unjust and with the sloathful Servant to be a hard Master We have elsewhere spoken of the injustice these men ascribe to God in making him to damn the wicked to whom they alledg he never offered any means of being good But this is yet an aggravation more irrational and inconsistent to say that God will not afford to those whom he has chosen to be his own whom they confess he loveth the means to please him What can follow then from so strange a Doctrin This imperfection in the Saints either proceeds from God or from themselves If it proceeds from them it must be because they are short in improving or making use of the power given them whereby they are capable to obey and so it is a thing possible to them as indeed it is by the help of that power but this our adversaries deny they are then not to be blamed for their imperfection and continuing in sin since it is not possible to them to do otherwise If it be not of themselves it must be of God who hath not seen meet to allow them Grace in that degree to produce that effect And what is this but to attribute to God the heighth of injustice to make him require his Children to forsake sin and yet not to afford them sufficient means for so doing Surely this makes God more unrighteous than wicked men who if as Christ saith their Children require Bread of them will not give them a Stone or instead of Fish a Serpent But these men confess we ought to seek of God power to redeem us from sin and yet believe they are never to receive such a power such Prayers then cannot be in Faith but are all vain Is not this to make God as unjust to his Children as Pharoah was to the Israelites in requiring Brick and not giving them straw But blessed be God he deals not so with those that truly trust in him and wait upon him as these men vainly imagine for such faithful ones find of a truth that his Grace is sufficient for them and know how by his Power and Spirit to overcome the Evil one § V. Thirdly this evil Doctrine is highly injurious to Jesus Christ and greatly denegates from the Power and Vertue of his Sacrifice and renders his coming and ministery as to the great end of it ineffectual For Christ as for other ends so principally he appeared for the removing of sin for gathering a righteous Generation that might serve the Lord in purity of mind and walk before him in fear and bring in Everlasting Righteousness and that Evangelick perfection which the Law could not do Hence he is said Tit. 2.14 To have given himself for us that he might redeem us from all Iniquity and purifie unto himself a peculiar People zealous of good works This is certainly spoken of the Saints while upon Earth But contrary thereunto these men affirm that we are never redeemed from all Iniquity and so make Christ's giving of himself for us void and ineffectual and give the Apostle Paul the Lye plainly by denying that Christ purifieth to himself a peculiar People zealous of good works How are they zealous of good works who are ever committing evil ones how are they a purified People that are still in impurity as are they that daily sin unless sin be accounted no impurity Moreover it is said expresly 1 Joh. 3.5 8. that For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the Devil and ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins But these men make this purpose of none effect for they will not have the Son of God to destroy the works of the Devil in his Children in this world Neither will they at all believe that he was manifest to take away our sins seeing they plead a necessity of always living in them And lest any should wrest this place of the Apostle as if it were spoken only of taking away the guilt of sin as if it related not to this life the Apostle as of purpose to obviate such an objection adds in the two following verses whosoever abideth in him sinneth not c. I hope then they sin not daily in Thought Word and Deed. Let no man deceive you he that doth Righteousness is Righteous even as he is Righteous he that committeth sin is of the Devil But he that sinneth daily in Thought Word and Deed committeth sin How comes such a one then to be the Child of God And if Christ was manifest to take away sin how strangely do they overturn the Doctrine of Christ that deny that it
wills than obey God's will have heaped up Sacrifices without obedience and thinking to deceive God as they do one another give him a shew of Reverence Honour and Worship while they are both inwardly estranged and alienated from his Holy and Righteous Life and wholly strangers to the pure breathings of his Spirit in which the acceptable Sacrifice and Worship is only offered up Hence it is that there is not any thing relating to man's duty towards God which among all sorts of People hath been more vitiated and in which the Devil hath more prevailed than in abusing man's mind concerning this thing and as among many others so among those called Christians nothing hath been more out of order and more corrupted as some Papists and all Protestants do acknowledg As I freely approve whatsoever the Protestants have reformed from Papists in this respect so I meddle not at this time with their controversies about it only it suffices me with them to deny as no part of the true Worship of God that abominable Superstition and Idolatry the Popish Mass the Adoration of Saints and Angels the Veneration of Reliques the Visitation of Sepulchres and all these other Superstitious Ceremonies Confraternities and endless Pilgrimages of the Romish Synagogue Which all may suffice to evince to Protestants that Anti-Christ hath wrought more in this than in any other part of the Christian Religion and so it concerns them narrowly to consider whether herein they have made a clear and perfect Reformation as to which stands the controversie betwixt them and us For we find many of the Branches lopped off by them but the Root yet remaining to wit a Worship acted in and from man's will and spirit and not by and from the Spirit of God for the true Christian and Spiritual Worship of God hath been so early lost and man's wisdom and will hath so quickly and throughly mixed it self herein that both the Apostacy in this respect hath been greatest and the Reformation herefrom as to the evil root most difficult Therefore let not the Reader suddenly stumble at the account of our Proposition in this matter but here us patiently in this respect explain our selves and I hope by the assistance of God to make it appear that though our manner of 〈◊〉 and Doctrine seem most singular and different from all 〈…〉 of Christians yet it is most according to the purest Christian Religion and indeed most needful to be observed and followed and that there be no ground of mistake for that I was necessitate to speak in few words and therefore more obscurely and dubiously in the Proposition it self it is fit in the first place to explain and hold forth out sense and clear the state of the controversie § II. And first let it be considered that what is here affirmed is spoken of the worship of God in Gospel times and not of the worship that was under or before the Law For the particular commands of God to men then are not sufficient to authorize us now to do the same things else we might be supposed at present acceptable to offer Sacrifice as they did which all acknowledge to be ceased So that what might have been both commendable and acceptable under the Law may justly now be charged with superstition yea and Idolatry So that impertinently in this respect doth Arnoldus rage against this Proposition Exercit. Theolog. sect 44. saying that I deny all publick worship and that according to me such as in Enoch 's time publickly began to call upon the Name of the Lord and such as at the command of God went twice up to Jerusalem to worship and that Anna Simeon Mary c. Were Idolaters because they used the publick worship of these times Such a consequence is most impertinent and no less foolish and absurd than if I should infer from Paul's expostulating with the Galatians for their returning to the Jewish Ceremonies that he therefore condemned Moses and all the Prophets as foolish and ignorant because they used those things the forward man not heeding the different dispensation of times ran into this impertinency Though a Spiritual Worship might have been and no doubt was practiced by many under the Law in great simplicity yet will it not follow that it were no superstition to use all those Ceremonies that they used which were by God dispensed to the Jews not as being essential to true worship or necessary as of themselves for transmitting and entertaining an holy fellowship betwixt him and his people but in condescension to them who were inclinable to Idolatty albeit then in this as in most other things the substance was enjoyed under the Law by such as were Spiritual indeed yet was it vailed and surrounded with many Rites and Ceremonies which is no waies lawful for us to use now under the Gospel § III. Secondly albeit I say that this worship is neither limited to times places nor persons yet I would not be understood as if I intended the putting away of all set times and places to worship God forbid I should think of such an opinion Nay we are none of those that forsake the assembly of our selves together but have even certain times and places in which we carefully meet together nor can we be driven thereform by the threats and persecutions of men to wait upon God and worship him To meet together we think necessary for the people of God because so long as we are cloathed with this outward tabernacle there is a necessity to the entertaining of a joynt and visible fellowship and bearing of an outward testimony for God and seeing of the Faces of one another that we concur with our Persons as well as Spirits To be accompanied with that inward love and unity of Spirit doth greatly tend to encourage and refresh the Saints But the limitation we condemn is that whereas the Spirit of God should be the immediate actor moreover perswader and influencer of man in the particular acts of worship when the Saints are met together this Spirit is limited in its operations by setting up a particular man or men to preach and pray in man's will and all the rest are excluded from so much as believing that they are to wait for God's Spirit to move them in such things and so they neglecting that which should quicken them in themselves and not waiting to feel the pure breathings of God's Spirit so as to obey them are led meerly to depend upon the preacher and hear what he will say Secondly in that these peculiar men come not hither to meet with the Lord and to wait for the inward motions and operations of his Spirit and so pray as they feel the Spirit to breath through them and in them and to preach as they find themselves acted and moved by God's Spirit and as he gives utterance so as to speak a word in season to refresh weary Souls and as the present condition and state of the peoples hearts requires
suffering God by his Spirit both to prepare peoples hearts and also give the preacher what may be fit and seasonable for them But he hath hammered together in his closet according to his own will by his humane wisdom and illeterature and by stealing the words of Truth from the letter of the Scriptures and patching together other mens Writings and Observations so much as will hold him speaking an hour while the Glass runs and without waiting or feelling the inward influence of the Spirit of God he declaims that by hap-hazard whether it be fit or seasonable for the peoples condition or no and when he has ended his Sermon he saith his Prayer also in his own will and so there is an end of the business Which customary worship as it is no waies acceptable to God so how unfruitful it is and unprofitable to those that are found in it the present condition of the Nations doth sufficiently declare It appears then that we are not against set times for worship as Arnoldus against this Proposition Sect. 45. No less impertinently alledgeth offering needlesly to prove that which is not denyed only these times being appointed for outward conveniency we may not therefore think with the Papists that these daies are holy and lead people into a superstitious observation of them being perswaded that all daies are alike holy in the sight of God And albeit it be not my present purpose to make a long digression concerning the debates among Protestants concerning the first day of the week commonly called the Lords day yet for as much as it comes fitly in here I shall briefly signifie our sense thereof § IV. We not seeing any ground in Scripture for it cannot be so superstitious as to believe that either the Jewish Sabbath now continues or that the first day of the week is the anti-tipe thereof or the true Christian Sabbath which with Calvin we believe to have a more Spiritual sense and therefore we know no moral obligation by the fourth command or elsewhere to keep the first day of the week more as any other or any holiness inherent in it But first for as much as it is most necessary that there be some time set apart for the Saints to meet together to wait upon God And that secondly it is fit at some times they be freed from their other outward affairs And that thirdly Reason and Equity doth allow that Servants and Beasts have some time allowed them to be eased from their continual labour And that fourthly it appears that the Apostles and primitive Christians did use the first day of the week for these purposes We find our selves sufficiently moved for these to do so also without superstitiously straining the Scriptures for another reason which that it is not to be there found many Protestants yea Calvin himself upon the fourth command hath abundantly evinced And though we therefore meet and abstain from working upon this day yet doth not that hinder us from having meetings also for worship at other times § V. Thirdly though according to the knowledg of God revealed unto us by the Spirit through that more full dispensation of Light which we believe the Lord hath brought about in this day we judg it our duty to hold forth that Pure and Spiritual Worship which is acceptable to God and answerable to the testimony of Christ and his Apostles and likewise to testifie against and deny not only manifest Superstition and Idolatry but also all formal Will-worship which stands not in the power of God yet I say we do not deny the whole Worship of all those that have born the name of Christians even in the Apostacy as if God had never heard their prayers nor accepted any of them God forbid we should be so void of Charity The latter part of the Proposition sheweth the contrary and as we would not be so absurd on the one hand to conclude because of the errors and darkness that many were covered and surrounded with in Babylon that none of their prayers were heard or accepted of God so will we not be so unwary on the other as to conclude that because God heard and pitied them so we ought to continue in these errors and darkness and not come out of Babylon when it is by God discovered unto us The Popish Mass and Vespers I do believe to be as to the matter of them abominable Idolatry and Superstition and so also believe the Protestants yet will either I or they affirm that in the darkness of Popery no upright-hearted men tho zealous in these abominations have been heard of God or accepted of him Who can deny but that both Bernard and Bonaventur Thaulerus Thomas a Kempis and divers others have both known and tasted of the love of God and felt the Power and Vertue of God's Spirit working with them for their Salvation And yet ought we not to forsake and deny those Superstitions which they were found in the Calvinistical Presbyterians do much upbraid and I say not without reason the formality and deadness of the Episcopalian and Lutheran Liturgies and yet as they will not deny but there have been some good men among them so neither dare they refuse but that when that good step was brought in by them of turning the publick Prayers into the vulgar Tongues tho continued in a Liturgy it was acceptable to God and sometimes accompanied with his Power and Presence yet will not the Presbyterians have it from thence concluded that the Common Prayers should still continue so likewise tho we should confess that through the mercy and wonderful condescension of God there have been upright in heart both among Papists and Protestants yet can we not therefore approve of their way in the general or not go on to the upholding of that Spiritual Worship which the Lord is calling all to and so to the testifying against whatsoever stands in the way of it § VI. Fourthly to come then to the state of the Controversie as to the publick Worship we judg it the duty of all to be diligent in the assembling of themselves together and what we have been and are in this matter our enemies in Great Britain who have used all means to hinder our assembling together to Worship God may bear witness and when assembled the great work of one and all ought to be to wait upon God and returning out of their own thoughts and imaginations to feel the Lord's presence and know a gathering into his Name indeed where he is in the midst according to his promise And as every one is thus gathered and so met together inwardly in their Spirits as well as outwardly in their Persons there the secret Power and Vertue of Life is known to refresh the Soul and the pure motions and breathings of God's Spirit are felt to arise from which as words of Declaration Prayers or Praises arise the acceptable Worship is known which edifies the Church and is well-pleasing to God