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grace_n deny_v teach_v ungodliness_n 4,302 5 11.7286 5 true
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A37296 Nayler's blasphemies discovered, or, Several queries to him proposed with his owne answers thereunto / by a friend to the truth of Christ. Deacon, John, 17th cent. 1657 (1657) Wing D486; ESTC R19310 45,154 64

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cries up one while and down another the self and the same thing And are not Scriptures external means and so granted by you to be useless and how then are they means of perfection if they be not useful or doe you mean something not external and so intitle a false thing Scripture But I fear your Ministry is rather misery then mercy for if you had receiv'd the mercy that Paul had you would also renounce the hidden things of dishonesty as Paul did not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully as you do And if you look a little further into the very same chapter of Paul to the Rom. you shall find him make it a matter not only of difficulty but also of impossibility that any should believe without hearing or hear without a Preacher by whom Christ is preached even by them that bring the word of God whose feet are beautiful And this is the word nigh us even at our doors not leaving us to travel to Jerusalem as of old to hear the word of the Lord which now is nigh to us though he be in heaven and we on earth by faith in him But if that that light in every individual man and woman be the sure word of Prophesie is there then a Prophetick light in all if so what doth it prophesie of life and righteousnesse for sinners in a Mediator or of death for disobedience and if this be the light that shines in a dark place what is the day-star and the Sun of righteousnesse for though the Apostle hath said that all may prophecy one by one yet hath he said again are all Prophets no but I wish the Lords people were all such and that Preaching is powerful I believe though you once denied it and I now see truth is no truth till it serve your turn And for every thing that you adde further we know it without your teaching as that every man which comes into the world of nature Christ as God enlightens with the light of nature as reason sense and the like and that he is the Saviour of the world Qu. 5. And if that the external means be useless to what end were those most sacred gifts bestowed upon men Eph. 4. 10 11 12. And how the end and intent for which they were given became void Answ. 5. The end of those gifts was for perfecting the Saints and bringing all into one faith unto a perfect man which they that teach that none can be perfect by those gifts while they live do set up a faith in people contrary to the end of those gifts and by setting up external things in stead of these spiritual gifts have you lost the gifts and have made them void and so are become enemies to the end and intent of them in others who have them and believe the end of them And thus the end and intent for which they were given are become void to you Eph. 4. 10 11 12. Rep. 5. Here also you abuse my intentions wrest my meaning as you doe the Scripture unto your owne will which we are not to query what for that I know as well as you can tell me if not better but if external means were useless and so consequently these gifts how became their end void for which they were given so that you answer not at all to the question but at confused randum and stuffe up lines with lyes First that to teach that none can be perfect in this life by these gifts is to set up a false faith produce a president of one person in all the Scripture that ever was perfect by any meanes whatsoever except Christ if you can or else yeild your self a lyar Secondly that by setting up external things for those spiritual I have made them void which is another lye and that two-fold First prove that ever I set up external things in stead of spiritual things if you can but have not you and your Ghostly Father the Pope done it in setting up carnal dictates of your own brains for that of the spirit of God Secondly that I have made them void testifie this if thou canst O subtil deceiver Thirdly that I am become an enemy to the end of these gifts in others I declare in the presence of God I honour though you oppose them wheresoever they be which is backed by a fourth lye that the end and intent of them is become void to me when my end is is not yet come but how soon it may God knowes but this I can testifie the fruits of those gifts have I reaped in my measure and by them in others have been both established and instructed in the truth and so I can witnesse the effects though not the end of them as yet But what means Paul by the spirits of just men made perfect in heaven if they were perfect before on earth and whether is Paul or you a lyar herein Qu. 6. If natural light be sufficient without the help of the means what then is become of the work of grace Eph. 2. 5 8. Rom. 11. 6. and of the growth of faith Luke 17. 5. Mark 9. 24. The practical use of Ordinances 1 Cor. 11. 2 23 24. As Baptism Matth. 8. 9. The Lords Supper Reading 1 Tim. 4. 13. Preaching Matth. 28. 20. and several other places Prayer 1 Thess. 5. 17. Rom. 12. 12 Communion of Saints in publique Assemblies Heb 10. 25. Answ. 6. The light of Christ is the gift of the grace of God which brings salvation which teaches to deny ungodliness and worldly lufts and to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Tit. 2. 11 12. And with this light is the work of grace seen but thou that callest this natural light or wouldst make people believe it is not sufficient must needs be ignorant of that spirit whereby that work of grace and growth of faith prayer and communion of Saints Supper and Ordinances is known for without faith in the light of Christ these are not known nor accepted though dark natural imaginations may make an imitation from them in the letter 1 Cor. 2. 14. And thus are the works of grace become to all that deny the light and spirit of Christ within and take up a tradition from the letter without sensual having not the spirit Jude 19. Reply 6. O deceitful sophistry Is this an answering or a baffling Is it a satisfactory resolve when I asked you what was become of the work of grace faith the growth of Faith which is by the natural use of ordinances c. all which we own as did the Apostles though you deny most if not all of them when you wave it and proceed contrary to request to declare though but shallowly what the work of grace is how sin and how the rest are known all which is impertinent to the thing required and therefore it being only a titular answer it scarce deserves a reply so that it resteth as at
it and so was Paul also a Preacher of this Gospel who received it by the revelation of Christ Jesus and declared what he had so received so that though it were of Christ yet was it by man still deny this if thou canst. But tell me hath that man any one spark of grace or truth in him that cannot see you are truthlesse or hath he the least faith in Jesus that is so faithlesse to his cause as to beleeve in and be besotted with your false delusions and erroneous heresies and is not he blinde with errour that sees not your wayes are erroneous and may not any whose eyes are not wholly darkened see Antichrist in your Doctrine and that man of sinne in your practises Prove what you say by Gospel or else be silent An Answer unto 14. Queries subscribed JAMES NAYLER By me JOHN DEACON Quere 1. NOw seeing you so much oppose the light within and spirit and sets up the letter for the light I say seeing it is plaine all the Saints had a light in spirit to guide them in wayes accepted in all Ages before the Letter was if you be spiritual men give it in writing what that light was where is was and how they came by it when they had no letter or was it sufficient before the letter is it the same now or when or how was it changed and the letter set in its stead An Answer to the first Query Mr. James Naylor what that Fabrick will be whose Foundation is a lye may easily be discerned by an impartial eye and what the Exodiam will be of that Epistle whose exordium is an untruth the fruition of this discourse will demonstrate and a thing beyond the limits of my faith to beleeve it is that when I see Satan as the Porter stand in the porch that in that Palace should be inhabiting one spark much lesse the whole of the spirit of God for a most incomparable lye it is to whisper in a corner much more to sound on the point of your pen to the world that horrid falshood that I oppose the spirit or light of Christ far be it from me to oppose it in the meanest of his Saints and farther be it or at least as far from me to own that for the light spirit of Christ which indeed is onely and alone the spirit of Antichrist which as God sitteth in the Temple of God shewing himselfe that he is God That the Saints in all Ages had a light within them and now have the same by faith in Jesus Christ in you Colossians the hope of glory This I own and will rather cease to be eternally then deny but would be as loath to own every thing for Christ which shall take on it the name of Christ But since the latter part of this Query consists of an examination of the original being and authority of the Scriptures the unity and difference of the Law heretofore written in mans heart and now in the letter I shall be the more large in my answer because it is one of the most principallest controversies betwixt us Christians and you Quakers When Adam stood in his created state of innocency there was then an exact Law engraven not then in Tables of stone as afterwards but in the fleshly Tables of his heart this I suppose you grant But then when he fell from that state of blisse unto wretchednesse he also fell from the Image of God unto the effigy of Satan and so became so far from accomplishing that command which called for exactness in moral righteousness that he was wholy alienated from Sanctity and nativitated in or to sin so that by continual increase of transgression the ingression of sinne wrought the exgression of sanctity insomuch that this Law became abbreviated if not extinguished for so much did sinne exuperate notwithstanding the Reliques of this Law or book of natural conscience that God rep●nted that ever he had made man yea and so far repented as to destroy them utterly except a few And the Lord seeing how fraile man struck saile unto the pride of Satan in the turbulent Ocean of this transitory world and sinne by its subtilty aspired that soveraignty as to subdue and extinguish for the most part that Law once written in mans heart and God having determined by an eternal purpose to redeem wretched man from that lost state wherein he stood chose in his due season Abraham fro m amongst all the men on the earth that he might raise from his Posterity a Messias and a deliverer unto his Israel and it so happened in the dayes of Jacob the great Sonne of Abraham the Sonne of Isaac the child of promise that by reason of the Famine that was in Canaan Israel was driven into Egypt where they sojourned till God in his good pleasure hearkning unto the groanes of their oppressions willing to deliver his Israel from their unsufferable bondage sent his servant Moses one of their brethren by a strong hand to conduct them into the Land of Promise and in their journey to their rest at Mount Sinai God made unto them a repetition of that Law once written in mans heart which Steven calls the lively Oracles of God then not a dead letter This is the time and manner how it was changed and that which once was written in mans heart and was sufficient is now become unsufficient for else if it either then was or now is sufficient of it selfe then hath God wrought a work in vaine which to assert is to suspect if not to accuse God of folly But then if that Law written in mans heart were not sufficient to its proper end as to direct and guide in matters of moral righteousnesse but that it was necessary that the Law should enter on mount Sinai as an exact rule that so offences which were not manifest might abound in the eyes of sinners how much lesse could or can that Law which brings the knowledge of sinne and a curse and yet is but the same that once was written in mans heart and therefore that which you so much stand for both justifie and glorifie wherefore it was a gaine not onely necessary but of necessity that the Gospel or Law from Mount Sion the Law of Faith should also enter which leads us in a neerer way by a Mediator who came to doe what the Law from Mount Sinai or in mans heart could not do and hence it is that both your Society and naturally all men runs unto Mount Sinai for righteousnesse and life in and by personal obedience because it is that Law which is or at leastwise once was written in mans heart which cannot but own what it could not so fully dictate and you with the rest of your factious Fraterty put your Proselytes upon and man so easily closeth with contrary unto the Gospel which is not first made known this I dare boldly assert by seeing within but hearing tydings