my forwardness should give them Offence in thinking I did it without such a religious Consideration and Preparation as was requisite before Receiving those Holy Mysteries That through Mercy being also much removed I became uneasie to delay that longer which I was convinced was my indispensable Duty and declared I would receive it at the first opportunity and accordingly did receive it as has been before related And heartily wish that all others who are under the same Delusions and Prejudices in which I too long continued would follow my Example and be made partakers of the same inward Peace and Satisfaction which through Mercy I enjoy in the Communion of the Church of England To conclude Another Reason why I deserted the Quakers was because I am able through Mercy to prove That they do not believe One Article of the Apostle's Creed in the true Sense of Scripture and all Orthodox Christians in the whole World and that all their Teachers pretences to Infallibility and extraordinary Prophetical Inspirations are all Artifice and Delusion which joined to the Errors Heresies and Blasphemy already mentioned will sufficiently justifie my leaving them Now what remains in this short account of my Change is to give you the Reasons why among all the Pretenders to the best reformed Church I have at last enter'd into Communion with the Church of England in which I shall use all the Brevity imaginable Now as nothing so much concerned me as the Salvation of my Soul and in order to that the choice of my Religion so I exerted all my Care in examining things conducing to it that I might be able to give account to others and have satisfaction in my self that my Religion was not the Effect of Chance but espoused upon a deliberate and well-advised Choice which I take to be the regular Method towards a Settlement Men may indeed be Confident but can never be Certain without Knowledge a diligent Examination of the Things proposed to their Consideration And this made me more in love with the Church of England that does not require a blind Obedience but is contented her Doctrines should be examined by the clearest Light in which I could largely expatiate in her Commendation and the Reproof of others that withhold the means of Instruction from their Members and boast of an absolute Infallibility which they have no pretence to but I hasten to the Reasons that obliged me to close with the Church of England And the first was because in Purity of Doctrine and Discipline the comes nearest to the Pattern of Primitive Christianity â— She retains the Three Creeds and does not reject the first General Councils and administers the Sacraments according to the Divine Prescription All her Children pray in a Tongue they understand and only to God through Jesus Christ This Church presses Men to Piety Loyalty Humility and Charity and earnestly desires the Salvation of Mankind She Preaches up the Excellency of Good Works but places her hope in the Mercy of God and the Mercy of his Son and every one that lives up to the Principles of this Religion are Safe and Happy Secondly Because in the main Articles of Faith the whole Church is of one mind and have as much Unity in Faith among them as they had in the first Churches planted by the Apostles themselves And their Differences are in lesser and secondary things which have no relation to the Primitive Doctrines of Christian Religion Which who ever opposes they disown him and look upon as in a Faction against the Church which is not thereby broken nor the Unity of its Faith destroyed For though some Men have preached strange Doctrines and drawn Disciples after them which is no more than they did in Apostles days yet they have not prevailed against this Church nor overturned its Faith And if some looser Part of the People have been carried away yet the Body of the Church like an unmovable Rock still persists in as great Unity as was antiently in any of the Apostolical Churches and that is abundantly sufficient to invite us to Conformity with it and Perseverance in it Thirdly Another Reason that induced me to embrace the Religion professed in the Church of England was Because she maintains the Scriptures to be the Word of God the Rule of Faith the Judge of Controversies and the Guide of Humane Life so that if we consult our Reasons use our Eyes and mind our Rule we cannot miscarry To this Rule St. Paul sends Timothy for Instruction and commands him to give attendance to Reading viz. the Holy Scriptures which he had known from a Child and which were able to make him wise to Salvation through Faith which is in Christ Jesus They being given by Inspiration of God that even a Man of God like the antient Prophets might be perfected and throughly furnished unto all good Works for every part of his Employment St. Paul directs him to these Holy Writings as a means to preserve him in the Christian Belief ver 14. But continue thou in the things which thou hast leâ—â—ned and hast been assured of knowing of whom thou hast learned them and that from a Child thou hast learned the Holy Scriptures c. What we have learned from them we are assured of we know from whom they come and are certain we are taught of God when we read these holy Books But cannot be assured of any other Tradition or pretended Revelation of the Spirit and therefore ought to continue stedfast in our adherence to the Scriptures and both to suspect those who would draw us from this hold and stick to those Guides who bid us stick to this and prove all things by it for it is evident that they have no mind to deceive us but do in effect bid us believe God and follow his Directions and rely upon his Authority Who cannot mislead us and will not suffer us to be misled if we continue in the things which we have learned out of the Holy Scriptures For taking them to be our Rule we shall neither admit any thing which is contrary to that Rule nor shall we take any thing to be an essential part of the Christian Faith which is not there delivered unto us For it is not consistent with the Notions we have of God's Infinite Goodness and Wisdom to believe he would give us a Rule which is defective in necessary things No he hath abundantly provided here for our Instruction in all such Matters And as we ought to refuse that which contradicts any part of these holy Books so we ought not to think it necessary that we should entertain any thing which they do not teach us And teach us plainly and evidently for in all necessary things they are very clear and perspicuous else they could not be a Rule unto us but we must seek for some other The Apostles Creed for instance which the Antients call the immovable Rule of Faith a short Summary of Christian Faith beyond which as they speak we ought not to seek for Faith together with the Nice Creed and Athanasius's which expound the Apostles Ought throughly to be received and believed for that they may be proved by most certain Warrants of Holy Scriptures But whatsoever is not read therein nor may be proved thereby is not to required of any Man that it should be believed aâ— an Article of Faith or be thought requisite or necessary to Salvation This is the Doctrine of the Church of England in its Sixth and Eighth Articles unto which let us strictly keep if we would not be carried to and fro uncertainly with the Blasts of vain Doctrines which have no certain Warrant in the Holy Scriptures and therefore are not to be Received or are contrary to them and therefore are to be Rejected Here we must fix and believe that here we are safe For the Scriptures want nothing to compleat us in Christian Wisdom which they do not wrap up in Obscurity but as far as is needful give us a clear understanding of the Doctrines of Faith And make us understand withal if we please to consider them that having laid our Foundation well in a firm Belief of those great and necessary things which out of the Scriptures are summed up in the Creeds before named we need not trouble our selves about other Matters which are not so evident but make it our whole Business in this World to raise the solid Superstructure of a Holy Life upon the Foundation of Faith in Christ The last Reason I shall mention at this time is That this Church has not suited her Doctrines to advance any secular Interests but her Religion is Heavenly in its Principle and Pure in its Aim disdaining to stoop to mean Arts for Wealth and Worldly Dignities Religion was designed as the greatest Blessing to Mankind and the Author of the Christian was a great Lover of humane Race in conformity to whose blessed Example this Holy Church cancels none of our Obligations to God or Man but teacheth the absolute Necessity of Contrition and Repentance and Mortification of our Lusts to Obey our Superiors to Love God and our Neighbours to follow Justice Mercy and Peaceableness To be Charitable to the Poor and to do to all Men as we would they should do by us To use no Craft or Equivocations but to be Sincere in all our Actions and Professions to live in Kindness Civility and under the firmest Obligation to a true and lasting Friendship And if any of the Quakers think fit to oppose these Doctrines they may promise themselves an Answer FINIS
associate longer with them lest being tainted with their Erors I should be obnoxious to their Punishment I shall in the next place give you some of my Reasons that engaged me to Abandon Quakerism and to embrace Christianity according to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England And the first Reason I assign for leaving Quakerism is because they are at such great Vncertainties in what they profess that no Man can have any assurance where to bottom or whether that which they own to day will be allow'd to be Truth to Morrow They are constant in nothing but in Contradiction and 't is Reason enough for them to Disbelieve any Position and with all their Force and Powers to oppose it if it had not the â—onour of their Invention and became Current by the Stamp of their own Authority and if it were not for their Habits they would be all taken for Mahometans by refusing to believe or act like Christians All other Religious Societies have their Confessions of Faith under some Appellation or other by which Men may know what they believe but the Quakers are such Lattitudinarians that if a Stranger should ask what they were he could receive no other Answer than that they are what other Men are not but such as in Humour Gesture Garb Meinâ— and Pedantick Canting Nonsence are Antipodes to all the World of which nothing is a greater instance than carrying dead Men to their Graves with their Heads foremost And if enquiry should be made what Faith they profess it must be answered that no Body knows nor themselves neither and their Meeting-Houses might be Dedicated to the unknown God A second Reason is That if their Principles may be collected out of the Books they publish they are too Erroneous Heretical and Blasphemous for any good Christian to comply with some of which I shall recite in this Discourse and refer you in the Margin to such Places in my Narratives where the Quotations are proved beyond contradiction Now the first thing I shall charge the Quakers with is That the Scriptures according the Dictate of their greatest Teachers are not the Word of God This Notion is so common among all their Authors and so frequent in the Mouths of their Proselites that it is almost lost labour to prove it upon them One of their famed Authors is so angry with his Opponent for affirming that the Scriptures are the Word of God that he charges him with Blasphemy * Nar. 4 p. 22. for Asserting it and by consequence makes the Church of England and all other Protestant Churches to be guilty of that direful Imputation Nor is this Doctrine of theirs a strife about Words but the Foundation of their Deism and a handle for the Overthrowing Christianity and therefore the Quakers have very lately Reprinted William Penn's Discourse concerning the General Rule of Faith and Practice who brings Fourteen Arguments to prove that the Scriptures are not the General Rule of Faith and Practice in Three of which Arguments he accuses them of Imperfection Vncertainty and Obscurity And this is a most dangerous Heresie for by this Principle they are not obliged to believe one intire Doctrine in the Apostles Creed as indeed I could easily prove they do not George Fox does not only deny the Scriptures to be the Word of God * Nar. 4. p. 24. but gives them contemptible Names as Ink and Paper Dust and Serpent Meat But that the Scriptures are the Word of God is clear from abundant of Places in the Scriptures Our Gospel came unto you said Paul to the Thessalonians not in Word only by Word here is meant Doctrine Isai 28.13 The word of the Lord was made unto them Precept upon Precept Line upon Line here the Precepts and written Lines of the Prophets are called the Word of the Lord and John 15.25 it is called the written Word which was a short Sentence written in one of the Psalms And when Paul bid Timothy preach the Word it cannot be justly thought that he would have him only preach the Inward Word but by the Word he meant the Doctrine of the Gospel and all that the Quakers say against this received Truth is but mere trifling and humouring their Spirit of Contradiction The next stroke the Quakers make towards the Destruction of Christianity is against the Divinity of Christ and to this purpose William Penn in a Controversie between himself and some Presbyterian Ministers in Ireland where the Question was whither he that suffered Death without the Gates of Jerusalem was not and is properly the Son of God William Penn in his Book called a Serious Apology p. 146. saith That the Outward Person which suffered was properly the Son of God we utterly deny With the like Confidence G.W. assaults the Humanity of Christ in pos 〈…〉 tively denying that Christ consisted of Flesh and Bones in those words I distinguish says he between consisting and having Christ had Flesh and Bones but did not consist of them as a Man has a Coat or Garment but does not consist of it and that outward Person that suffered at Jerusalem was Christ by a Metoning of the the thing containing for the thing contained But all Sound and Orthodox Christians say according to the Scriptures that Christ is both God and Man having his Godhead and Manhood so united as to constitute one Christ which is a miraculous and extraordinary Vnion that no other Creatures neither Angels nor Men are dignified with And though Christ as Man was the Son of God miraculously conceived and born in time and also as God was by a Generation from all Eternity yet he is but one Son of God and because of the personal Union of the Godhead with his Manhood both as God and Man is properly the Son of God The Excuse the Quakers make that Christ did not meerly consist of Flesh Blood and Bones signifies nothing for none ever affirm'd any such thing Whatsoever has Parts consists of those Parts Incompleatly of one or more Parts Compleatly of them all The Foundation of the Quakers great Error on this Head lieth here That because Christ was before the Body was therefore that Body is no part of him which is easily answered thus Christ was before that Body was but he was not compleatly and in all respects fitted to be the Anointed Saviour of the World until the Word was made Flesh that is till the Word did take our Flesh and whole Nature into a personal Union with him which was necessary to the compleat Performance of his Mediatory Offices of King Priest and Prophet and especially of his Priestly Office The next thing I charge as abominable Blasphemy upon the Quakers especially G.F. and G W is for affirming That Christ's coming in the Flesh and his Suffering without us in the Flesh and his outward Flesh and Blood was a Figure and but a Figure of Christ of what he suffered in us and his Blood shed in us Thus
the Mouth and that the Ingrafted Word is able to save the Soul He did not preach a Visible Christ with Flesh and Bones as some others do So he taught them to pray Our Father not to look at his Person and to pray to him as a Person without them but within them Where we may observe that if they were not to pray to him as a Person without them by the same Reason they are not to believe in him as a Person without them but Christ not only consider'd as the Word who is Omnipresent and in all Men and Things but as made Flesh and having taken the true Nature of Man into a Personal Union therewith and replenishing the same with the fullness of the Godhead and with all fullness of Grace and Truth is the Object of the Christian Worship together with the Father and the holy Spirit dwelling and residing in him But of all this Antichristian Quaking Crew none have discovered more Indignity and Hatred to the Blessed Jesus Christ than William Shewen in a Book call'd A small Treatise concerning evil Thoughts p. 37. being about to conclude a Paragraph he saith Not to Jesus the Son of Abraham David and Mary Saint or Angel but to God the Father all Worship Honour and Glory is to be given A Mahometan would have expressed greater Reverence to Christ than this Quaker has done but what can be expected from such People as deny the Lord that bought them and count the Blood of Jesus as unprofitable to Mankind And whether these are not sufficient Reasons for leaving People of such Principles I leave the World to judge William Smith a great Man among them when he was alive in his Primmer Printed at London 1668 Asks this Question p. 8. Child but how may I know which are the True and which are the False Teachers seeing Words may be the same and makes Childs the Father thus instruct the Child Why they that are false Preach Christ without and bid People believe in him as he is in Heaven above but they that are true Ministers they Preach Christ within and direct People to wait to feel him in themselves and so to believe in him as he makes himself manifest in them And having given this as an infallible Sign of a Quaker he makes the Child ask but must I not try all things by the Scriptures and the Father answers Nay for the Scriptures were given forth by the Spirit and it is the Spirit that tries whether the things be true or false good or evil Here is another piece of the Old Serpents Subtilty for since the Spirit must try all things they laying a claim to the Spirit have invested themselves with a pretence to make their own Sentiments of greater Authority than the Sacred Scriptures Which is another good Reason for leaving them that deny the Word of God to be the Test of Christian Doctrines and though we are commanded to Search the Scriptures discharge us from doing it Through the Pride of their Hearts the Quakers pretend to Infallibility and a sinless Perfection in this Life * Nar. 4. p. 1 2. vilifying all those that deny them this Prerogative as under the Curse in another Spirit than Christ the Prophets and Apostles were in that gave forth the Scripture And George Whitehead affirms Those that Ministers that want Infallibity have not the Spirit of Christ but are out of the Truth and their Ministry is deceiful And this they as confidently and proudly affirm as the Pope himself But it is denied by all Oxthodox Christians as repugnant to the Doctrine of the New Testament who yet grant that all the Faithful are infallibly led into all Truths necessary to Salvation by the infallible Spirit in the use of the Holy Scriptures which contain the infallible Truths of the Gospel But as this Doctrine of the Quakers is contradictory to Scripture which brands all with the Infamous Character of Lyars that pretend to it so it is seldom claim'd but by those that are farthest from it as is manifest among the Quakers who though they pretend to be guided by an infallible Spirit 't is apparent that many of them are under great Delusions and Errors concerning the great Truths of the Evangelical Dispensation as has been proved by the foregoing Instances Again as to their pretence to Sinless perfection he that makes a Scrutiny into their Morals will scarce find them such a Church as is without Spot or Wrinkle but are as far from that Perfection which they boast to have attained to as any other sort of People that pretend to any exactitude in their Conversation and as to their Principles 't is certain that George Fox their Quondam Metropolitan Edward Burroughs Francis Hougil Richard Hubberthorn and some of their greatest Saints lived in great Ignorance Error and Unbelief in divers great Fundamentals of the Christian Faith and in great uncharitableness toward such as differ'd from them The same humour of Self-conceit that began with this People still continues among them and G.W. laughs at the Church of England who are always from Seven Years of Age to Seventy Praying Lord have mercy upon us miserable Sinners Is not this a plain Evidence of the intollerable Pride that reigns among the Quakers concerning their Sinless perfection who despise not only the Church of England but all other Christian Churches throughout the World who pray for Forgiveness of Sins tho' when Christ taught his Disciples to pray for their Daily-bread he enjoined them also to pray for the Forgiveness of their Sins Must not the Diseased come to the Physician till they are cured and those that feel the Burden of Sin pray to be Eas'd How arrogantly does George Whitehead charge the Church of England for Confessing and not Forsaking their Sins How can he more prove his Charge against them than against his own Society or himself Many in the Church of England and among other Protestants may compare with the best of Quakers for Holiness of Life and far exceed them in many Vertues especially in Sobriety and Humility But pray tell me you Self-conceited Quakers are not they better employ'd who confess their Sins and yet through humane Frailty find they Relapse into some Sins than such proud Pharisees as you are that neither Confess nor forsake your Sins but employ your Selves in Railing against them that do They that Confess their Sins shew a Desire and pray for ability to forsake them whilst those that say they have no Sin deceive themselves into such a Security as is the ready Road to Damnation The next great Article of Faith which they deny and Fight against is the Resurrection of the Body but because the denying this in plain terms they think would make them be despised among all the various Professors of Christianity William Penn being urged to Answer the Proofs that were brought from the 1 Cor. 15. says in his Rejoinder That let the whole Chapter be considered and we shall find