Mystery of God the Father and of Christ Hitherto we could not for the whole world is full of fleshly-minded men and the spiritual men are so few among the children of men for men speak one with another unprofitable carnal vain and wicked words being voyd and ignorant of the mind of Christ yet notwithstanding a man may find now and then some few that have already received a Glimpse or Spark from the Father of Lights waiting together with us for the Glorious Manifestation of the Children of God who among all Nations as yet are hid for far be it and false it is that all Sects should be reprobate and rejected for God shall yet both call and gather many of and amongst them and use them as precious Stones for the Building of his great glorious third and last Temple False and idolatrous it is to think according to the Roman Catholiques self-love and conceit that all Protestants are damned Hereticks for the Lord hath chosen not a few of them whom he shall make his Evangelists and send them in Troops to preach his Salvation A great mistake and blindness it is that one Sect imagineth the other to be an Abomination before God not knowing the Lord will call of them many chosen Instruments to work upon his Temple and to convert his People Israel to Himself through his Spirit which shall be shed abroad upon all of us and so forth de Paribus idem Judicium for God neither seeth nor judgeth according to the judgment of man but he looketh to the Heart and dealeth with us in great forbearance He governeth us with great Patience and hath mercy upon us without Intermission Wherefore then should not we also have pity and compassion towards our fellow-servants let them be according to the letter what they will and love them from our very heart thereby praising our Father which is in Heaven If we be stronger wiser and more righteous then our fellow-servant is well and good let us bear his weakness folly and sin as Christ did that we may fulfil his Law If he erreth then let us instruct him in Love according to the simplicity of Children not with many Articles whereby he will be but more disturbed and confounded If he be faln let us help to raise him up again not with reproaches reviles and expostulations but with a meek spirit for he that thinks himself to stand let him take heed lest he fall not If he be obstinate and refractory then let us bear and carry him for it is neither strength nor art to carry one that is light and willing but him that is heavy hard and froward that the strength and vertue of God may be seen and known to dwell with us together with the patience of Christ and the meekness of his Spirit If he be altogether a weed yet we are willing to suffer him to grow until the time of the Harvest and not root him out lest we in so doing should also hurt the Wheat Now what a folly is it that we hitherto so unchristianlike have despised reproached judged and condemned one another I my self was also once among the Scornful Fools Blasphemers and untimely Judges whereof I am now justly ashamed Therefore beloved Man whosoever thou art boast not against another for who hath set thee before another or what hast thou beyond him or above him which thou hast not received or wherefore dost thou judg anothers servant and thereby curse his Master whether he stands or falls he stands or falls to his own Lord and Master We must all of us appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ and every one must give an account for his own self and every one must also bear his own burden and have his own honor or dishonor by himself and for himself and not by any other Wherefore dost thou vaunt and boast thy self being puffed up against another who hath Justified thee before thy Neighbor if thou perswadest thy self that thou understandest things better and to be of greater ability in they wisdom My Beloved boast not your selves one against another but rather love one another for the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth cometh is come and shall come and pass one sentence upon all your Sectarians to wit that ye know neither Christ nor your own selves nor one another if so be that you imagine your selves to be wiser more understanding and learned and more righteous then another But if ye be simple then abide ye in the Love of Christ not judging nor despising nor condemning one another and so ye shall neither be despised judged nor condemned but mercy shall be unto you from the Lord. Now when the Spirit of Judgment cometh then shall we plainly see how grievously we all of us have erred one as well as another not one of us excepted Therefore O Man examine thy self well and consider that we are not able to answer for one of a thousand Therefore let us in serious Repentance and contrition of heart lay hold on Love towards one another that we may also be apprehended by the Love and preserved to Eternal Mercy If thou think it strange when we say that all of us have erred and gone astray and thou thereby conceivest as if we should have been excluded from Salvation seeing we have not had the perfect Wisdom then know and understand that no Article of Faith no Prophecy no Knowledg no Wisdom no Mystery yea no Faith neither according to thy knowing as thou conceivest it in the letter nor Baptism nor Absolution nor Communion shall nor can save thee but only the Spirit the Spirit the Spirit I say it is which quickeneth and saveth where that is there is all the rest also be it what it will and call it what you will therefore things must be judged spiritually and not animally humanely and carnally And whosoever hath not the Spirit of Christ belongeth not to Him though he boast profess and protest never so much therefore in the time of their Ignorance God hath winked at all Sects call them what Sect you will seeing it hath been the time of Desolation whereby Christ is rooted out and the Man of Sin set up in the holy place and hath given out concerning himself that he is God to the end that he now might manifest the exceeding Riches and the great hidden Depths of his Wisdom and Knowledg and convert to himself not only the Christians being so confused and distracted among themselves but also all Jews Turks and Heathens yea all the World and therefore he will shew his exceeding great Mercy unto all Men in the whole World yea unto all Creatures CHAP. X. How in the End here we shall enter into the Kingdom of Christ and how we may beware of Hinderances SEeing he hath concluded All under the Error of Folly and confusion of great Babel so now he will also have Mercy upon all not only upon the distracted and perplexed Christians but also upon the erring
Gifts and taught by God Himself as Christ speaketh wherein the vocation and calling of every one to the Ministry of Preaching properly consisteth and thereby is distinguished and discerned from Hirelings having nothing but outward self-forged Arts and Inventions These three Degrees of several Gifts Christ also Himself went through for being a Child he encreased in Age Nature Wisdom and Favor with God and Man and with the twelfth year of his Age he concluded his Infancy or Childship and begun his Youth but what he did in this Youth until the thirtieth year of his Age is not recorded seeing it hath not pleased the Spirit of God to reveal more unto us but what was requisite and necessary to the Performance of his proper Office doubtless to the end that we the more diligently and earnestly should ruminate and observe his Precepts Commandments Miracles Testimonies and Sufferings not mixing there-amongst any other impertinent and unnecessary things seeing the wanton outward Reason always rather flattereth the flesh in its wickedness then obeyeth the Spirit of Christ In the thirtieth year of his Age his right Office of Redemption and Mans Age begun of which the four Evangelists sufficiently do witness yet far more was done then recorded as John saith in the end of his Gospel But what is written is abundantly sufficient if we would but order and rule our selves accordingly and not with Babels foolish Reason account it Impossible as we have said afore Now as these three Degrees have their three several times so also have they their several knowledg Hence it is that the Apostle saith When I was a Child I spake as a Child I understood as a Child I thought as a Child But when I became a Man I Put away childish things Also We know in part and we prophecy in part And he saith to his Corinthians 1 Cor. 3.1 Brethren I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal but as unto Babes in Christ I have fed you with Milk and not with Meat c. But when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away This we may also in truth and without folly apply to the several times and ages of Christians saying that they be threefold and that in respect of knowledg wisdom and understanding we have been but Children hitherto in all our deep learned Men and great Schollers as the world thinks them to be and they themselves all one and other love to be called having nothing but some Ethnical literal Learning confusedly heaped and hoarded up according to the outward carnal Reason whereof they have made a self-forged Art without the power and vertue of the Spirit to deceive the world to their own heavy Judgment in that great day And it is still so at this very day in so much that is goeth with us now as some hundred years ago when people lay in Blindness and Darkness so that it is very hard for a man to rid himself out from them until Satan be bound Apoc. 20. The same happened in the time of the Apostles with the Corinthians where one called himself of Apollo another of Cephas another of Paul But were not they herein fleshly-minded yet notwithstanding they were Christians though but little Children in Christ and not spiritual though yet spiritual in another respect for Paul could not speak to them of Christ and his Mysteries as he fain would seeing they could not yet bear such solid food for to new wine we must have new bottels And the very Disciples themselves were even so in the beginning that they understood nothing of what was told them being unsensible of it and the words were hidden to them So is it with the Christians at this very day in deed and in truth for what is it but blindness and Ignorance proceeding from the Heathenish carnal understanding according to the outward Reason wherewith Men so pitifully torment both themselves and others that they purposely of meer abominable pride arising from the vain wisdom of the wicked flesh curse and condemn one another and that against the express Word of God One is and will be called after this Sect another after that Sect and its Author and oftentimes for a slight and frivolous Opinions sake concerning this or that Point they give one another Nick names therewith to exasperate the Hatred conspiracy and confederation of one party against the other for that purpose plotting and inventing divers tricks and stratagems for the undermining and supplanting of each other and yet nevertheless all these without the ground of true Love will be called Christians in so much that now adays all chambers and Chappels are full of those that cry out Lo here is Christ not there those be Hereticks c. But are not these humane and carnal as Paul saith Yes verily as bad as the Corinthians formerly if not worse Now what should we say and think of these Men if we our selves were strong and spiritual Nothing else but what we would have and wish them to judg of us if we were Children and they strong to wit from Christians we should expect and look for nothing else but Love as Christ himself in divers places repeats this his earnest Commandment viz. that we should love one another as he hath-loved us John 15.17 By this only mark his Disciples or true Christians yea all true Christianity is known and discerned For Love is above all Faith Knowledg and Mysteries It also can bear suffer and endure all things it vaunteth not it self nor is it puffed up though it were never so strong wise and wealthy but rather the stronger wiser and richer it is the more and easier it beareth the weak silly and poor otherwise it cannot be the Love As it now further more plainly shall appear CHAP. VI. Of the difference betwixt the unfeigned true Love and false Love and how the false Love always mingleth it self with the true NOw adays a Man may justly make moan and complain that there is so little true Wisdom to be found amongst Men and that all men run on in their Blindness as the Prophet saith Many men boast of Love and think that to be sufficient though it be but for our own end or else if they do but thereby shew some Hospitality or other liberality in relieving the necessity of their Neighbor This indeed according to the outward shew is somewhat yet very unclean in so much it scarce is to be accounted a sign or mark of Love And though it be somewhat yet notwithstanding it is far inferior to the Love prescribed and enjoyned in the Law which saith Thou shalt love thy Neighbor as thy self Therefore there is a very great difference between Love and Love namely as great as there is between the threefold World For first the Creature-like Love proceedeth from the Elementary Sydereal or Astral Spirit and from its Inclinations and Aspects and is caused and engendered by a
that thinkest thy self to be wise turn turn and become a Child with us a Fool in the fight of the world and a Disciple or Scholer of Wisdom then thy heart shall first be quick to seek and thou shalt know and discern thy folly and become wise with the simple Think not with thy self I am a great Doctor or Master c. Not so for all these are words of an Hypocrite and not of Christ and unless thou humblest thy self and becomest a Fool with us before the world thou shalt never come to Honor Think not we instruct thee No there is but one that is the Master and the Lord over us all He will teach us all the right way to the Eternity in God and even he himself is the Way the Truth and the Life both in his Conception and Birth by which we must turn back from the old Adam and become Children otherwise we shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven in his Life and Suffering c. Him we must and will follow he regardeth not what is humane but what is divine Therefore leave the great folly with all thine ornaments wherewith thou hast adorned thy self hitherto for Christ in that day when all of us must give an accompt shall not ask thee whether thou hast been addicted to any Sect how many Articles of Faith thou hast had what opinion thou hast been of in every particular Point how thou hast studied proficed taught and preached how diligent thou hast been in hearing of Sermons c. No the Modus and Manner of Judgment is plainly enough set before thee by Christ himself viz. the Works of Love and Charity shall Judg and Censure us either to Salvation or Damnation and this is most true and Infallible Christ shall neither then ask thee what thou hast beleeved of him or according to which Sect thy Opinion hath been No for the Science Knowledg or Wisdom of the Letter and of the outward Man condemneth not Therefore we Judg no Man according to his Knowledg or Ignorance neither to Salvation nor Condemnation namely among those that are Children of Love All the rest do judg themselves and not we be it either according to their Knowledg or Ignorance for we judg no Man But the Lord it is that judgeth us all who also cometh with his Judgment whom we beseech for his Grace and Mercy that he would be pleased not to enter into Judgment with us else we all would be lost but that he would grant us the Spirit of Judgment that we by it may judg exhort and reprove our own selves amongst our selves in Love as loving Children while it is called to day lest we be condemned with the world but that we may through his Grace in Faith Hope and Love of Truth obtain Eternal Righteousness and Salvation through Jesus Christ Amen THE CONTENTS Of the Preceding TREATISE CHAP. I. WHat is that which a man ought to labor for in this Life Pag. 9. CHAP. II. An excellent Type of Love towards God and Love towards the World Pag. 12 CHAP. III. Even as God is the Being of all Beings and the Life of all Living so also must every one that meaneth to inherit Salvation become like unto him in Christ Pag. 18 CHAP. IV. Of Mans true Perfection in Christ and in the Love Pag. 26 CHAP. V. What are those seven things in Christ which ought to be well and especially considered And how we may attain to the Perfection of Love Pag. 33 CHAP. VI. Of the difference betwixt the unfeigned true Love and false Love and how the false Love always mingleth it self with the true Pag. 44 CHAP. VII Wherein doth the dayly Practise of Love towards our Neighbor truly consist Pag. 58 CHAP. VIII That Love is the true and only means whereby a man may attain the true Christianity Pag. 66 CHAP. IX Wherein Mans true Conversion consisteth and which way to attain it Pag. 76 CHAP. X. How in the End here we shall enter into the Kingdom of Christ and how we may beware of Hinderances Pag. 92 FINIS