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A57306
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A premonition to the bishops and priests of England &c. with twenty reasons why the people of God in scorn called Quakers do refuse to hear them.
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Rigge, Ambrose, 1635?-1705.
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1676
(1676)
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Wing R1488; ESTC R17045
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10,145
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16
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in the Earth-beneath of the breaking forth of the wrath of the Lamb whose Patience and Long-suffering being sleighted you are not led to Repentance but they wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived even heaping up Wrath against the day of Wrath and the revealing of the righteous Judgment of God Even as it was in the Dayes of Noah so is it now in the coming of the Son of Man for the Earth is filled with Violence and is corrupted by Iniquity and the dark Corners thereof are full of the Habitations of Cruelty but an Ark is prepared and a small Remnant are gathered and more gathering daily into it at the Command of the Lord the like Figure whereunto Baptism now saveth us not the putting away of the Filth of the Flesh but the answer of a good Conscience by the Resurrection of Jesus and now it is fulfilled that as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the Wilderness so is the Son of Man lifted up in the Hearts of his People in this his Day of whose Government there shall be no End and all are and will be accounted his Enemies that will not suffer him thus to reign But he gives Caesar his due at this Day viz. the Government in outward things for his Kingdom is not of this world neither do his Servants fight but are made perfect through Suffering as their Lord and Master was in the Dayes of old Therefore awake awake all you who have long laid in Security for the great and notable Day of the Lord is dawning wherein all the proud yea and all that do wickedly shall be as Stubble and the Day that cometh shall leave them neither root not branch but unto them who fear the Name of the Lord and depart from Iniquity and hate every evil way shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with Healing and shall give them Beauty for Ashes and the Oyl of Joy for the Spirit of Heaviness under which they have walked many Years and the Cup of Trembling shall be taken out of their Hand and shall be given into the Hands of them who oppress them And God's Arm is not shortned that it cannot save neither is his Ear heavy that it cannot hear the cry of the Poor and complaint of the Needy who are even at this day groaning under the burthens of an oppressed Conscience through the cruel unnatural impositions of men having assumed that to themselves which is proper and peculiar to God alone viz. The Government in spiritual matters relating to another world this is his honour which he will not give to another and if all Judgment be committed to the Son what place is left for the Bishops Judges What Judgment is to them committed And who gave them Authority to set Judges over mens Consciences in matters of Faith and Worship do not the Scriptures say that Whatsoever is not of Faith is Sin Rom. 14.23 And without Faith 't is impossible to please God Heb. 11.6 Now do not you greatly dishonour the Son who is the only Author and Giver of Faith who would impose a Worship contrary thereunto upon his Servants is not he only spiritual Judge of Heaven and Earth whose Judgment is just and according to Truth and Righteousness altogether how can you judge of spiritual Things if you have not the infallible Spirit and so not sure of your own standing nor of the way you walk in to be Right and yet Persecute others even to Life Liberty and Estate because they will not walk in your uncertain way you presume higher then did the Scribes and Pharisees of old though short of their Righteousness for they were said but to sit in Moses's Seat who had a Legal ministration but you pretend to sit in Christ's Seat who hath an everlasting Spiritual Priesthood and is only Judge of quick and dead Therefore down with your pretended spiritual Courts whereby you would limit God in his Worship and prescribe his Servants a way which your selves do not certainly know to be true to worship God contrary to the measure of Faith they have received from God and let sound honest Judges in Temporal matters between a Man his Neighbour be set up in all Cases of difference in temporal things and let them be a terror to Evil-doers under what Name and Profession soever for the Law was made for such and not for righteous men have you any president in the Scriptures in all the dayes of the Ministration of Moses in the dayes of Abraham in the time of the Prophets or in any of the Gospel-dispensations that ever any outward Law with an outward penalty was made against them who did not Worship God in that way manner in which he had appeared in those dayes If you cannot you must either judge them deficient who had the ministerial Offices in those dispensations or your selves to take more upon you then you have either precept or example for in the holy Scriptures Here followeth some of the weighty Reasons why we who are called Quakers do deny the Bishops and their Priests to be Ministers of the Gospel and do refuse to hear them Reason 1. YOU being made Ministers by the Will and Wisdom of Man and what you have received being from man and taught you by man and not by the Revelation of Jesus Christ contrary to the true Ministers in the Dayes of old having not entred in at the Door but climbed up some other way therefore we cannot own you to be ordained of God nor to be true Shepherds Reas 2. After this wrong Beginning you have been inducted by men into great Benefices in every Place as you could obtain them and have preached for Hire and have spoken a Divination of your own Brain-study in your carnal Wisdoms and not from the Mouth of the Lord as he hath taught you and therefore have you remained some Ten some Twenty Years more or less in a fat Benefice and have not profited the People at all Jer. 23.21 22. Reas 3. You like the false Prophets of Israel have every one sought your own Way every one for his Gain from his Quarter I se 56.10 11. And moreover have run from Quarter to Quarter where was most Gain and so have made Merchandize of People through Covetousness as they did whom Peter testified against 2 Pet. 2.1 2 3. This hath manifested to us and all sober People that you have the Spirit of Error Reas 4. You have run and the Lord hath not sent you therefore have you turned none to Righteousness nor profited the People at all but if you had stood in the Counsel of God and had caused People to hear his Word which is Christ then you should have turned them from the Evil of their Wayes Jer. 23. Reas 5. You have fed your selves with the Fat and cloathed your selves with the Wooll and like Drones have lain within and have eaten up that which many have laboured hard for and have persecuted and killed them who
of their Friends and loving Neighbours Oh! the Cry of these things is loud was this ever Christ or the Apostles way and manner towards them who opposed them did not Christ command his to bless their very Persecutors And did not the Apostle forbid the Saints to Curse Rom. 12.14 And did not the Apostle James say that out of one Mouth should not come blessing and curssing James 3.10 And was ever any forbidden to buy or sell or have Society amongst men but only by the Power of the Beast spoken of by John Revelation 13.16 17. who made War with the Lamb and the Saints now let the wise Judge who is your example in your Court-proceedings whether Christ or Antichrist according to your professed Rule viz. the Scriptures And if you prevail upon any who through Fear of your Whip do outwardly conform to your Worship contrary to the Perswasions of their own Hearts do not you thereby make them Hypocrites and twofold more the Children of the Devil then before God hath turned the Hearts of many from you and hath commanded them to offer a Sacrifice to him out of the Borders of Egypt even in the Wilderness which is towards the Red Sea in the Way to the Land of Canaan and your Pursuit of them here will be to your own overthrow as it was Pharaoh's Oh consider what you are a doing by your Courts and Proceedings is it not to draw them into Egypt again whom God by the Cords of his infinite Love hath drawn into the Land of Goshen where they enjoy and possess Light in their Dwellings and have forever turned their Backs of Egypt's Land having set their Faces Zion-ward and are come to the Father's House i e. The true Light where they have Bread enough yea of the living Bread which is come down from Heaven by which they are nourished up to Eternal Life so that your Husk they utterly refuse which you sell at a costly Rate with which no weary Soul can ever be nor never was satisfied Therefore touch them not I charge you by the God of Heaven nor offend the least among them for they are near and dear unto the Lord and he tenders them as the Apple of his Eye and no Weapon formed against them shall ever prosper are you still so blind as not to consider your ill Success in this Undertaking this many Years methinks you should have as much Wisdom as Gamaliel had to say Let them alone if they be of God they will stand if not he will overthrow them lest hapily you be found Fighters against God Acts 5.34 35 36 37 38 39. And you should consider the Parable of the Wheat and Tares how that the Lord of the Houshold of Faith would not suffer his Servants to pluck up the Tares but commanded that they should grow among the Wheat to the End of the world though he declared them to be the Children of the wicked one Mat. 13.18 to the 44th verse He was not of your Mind to root them out from the Earth though he infallibly knew them to be sown by the Enemy which you do not pretend unto and therefore cannot discern between the Children of God and the Chidren of the Devil but call Good Evil and Evil Good and put Light for Darkness and Darkness for Light as your Fore-Fathers did in the Dayes of old But if you fall upon that Rock you have so long stembled at you will be broken but upon whomsoever it falls it will grind him to Powder Therefore dread the Majesty of the great God of Heaven at whose Rebuke all the Mountains of the Earth tremble and are moved and howl all ye idle Vine-dressers whose Vineyards are overgrown with Weeds the Lord of the Vineyard is come to look for Fruit and behold there is little among you but bitter four and ill-tasted Fruits your Vine is the Vine of Sodom and your Grapes the Grapes of Gomorrah and the Lord of the Vineyard will cast you out as unprofitable Servants and idle Shepherds unless you weed out all the Bryars and Thorns and then which of you can escape for the best among you who are guilty of Persecution are as a Bryar and sharper then a Thorn-Hedge from which no pleasant Grapes can be expected so that by your Fruits you are known and not by your Words Mat. 7.2 3. for you have got the good Words the fair Speeches by which you deceive the Hearts of the simple and if Covetousness be Idolatry which none questions then who are greater Idolaters then your selves of whose covetous Practices the whole Nation is full having a Cloud of Witnesses in every parish And how can you call your selves spiritual Persons when you so much resist the Spirit of Truth and contemn those who own and witness it to be their Guide and Leader into all Truth for none can truly be spiritual Persons but who by the spirit of Truth are made so for all men naturally are carnal sold under Sin and none can judge for God but they who are led by his Spirit Now if you were led by the Spirit of God you would let People alone to be perswaded by it in things relating to another world whose Fruits have no bad Aspect on the affairs of this and especially they who desire nothing more then to live a quiet and peaceable Life in all Godliness and Honesty but by oppressing such you not only seek the Destruction of their Souls but of their Bodies also and if such be not ravening wolves there was never any in the world And as your Fore Fathers did so do ye begin at the wrong End instead of being a Terror to Evil doers you make your selves such to them that do well and let Drunkards Lyars Swearers Whoremongers and Adulterers go free which God will judge and because of these and many mroe Abominations the Land now mourns and there is but a small Remnant that fighs and mourns for all the Abominations that are committed therein but the great Number lives wantonly upon the Earth and kill the just one and cruifie afresh the Lord of Glory putting him to open Shame and give Occasion to the Adulterers of Forreign Nations to blaspheme the Name of the God of Israel which he will require at your Hands And why do you suffer Forreign and other Cheats to come in and set up Stage-playes in open Streets of Cities and Towns whereby the Name of God is dreadfully blasphemed youth and old ge wofully corrupted and debauched Oh! what will you do or where will you appear when God ariseth to take Vengeance for these things My Soul is even bowed down at the Consideration of these things and often mourns in secret for the Abomination of Desolation which now stands where it ought not therefore let him that reads understand And Nation is now appearing against Nation Kingdom against Kingdom Famins Pestilences terrible Earth quakes in divers places yea many Signs in Heaven and Wonders