Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
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A81625
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A door of hope: or, A call and declaration for the gathering together of the first ripe fruits unto the standard of our Lord, King Jesus.; Door of hope.
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1661
(1661)
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Wing D1908; Thomason E764_7; ESTC R207107
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22,969
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16
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Serpents and Vipers that are in our own Bowels who will suck out our very heart blood if some Remedy be not sought The Grand Conspiracy which we conceive those two remarkable Scriptures doth discover Rev. 12. 17. Psal 83 now on foot amongst the Popish Parties in Europe against a poor despised Remnant in England ought to awaken every man from the sleep of security For no doubt the Devill and the Pope hath at this day a great Design upon England And we are very much perswaded that there is now on foot amongst the Popish Parties and Jesuits a very great and bloody Design to bring in Popery in England to take the Gospel from us to root out the Name and Interest of our Lord Jesus Christ and all the gathered Churches in the Land And Episcopacy and Common Prayer is but the door to someting worse And it seems to us a thing very rational that this cursed design of the Papists is already formed in England hath life moves strongly and is even struggling for the Birth in the Womb of the Mistery of Iniquity if we weigh but in the balance of Reason the Interest that they have in the Court the great number of Popish Lords in the House some of whom have suckt in more of the Venom of the Serpent beyond the Seas that their Sting is the Poyson of Dragons and the cruel Venom of Asps to poison and destroy the precious despised Interest of our Lord the multitudes of Papists about the City of Westminster even of the bloody Irish Rebels who cut the throats of the Protestants there many thousands of innocent souls and are now said to be many thousands If withall we consider the high favour those Irish Lords who were chief Actors in the Rebel lion and Massacre are in at Court the enlisting of the Papists and old Cavaliers whereby they are put into a capacity to act the greatest Villany the Popish Queens coming over the putting of Papists and old exasperated Malignants into all places of Power and Command which are as so many symptoms of a generall and bloody Massacre for it is evident that their design is not so much against Persons as Interests neither will the blood of a few particular Persons such as the Kings Judges satiate their cruel inraged blood thirsty mindes which is set on fire by Hell but they thirst for the Blood of us all that they might drink Blood as the Desert doth Rain And their Design which hath a deeper Original then Rome is to give so great and effectuall a Blow to the Interest of Christ and the People of God in England that it may never Revive again which makes them prepare so great a Sacrifice and drive all to one head that they make a short and thorow work of it And now will not this mighty confluence of the Papists and Popish Interests to England as all the Rivers to the Sea awaken us How can we promise our selves any security whilest we see the most implacable venemous Serpentine Enemies as Vipers creeping into our Bowels who cannot merit greater fame and praise from holy Church as they call it then by spilling the blood of Protestants We see what multitudes of the cruel bloody Spaniards under the pretext of Attendants on the Prince and Ambassadour of Spain is not onely come into our Land but advantageously placed in the heart of the City of London And what unwelcome guests to England the old Queen Prince Robert the German Ambassadour will bring may easily be imagined Certainly the Popish Parties have some great design upon England We fear the Poison and deadly Sting is in this Tail of the Dragon and also the coming in of these forreign Princes and Ambassadors at this time and with such Triumphs as some Ages past have been strangers to we can look at as no less then the fulfilling of that most wonderful Prophecy Rev. 11. 10. We know the Papists Principle No faith is to be kept with Hereticks Let us remember France and Ireland and not forget Piedmont whose wounds bleed yet fresh in our memories They are making our Throats bare to the Knives of their Butchers and they know well and we shall feel if we should longer sit still what advantage an armed united Interest has of a naked dispersed one And were there no more to be said then that the Law of Nature and Nations hath ordained to fly to means of preservation in threatning and emergent dangers we are highly concerned at this time to take up Armes And if we look abroad which is wonderful to ponder that the whole state of the Christian Interest should be conformed to England upon the face of things in all Europe we can see nothing but the ruine and destruction of the Protestant Cause and Reformed Interest both in France Savoy Bohemia Poland c. And it is very observable that every where the Popish Interest gets ground and the design of the universal Peace is even now perfecting and the top-stone is laying and things of late have wrought strangely but providentially in order thereunto in the death of the late King of Sweden and Prince of Transilvania as also in the coming in of Stuart into England which can in humane probability produce nothing but bloody persecutions of the Reformed Churches But this consideration that God turns a wheel within this wheel and that the Churches of Christ and poor despised People of God in other Nations are but by this dispensation brought into a state of conformity to and sympathy with the death of the Witnesses in England is a supporting one And now to suffer all these things and lose our Birth rights and to entail Persecution Slavery Popery and Idolatry to our Posterities for ever which will leave our names for a curse and stink to them is grievous but to suffer them from the Cavaliers an old beaten Enemy and that without striking a blow or bleeding in the Field for that which is much better then our Lives for as a Romane could say There is no necessity that I should live but there is a necessity that Rome should be relieved is the Aggravation For how did this old Enemy come in did he beat us in the Field did he win it with his Sword is our Cause lost or is our God dead no! how then why by lies of which the Devil is father and so through divine permission of their conquest by hellish plots and contrivement clad in the robes of our dead cause as Jacob in Esaus Garments Well then it is but an old conquered Enemy he has been beaten in the Field times often of whom now shall we be afraid of a broken serpent of a spiritless Enemy We have not onely considering what we have said a sufficiend primary original special cause and call from the Covenant of God Prophesies of the Scriptures and time of the end for an offensive war to take the Kingdom and bring these Nations into subjection to the right Scepter
secure that they shall not be moved for ever ver 10. Nevertheless it seems to us they shall not effect or accomplish any great or weighty matters but the greatest part of their little time will be spent in Rejoycing Feasting taking pleasure making merry and sending gifts one to another for their supposed new and great Victory and that until the fatall day come upon them 5. Towards the end of this time which the Lord hath every where set a mark upon as that which shall period the Sufferings and Captivity of the Gentile Churches some bloody and cruell design will be laid by the Dragon against the Remnant of the Womans Seed who appear for Christ and the Truth in the time their Brethren the Witnesses lye dead either of a Massacre Banishment or fiery Persecution Psal 83. which just upon the point of the three years and a halfs expiring he will attempt to put in execution Rev. 12. 17. but shall never accomplish it chap. 14. 1. These signs most of them are also in M. Till Knowl of Times whose Method we have in part followed Now some for want of light in these Prophecies may think that in these things there is a great likeness of the Witnesses Slaughter and that they do not as indeed they do as will be found of him who diligently searcheth immediately go before their Rise but is rather the slaughter of them or something in order to it But that cannot be for this Reason because then must we come to persecution and their death would be a corporall Death for it is not the Beasts clemency or mildness but want of time that cuts him short in this point But that their death will not be a corporall death but civill and spirituall we could prove by many sound and unanswerable Reasons And that we are not to expect any more persecution unto blood or suffering for Gospel Truths after the Witnesses death is as plain The present distress being rather a Nationall Quarrel then any thing else And now unto these things that are transacted on the Stage let us adde these two 1. That these things are of great use unto the people of God that have kept their Garments in any measure For by these Trialls God is taking the Precious from the Vile blowing the chaffe from the wheat raising up a new Generation and making of them a new sharp threshing Instrument with teeth and separating some for his own service by the marks of Non-conformity all which look very like that Prophecy Rev. 14. 3 4. Christ is gathering his first ripe Fruits redeeming a precious Remnant from the Earth and severing them from among all men that they may follow him with another spirit as Joshua and Caleb did and not come short of their work through temptations of Honour Profit and worldly Vanities as some have done to their shame 2. That this blessed strong lively supplicating wrestling pulling groaning travelling praying Spirit among the poor dry Bones the scattered despised Stones and Dust of Zion which takes hold of Gods Arm i. e. Christ Covenant Oath Promise Faithfulnesse and Word is a great token and Symptome of Deliverance Zech. 10. 1. Thus much to the second Point 3. That O. C. kill'd the Witnesses and that the place of their lying dead is England 1. That O. C. kill'd them proved by two Arguments 1. This last War of the Beast against the Witnesses is altogether different from that which hitherto he had waged continually against the company of the Saints Rev. 13. 7. 1. It is not of the same kinde the former was alwayes with sword fire and fagot this a certain kinde of spirituall War in that they dy'd corporally in this civilly and spiritually and in the latter sense lies the blacknesse of the day as Tillinghast well observes In the former War the Beast could never get the Victory in a spiritual sense for they alwayes dy'd Conquerours and triumphed over him in the midst of Flames maugre all his rage which bred in him a certain kinde of torment but now being more old and cunning and withall such a Day-star of Reformation being Risen through the Witnesses prophesying as made him that the durst now appeare in the day in his old bloody blasphemous hue and finding himself also much weakned through the continuall War that now had been all along between him and the Witnesses and being just upon the expiring of his 42. moneths or Reign of darknesse and finding that he is not able to come unto blood he takes unto him weapons of another Nature which proves more effectuall and advantageous to his Cause For this Quarrel between him and the Witnesses being about the Finishing-Testimony and the Cause of Reformation he is now enforced unlesse he will lose all to use his utmost policy and craft 2. This War is declared as peculiar unto the last time of the Beast and a speciall Note set upon it to distinguish it from that which had been familiar to him in the times of his 42. moneths 3. It is one kinde of War which the Beast waged universally against the Saints another which in his last declining estate he shall wage with the Prophets which had begun now to put off their sack-cloth and to end their Propheticall mourning Answerable to this is that of the Woman in the 12. of the Rev. touched before where at the end of the 42. moneths there is a shew of coming out of the wildernesse ver 10. But this sad and sudden and indeed unexpected news of the losse of the Field and Witnesses slaughter coming she is forced suddenly to flie to her old place again her Champions being gone for three years and an half longer ver 13 14. 4. This last War is not universally over all the Beasts Kingdom but is peculiar to some one place or Nation where the Witnesses had gained upon him which in the Text is called the street of the City i. e. one street or dominion of the 10. ver 8. 5. The event of this War however the Cause may seem at first to go on his side and he may think the field won and the day his own is very lamentable In his former Wars Power was given him over all Kindreds Tongues and Nations Rev. 1. where he procures to himself a sudden and fatall ruine and he will never be able to rally or make head again in that Nation so notably is it levened with the Witnesse Doctrine Most of these distinctions are found in Mede Now this last War against the Witnesses and their Death and Slaughter being of another kinde from what was common to the Beasts Reign it must needs follow that it be managed by a subtill hand and one that can handle a spirituall weapon well and do it with a notable profession of Religion and seem to differ from the Witnesses in nothing but time And certainly if we depart not from the plain sense and meaning of the Text we must needs conclude that O. C. was the man for the whole limits of the Beasts Kingdom could not parallell him 2. The main ground of this Quarrel is about the Finishing-Testimony By the Finishing-Testimony we cannot more fitly understand any thing then the great Truth of the Kingdom of Christ Now that which doth enrage the Beast and against wich he makes this War is against this precious Truth of the Visible Kingdom of Christ as it is the Truth of the Generation and that which the Witnesses in their Finishing-Testimony was going about to cause to take place in that Nation The which neverthelesse they shall not do for it is said When they shall be about to finish their Testimony so Mede renders the word the Beast shall make War against them and overcome them and kill them which Victory of the Beast makes the Witnesses Cause never a whit the worse But O. C. persecuted no Truth but this Truth of the Kingdom of Christ and he persecuted not that neither but as it was the Truth of the Generation and that which the Witnesses would immediately have to take place so that they going about to finish their Testimony he was necessitated to make this lamentable War unless he would have his Government over-tun And two things of him are very considerable 1. That about a year and a half before his death this Prophecy of the Witnesses seemed to trouble him very much and he was very earnest with two of us to know what we thought of the Witnesses the which he seemed to speak with a convinced guilty minde and some kinde of regret 2. We have sometimes thought from the last clause of the fifth veise And if any man will hurt them he must in this manner be killed that this Finishing-Testimony of the Witnesses however he seemed to have the better was the death of him gave him the wound he could never claw off But 2. That England is the place is yet to be proved for which we shall name two Arguments and leave it 1. This War and Slaughter must be where a notable Work of Reformation has been on foot where the pure Doctrine of the Reign of Christ is powerfully and effectually preached where there is a people that are the choicest and forwardest of all others and may be said to be the first fruits of all the Antichristian World But if Germany it self or all Europe can parallell England in this which is as a Garden of choice Plants then will we consider further 2. It is called in the Text the Street of the City that which is the very Stage of Action or Market place of the world and whether England has not been so for these twenty years even in the account of other Nations as witness what that German writes in his Clavis p. 100. and Manasseh Ben Israel the Jew in his Epistle of his Hope of Israel to the Parliament of England we leave to sober and judicious men to judge Thus much to the third Point 4. And lastly In all probability the great Day of the Witnesses Rise will be in this present Year 1660. AMEN FINIS