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
that the Guides of this Sect notwithstanding their faire pretensions of an immediate call and extraordinary Mission and the great Opinion their followers have conceived of them are not the servants of the Lord Jesus but in very deed the Emissaries and Ministers of Satan and that their way is not the good old way the way of God but as contrary to it as darknesse to the light I shall take some paines to acquaint my Reader 1. With the cursed Blasphemies which George Fox the Grand Master of this Faction and some others have uttered 2. With some of those Doctrines of Devils damnable Heresies and dangerous Errors which their speakers have disseminated and wherewith they have infected their unhappy Disciples 3. With the bitter and rotten fruits of their Doctrine such of their strange impious seditious suspicious insolent and Barbarous practices as have come to my knowledge some of which doe in the judgement of the most sober and intelligent Christians strongly savor of sorcery and the immediate co-operation of the Devill Of the horrid Blasphemies of the Quakers against God and his Christ. George Fox the Father of the Quakers of these parts hath avowed himselfe over and over to be equall with God being asked by Doctor Marshall in the presence of Master Sawro Colonell Tell and Colonell West Justices of the Peace in the County of Lancashire at a private Sessions in the Towne of Lancaster whether or no he was equall with God as he had before that time beene heard to affirme his answer was this I am equall with God This Blasphemy hath been attested upon Oath by the foresayd Doctor Marshall and Master Altam Schoolmaster of Lancaster before the Justices at the last Sessions held at Appleby Ianuary the 8. 1652. and before Judge Puleston at the last Assizes held at Lancaster March the 18. 1652. This Fox in a Booke intituled Sauls Errand to Damascus endeavours to purge himselfe of this and other such cursed speeches layd to his charge but he doth it so woodenly and ambiguously that if there wanted sufficient witnesses his owne bungling answers would to a rationall man declare him guilty And well may he affirme himselfe to be equall with God when he in the foresayd Booke Page eight Line nine and ten layes downe this blasphemous Proposition indefinitely Hee that hath the same Spirit that raised up Iesus Christ from the dead is equall with God The said Fox hath also avowed himselfe to be the Christ yea to be the way the Truth the life George Bickett Isaac Bourne witnesseth At the last Assises above-mentioned at Lancaster Mr. Sawro a Justice of the Peace in that County and an honest Gentleman told Judge Puleston in the open Court that he could produce many would witnesse that Fox had affirmed himselfe to be the Christ. The same also he said in the hearing of an honest Minister in Westmerland who will be ready to attest it when called to it This Fox hath also professed himselfe to be the Judge of the World George Bickett Adam Sands Nathaniel Atkinson witnesseth Yea the Eternall Judge of the World George Bickett witnesseth Iames Nailer another of Satans Nuntioes and principall spokesman in these parts affirmeth that he was as holy just and good as God himself This was I heare attested at Kendall by two witnesses There is a man of good Repute an Inhabitant of Underbarrow in the Barony of Kendall who sayeth many heard this Blasphemy besides himselfe but he thinks being all followers of this Nailer and Fox they will be unwilling to testifie it Iames Milner one of Foxes Disciples in the County of Lancashire professed himselfe to be God and Christ. Thomas Shaw Gerard Shaw George Inman witnesses This mans Advocate I mean that Pamphleteer that took the pains to put forth and procure the printing of that Book called Sauls Errant to Damascus or he that undertook to answer in his behalfe to Salve this his execrable Blasphemy and some wretched Prophesies which are already turned into lyes hath minted this miserable Excuse As for Iames Milner saith he though his mind did run out from his condition and from minding that Light of God which is in him whereby the world takes occasion to speak against the Truth and many Friends stumble at it yet there is a pure Seed in him It seems if a man be of their way though a Blasphemer and false Prophet by their own confession yet with them he is excusable One Williamsons Wife a Disciple of Milners when she came to see him at Appleby said in the hearing of divers there whose names might be here inserted if it was needfull that she was the Eternall Son of God And when the men that heard her told her that she was a woman and therefore could not be the Son of God She said no you are women but I am a man These last words I insert that the Reader may see how strongly the Spirits of some of these people are transported and how ready they are to affirm any thing how ever impious or absurd Of the Erroneous Opinions of the QUAKERS HItherto of their Blasphemies Now for the Doctrines which the Leaders of this Sect have avouched and taught and the Principles they have instilled into their credulous Adhaerents They are some of them Errours of the first Magnitude Fundamentall Errours Others of them though of a lesser size in their own nature yet the understanding Reader will censure them to be such as tend to the disturbance of the Civill Peace as well as that of the Church Others of them again are such light stuff as shewes them to be meer triflers in Religion I shall heare mention such of their Errours onely as I can bring sufficient proofe for either from those that have been Ear-witnesses and are well acquainted with their way or from their own printed Books which are owned and admired by their Disciples 1. They hold that the holy Scripture the Writings of the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles are not the word of God and that there is no written word of God But they say using a foolish distinction of their own coining that they are a declaration of the word onely in those that gave the faith 2. They hold their own speakings are a declaration of the word Christ in them thereby making them though they be for the most part full of impiety and non-sense to be of equall Authority with the holy Scriptures 3. They hold that no Exposition ought to be given of the holy Scripture and that all expounding of Scripture is an adding to it and that God will add to such a one all the plagues written in that Book Opening and applying the Scripture is one thing they mainly declaim against where ever they come 4. They teach poor people that whosoever takes a text of Scripture and makes a Sermon of or from it is a Conjurer and that his preaching is Conjuration Fox in his printed answer to this Sauls Errant Page 7. saith thus
reach the very same Doctrine that these men do or some other very like unto it Such as wherein he would not cease to pervert the right waies of the Lord. 1. To render them odious and make them seem to be perverse waies to the Ignorant Multitude and such as wherein he would chiefly labour to perswade them to turn their backs upon the preaching of the Gospell and all Gods Ordinances and to mind onely the light and guide within them which is plainer English to worship God according to their own Fancies to pursue the bent and inclination of their own Nature and to do only that which is right and good in their own eyes If the Divell himselfe whose Mercuries these Speakers of whom I am now speaking are could with his Seductions prevaile upon unstable Souls but thus far what would he desire more I have related in part what is and will now tell you according to the best intelligence I could gain what is not the subject of their speakings I once heard Naylor speak a while my selfe I have enquired of divers that have been the Auditors of others of them I have read very many of their Epistles and Papers that are common in the Country which I think I can produce I could never see or heare or learn that they speak almost any thing of the miserable estate of all men by Nature of Jesus Christ our Redeemer of his two Natures of the reality of his Deity and Humanity of his Office of Mediatorship especially of his Sacerdotall Office of his Meritorious death and Resurrection of the Satisfaction he hath given to God for us of his Intercession for us of Remission of Sins and Justification to life to be obtained through faith in his blood These glad Tydings these Evangelical Doctrines are too low for their high-flown Spirits Instead of making our Lord Jesus Christ blessed for ever be his holy Name the Object of their teaching they make Ministers and Tythers and the pure light that is in every man that cometh into the World the Object of their teaching And the two first of them chiefly of their railing If they chance to speak any thing of those Gospell-Doctrines above rehearsed it is so obscurely mystically and in such odd tearmes that they do rather darken then cleer up those truths to their hearers and so erroneously that they had a hundred times better let speaking alone For these wretched Speakers must one day know that it is no little sin to adulterate the Glorious everlasting Gospell of Jesus Christ. And for propagation of such their erroneous Opinions as are heretofore recited Their Speakers and others of their way that have nothing else to do but follow them wander from one Parish part of the Country to another sometimes ten or twenty sometimes a whole Troop of them together and by their Agents and Letters which they send before hand to those that are friends to their Sect or that they heare are Opinionative and addicted to Novelties in Religion gather people together And sometimes they are invited by such as hanker after their way Where their places of meeting are many resort some out of curiosity to see their persons that are so famous or infamous rather in these parts for their Seductions some itching to heare how and what manner of Doctrine they speak In these Conventions they tell people they are sent to them from God to declare what he hath revealed in them and begin such Preachments as are above Deciphered Where this Swarm hives they are generally more chargeable in two or three Nights then the payment of their Tithes which they so eagerly declaim against would be in two or three yeares Of their Quaking Fits and the manner of them NOW for their Quakings one of the most immediate notable Fruits and Accidents of their speakings though their speakings be a very Chaos of words and errours yet very often while they are speaking so strange is the effect of them in their unblest Followers that many of them sometimes men but more frequently Women and Children fall into quaking fits The manner of which is this Those in their Assemblies that are taken with these fits fall suddenly down as it were in a Swoon as though they were surprized with an Epilepsis or Apoplexy and lye groveling on the Earth and strugling as it were for life and sometimes more quietly as though they were departing while the Agony of the fit is upon them their lips quiver their flesh and joynts tremble their bellies swell as though blown up with wind they foam at the mouth and sometimes purge as if they had taken Physick In this fit they continue sometimes an houre or two sometimes longer before they come to themselves again and when it leaves them they roare out horribly with a voice greater then the voice of a man The noise those say that have heard it is a very horrid fearfull noise and greater sometimes then any Bull can make The Speaker when any of them falls in this Fit will say to the rest that are sometimes astonisht at this Sight especially if they be Incipients let them alone trouble them not the Spirit is now strugling with flesh if the Spirit overcome they will quickly come out of it again though it be sorrow now it will be joy in the Morning c. And when they have said a few words to this effect they go on with their speaking Sometimes ' they carry those wretched Patients to Beds when they are neer them and let them lye on them till their Fit be over These Quakings they maintaine Sauls Errant Page 5 and in their Books and Papers call them the marvellous works of the Lord Battles of shaking and trembling before the presence of the Lord and call them that speak against them Ishmaelites that scoff at the Works of the Lord and endeavour to prove them to be from God horribly abusing the holy Scriptures to this purpose The chiefe places they quote for this purpose are Ezra 9. 4. 10. 13. Isaiah 66. 2 Ier. 5. 22. 23. 9. Hos. 13 1. Hab. 3. 16. Act. 9 6. 2. Cor. 17. 15. Eph. 6. 5 Phil. 2. 12. Heb. 12. 21. c. They say also those that speak against this Quaking shew themselves to be Blasphemers and that it is presumption and blasphemy against the holy Ghost to speak against it From their frequent falling into these Fits and defending of them this people have deserved the name of Quakers A Title of distinction not Dignity now usually given to them Some are of Opinion that these quaking Fits are meer feignnigs but others look upon them as reall passions I hope my Reader will not be displeased if I freely deliver my own Opinion In plain English then I do heartily believe these Quakings to be Diabolical Raptures immediately proceeding from the power of Satan if not from his Corporall Possession or Obsession of the Parties so passive For 1. divers Godly learned
some that pride idlenesse and fulnesse of bread the sins of Sodom are the fruits of their preaching They acuse them of being brought up at Oxford and Cambridge they say they know nothing but naturall Books and naturall things the Scripture Letter Hebrew and Greek which is all naturall That the ungodly unholy proud Priests add Professors must be scorned who know not the Power of the word Reader I coine or add no expression of mine own I repeate onely their own words which such Books and Papers of theirs as I can produce are full of They apply all that is spoken to Idolatrous ignorant idle prophane persecuting Priests and false Prophets either in the old or new Testament to the Ministers of England but we know that though one syllable or tittle of such abused Texts of Scripture doth not pertain to any godly faithfull Minister of the Gospell yet that very many of them do as properly belong to themselves as the Skin that is upon their flesh They exhort people not to heare them to cease from them and not to hold them up and tell them they will never be profited by them And indeed as soon as any man turnes their Proselite he becomes as pure a Recusant as any Papist in England And not content to raile against them in Prose they compose Songs or Ballads rather which their Disciples magnifie and look upon as Spirituall Songs that they may revile them in Meeter also One of their Speakers said not long since that the Priests had deluded the people this sixteen hundred yeares borrowing this peice of Divinity or Devility rather from the Almanack-maker Their Writings are full of Threatnings Prophesies against Ministers for which also they are beholding to the Astrologers They say the Lord is coming to beat up their Quarters the Son of Thunder is coming abroad to sound Trumpets to call to Battell against the great day of the Lord and there Kingdome must be taken from them and that their downfall is neer at hand Some of them have said they hope within a yeares time to see never a Minister left in England They exhort one another in the words of Coliier out of whose Pit they have drawn much of their black Religion to overturn overturn overturn Thus one Instrument of the Divell helps another Reader I do very believe that if these wicked men had power in their hands there would be no Toleration of any true Minister of Jesus Christ in England and that one of the first things they would endeavour would be if not to raise a tempest of Persecution by raining blood yet at least to raise and extripate the Sacred Callings I say Sacred calling of the Ministry being the Institution of Jesus Christ in his Church One principall reason why they do thus shew their teeth against Ministers I imagine to be this they look upon some of them as those that do mainly stand in their way as those that are able to detect their Errours to manifest their folly and unsheath the Sword of the Spirit the word of Truth against them They cannot for them so freely proceed in the propagation of their Delusions as they would Hence they are their greatest eye-sores Also if I may without offence speak what I think and partly know they presume to take this liberty to themselves because they are apt to conceive that Ministers are now almost friendlesse that Authority will not appeare for them and that they are the Object of the wrath of divers Soldiers in the Army whom they foolishly suppose to incline to their as to them unknown Sect. But I hope yea I am confident that when the Hypocrisie of these men shall be unmasked and their madnesse and iniquity which hath already begun in some places to lift up her head shall be better known and appeare they shall then proceed no further And that those Worthies that by divine Providence do or shall sit at the Stern to guide the Ship of the Common-wealth and the godly Officers of the Army will not onely disowne and detest but also manifest themselves to be Enemies to all their Impieties and Enormous Practises of this turbulent Faction But in the mean time while they are so injurious to the Soveraigne Majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ the Prince of the Kings of the Earth by their Hellish Blasphemies and eager opposition of the Truth well may they contemne and rage against such Earthen Vessels as are his Ministers here on Earth Of their Censoriousnesse Lying instability in their own Errours and enmity to Learning NEver did Hereticks speak greater swelling words of vanity and more exalt themselves and throw down others then those who are of that Synagogue do They commend themselves up to Heaven they give themselves the title of Saints they boast themselves to be equal to the Apostles to speak from the immediate Revelation of the Spirit impudently impiously affirming more of themselves then the true Apostles of Jesus ever did or durst do touching their freedome from sin and perfection in holinesse c. and threaten that they shall be the Judges of the World but they will readily censure all others to Hell tell them they are damned that they worship the Beast that they are possessed with the Divell yea with many Divels that the Divell speakes in them and that they see him in their eyes and faces c. This language of Divels indeed is as ordinary with them to dissenters from their way that oppose them as to talk with them Many of them will be as ready to say and unsay any thing as if lying was a Vertue They make no conscience of raising false Reports against those especially that do any way oppose them Witnesse that lying Pamphlet Sauls Errant to Damascus wherein there are a hundred untruths as may be proved by a hundred Witnesses It is the Testimony of a faithfull Minister of Christ concerning them Not in halfe an houres discourse saith he with most of those I have discoursed with but you shall finde plain and down-right lyes Some of them saith he have commed to my house and said they had a Message from God to me upon my speedy demanding it they have point blank almost in the same breathing time denyed it When some that have been in some measure able from the word of Truth to manifest their Errours have discoursed with those Wells without water though themselves have stood like men inwardly convicted and ashamed utterly unable to gain-say or darken those cleare Evidences of Scripture brought against them and sometimes totally silenced and as mute as Fishes Yet when these Champions of Errours have gone away they have boasted of their Conquests and how gloriously they had foiled and stopt the mouths of their Adversaries Thus wholly by Lyes Lying Doctrines lying Revelations lying Wonders lying Reports they do endeavour to build up the Kingdome of the Father of Lyes among us Their inconstancy to their own Errours is also very remarkable They
not heard heard of their open revilings which they principally fasten on them in whom most of God and sound Religion appears A man that professeth godlinesse especially a Minister that endeavors to be faithfull to Jesus Christ in the discharge of the duties incumbent on him cannot passe by them without their scorns Against such they grin and point at them with their fingers These and such like practises of this licentious people have filled the hearts of Gods People in these parts with exceeding fears to be driven after all their hopes to serve God in Corners and that they may die tho in the faith of the promise of Jerusalems peace yet without receiving it whilest the enemies of God roare in the midst of the Congregations So fast did their insolencies grow and their Numbers increase for a while that had they not been a little curbed by the imprisonment of Nayler and sending forth a warrant for the Apprehension of Fox for his blasphemies it is verily believed by many sober understanding men among us there would have been in a short time no peace or almost safety for any real Christian in Westmerland and some adjacent parts This was as some of the Justices expressed themselves at the Sessions Ianuary last one main reason of Naylers confinement namely that they were necessitated to it for the preservation of the publique peace and prevention of civil dissentions and such evils as might have ensued upon further connivance at these turbulene Impostors I shall conclude with the Judgements of two known learned and judicious men one of which is yet living and able to plead for the Truth and himself Master OWEN in his Discourse of Toleration hath this Passage Page 32. THere are saith he a sort of persons termed in Scripture disorderly vagabond wandring irregular persons 1. Thes. 5. 14. Acts 17. 5. 2 Thess. 3. 2. 1. Tim. 1. 9. Fixed to no Calling abiding in no place taking no care of their Families that under a pretence of teaching the Truth without Mission without Call without Warrant uncommanded undesired do goe up and down from place to place creeping into houses c. Now that such wayes as these and Persons in these wayes may judicially be inquired into I no way doubt The Storie is famous of Sesostris King of Egypt who made a Law that all the Subjects of his Kingdome should once a yeare give an account of their way and manner of living and if any was found to spend his time idly he was certainly punished And the Lawes of most Nations have provided that their people shall not be wanderers and whosoever hath not a place of abode and imployment is by them a punishable vagabond And in this by experience of the wayes walking and converse of such persons I am exceedingly confirmed I did as yet never observe any other issue upon such undertakers but scandal to Religion and trouble to men in their Civil relations when men by the practise of any vice or sin draw others to a pretended Religion or by pretence of Religion draw men to any vice or sinne let them be twice punished for their reall vices and pretended Religion Thus far Master Owen Master COTTON of New England touching the controversie of Libertie of Conscience in matters of Religion Page 7. layeth down this Position for Truth IF a man hold forth saith he or professe any Errour or false way with a boysterous and arrogant Spirit to the disturbance of civil Peace he may justly he punished according to the qualitie and measure of his disturbance caused by him and page 8. He saith the Scripture forbids not to drive ravenous Wolves from the sheep-fold and to restrain them from devouring the sheep of Christ and Page 9. He saith we acknowledge that none is to be punished for his Conscience though misinformed unlesse his Errour be fundamental and seditiously and turbulently promoted and further we acknowledge none ought to be constrained to believe or professe the true Religion till he be convinced in judgement of the Truth of it but yet restrained he may be from blaspheming the truth and from seducing any into pernicious Errors The End A BRIEF REPLY To some part Of a very scurrilous and lying Pamphlet CALLED Sauls errand TO DAMASCUS SHEWING The vanitie of the praises there attributed to the Sect of the Quakers and Falsitie of their Relations which are nought else but the breathings of a spirit of Malice Psal. 35. 20. They speak not Peace but devise deceitfull matters against them that are quiet in the Land LONDON Printed by T. R. for H. R. at the signe of the three Pigeons in Pauls Church-yard 1653. To the Reader THere is an unlicensed Pamphlet called Sauls errand to Damascus lately procured to be Printed wherein diverse Ministers of Westmerland and Lancashire are falsly aspersed and maliciously belied and traduced Had it not been for the clearing of their Innocency and the discovery of the falsities contained in that Book too apt in this credulous age to be believed as whatsoever is spoken against a Minister there had not been one word written in answer to it And for the rest of that Book that concerns us not I should be loath to betray my indiscretion so far as to attempt a full answer to such a heap of words or to trouble any judicious Reader with such fruitless contests Good Readers you have that Book by you or can think it worth your buying or perusal let me intreat you to read it with some observation of the Contents And if you be men whose inner man hath been indeed illuminated by the good spirit of the Lord and the knowledge of the Truth or whose reason hath been at all refined or polisht by learning or good education you will easily perceive by what they have to say for themselves that they are men whose knowledge is science falsly so called that these men are blind Leaders that while they pretend to be full of the Spirit full of Light and Revelations they are led a captive prey to the spirit of lies that spirit that workes in the children of disobedience that they walk in thick darkness that they go they know not whither and speak they know not what Something they would say to clear themselves of those blasphemies and cursed speeches they have been overheard to utter and have bin deposed upon oath against them both in Westmerland and Lancashire if they could tell how Flatly deny them they cannot they do not you wil even wonder to see how they bungle out an answer You wil admire at their impertinencies inconsistencies irrational insensate misty expressions as ambiguous sometimes as the devils oracles and stand amazed to see their impudence and how magistically they can revile censure to the pit of hel how boldly they dare avouch an error and offer a rape upon the holy Text wrest and misapply it and father their heretical absurd tenets assertions on it that in Print even