Christians Ministers Physitians and such as are able to judge do so conceive of them 2. It is an utter impossibility for any man especially women that never knew what belonged to Stage-playing and young Children to feign such swounings tremblings palsie-motions swelling foaming purging such great and horrid screechings and roarings yea common Modesty would restrain any man or woman that are themselves from such uncleanly Excretions as do often accompany these sordid Trances Surely it must needs bee some black Art that works so turbulently on mens Spirits or bodies and conjures them into such Surprizes 3. The holy Scripture predicts 2 Thes. 2. 9. that the coming of Antichrist the man of sin c. shall be after the working of Satan with all Power and Signes and lying Wonders and withall deceivablenes of Unrighteousness in them that perish and that God shall send his Followers strong Delusions to believe lyes c. Ergo the coming of Antichrist and Hereticall Speakers may be such also 4. Their Quakings are very like the Fits of that Child mentioned Mark 9. 17 18. 20. 26. Master saith the Father of the Child to Christ I have brought unto thee my Son which hath a dumb Spirit and wheresoever he taketh him he teareth him and he foameth and gnasheth with his teeth and pineth away and strait-way the Spirit tare him and he fel on the ground and wallowed foaming and the Spirit cryed and rent him sore and came out of him and he was as one dead This is as punctuall a Description of a Quakers Fit as if it had been intended for a portrature of it and for that particular in it which concernes pining away all the Country in these parts knowes how pittifully many of the Quakers look by reason of those Fits and immoderate fastings and some distemper it may be of brain besides and what pale ill countenances they have now in comparison of what they had before they joyned themselves to this Sect This is not generally true of them but so true of some of them that they may be discovered by their very faces 5. The Devill delights to possesse and abuse the bodies of men and women that are in his power when and as far as God permits but this people who have forsaken the truth and true Worship of God his Ordinances Commandements and are selfe-excommunicate may more then probably be lookt upon as delivered up to Satan by God himselfe as may appeare by this whole Relation Ergo the Divell Will delight to possesse and abuse their bodies 6. It is no new thing for false Prophets to fall into Satanicall Trances such were Mathewes Becold and others the Prophets of Munster which lay sometimes two or three daies in their Ecstacies though some think they were Forgeries and therefore we need not wonder at these Raptures as if some strang thing had happened amongst us that was never heard of before especially seeing this people both Leaders and Learners if it be proper to call them so that will away with no teaching are as like that Phrantick Rabble that once Reigned in Munster as any one thing can be like another 7. Women or Children or those that have fasted long such as are most subject to Fascination do most frequently fall into these Surprizals 8. These Ecstasies are seales of Doctrines of Divels therefore from the Divell Mr. Perkins in his discourse of Witchcraft Chap. 3. Sect. 4. makes this difference betwixt Divine and Diabolicall Trances Divine Ecstasies tend alwayes saith he to the confirming of the truth of the Gospell and the furtherance of true Religion and Piety such was Peters Act. 10. 11. which served to assure him of his calling to preach the Gospell to the Gentiles and to inform his Judgment in this Truth that there was no acceptation of Persons with God and that to them of the new Testament all things were clean and nothing polluted But the scope of them that are from Satan is principally the suppressing and hinderance of Religion the drawing of the weak into Errours the ratifying and confirming of those that are fallen thereinto and the generall upholding of practises of ungodlinesse 9. Mr. Perkins ibid. makes this another difference between Divine and Satanicall Trances In Divine Trances saith he the Servants of God have all their Senses yea and all the powers of Soule and Body remaining sound and perfect onely for a time the Actions and Operations are suspended and cease to do their duty But in Ecstasies that be from Satan his Instruments are all cast into Frenzies and Madnesse so as Reason in them is darkened and Understanding obscured Memory weakened the Brain distempered so kind is Satan to his Friends that he will leave his tokens behind him where ever he comes in this sort That some of these people have fallen out right and furiously mad and dyed in that madnesse That others of them have been and are strangely distracted and that the Countenance ' of many of them bewraies the troubles and distemper of their heads is too well known in these parts to be denyed This Brain-sicknesse though I know it is principally to be imputed to the just Judgment of God upon them who have turned away their Eares from the Truth and greedily drunk down many intoxicating Opinions yet I think it very probable that in some of them it is the Fruit of these Ecstatick Fits whereby Satan hath disturbed and debilitated their Intellectuals 10. George Fox the Ring-leader of this Sect hath been and is vehemently suspected to be a Sorcerer The presumptions of his wickednesse in this kind are not weak Some persons of good quality that came out of Notinghamshire to Kendall told them of Note in that Town what Pranks this Fox had played and what disturbance he had caused in that County before he came into these more Northern parts and with all he credibly reported to them a very strange story of the Devills discovering this Fox to be one of his Vassalls and Agents while he was there in a certainr house together with many of his Disciples speaking to them This Accident he said caused many of his followers to desert both him and his wicked way and principally procured this Foxes Apprehension and imprisonment in Nottingham Castle till he runne away and his Keeper with him It hath been his custome in these parts to fix his Eyes earnestly on such strangers as came into his company a good while together as though he wold look them through If any one please to look on him sted fastly again it is his manner impudently to out-stare them His followers say he can out-look any man and that he doth it to know what is in them but if there be such a thing as Fascination by an evill Eye I should rather suspect him guilty of that then of any abillity to discern the complexions of mens soules in their Faces When such as have conceived any likeing of their way come to their meetings or any young men
have left the Truth and the good waies of the Lord which are alwaies like themselves and as unalterable as the courses of the Stars of Heaven And now they fluctuate like the Waves of the Sea they have unbottomed themselves and now they know not where to fix they are removed from that Religion that is true to another Gospell and now they have both the Credenda Facienenda the Doctrinall and Practicall parts of their Irreligion they have taken up to seek and settle It is not to be expected that they will be a yeare or two hence what they are now new Visions new Revelations they daily look for Unstable Soules whither will your Fancies go whither will he drive you that sets you on work One in Kerbylonsdale Parish that had been of their Society a while fell sick of an Ague and was by it detain'd at home a Month after recovery going to their Assemblies again he professed that he found them so altered from their Principles in that Months time that he could onely know them by their faces to be the same men not by the constitution of their mindes Divers others that were a while agon of their way perceiving the instability of their Opinions and Impiety of their walkings are now fallen off from them and frequent the publike Assemblies as before The Profession of some of the tallest of this Sect that afford shadow to the rest hath had almost as many faces as the Moon before they turned Promoters of Quakers The world hath seen them zealous for Episcopall Policy and Ceremonies hot for Presbytery all for Independency and after all for Antinomianisme Anabaptisme and now beyond all onely for Foxes new Irreligion which is above all Formes and Ordinances Most of them that steer their course according to the direction of these wandring Stars were heretofore noted men for their Singularity and unsoundnesse of their Tenets such as ever affected to put on the newest Fashion of Religion A Taylor at Grayrigge that while there was no Minister there used to speak publikely every Lords day delivered them openly many dangerous and Hereticall Doctrines and what ever his Doctrine was true or false he was wont daily as his Hearers said to pawn his Soule on the truth of his Assertions and bid if they were not such to take him for ever for a false Prophet Yet this man after Fox and Nayler came into these parts having been their Auditor a little while was perverted by them and became a Quaker left his former Principles and came to Grayrigge where he had taught long before and told the people he had formerly deluded them and taught lyes and false Doctrine among them but he had now found the right way indeed with other words to that effect The Builders of this Babell of the Quakers which they as impiously as vain-gloriously call the Temple of the Lord will have no Tooles taken out of the Shops of humane Learning to work withall and indeed I think they have not except what the Learning of Winstanley and Collier have afforded them If any of their way of of the Countenancers of them be learned indeed as some of them are held to be I look upon their owning and admiring at it and those empty Clouds their Speakers as a very sad Judgment of God upon them sending them strong delusions to believe a lye They hate a Library Cane pejus Angue all Expositors of holy Scripture they call Heatheninsh Commentators the Reliques of those pious Learned men that were great Lights in the Churches of Christ in their Ages such Books I mean as Students in Theology use as good helps to attain to that excellent Knowledge of the Doctrine of the holy Scriptures they tearm heathenish Books and the Compilers of them heathenish Authors Languages and Arts and such like Ornamentall Qualifications are ulcerous Deformities in these mens eyes A methodicall discourse is an Odium all distinctions they say are the Seed of the Serpent they savour too much of solid Knowledge They deny it to be needfull to bring up Children in any Learning and some of them have taken their Children from Schoole Their Books and Papers which they disperse abroad the Country with these or such like absurd frothy Sefle-contradicting Quaeries Whether the Lord made use of any as Ministers of his minde unto the people that were bred idle at Sdhooles and Universities all the daies of their lives without a calling as the Priests of England but rather the contrary as Moses a Shepheard Amos a Heardsman Christ himselfe a Carpenter Paul a Tent-maker Peter a Fisherman Whether ever Universities or Schooles of Learning were in holy Scripture called the Well-heads of Divinity Whether ever Christ and his Apostles did make use of those great Bugbeares so common in use with the Priests of England to prevent the Saints from preaching the Gospell and the world from hearing them As first the Approbation and Ordination of the men of the Earth Secondly humane Learning and the Language of the Beast without which men are in their account altogether unmeet to meddle in the things of God Whether ever Christ and his Apostles did confirm the Truths they delivered by the power of the Magistracy Authors and Fathers Whether the Spirits teaching be not sufficient in the things of God Whether it be not the work of Christ and that which is to be expected in the latter daies to overturn overturn overturn all these waies so contrary to his own minde What do they mean in the last Quaere what Spirit is this they speak from but let these Quaeries go as they are for me Of their Idlenesse Savage Incivilities and their Irreligious bloody barbarous and turbulent practises TO what hath been hitherto related of their Impieties and disorderly walkings it may be added that they are many of them notorious for Idlenesse in their Callings working not at all sometimes for whole weeks and months together Some of them leave their Wives Children Families Vocations and turn all Journy-men Speakers Others regardlesse of all at home wander after them compassing the Country from place to place and live upon those of their Fraternity where they light to their Excessive charge They are degenerated also to such Incivilities as are in few places of the World to be found among the Heathens having departed from the Doctrine of Christ and practise of Civility both together Reader I have been an Eye-witnesse of more courteous behaviour in the Indians of the West and Natives of the East Indies and Moores of Africa then these men will afford to their neerest Relations or those they ought most to honour A Son if turned a Quaker will not use the usuall Civility of the world that is christian in putting off his hat to his Father or Mother will give them no civill Salutations to bid him Goodmorrow that begat him or her Good night or farewell that brought him forth is with them accounted a wickednesse None of the
of all the Ministers in England without exception and did pretend that himself together with his fellow speakers were the onely true Ministers and Messengers of Christ that we desired to know his Faith and to hear from him if we might the summe of that Doctrine of the Gospel which he came to preach I told him further that our selves and the Countrey in general did look upon him and his fellow speakers as seducers such as preached another Gospel and another Jesus then we had preached and that therefore for the clearing of himself and the satisfaction of the Countery and our selves there present it was but meet that he should give us them desiring it some account of his saith And to do that I told him I hoped he would not be unwilling seeing the Apostle Peter exhorts all Christians to be ready to give a reason of the hope that is in them to every one that asketh To this he replied nothing but stood as one that had nought to say I then asked the people there present if they did not generally desire to hear something from him touching his Faith in some of the main principles of Religion To which many of them said it was their desire Whereupon I intreated Nayler to answer plainly to a few questions which I desired to propound to him The first Question I propounded was whether he believed the Holy Scripture to be the very Word of God To this he answered there was no word but Christ which he would have proved out of Iohn 1. 1. In the beginning was the Word c. I told him we did not deny Jesus Christ to be the Word but did believe him to be the Essential Word of his Father I further told him according to that distinction of the Word into Verbum Deus Verbum Dei That the Word was twofold The Word that is God which is Iesus Christ and the Word of God which is the Holy Scripture Then altering the former question a little I asked him whether he did believe the Holy Scripture to be the written Word of God To which after many words to no purpose being pressed to answer positively he said It is not the Word of God there is no written Word The next question I asked him was Whether he that speaks or teaches that which is directly contrary to the Doctrine of the Holy Scripture is to be lookt upon as one speaking from the immediate inspiration of the Spirit though he pretend to do so To this be replied The Word and the Spirit are one What said I do you understand by the Word when you say the Word and the Spirit are one He said by the Word he meant Christ. I told him we did believe Christ and the Holy Spirit to be one God and that if that was the matter of his answer That Christ and the Holy Spirit are one it was impertinent to my question I then put the case touching my self thus If I said I should pretend to preach from the immediate assistance of the Spirit and preach that which is repugnant to the Holy Scripture whether would your self believe that the Spirit of God spake by me or no To this he answered as before I say saith he The Spirit and the Word are one I told him he did not answer like a rational man and pressing him to answer plainly and not so cloudily and darkly as he did indeavour to do that those were Auditors could not understand what he meant divers of his followers that were there present said altogether almost the devil spoke in me the Serpent spoke in me I told them that was a pure Language that became a Quaker better then a Christian. His Disciples there present desired he should propound some question to my self I told them upon that condition he would answer me plainly to some questions I further desired to put to him I would answer him to any Question of his as plainely as I could He then asked me how I could prove my self to be a Minister of Jesus Christ. I told him that-I had been called and ordained to the work of the Ministery by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery and that the Lord had been pleased mercifully to furnish me with some though very mean abilities for the discharge of that work and that it had been my endeavour to preach the Gospel sincerely and that I desired and as farre as the Lord assisted laboured to walke as became that Doctrine He told me I did not live as became a Minister of Christ. I asked him wherein he could accuse me He said I preached for hire and suffered my self to be called Master contrary to the command of Christ. To the first I replied that for the terms hire or wages they were used in Scripture that our Saviour speaking of those that labour in the Gospel saith The workeman is worthy of his hire And that the Apostle scrupled not to say he received wages Accordingly I told him I tooke hire or received wages for Preaching of the Gospell But did not preach for it did not make that the end of my Ministery And for being called Master I told him that I was not ambitious of that Title That my name was T. H. and that it would please me very well to be called by that name I said further when our Saviour saith Matth. 23. and 10. Be not ye called Masters he doth not simply forbid them to be so called no more then in the foregoing verse he forbids children to call an earthly Parent Father but that he there forbids such proud and ambitious affectation of Titles of respect as was in the Scribes and Pharisees Away Away saith Nayler with your Expositions of Scripture The Scripture is not to be expounded and God will adde to such as Expound them all the plagues written in that Book I replyed that the Apostles knew the meaning of this Precept of Jesus Christ and were obedient unto it and yet suffered a Title superior to that of Master to be given to them Iohn 12. 21. and Acts 16. 30. and that they reproved not them that so called them which they would have done if it had been unlawful for them to have been called Master and that Iohn 20. 15. Mary Magdalen called our Saviour Sir supposing him to have been the Gardiner The Greek word translated Sir is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and doth properly signifie Lord and is as Linguists know a Title of greater respect then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the term used Matthew 23. 10. The next question I asked him was not as he saith Whether Christ was ascended into Heaven as Man that was in another place about 5 dayes after which yet some of their speakers have denied and argued against but whether he did believe Iesus Christ to be true God and true Man also in one Person And first said I whether dost thou believe Iesus Christ to be true God The question I asked because I
True it is so said but that Face of God which Moses saw is not spoken of as that full vision of God which we cannot have till we be changed but of a more extraordinary appearance of God in his outward discovery of his Glory And therefore when afterwards Moses desired to see Gods Face he shewed him but his back parts Dost thou then believe said Nayler to see God with thy carnall eyes Master Coale answered in the words of Iob Yea with these eyes shall I see Him Onely said he friend understand That though these same eyes shall see Him yet they must be though not in substance yet in quality changed He shall change this vile body saith Paul and make it like unto his own Glorious body Saith Nayler Had I said so I had been charged with Blasphemy though it be Truth Master Coale answered he would then have had a great deale of injury done him but said he though we shall be made like unto him I doe not understand it thus that we shall be made equal to him there is a vast difference betwixt likenesse and equality Nayler after this speaking of the life of Christ said he lived by the life of Christ and Christan him Master Coale told him it was true that a Christian lives by the life of Christ but that life saith he which I live is a created life and t is I am quickned and I that am made alive 〈◊〉 saith Nayler by an uncreated life True said Master Coale A Christian doth so but he must make a difference between living the Essentiall life of Christ and living by it The uncreated life of Christ said he is the cause of my life but not the matter of it For they were the influences of that life upon me that did beget a life in me but that life that is in me is a created life for which he quoted Ephesians 2. You hath he quickned and 1. Cor. 15. The last Adam is made a quickning Spirit or a life creating Spirit as he told him the word signifies Also 2. Cor. 5 If any man be in Christ he is a new Creature And you are his workmanship created in Iesus Christ unto good works To these he replyed nothing but said I do witnesse Christ is in me and is persecuted in me this day Master Coale told him he persecuted him not but came to crave Protection The foregoing discourse produced some words about Justication touching which Nayler said he was justified by Christ in him To which Master Coale replyed thus Christ in me is my sanctification but Christ fulfilling the Law for me is my Justification Justification is an Act of God for Christs sake acquitting me and absolving me from the guilt of sinne not done in me but without me in the Court in Heaven Onely the Manifestation of it is in my Conscience Nayler said nothing to this but that which is without is without Being asked whether the Scriptures were the Word of God he answered he knew no Word of God but one Being asked again whether he believed the written Word to be the Word of God he said I know no such thing Master Coale told him That it was true that Jesus Christ is the Eternall Word but in the ordinary sense a word is as much as the Declaration of a mans mind He asked him therefore whether he beleeved the Scriptures did declare to us the Minde of God and so whether that which they deliver to us is the very minde of God He answered I do believe it This is the substance of all those Passages ANd now good Reader compare this faithfull Relation which may be attested by many judicious and observant witnesses with their foolish and scandalous stories and you may find them full of such grosse abuses and pernicious suggestions and falsehoods as are apt to proceed from a spirit that premeditatech mischief and abhorreth not evil I think none of us that are traduced in Sauls Errand to Damascus should have made any thing publick in this kind in respect to our selves We know t is as easie is common for Christs Disciples indeed to beare the lying accusations and reproaches of his Enemies But knowing again how Errour may strengthen it selfe and get a party by lying reports and the Cause of God contract an Odium by misrepresentations and Religion sometimes suffer through silence especially when Satan labours to speake so like the Language of a complaining Saint and Truth it selfe is under prejudice and disadvantage we were moved in Spirit to speake what we have heard and know and to testifie what we can witnesse though the world should not receive it That Mystery of Iniquity which doth so Energetically work against the Gospell in this Nation and that designe of Satan which now appears with open face in Multitudes of his Agents to overturne the Ministery of the New Testament and roote out the Soule and Life of Christianity from among us the despised Servants of the Lord in these parts are hopefully encouraged that the Lord will ere long crush to pieces and make it as the untimely Fruite of Summer and as the grasse upon the House top of which the Mower filleth not his hand nor hee that bindeth Sheaves his bosome Yea we see already some probable Symptomes of Death upon these New born Principles and the markes of Vengeance from Heaven upon them The hollownesse and unholynesse of their fanaticke Notions which as blazing Starres doe dazle the weaker or delight the more wanton eyes of many The fruit of our Prayers in the returning of some who were esteemed Godly The Divisions of the rest Their visible palpable Atheisme And the Lords Eminent leaving of them both living and dying in either the most despairing or most bruitish Condition ever heard of which though sad as to their persons yet wee cannot but looke upon them as Signall Testimonies of GOD against their Heresies and Impieties O that Men would receive the Truth of God in the Love thereof that those Glorious Beams of the Eternall Word might ravish the affections of all that know them Least otherwise as is the sad condition of this poore Country the Lord doe in his just Judgement send them some strong Delusions to believe a Lye and plunge their Soules from their Imaginary highest Elevation of Spirituall Knowledge into the lowest depth of Atheisticall Heathenish or Popish darkenesse In this Prayer I hope good Reader we shall have the Communion of your Spirit and the joynt compassion of your Soules for a misguided Generation The Lord inable us to contribute what strength wee have for the Gospels Interest FINIS Nayler saith to this Question he could get no answer