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england_n	church_n	communion_n	schism_n	2,635	5	10.6078	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A25568	An answer to several remarks upon Dr. Henry More, his expositions of the Apocalypse and Daniel, as also upon his Apology written by S.E. Mennonite, and published in English by the answerer ; whereunto are annexed two small pieces, Arithmetica apocalyptica, and Appendicula apocalyptica ...	S. E., Mennonite.; More, Henry, 1614-1687.	1684 (1684)	Wing A3379; ESTC R10256	245,076	439

they that doe such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God But the fruit of the Spirit is Love Ioy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance And as to the former he saith That they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts And as to the latter he admonisheth If we live in the spirit let us also walk in the spirit But now if we crucifie the one and live and walk in the other shall we not then be in reality no conceited and presumptuous Saints so fansied by our selves onely or by our own party but truly become such in the sight of God and all discerning people And this assuredly those may attain unto who under the dispensation of God's Providence are called unto the Communion of the Church of England if they be not wanting to themselves in the use of the advantages thereof And if so what can the cavilling at and calumniating the Constitution of things what the vilifying and speaking contemptibly of them and what the Insensibleness of the wickedness of Schisms and Divisions what can these proceed from but from the Spirit of Pride and Hypocrisie which would seem some extraordinary thing in Religion when indeed it 's nothing but its mere self that is a proud Hypocritical and many times Hypochondriacal Spirit fermenting and swelling it self into a conceit of its affecting a more perfect state of Holiness and Saintship than is consistent with communion with the publick Religion established by Divine Providence here in England suppose but in the mean time it self neither crucifying the flesh nor the lusts nor ill humours thereof as Hatred Variance Emulations Strife Wrathfulness Schismaticalness Fierceness of Spirit c. nor walking in the Spirit of Love Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness and Meekness whenas the Wisedom that is from above is first pure then peaceable gentle c. And therefore this is a false satisfaction of a tumid mind that has no real thirst after true Holiness and Righteousness indeed such as the Spirit of God has exhibited the light of to us in the Scriptures but this false spirit would cloathe it self in a counterfeit shew of Saintship of its own devising and rellishing which being extravagant and out of the road of the established Rule it fondly hopes will approve it self to be extraordinary And truly this is the ordinary cheat whereby spiritually proud men impose upon themselves and others that are no wiser than themselves They think themselves extraordinarily holy and singularly Religious for their extraordinary zeal against or contempt of the publick Religion appointed by the special Providence of God and the Sovereign Autority of the Nation and deem it in a manner profane because common or publick Whenas if they would but cast their eyes upon those Texts above cited that set out so fully and expresly the works of the Flesh and the fruit of the Spirit and examine themselves by that Rule that is so intelligible and wherein there is no freakishness nor canting and resolve to indulge themselves in no sin as there is no sin required as a condition of Communion with the Church of England and out of a firm faith make their earnest addresses to God for strength and assistence to overcome all our inward corruptions and perfectly to mortifie the old man that we may attain to that newness of life through the Spirit of Regeneration and so be wholly quit of the works of the Flesh above enumerated by the Apostle and walk in the spirit and the fruits thereof I say if they would examine themselves whether they doe thus or no whether they have mortified or at least do sincerely endeavour to mortifie all those works of the flesh there mentioned or any other any way a-kin to them and whether they be revived into those fruits of the spirit there specified and have a real savour and rellish of them and are ashamed in themselves and perceive it a burthen to them to find themselves in any other Temper this is the onely way for them to discover their own Hypocrisie and to bring them into a true method of becoming real Saints indeed And this they may be holding communion with the Church of England as I shew'd above But to bear themselves high in their own conceit for their pragmatically fansying rather than espying faults in the Constitutions of a Church so well established and to have a huge zeal for a purer external Reformation of the Publick while that private internal Reformation upon a false satisfaction of mind from that zeal for an outward is so blindly neglected this is the most effectual method I know to make them become and ever remain haughty and headstrong Hypocrites and as to all true and real spiritual Religion very cold and dough-baked Christians This high haughty but really empty Schismatical Spirit is the very pest of the Reformed Churches and I pray God it may never prove the utter Ruine and Destruction of the Reformation And let this serve for a Return to the Remarker's rude and irreverent scorn and contempt he has cast upon the Reformation wherein Divine Providence it self suffers and his Spirit of Prophecy who has plainly declared it to be the Rising of the Witnesses as has been above demonstrated mauger all the pretended Objections of the conceited Remarker But now lastly Whereas the Remarker will have the Reformation sufficiently prophesied of by the second Vial onely it is a thing utterly incredible that so glorious a passage of Providence should be passed over with so short and slight an intimation which is onely this The second Angel poured out his Vial on the Sea and it became as the bloud of a dead man and every living soul dyed in the Sea This is all according to him that prefigures this stupendious passage of Providence whenas the Victory of the Primitive Christianity over Paganism is set out most magnificently and copiously at the opening of the sixth Seal chap. 6.12 as also again by the victory of Michael over the red Dragon chap. 12.7 and there are great Acclamations and Rejoicings thereupon But according to the mind of the Remarker the victory of the Evangelical Christians over Antichrist and horrid Enemy of the Church of Christ and over Pagano-christianism consisting of many gross Superstitions and multifarious Idolatries and execrable Cruelties and Butcherings nothing inferiour to those of the red Dragon all this is hudled up into two or three lines without any Acclamations of Ioy Doxologies or Songs of Thanksgiving for such an inestimable Mercy which yet to such a vast atchievement of Providence according to the usual mode of the Apocalypse ought expresly to have been annexed Wherefore though the second Vial may be a Type of the settled state of the Reformation after some short Reciprocations of affairs after the Rising of the Witnesses yet it cannot be in any reason or congruity of sense reputed the Type of the Reformation it self in its first and fresh

even those that are poured on the Sun into the Air or on the River Euphrates they all touch the concern of the Beast that rose out of the Earth as you may see by the Exposition of the Vision And the first Vial poured on the Earth in this sense reacheth them immediately it inflicting so noysome and grievous a sore on those that are the marked slaves of the two-horned Beast especially their Interest being so much concerned in the fall of Babylon and the Rising of the Witnesses Wherefore that Cup of Intoxication and Dementation through Envy Malice Rage and Fury as it is said ch 11. v. 18. upon the Rising of the Witnesses and Doxology of the Elders And the Nations were angry which answers to the effect of the effusion of this first Vial the noysome sore on the marked slaves of the Beast that Cup I say is really the pouring forth of this first Vial which is a grievous plague indeed Impedit ira animum And Quos Iupiter vult perdere eosdem dementat prius So that by the Remarker's leave these are no sorry conceits nor the Expositor's private opinion but the opinion of worthy Interpreters before him b But the Remarker's is a groundless conceit to apply that which belongs to the times preceding the Rising of the Witnesses to the Vials which come after their Rising as is most plain to them that do not wilfully wink against the Truth Wherefore the War of the Hussites c. is such a business as the Albigensian War and if justifiable to be referred to the War betwixt the Beast and the Saints ch 13. v. 7. c Nor has the Remarker any evasion out of this evidence of truth but by an unworthy vilifying of the Protestant Reformation which undoubtedly was the Rising of the Witnesses and most certainly was a very illustrious Atchievement of Providence and quite wiped away that foul face of things which Custome and Law had established before and is described in the Idea of Antichristianism and therefore it is most wretched Ingratitude to undervalue so great a Bounty of the Divine Majesty towards his servants like the murmuring of the Israelites against Moses and Aaron by whose conduct they were delivered from the bondage and Tyranny of Pharaoh Nor was the Pope's Supremacy onely rejected and some gross corruptions here in the Church of England suppose reformed but all gross corruptions nor were there any left that can be a just cause of Separation from our Church But the cavil now forsooth must be because they retain still Political Government for Popish leaven in matters of Religion which is reformed to the pattern of the Times that were symmetral is plainly outed from our Church and continue in the same worldly state and station the terms for Political Government as if all Political Laws and Orders though they were made and managed for the support of the Kingdom of God and the purity of his Worship were worldly How freakish is this But how outragious to make the Reformed Churches merely for this cause to continue Members of the Beast This is such a wild Imagination that it is more becoming those Dreamers St. Iude describes that despise dominion and speak evil of dignities than any sober Christian d And lastly as I remember I noted before the Spirit of life entring into the Witnesses has not a Spiritual sense but Political And the Genius of Prophetick Iconisms and of the Apocalyptick Prophecies is rather to adumbrate the External and visible state of the Church than the Internal There is onely one thing remaining in this Remark at the beginning that I may seem to have slipt over viz. That the effect of the first Vial namely that rankorous sore does not seem to be imputed to the effusion of the Vial but to the Rising of the Witnesses But I answer that it is sufficient that this sore rages in the time of the Vial-Angel For here are seven distinct Times allotted to the seven Vial-Angels as there are seven distinct times allotted to the seven Trumpet-Angels and what happens in the said allotted times is attributed to the Angel to whom the time is alloted whether the Angel contribute any thing to it or no. Nor does any one imagine that the Locusts and Euphratean Horse-men were blown out of the fifth and sixth Angels Trumpets but that those things happened under the times allotted to them And the Rider of the red Horse under the second Seal he is said to take peace from the Earth merely because in his time there were such killing and slaying one another And it is something Idiotical to think otherwise of these things But supposing there must be some real activity in this first Vial-Angel for the inflicting this angry Aegyptian boil there is not the least absurdity in allowing it viz. That as an evil spirit from the Lord haunted Saul when his Melancholy fits came upon him so this first Vial-Angel may commissionate some spirits upon the envy and the anger the Bestians had conceived against the Risen Witnesses to actuate them with more than ordinary rage and madness against them and so infatuate their counsel by this distemper This I hope will take away all scruple touching this first Vial. Vers. 3. The second Vial is made to synchronize and in substance to be the same with the first the first being supposed to be the envious raging at the Reformation by the enemies of it and the second the Reformation it self in rejecting the Pope's Autority c. Ans. This second Remark is a mere calumny For the first Vial does not synchronize with the second because the first viz. that exulcerated Rage of the marked slaves of the Beast began presently upon the Rising of the Witnesses while the Reformation was but fresh young and tender and not so thoroughly established but was capable of quick Reciprocations of affairs as it happened here for example in England Queen Mary so suddenly succeeding King Edward But after this there was a more full settlement and firm establishment of the state of the Risen Witnesses so that through many Provinces Principalities and Kingdoms which are so many Seas the Pontifician party was hopeless and helpless those Seas becoming by the effusion of the second Vial as the bloud of a dead man For they were all dead to the Emissary fisher-men of the pretended successour of St. Peter nor a live Fish to be taken for their game The perfect Revulsion of these great Parts of the Pontifician Iurisdiction from those that his power still did actuate and enliven and the hindering them from reuniting for a due time till they were turned into the congealed bloud as it were of a dead man this was the effusion of the second Vial and plainly distinct from the first and such as to which the first might well contribute For the marked slaves of the Beast being dementated with wrath would necessarily doe such things as would excite the other party to use all possible care and

letter of the Vision chap. 11. vers 7. Nor does the prohibiting to buy and sell imply that Death of the Witnesses for 1260 years together there being no intimation of the extent of time in the business Whence there is a necessity that the three days and an half which is the three times and an half equivalent to 1260 days must denote the Time of the Political Death of the Witnesses that the 42 months War and the Beast's overcoming the Saints chap. 13. vers 5. both the victory and war may be expounded accordingly as equal to and coincident with the three days and an half or three times and an half and to the 1260 days Whence we may understand that this Answer of the Remarker is most miserably forced weak and far-fetched e The Expositor's fifth Reason is That being the Witnesses have lain slain in a Political sense so long and have been so often slain even many hundred thousands of them in a natural sense before the end of their mournfull Witnessing it is unconceivable what persecution or oppression in these last three years and an half different from what they had endured before should befall them or more worthy taking notice of that the former should be omitted and these by the karcases lying three days and an half in the street be represented The answer of the Remarker here is very slim and lank to this fifth Reason he acknowledging the persecution and oppression for these three days and an half nothing comparable to the severities of that in the 1260 days of the mournfull prophesying of the Witnesses but discreetly letteth slip the main question why so gentle a persecution in comparison and of so small continuance should be noted in the Vision and one more than three hundred times longer for duration and more bloudy rude and barbarous for all manner of cruelty should be omitted This he wisely declines to say any thing to it being such as to which nothing can be said f The Expositor's sixth and last Reason is this That whereas it is said vers 7. And when they shall have finished their Testimony the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them that unless his sense be admitted there is till the end of their prophesying neither any war nor any overcoming nor any killing of the Witnesses which is point blank against the truth of History What says the Remarker to this His former Answer says he is an Answer to this if it need any For this is a different war saith he from the former being not to destroy but to silence and subdue And yet this is notified and the other omitted What will not one say that is wedded to a fond opinion But the Vision does not onely omit the forty two months war against the Witnesses and that continued slaughter either Political or Natural above three hundred times of longer continuance than this slighter distress of three days and an half but does naturally import that there was no war against the Witnesses till they had finished their 1260 days witnessing if we adhere to the cortical sense as the Remarker does which is point blank against the truth of History For the Text saith And when they shall have finished their Testimony 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bestia illa ascendens so Beza which S. Iohn had his eye upon That Beast ascending out of the bottomless-pit shall make war against them c. Which implies he came out of the pit just upon the finishing their Testimony when they had said their say to assault them c. As it is said chap. 13. upon the wrath of the Dragon against the seed of the woman and his resolution of making war against them that S. Iohn saw 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Beast ascending out of the Sea which implies the first appearance of him And the very words When they shall have finished their Testimony the Beast shall make war against them does plainly and naturally imply he shall not war against them before but that then coming out of the Pit or out of the Sea he will presently set upon them He that can shut his eyes against such plain truth I pray God he may not become blind for ever Pag. 291. Whereas it is supposed there hath been such evident proof that the Vials follow the Rising of the Witnesses the contrary I suppose hath been made sufficiently evident whereby the fansied Mathematical Evidence that the Reformation must be the Rising of the Witnesses comes to nothing And the change by the Reformation was not so vast and stupendious as it 's here said to be but that it 's sufficiently prophesied of by the second Vial which does very aptly signifie it it consisting chiefly in rejecting the Pope's Autority with some corruptions which were incident to the owning of it Ans. This last Remark is nothing but a Triumph before Victory he supposing he hath produced such Objections as do enervate the Expositor's arguments for the placing the Vials after the Rising of the Witnesses whenas in truth all his Objections are as weak as water and as tender as any Cobweb as I have manifestly shewn nor is there any unprejudiced eye but will easily discern it and consequently that the Reformation begun by Luther is the Rising of the Witnesses is no fancy as the Remarker reproachfully calls it but a solid Truth and even of Mathematical Evidence and clearness And whereas he would lessen that Illustrious passage of Providence the Reformation which of a truth was very glorious and stupendious by saying it consisted chiefly in rejecting the Pope's Autority with some corruptions incident to the owning of it I say here in England for example not onely the Pope's Autority was rejected but all the corruptions of that Church that can be properly called Antichristian and such as are described in the Expositor's Idea of Antichristianism From the imputation of all which he has solidly and impartially vindicated the Church of England at the End of his Synopsis Prophetica as any one may fully understand that reades that Vindication without prejudice So that the Constitution of things as to the worship of God is reduced to the state of those times that are Symmetral before the Apostacy came in This has the ineffable goodness of God by his Providence brought to pass but that we have made no better use of it of whatever party we are lyes at our own doors And a sad reckoning I fear will fall to their share that grumble and murmur against so laudable a constitution of things under which they may live an holy innocent and Apostolick life here and hereafter arrive thereby to eternal glory The works of the flesh saith the Apostle are manifest which are these Adultery Fornication Vncleanness Lasciviousness Idolatry Witchcraft Hatred Variance Emulation Wrath Strife Sedition Heresies Envyings Murthers Drunkenness Revellings and the like of which the Apostle tells us that

of Babylon and Rising of the Witnesses for all the Vials are after their Rising it necessarily follows that the aforesaid Reformation is the partial fall of Babylon and the Rising of the Witnesses which was the thing to be demonstrated And this succinct Master-Reason of the Expositor as I may so call it may go for a more general Confirmation of all his particular Reasonings on this subject though they are sufficiently firm also of themselves and shews how skilfully he has allotted the several passages of the two Visions that follow the fall of Babylon and Rising of the Witnesses to several of the Vials which are certainly in that time after the said Fall and Rising It shews also the assuredness of his judgment in making the three days and an half that the Witnesses lye slain to be the same with the three times and an half or 1260 days and that the Expositor's six arguments for it as they are rational in themselves so they conclude a certain Truth and that the Remarker's Answers to them are mere Whifling For the late Reformation being demonstrated to be the Rising of the Witnesses all the Remarker's conceits about this matter are quite out of doors These are the genuine Corollaries of this solid Demonstration as to speculation but as to use this one is inestimable That it naturally gives a stop with all that are not out of their wits to their conceiving any hopes of Innovations in State or Church from the near approach of the Rising of the Witnesses the completion of that Prophecy being so plainly past And farthermore for the quieting of their Spirits does plainly inform them of the Excellency of the Reformation made by our Reverend and Royal Reformers here in England and that therefore to separate from such a constitution so well approved of by Divine Testimony is a piece of gross disobedience to the Magistrate and hatefull Ingratitude to the goodness of God and his benign Providence over his Church ARITHMETICA APOCALYPTICA OR A RESOLUTION TO Three main QUERIES Touching the NUMBERS OF THE Medial-Visions OF THE APOCALYPSE Added by way of APPENDAGE to the Answer to the foregoing REMARKS UPON Dr. HENRY MORE HIS APOLOGY LONDON Printed by M. F. for Walter Kettilby 1684. ARITHMETICA APOCALYPTICA OR A RESOLUTION to Three main QUERIES c. WHile my Answers to the foregoing Remarks were in the Press by a lucky Providence there came into my hands certain Apocalyptick Papers sent me in a Letter from a friend who desired my judgment touching them The Papers were the more welcome because the Authour of them seemed to be convinced of that grand truth contended for by Dr. H. M. in his Apology viz. That the Protestant Reformation was the Rising of the Witnesses To which that Authour addeth also that they rose in the year of our Lord 1559 but that their mournfull Prophesying did not conterminate as naturally it doth with their Resurrection and Ascension but was to continue 127 years longer and to expire in the year 1686. In which year he declares with a strange scheme of Enthusiastick confidence that Babylon will be utterly ruined and all Antichristianity quite rooted out of the Church Which look't so like an intended defeat to the important usefulness of the assurance of the Doctrine That the Witnesses are risen already which is the quieting mens minds and preventing stirs and commotions and the conciliating a good opinion of the present constitution of things in matters of Government and Religion here in England that I thought I was obliged the more narrowly to consider the grounds of so Triumphant a conclusion And especially my friend in his Letter pressing me the most earnestly thereto to settle according to my best judgment the Epocha of the Medial Visions which the Authour of those Papers makes to be the year of our Lord 426. Which depends upon his making the Epocha of the Sealed-book-prophecy and the Opened-book-prophecy to be the year 66 in which he supposes that S. Iohn received those Prophecies in the reign of Nero. Wherefore to demonstrate the folly of that Enthusiastick confidence in the Authour of those Papers according to my friend's desire I have here settled the true Epocha of the Medial Visions or of the Apostasie or Reign of Antichrist the usefulness of which we shall consider in its due place Nor content with this I have prefixed two other Queries that tend to the satisfaction of them that urge against the truth of the doctrine That the Witnesses are risen that they are made to rise while the last semitime is but current and not expired as if this destroy'd the usefulness of the Prophecy by giving so large a latitude of time as the space of 180 years for the fulfilling its prediction and were also inconsistent with its synchronizing with the 42 months and 1260 days those days not admitting of any latitude but necessarily signifying strictly so many years The use therefore of these two first Queries for the solving this difficulty I shall also take notice of in its due place In the mean time we shall produce into view the Queries themselves of which this is The first Whether Daniel's Three times and an Half however disguized or varied into 42 months and 1260 days be not the standing Authentick measure of the Medial-Visions of the Apocalypse The second It being granted that Daniel's Three times and an Half is the standing Authentick measure of the Medial-Visions what may be the genuine use and purpose of varying them into 42 months and 1260 days The third What is the precise Epocha of the Medial-Visions or of the Apostasie or Kingdom of Antichrist These be the three Queries And as to the first I say That Daniel's Three times and an Half or seven Semitimes is the standing Authentick measure of the Medial-Visions of the Apocalypse Of which that of the woman in the Wilderness is one of whom it is said Apoc. 12.14 That she was there to be nourished for a Time and Times and half a Time with which abiding of the woman in the Wilderness The Entireness of the Rule of the seven-headed Beast restored The Outer Court troden under foot by the Gentiles The two Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth The entire Dominion of the two-horned Beast or false Prophet or of the great Whore or Mystical Babylon according to Mr. Mede and according to the truth do synchronize Of all these Visions therefore are Daniel's seven Semitimes the standing Authentick measure for the computing the event of any Medial-Vision however varied into 1260 days and 42 months nor is there any more precise restriction as to eventual prediction than there would have been though the expression of Three times and an Half or seven Semitimes had never been varied into 42 months and 1260 days And my Reasons for this my Assertion are these First It looks something absurdly and derogatorily to the Omniscience of the Spirit of Prophecy as if he were farther advanced in Knowledge in St.