no other Presence or Absence of a Christ but invisible and Spiritual and subtilly affirms that Christ Iesus hath no bodily Presence at all in the sence which all Christians of what sort or Sect soever but these Iuglers and themselves also in word and horrible hypocrisie do acknowledg and profess In Page 10 He brings in the same Author saying Christ was not in his Disciples when he said I am the Light of the world G Fox answers And so corrected by Christ I in you and you in me Pag. 12. He brings in the same Author saying The Body of Christ is out of the sight of all his Saints G. Fox Answers they sat with Christ in Heavenly places the Saints are Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone were the Church which he is head of his Body In which I Answer and all his Book over though he own a Christ without and that died at Ierusalem in word yet he allows in effect no other Body to Christ Iesus but what is Mistical and Spiritual so that with notorious Iugling and Iesuitical Impudence they would make their simple Followers believe that they own such a Christ as shed his Blood at Ierusalem and yet leave him in his Body no more Blood to shed then is in a Spirit which hath no Bones Flesh nor Blood to shed at all Pag. 17. He brings in Enoch Howet Affirming That it is Blasphemy to say that Christ is in Man as God Man G. Fox Answers still like the Cuckow in one silly Note How are they of his Flesh and of his Bones And doth not the Scripture say Christ in you and God will dwell in you and walk in you and are not his Saints of his Flesh and of his Bones and there is one sentence added are they not partakers of the Divine Nature I Reply this Participation of the Divine Nature is saith Peter in the Saints by those precious Promises that is by receiving Christ Jesus by believing in him according to that Ephes. 3. 10. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by Believing not that the Divine Being or Essence and Nature or Godhead is communicable to a finite Creature from hence these proud Simpletons fancie and some have been such bold Bayards as to say they are Christ and God as much as he that died at Ierusalem Christed with Christ and Godded with God 51 It is remarkable that Nicholas the Deacon was the Father as I believed of the old Nicholaitans and Henery Nichols in King Iames his time the Father of the new Nicholaitans in London and other places crying up their perfection their Spirituality and Godhead all leading from the purity of Gods Worship and Authority of the Holy Scripture and at last to carnal Filthiness as the Daughters of these the Ranters declare evidently This Humane Nature humane Soul and Body of Christ Jesus is so cross opposite and contrary to their new whimsical Christ Jesus the Light within them that G. Fox in all this Book cannot endure to hear of the word Humane as being a new Name and never heard of in the Scriptures As to the word Humane such an odious Word and Bugbear to G. Fox in all this Book I said in publick many Words truely and properly English were well and commendably used that were not in the Scripture in English it is true the word Humane comes from the word in Latin Humanus signifying partaining or belonging to Man so a Humane Soul or Body is no more but such a Soul or Body as all Mankinde have Hence I told them that the word Anthropinos peirasmos 1. Cor. 10. I presumed Iohn Stubs knew might have been turned Humane but is truely turned no Temptation or Trial but such as is common to Men. This Fox knows that if Christ Jesus be granted to have had such a Soul and Body as is Humane or Common to Men down falls their Dagon before the Chest or Ark of God viz. their Horrible Monstrous Idol of a Christ called Light within them We went on thus in alleadging Quotations though not in a close Examination of them which they endured not though ever and anon I made some sallies out upon them and had some Skirmishings and sometimes sharp Disputes before I would retreat from the Quotation In Pag. 282. He brings in Daniel Gaudry saying We shall not see Christ as he is until he comes to Iudgement and then and not before we shall see him G. Fox Answers You where you are see him not nor know him as he is we do believe you but the Saints the true Church whom he is the Head of in whom he is in the midst and in whom he is c. I was not desirous to trouble the Audience with more Quotations but they still urged haste thou any more hast thou any more c. upon their provocation I Quoted many more to 52 make up an overwhelming Cloud of Witnesses against these Protestant Iesuites and Iudasites Betrayers of the Son of God the true Lord Jesus Christ. In Foxes Answer to his Opposite Daniel Caudry it is clear that he affirms the contrary to his Opposite to wit that Christ Jesus is as much now seen visibly as ever he shall be seen in which I believe he speaks the heart of all the Antichristian Wolves and Foxes who quake and tremble at the thought of Christs return again to judgment and therefore these deluded and deluding Souls in their dark Prisons of willing Blindness and the hellish Chaines of the pride and hardness and security of their hearts they dream they sit in Robes of Glory themselves now keep open the high Court of eternal Iudgment and pass Sentence upon this Christ without as a poor Outside Christ and all that worship him 2. I observe in Fox his answer that he can not keep out of his Burrow of confounding a visible eye and a Spiritual a visible and invisible seing you see him not saith he where you are that is you that look upon such a real person indeed such an one born living and dying as the History sets forth you cannot see him as he is but we that look at Christ Iesus and the history of him as Mystical immediate invisible though we use to please you children and fools with the words of Christ dying at Ierusalem we see him he is in the midest of us and he is the invisible Head of the Church in God while you talk of Visibles and seing him as Visible c. In Page 276. he brings in Richard Meyo saying that he did believe in a Christ that dyed at Ierusalem and that he doth not believe in a Christ within and preach Christ within is a Reprobate Colloss 2. 2. Cor. 13. And he is not in a true Belief of Christ without that doth not believe in a Christ within but is in the Devils Belief and believes as the Devils do In this his answer an
humble Soul may see how this subtle Traytor under the golden name of Christ and Christ within in the heart he stabs at the heart of the true Lord Iesus who suffered for poor Mankind in mans own nature at Ierusalem 2. I observe his virulent and venemous Mind and Pen stabbing damning and reprobating all that truly believe in the true Lord Iesus whome he confesseth to have been a real man dying at Ierusalem c. except they can believe that he is now no where to be found but in every mans heart that cometh into the world that is no where 53 In Page 246. He brings in Christopher Wade saying It is whimfical to say Christ God and Man Flesh and Spirit is in them He answers Contrary to the Apostles Doctrine who said they were of his flesh and of his bone and Christ in you and he would walk in them and he that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his and they are of his slesh and of his bone and Christ in you the hope of Glory In the same Page he brings in the same Author saying Flesh and bone cannot be a measure in one and a measure in an other He Answers wheras the Apostle saith we are of his Flesh and of his Bone here thou art contrary to the Apostle and that was more then one that had the Flesh of Christ and his Bone and his Spirit In Page 248. He brings in the same Author saying It is a false thing to say Christ Person is in man He Answers which is as much as to say none are of his Flesh nor of his Bone nor eat nor had not his Substance And Page 249 The Saints bodyes are not Christs body He Answers How are they Christs How dwels he in them and how are they of his Flesh and of his Bone then and how bruitish are you bâ—come in Knowledge hath he not bought them with a price and are they not his And in the same Page he brings in the same Author saying that neither Gods Essence nor Heaven nor Christs Person was in Peters holy body He answers but the Apostle said God will dwell with you and walk in you and again our conversation is in Heaven And once more in the same page There is not whole Christ God and man in men Answ. Then how must men grow in the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ and Christ and God will dwel in man and walk in man God that made all things and Christ by whome all things were made I Reply this Author Christopher Wade I know not many of his opposites living and dead whome he here vapours to answer in his Book I know were worthy of Christian esteem and honour for the grace and Knowledge of Christ Jesus in them and for other worthy respects and whither this Opposite or any other whome he pretends to puffe at or Answer have thought this audacious Quacksalver worthy of any Reply I know not For certainly as he commonly concludes his Answer in his Book Thy many notorious Lyes and Slanders and Blasphemyes are not worth the mentioning however for the proof of my Position I am occasioned 54 to follow this Fox into his holes and Burrowes and to hale him out before God Angls and Men as a most greedy audacious Fox and Wolfe not sparing the Son and Lamb of God nor his precious Lambs and Sheep Now to all these last Quotations I say as the Opposites to Fox said that this Notion of Christ wit hin opposite to Christ without is a most Frantick and Whimsical Gross and Blockish Fancy For though he grant Christ Jesus to be a Man which died at Ierusalem yet making him only Spiritual and such a Christ as is whole Christ God and Man in every man in the World he makes Christ Jesus to be but Whimsical Christ and that Man that died at Ierusalem but a Babylonian Fancy In Pag. 221. He brings in the Author to a Book called Hosanna to the Son of David saying Christ is without the Saints in respect of his Bodily presence He Answereth They are of his Flesh and of his Bone and eat his Flesh and drink his Blood and how have the Saints his Mind and Spirit and he with them and they with him and sit with him in Heavenly places and he is the Head of the Church how then is he absent the poor Apostates from him who feel not Christ with you but he is with the Saints and they feel him I Reply I observe this Viperous Tongue saying to the unknown heavenly Author and Fox his other Oppositee Ye poor Apostates c. what is it but a heighth of Devilish Pride going before destruction and condemnation this proud swelling Bladder puft up with a Timpany of Wind and Vanity what a huge swelling shew he makes what a breadth of confident boldness and bruitish impudencie he carries before him what a gross Frantick Papist is he become that cannot will not distinguish between Christs Spiritual presence and his bodily that cannot will not consider the difference between Spirits and Bodies a Spirit that hath no Flesh nor Bones and a Body which hath both as Christ his Body had that cannot will not distinguish between their sinful Flesh and Bones and the sinless Flesh and Bones of that Man Christ Jesus that cannot will not distinguish between God manifested in the Flesh and Bones of that Man Christ Jesus and manifested in the Flesh and Bones of Believers in him O most Holy and Righteous are thy Judgements O thou most High Judge of the World who art a devouring fire and Justice it self who thus castest down the Proud and Self-conceited into the Dungeon of such Black and Hellish Ignorance 55 Pag. 217 Out of a Book mentioning the Quakers Cause saying To say Christ within is never to mention Christ without He Answers There is none knows Christ within but he knows him without the same yesterday and to day and for ever And there is none knows him but they know him within revealed of the Father which is beyond Flesh and Blood I Observe This foolish Fox for all his hiding Craft is here found out He professeth against his Will and Heart a Christ that died at Ierusalem and therefore is he forced to name a Christ without but when the Hole and Burrough is Digged the Fox is found For Examine what is this Christ without is he that litteral real and material Person the Son of Mary as all professing Christs Name generally agree Is this he whom the Quakers acknowledge to have lived and died at Ierusalem and do they intend a Material Crosse a literal Death a literal and real Ierusalem some of them will say yes but therein give the lye to others of themselves and also to the rest of their own story in acknowledging no other Christ but such as is in every man such a Christ as really and bodily died at Ierusalem they
Christ Iesus in all Humility self-denial Love Charity Tenderness in bowels of compassion in Gospel Peace and Unity only unto your Masters praise and Glory that the Auditors may receive the plain naked Truth of the Lord Iesus unto their Souls Edification even the real Truth as it in Iesus and not as words of man which is only Vanity and vexation of Spirit under the Sun of eternal and universal Righteousness whose infinite glory is witnessed by Robert Willams Newport August 6. 1672. THis was that poor Letter condemned unheard by these high Saints who now keep Judgement day to the fire and everlasting silence this was the two edged Sword which smote in the honest upright intentions of the Author every way reproving me reproving them and yet having so much Sugar with his Vinegar and Honey with his bitter Powder that had it been unsealâ—d and read at Newport or read at Providence whose taste could it have offended but theirs only who like the men of China judge all the World to have no eyes but themselves excepting the Men of Europe to whom they will grant one eye and that is more then our proud Pharisees will do to any that bow not down to their most grosse Phylacteries But from this finger of God this providential Letter appearing upon the Wall before us I return to the work of the day which was the Discussion and Probation on my part of the other five Proposals remaining I therefore after the Letter was put up unread into my pocket requested their Patience while I produced my Proof of the third Position which was viz. That the Spirit by which they were acted was not the true Spirit of God T is true I had many things in my mind and memory some of them I here express but I was forced to pick and chufe and lay by for I told them that according to my promise and their expectation I would present them with the Substance of my proof of this Position in the compass of about a quarter of an hour 76 I reminded them first of the nature of the Word Spirit in Latine Spiritus in Greek Pneuma in the Hebrew Ruch and Ruach signifying sometimes Breath sometimes Wind and from thence applied unto God himself unto Angels unto Men as denoting a spiritual powerful invisible fine Substance distinct from flesh and earthly Bodies Hence God was said to be a Spirit not properly but that his Being was pure powerful invisible c. 1 Whether God was properly a Spirit as the Quaker affirmed we had some controversie at Providence of which hereafter 2. Concerning Spirits I observed two great Sects 1 Those of the Pharisees who were accounted the most Orthodox Sound and right holding such a Spiritual Substance in Angels and Spirits and a Resurrection 2. The Sadduces which held neither Angel nor Spirit nor Resurrection as at this day c. 3. It is clear there is a two-fold Spirit 1. Holy and pure such a Spirit is God himself and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father by the Son such are the Spirits of the Angels the Spirits of Gods Children in part and the Spirits of just men made perfect the Quakers say here we say in the life coming The other Spirit is a wicked Spirit a lying and a murtherous Spirit in Sathan and his Children yet often counterfeiting the Holy and pure Spirit like the Oile and Ointment which God prescribed and forbad the like of it to be made on pain of death Therefore we are commanded not to believe every Spirit but to try even the very Spirits not only of men but of Doctrines Churches Religions pretending the Name of God as do the Turks Iews and Christians and of the Son of God as do all the Antichrists and Antichristians extant 4. The Holy Spirit of God being the seven Lambs of Fire the seven Eyes and seven Horns Rev. 5. he is pleased to work variously First in an ordinary way of Regeneration and Sanctification c. common to all the lowest and youngest of Gods Children Iohn 3. that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit Hence we read of the Spirit of Prayer and of Holiness wrought in the Soul by the finger or power of God so that the knowledge of God the fear the love the trusting to and in God the calling upon God is natural to all Gods Children Gal. 5. Abba Father c. 77 The second is extraordinary and immediate such as was pour'd upon the Lord Jesus Isai. 11. such as Christ breathed upon the Apostles and by the Apostles hands upon others when they spake with Tongues fortelling things to come and penning the Holy Scriptures or Records as did the Prophets of old and the first Messengers the Apostles of Christ Jesus I told them I had many things to say as to the false Spirits of the false Christs and false Prophets the Spirits of Devils as well as the Spirits of God in the Revelation and the three wayes of deceit mentioned 1 Thess. 2. by Spirit by Word or by Letter but I would contract my self I say that their Spirit by which they were acted was not Gods Spirit 1. Because the Holy Spirit of God was given by means but the Quakers pretended all along in G. Fox and other Books that their Spirit was immediate or without means I said in the 8th of the Romans was a Golden Chain of Gods Order or Method of Working from Predestination to Glorification In the 10th to the Romans was a Golden Chain of the Means appointed c. How shall a Man be saved by calling upon God How shall he call on him except he believe in him how shall a Man believe in him except he hear of him how shall a Man hear of him except some Preach how shall a Man Preach except he be sent c Hence Peter Preaching Christ Jesus to the first Converts they were some thousands brought to Christ when they were pierced to the heart and cried out what shall we do Peter sends them nor to a light within them but bids them Repent and be Baptized Act. 14. Paul so spake that many believed Act. 16. while Paul spake the Lord opened Lydias heart and I appealed to the Consciences of those called Quakers at Newport there present whether in a contradiction this Spirit they now professed descended immediately upon them from God as they spake or was not conveyed unto them by the Ministry of the former Preaching Quakers that came unto them so that these now are but the waterers and confirmers of this Doctrine of the Spirit in them 2. As Believing and Conversion comes by hearing c. so these extraordinary gifts and powrings forth of Gods Spirits was generally by means also Christ used Breathing upon the Apostles the Spirit of God descended Act. 8. 19. in the laying on of hands in Peters Preaching Acts. 10. the miraculous Spirit of 78 Tongues and Prophecy descended upon Cornelius and his
Faith and put in a painted or Glass Eye in the Room of it True Faith is a Receiving of Christ Jesus as my only King Priest and Prophet It is a believing on or receiving of Christ distinct from God Iohn 14. You believe in God This true Lord Jesus Christ the Quakers turn into a meer Fiction Dream or Imaginary Christ in the mind of a man or Woman a Popish Transubstantiated Christ all Spirit and no Body and so not consisting of Flesh and Spirit He hath no Flesh of his own as you make him and yet Flesh of his own because your Flesh is his Flesh and yet your Flesh you say also must dye and rot and never rise again and so you have blown up and Jugled away the Flesh of Christ Jesus both his and your own also altogether This is a Trick of the Father of Lyes and Iuglings beyond that Monstrous Fancy of the Papissts Transubstantiation for although they turn the Bread into the Flesh of Christ yet they turn not the Bread of Christ nor the Flesh of Christ into their own Flesh The Quakers can give no Account what is become of the Flesh or Body of that man Christ Jesus these Foxes have devoured the Lambs of God Miraculous and Monstrous is 119 the Papists blasphemous and Bloody Fancy of Transubstantiation but not more miraculous and monstrous c. then that of the Quakers which granteth Christ Jesus to have been born lived and dyed as We c and yet now Transubstantiated into a Spirit and the Quakers Flesh. So that in the Upshot the Christ in whom they believe is vanished by an Hellish Chimistry into themselves and it is most certain the Lord open in great mercy some of their Eyes to see it they do believe on themselves and that lying Spirit within them I remember that hereabouts Iohn Burnet said that it was not true that they preached not true Repentance and herein he fell into a Speech or Sermon to the People professing that the Quakers maintained Repentance toward God and Faith in Christ and Godliness and Righteousness c. and he continued I Judge above half an hour though not so long nor so furious as William Edmundson the day before I listned carefully and watcht his Ending being desirous to say something least another of them should fall into a Sermon also and put me by and I speedily said to this Effect Friend you have here delivered many holy Truths of God at this there was deep silence as if I had turn'd a Proselite at least it pleased them to be applauded I went on and said concerning Repentance and turning from all sin of the Blood of Christ and of being saved by his Blood of living soberly Righteously and godly in this present World c. but withal I said they did not reach me nor any thing that I had spoken as proof against them for I and all their Adversaries the Protestants preached Repentance and Faith c. but theirs was an Anti-Christian Repentance and Faith c. because either not true Repentance and Faith as Protestants argue against the Papists and Quakers or else in general Terms not distinguishing between true Repentance and false and shewing the difference between the true Faith and the false So that I said you might have preacht this Sermon even in Rome before the Popes face in his own Chappel yea the Pope and the Cardinals and Friars and Iesuits deliver the same Doctrines in general Terms daily But as Thieves Iuglers and Counterfiets when they come to Examination their Impudent sayings and Swearings prove but the paints of Whores and Har 120 lots So do the Devilish Doctrines and Devilish Conceit and Fancies of Papists Quakers and all Fantastick Formal Carnal Protestants who Cry Lord Lord c. but are Answered by Christ Jesus with I know ye not Depart from me ye that work Iniquity I cannot Affirm that I spake all these Individual words nor have omitted ought that I or they spake yet I remember no more though being Confined by their great desire and my self to a puarter of an hour for each point I was forced as all may judge to omit many Amplifications and Illustrations which now I crave the Readers patience while I present him with some of them I intended to have Charged them with the falseness of their Hope and Love and Peace and Joy which they often Crake though they pretend quaking and Trembling their Heaven consisteth and all the Eternal Life to come they look for they are now in present full Possession of What Scripture is more common in the mouths and pens of the Quakers then that of Paul to the Colossians Chap. 1. which is Christ in you the Hope of Glory whereby they Insinuate two of their grand Deceits and Lyes First that their is no other Christ but what is in every man in the World Secondly That there is no other Glory to be hoped for in or by or with the Lord Jesus but what the Saints that is the Quakers enjoy and are already possessedof within them in this Life To which I say how many painted Anchors and painted Hopes are there How many Hope 's as in Iob like the Spiders web swept away to Eternity If there be e're a painted Anchor or e're a Spiders web in the world this of the Quakers Hope is one as in time I may furthet demonstrate For do they not overthrow the very Nature of Hope which they prate of and give the Spirit of God Rom. 9. the Lye which tells us that Hope is not of things in possession or which we see doth not Paul there tell us almost in plain Terms that it is simplicity and Non-Sense to talk concerning Hope after such a Rate Doth not 1 Pet. 1. tell us of a Living Hope opposite to painted and dead Hopes and this Living Hope called in other places the Hope of Righteousness the Hope of the Redemption of our Bodies the Hope as of Heirs for an Inheritance of the Glory that 121 shall be revealed in us which is a state of the manifestation of the Sons of God though saith Iohn We are now the Sons of God 1 John 3. we know not what that is all that is now enjoyed is but as the first Fruits to the Harvest as the Spirit speaks 2. Again what Ignorance and simplicity is it to call Christ or God the Glory or the goodness or good things which we hope for Literally and properly upon the Promise and the Power and goodness of God no Christ Jesus Can the Eternal God in any Literal Sense be called the Hope of Israel Jer. 14. but in the same Figurative Sense whereby Moses cals him Our Life and the Length of our Dayes and we in Common Speech call such a man or his Promise or any Creatures dear to us Our Hope our Love our Ioy c. that is the Ground or the Object of our Hope c
of God For what man knows the things of a man save the Spirit of a man c. now we have not received the Spirit of the world but the Spirit which is of God that we may know the things which are freely given to us of God In ver 6. the Spirit of God speaks of a twofold wisdome first the wisdome of this world and the Principles of this world which come to nought Secondly the wisdome of God in a Mystery even the hidden wisdome which God ordained before the world unto our glory Again ver 12. God tells us of two Spirits The Spirit of the world Secondly The Spirit of God Now this woful Cheator finding the word Spirit Confounds as his Course is all together and because Gods Spirit regenerates the Corintâ—ians and opens to them a glimpse of the Godheads power and wisdom and Goodness by Pauls preaching and opens their hearts to it therefore he must also enlighten the world with the same Light whereas that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit and that of Flesh is Flesh This Change and renewing of the Spirit by the Holy Spirit I fear G. Fox and most of his Foxians never Experimened 74 though they enjoy in common a Light of Nature though God hath endowed him and many of them with excellent Natural Parts yea with a Light from the holy Scripture yea with a Light of Experience and common Motions from Gods holy Spirit and have been lifted up by their own thoughts and others as Capernaum up to the Heaven and therefore my Soul fears as to most of them that God will bring them down to Hell with the greater Condemnation The 38th Instance is in Pag. 222. where he brings in the same Author saying Salvation and Faith are the gifts of God distinct from Christ He Answers They are all of him and from him and with him And how is he the Author of Faith in whom it ends and from whence it comes I Reply as Potiphars wife cries out against Ioseph and pretends Chastity so doth this subtle Whoremonger pretending that all is pure Christ the Light is Christ their Hope is Christ their Faith their Spirit is Christ himself yea the Saints are Christ No distinction between Christ and them for they are all of him from him and with him In short I pray the Reader to mind with me the first Chapter to the Colossians where ver 1. The Spirit of God declares how Gods Children poor slaves at first in Sathans Clutches are Translated from the Kingdome of Darkness into the Kingdome of his dear Son In whom we have Redemption through his Blood even the Forgiveness of Sins I know the Foxians turn Christ yea his Blood also into a Spirit a God How admirably doth the holy Spirit of God declare the Godhead or Divinity of Christ Jesus and his Manhood or Humanity unto ver 21 out of both which I shall select two or three Attributes of the Lord Jesus 1. The State of Christianity amongst many other high Expressions in the Scripture is here called the Kingdome of Gods dear Son which argues a distinction from all other Kingdomes and a distinction from his Saints as a King is not his Subjects nor their Gifts and Honours and Estates and peace and Ioy though given by him to them and procured by his great wisdome and love for them Oh poor Ungrateful Monsters not content to be taken from 76 the Kingdome from the Dungeon of Darkness and Hell and that by the Ransome and price paid and Blood and Death of his only Beloved the Prince of Life but we must be the King of Heaven and Prince of Life our selves 2. I observe The Instrumental and purchasing Cause or price is said to be his Blood which argues the Infinite value of his Sufferings in which Respect only it is called the Blood of God I know the slight esteem that some of these Foxians have of the Blood of the Lord Iesus saying that wicked men the Souldiers shed it that it was spilt upon the ground that there was no difference between that Blood and the Blood of another Saint That by Gods blood is only meant godly and heavenly power and Spirit by which God applies Mercy and pardon Iustification Righteousness c. I have read the Blasphemous Discanting of the Iesuit concerning Maries white Milk and Christs Crimson Blood in the close his preferring the Milk of the Mother before the Sons Blood I have heard also the foolish Blasphemy of one of my own Neighbours saying That the Blood of the Quakers and by name of W. B. was Saving and Salvation to the World 3. But I pass on The Lord Jesus is here called the Image of the invisible God If this should respect the Godhead only which is invisible how could Christ be a visible Picture of Invisibility If the Manhood only is God a Man and Man his Image or Picture as the old Heretick and late in London Reeves and Mugleton fancied The Truth is as Christs Blood is but figuratively for an Antitipe and fulfilling of all the Figures foregoing him and for all his Sufferings and many Blood-sheddings both of Minde and Body so this Image or Picture this Blessed Lamb of God consisting of the Godhead wonderfully assuming such a none such Manhood both which the Papists and Quakers are forced to confess I say it is clear he was the brightest Image or Picture of God to the World that ever God appeared in and therefore called the Word of God the fullest and loudest of all the Words of God in which ever he spake c. 4. Many more I might insist on but I must abbreviate and only mention ver 18. where the Lord Jesus is made the Pallace of 77 the Godhead that in him as the Head of the Body his Church should all fulness dwell reconciling and making peace through the Blood of his Crosse c. Iohn tells us that of this fulness in him we receive all the World receives the Mercy and Patience of God by him all his Followers receive his Grace and Spirit Converting Sanctifying Comforting c. so that his most holy and glorious Manhood visible amongst us c. was as a fair and spacious beautiful Conduit into which the eternal and inconceivable Counsels of the eternal Power and Godhead flowed and from whom by all those blessed means and Ordinances as by so many Cocks turned and let loose flow and run into poor empty Souls as Pails and Tankards all sorts of mercies to the whole World and especially to the Elect and Chosen his Church and Body that believe in him what poor Children and Frantick Souls are we then that cry out poor Pots and Pails and Tankards that we are the Conduit it self yea we the Well-head Fountain and Spring and as this frantick Fox in his Book once and again affirms no distinction between God Christ his Saints yea
Ministeryes or Offices 3. Operations Works or Successes all wrought in the Saints by the holy Spirit for the Glory of the same Father Lord and Spirit the mutual comfort and edifing of the Saints yea and for the Convicting and drawing of other poor Sinners out of the World to God The Lord mercifully awaken your Souls to the Love of God and the Love of his holy Truth for the not beleiving of which but the profane playing with it the most high and righteous Judge of the whole world in a way of Iudicial Sentence delivers up poor Souls to believe Lyes and that so strongly as to give their bodyes to be burned for them The Papists catch hold upon a Letter This is my body You as simply as doe the Generalists catch hold upon the Letter All every man that comes into the world .c. whereas the Scope and Connection in all writings and in all matters in the world are rationally to be minded The Sence and Meaning is in all Speech and Writing in our own and other Languages the very Speech or Writing it self These Words All and every one in our own and other Tongues 9 are often used figuratively it is so all the Scripture over and thrice in one verse Colloss 1. 28. where Reason cannot imagine that Paul did literally and individually admonish every man teach every man and present every man that comes into the world perfect in Christ Jesus which could not cannot possibly be true without another Sence and Exposition then the words literally hold out 4 Again you are dangerously bold to say that you write from the Spirit of Truth wherein you Father these your childish Irrationalityes your profaning of the holy Majesty of God his holy Scriptures and writings and your rash Judging and Examining of others upon the holy Spirit of God But I do humbly hope to evince that the Spirit you boast of is so far from the Spirit of God that it falls beneath the foot of a sober and well grounded Humanity At present I only Instance in that whorish and monstrous act of your Women and Maidens stripping themselves stark naked by your Spirit and with a face of brass coming into the open streets and publick Congregations of Men and Youths This Spirit though defended by G. Fox and others is such a piece of unnaturall and bruitish Impudence that I cannot hear of the like amongst Jews or Gentiles yea not amongst the most Savage Base and Barbarous of them all all Circumstances considered 5. In the last place I observe your Fickleness and Inconstancy what and how often have I heard you speak of the Chief of the Quakers now at Newport How lately and how much have you uttered of John Crosman his Cross and froward spirit even since he pretended the Spirit yea how inhumane and injurious to your self in the way of his Calling now all on a sudden for I heard but little untill I saw your Lines you are got up into the lofty Chair of Judging and ready to say God I thank thee I am not as this Publican I beseech the Lord to make you savingly to remember that Word God resisteth that is sets himself in Hostility against the Proud but he giveth Grace unto the Lowly so prayes your old unworthy Friend R. W. Providence 18th 5th 72. I had hoped that I had Conjur'd down at least for the present that Waspish spirit but he flyes out against me within a few dayes in this second Letter following 10 Providence 23. 5. 75. ANcient Friend and Acquaintance I read thy Note four dayes after the subscribing it that so thy Councellors might throughly be informed of thy continued Zeal in a dangerous Case What I write to thee in Love hath a contrary effect in thy Spirit being so prejudiced against us according to the Proverb Nothing is well spoken that is not well taken Upon Discourse thou didst say the Quakers could not be believed on their Words or Writings having a secret Reservation within them which gives me to conclude that wee are Iudged before wee Speak For my charging upon thee Slanders and Lyes Examine but thy Positions which will make manifest what I say As for the Terror which thou speakest of c. I leave it to thee to consider what thou art about least thou be called to Account for it before thou art ready As for charging me with Irrationality for not alleadging Scripture for what I write yet I alleadged three Scriptures one of which thou wrestest adding what I wrote not so that if I had urged more I should have had the like Catching But we both must come to give an Account of what is done in the Body In this my Letter thou mayest see my witnessing against most of thy Slanderous Propositions Concerning the Spirits manifestations 1 Cor. 12. 13. I freely consent that they were the Saints by Calling who are there Considered As thou alleadgest the Papists Catch at a word This is my body so we catch at a word All and misapply Scripture so that I perceive thou hast not a Guide to thy mind but utterest thine own Conceivings John 3. 16. The Promise is to them that Believe and not to All. Again Thou findest fault with my rash judging thee and abusing Scripture Take it to thy self for the word Damning thou foistest in thy self neither dare I pass Sentence of Damnation upon any For Iudgment belongeth to the Lord and we must stand or fall to our own Master As for my Fickleness and Inconstancy Lay thy hand upon thy mouth and Consider thy Windings and Turnings in thy Iudgment and Practice how thankfull thou wast to J. Burnet whome thou highly commendest after thou camest home and now reproachest the Truth which then thou assentest to and in thy 14 Positions thou hintest by thy wicked Surmises what the sudden spirit of the Quakers is to take away the Lives of Kings .c. but I told thee in my first Letter thou art a stranger to that holy Spirit we act by But further thy Malice appeareth in going to one thou saidst that 11 if the spirit of the Governour were to cut of his head he must doe it Call to mind what thou didst to thy peaceable Neighbours seeking their Blood crying out Treason when the Court discerned thy Blood-thirsty spirit which thy friends at Newport were ashamed of and thy Accusations proved Invalid How childish didst thou act to swear against One when another told thee of somewhat spoken to allay thy fury against William Harris Call to mind thy Books written and see thy Fickleness wanting a Guid to thy mind being for and against Persecution Thou chargest me to have gotten into the Chair of Iudging thy two Scripts I return upon thy self Physitian heal thy self The Wisdom of man puffeth up but the Wisdom of God humbleth that God may be all in all I desire thee to look back to thy Lines and where thou mentionest the Satisfaction of infinite
very unhandsome Clout of a grievous Interruption so that sometimes I was forc't to play the Moderator and to protest that such practises were against the sober rules of Civillity and Humanity It pleased God to help me with such Patience to weather them that Iohn Stubs openly confest twice that though some others had given them some interruptions yet that I had not done it I took my Seat at the other end of the house opposite to them and began telling them that the most High was my witness that not out of any prejudice against or disrespect to the persons of the Quakers many of whome I knew and did love and honour nor any foolish Passion of pride or boldness for I desired to be sensible of my many decayes of my house of Clay and other wayes nor any earthly or worldly ends I had that occasioned this trouble to my self and them I was first commanded this work from Heaven Why should not this Argument be good for mee and for others as well as the Quakers they say their commands are immediate for Interpretations are immediate but I say they herein suffer Satan to cheat them for they say they pray they fast they wait they listen they judge of the motions that arise within them and so have I done The great maker and searcher of all hearts knowes that none but his holy Majesty was privy to the Conception of this business 1. My end was the vindicating his most holy Name which my Soul saw was trodden in the dirt by Sathan clothed with Samuels Mantle and the bright garment of an Angel of Light which once he was but pride deceived him 26 2. I had in mine eye the vindicating this Colony for receiving of such persons whome others would not we suffer for their sakes and are accounted their Abettors that therefore together with the improvemeut of our Libertyes which the God of Heaven and our Kings Majesty have graciously given us I might give a publick testimony against their Opinions in such a way and Exercise I judged it incumbent upon my Spirit and Conscience to doe it in some regards more than most in the Colony I may also truly say that 3. I had also in mine eye that this exercise might occasion some Soul Consideration in many I told them that we had a dolefull Alarum and instruction lately we were taught what Salvation and saving was in the late death and drowning of a person so known to us and all N. England Nicholas Davis I told them our case and the case of all mankind is his in Spirituall and Soul matters Oh a world for an Oar a Rope a Plank Only it must be to all of us our work to try whether our Saviour our Salvation be reall and not failing in so great a Straight Some of these blessed ends it hath pleased God to propagate by this occasion all this Colony over and all of us round about have put forth our selves in Disquisitions and Searchings after the true grounds of the Christian Religion and Worship I had many thoughts of beginning such an exercise with Prayer unto God for his Presence but I knew I could not joyn with them nor would they owne my Prayers I had thoughts as Eliah among the Baalites to have prayed in the singular number But some Considerations made my spirit content with this kind of Petition unto God For not only in my Closet and my heart but publickly before them all I said I doe humbly hope and beg of God the Father of Spirits so to order and direct our Spirits in these our Agitations that his holy name may receive glory and the Soules of all of us some Soul-profit and Advantage I began with the first Position which I think W. Edmunson also read out of the Paper viz. That the People called Quakers are not true Quakers according to the Scriptures 1. I said I knew they did not owne that name Quakers as imposed on them by God or taken up by themselves but given them in scorn and derision as G. Fox Ed. Burrowes and I had heard Iohn Stubs who joined with them declared and that 27 one Gervace Bennet a Iustice in Derby first so called them in the year 1650 And yet I had cause to judg that the name was given by Iustice Bennet and others to them from that strange and uncouth possessing of their bodyes with quaking and shaking of their Bodyes even in publick Assemblyes and Congregations which extraordinary motions I judged to come upon them not from the holy Spirit and Power of God but from the spirit and power of Sathan for diverse Reasons First Although they pretend that Moses and David and Habbacouck and Daniel were Quakers yet as to the Christian Profession and the dayes since our gallant fore-Fathers in Germany at Spiers protested against the whore of Rome and from that Prostestation by the Papists they were called in scorn and wrath the Protesters or Protestants about 150 years since unto this day I say as to the Protestant Professors and Confessors the Quakers are but a new upstart party or Faction risen up little above 20 yeares since in the northern parts of England Lancashire c. T is true t is probable they are the Offspring of the Grindletonians in the same Lancashire about two yeares before who held those two grand Points though many wicked paths of Doctrine aud Practice were amongst them viz. 1. That God doth all 2 They could not sin taking it according to the Letter These Grindletonians were the Offspring of the late Nicholaitans as all of them are in truth justly so called from Henery Nichols who put forth his Books of the same Poison in K. Iames his time which long since I read and were confuted by many and by Mr Ainsworth and Mr Robinson precious and powerfull Witnesses of Christ Jesus H. Nichols aud his Nicholaitans were the Litter of those Spirittualls and Libertines which spread in Germany and France in Calvin's dayes against whome that heavenly soul gave his powerfull and heavenly witness in his Book against the Libertines These Libertines Satan raised up about the Protestant Reformation from the ruines and rubbish of the old Manicheans and Gnosticks and other blind Guides who swarmed in the first third and fourth Christian Centuryes until the Pope swallowed up all the lesser Serpents and so became a Dragon with seven Heads and ten Horns forcing all with fire and Fagot to deny Christ Iesus and to martch under Anti-Christ the Anti-christ the man of sin his Colours Some of these Particulars I could not then express but think 28 fit here to remember the former dayes for Information of such as doe desire it These People came from Lancashire and other northern parts to the Southward of England and to London I spake with some of their Chief then in London I knew it was the old proud spirit which had appeared in so
willing I would produce some Instances I took up the Book and read in the 3d. page where he brings in his Opposite Samuel Eaton saying The Saints have not Christ in the Flesh G. F. his Answer is Contrary to Christ and the Apostles Doctrine who said they were of his Flesh and of his Bone and should eat his Flesh and they that eat his Flesh have it in them Whence I affirmed that Christ Jesus had such a Body as might be really and materially in the Saints and ii was clear that they were one with the Papists in their Sayings and Doctrines denying the Flesh Body and Person of Christ Jesus For as the Papists in stead of a Spritual feeding upon his bloud and Merits they substitute and bring in a Real Material and Carnal in their horrible and fantastical Transubstantiation so do the Quakers professing to eat Christ spiritually wholy destroy his material and fleshly being I proceeded saying in the 4th Page G. Fox brings in the same Opposite saying The Saints do not see Christ the Heavens contain him And G. F. Answers And the Apostle saith they sate with Christ in heavenly places so he is contrary to the Apostle and Christ was in them and walked in them and God dwelt in them and Christ in you except you be Reprobates I said that as the Papists were up ridiculously odiously with Hoc est Corpus meum This is my Body c. so they with The Light within you the Light that enlightens every man Christ within you except you be Reprobates c. 48 For if the Heavens do contain that Man Christ Jesus bodily as they grant in word saying They believed he dyed rose and ascended then in that same sence and respect the Saints cannot now sit bodily with Christ in heavenly places and therefore to alledge Christ within and their sitting with Christ in heavenly places was but irrational Nonsence and Jesuitical Equivocation The truth is they were gravel'd with these Considerations and they were willing that G Fox his book and his Answers should answer for them and although the oppositions of G. Fox his Opposites were mighty and G Foxes were meer simple barkings of dogs or foxes compar'd with the rational and prudential Answers of a man yet when I began to open and compare the Assertions of the Opposite and Fox his answer they would cry out especially W E. like a galled horse winching Why dost thou make thy Observations upon G. Fox his words G. Fox his words need not thy Expositions let G. Fox his words alone they are able to speak for themselves I told them it was a senceless business for me to alleadge and they to be willing I should G. Fox his sayings and his Answers and we should not debate and discuss the Sence and I make out my Proof out of G. Fox his words and his Adversaryes compar'd together when they had spoken they knew their liberty to take of my Answers with their own and leave what was spoke to every ones Conscience in the sight of God They were Obstinately that is in Greek Heretically resolved to avoid this Course therefore I was glad to hale my Tacks Bolings close home and make my best of a bare Wind and now and then loof up into the wind and get liberty to say something and omit abundance of my Thoughts Once I was forced to say to W. Edmondson Friend yesterday you quoted the 9 of Nehem. how it pleased God to send them his good Spirit to guide them I pray remember now a word in the 8 of Nehem. They read and gave the Sence and caused the People to understand the Reading Without this searching for the Sence and meaning the Pith and Marrow of the holy Scriptures or any other Scriptures or Writings we make use of what are our Readings but the Papists Latine the reading Ministers the pratling of Children and Parrets yet notwithstanding all that I could say and urge it is known to all the Audience the Song was let G. Fox words alone to speak for themselves if thou hast any 49 more to bring forth let us have them so that as before I was forced to wave my Observations and Intentions and pass on to new Allegations Though now I shall crave liberty to touch and point at as with the finger the Opposites Assertions of Truth and G. Fox his unsavoury and rotten Answers In Page 8. He brings in Iohn Bunyan c. saying The Lord Iesus Christ is afar in his bodily presence and G. Fox answers And yet he saith the Lord is at hand and the Apostle said he was in them and Christ said he would dwell with them I here observe and reply the holy Scripture abundantly tells us of a twofold presence of Christ 1. His bodily visible Presence which Iohn Bunyan speaks of and the Quakers in words grant The 2. His Spirituall invisible Presence of which many Scriptures speak and that most clearly Eph. 3. 10. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by believing c. Concerning this visible bodily presence of which the Question is First G. Fox his impertinent and silly Answer is not to the Point no more then the East and the West is to one point of the Compass 2. He fallaciously most unchristianly and impiously denyes the body of Christ Iesus to be any where and as Conjurers do Hocas Pocas that which all now see is gone vanished so that with the ancient enemies of Christ Humane Nature the Manicheans they say and unsay and at last affirm a Christ only God and Spirit dwelling in them and in all mankind also About this time these subtle Foxes minded to spin out Time and wave the close Fight of examining Particulars concerning Christs humanity G. Fox his Book was brought forth the same with mine Iohn Burinat took it and went along with me in the Quotations I read and alwayes endeavoured to make my proof out of the Allegation But W. Edmundson kept strict watch and stood Centinel that no Observations of Sences or Meanings should pass resolving to keep out the Fire and Light of Christ Jesus with Stand or I le let fly a Fire from Hell upon you Well I knew what froward Children and bruitish Spirits I dealt with resolved to go softly and to speak softly and as I could gain ground by inches at least for liberty to give my witness for the Lord Iesus In Page 9. He brings in Iohn Bunyan c. affirming that the Son of Mary God-Man is absent from his Church G. Fox answers but never touching Scripture about it contrary to 50 Christs words I in them and they in me and I will be with you to the ends and Christ the Head of the Church where two or three are gathered c. and the Saints are bone of his bone and flesh of his slesh I Reply here half an eye may see as before how he gives
scorn and hate and fly from as the Devils did crying out What have we to do with thee Iesus thou Son of the most High God art thou come to torment us hesore the time Hence the former Arch-deacon or Arch-bishop of these parts Humphrey Norton he mocks at an outward Christ he asks what Countryman he was and shall be He reproves the Fools that have their Eyes abroad and gazing after a man into Heaven he jeers at the Crosse aud asks what manner of wood it was made of seeing we must take it up dayly And Fox saith this Jesus Christ without and within is Jesus Christ yesterday and to day and the same for ever therefore in the Logick or Reason of this Bruite Christ had no body that was born at Bethlehem or died at Ierusalem For he was born yesterday and to day and he is born forever he dyed yesterday and he dies to day and he dies forever which is a most Heavenly Truth relating to Gods purpose Christs Merit and to Forefathers our present times and such as yet must be born and follow after us But such Mystical and figurative Scriptures which are in themselves like Sampsons Lion and Riddle through Satans Policy and the proud simplicity of these simple Foxes are made the common Holes and Burroughs where you may be sure to find them just like the Iesuites whose Cosens if not Brethren of one belly of Hell 56 they are who usually confound clear Scriptures with Spiritual and Mystical Illusions and sly from Distinctions and openings necessary in places more dark figurative and allegorical In pag. 211. He brings in Iohn Burton saying That the man that was crucified his body is now in the presence of his Father absent from his People as touching his bodily presence He Answers Doth not the Apostle say he is the Head of the Church and doth not the Apostle say they are of his Flesh and Bone and sit it heavenly places with Christ and Christ saith they must eat his flesh and he is in them As I remember at the reading of this Quotation I urged that herein G. Fox did plainly deny as indeed in all the rest I have quoted Christ Jesus to have had such a body as could be born of a woman wrapped in swadling Cloathes c. as could be hungry weary sleep discourse apprehended buffeted whipped nail'd to the Gallowes die be buried arise and ascend up visibly into these visible Heavens now in the presence of his Father and absent from his People on Earth as touching his bodily presence But one of my Opposites I think two of them bid me not wronge G. Fox by my Observation for his words were not so I Answ. In effect and Substance they were for G. Fox here and in all his Answers maintains the Negative to what his Opposites Affirm And 2. As to the grounds of his deniall it is clear that sometimes they are most plain and clear and sometimes most subtle and commonly such as will bear a twofold Sence on which they commonly ground some Iesuitical equivocation In Pag. 210. He brings in Iohn Burton saying Christ went away into Heaven from his Disciples and so not within them He Answers Did not he say that he would come again to them Did he not say he was in them I in you And did not the Apostle say Christ was in them except they were Reprobates the hope of Glory was he not revealed to the Apostle and so in him and did not the Apostle Preach Christ within and you preach Christ without Again in the same Page Those Believers that are in the body at this day are absent from the Lord He Answers again Doth not the Aposte say Christ is in them except they be Reprobates and he is in them the Hope of Glory and they have fellowship with God and God will dwell in them and walk in them and he that believes believes in him and Christ and so notabsent Again in the same Page they say He is absent from them as touching his slesh He Answers Doth not the Apostle say they 57 are of his Flesh and of his Bone and he that eates not his Flesh hath no life in him and they sit in heavenly places with him and he that eates his flesh hath it in him And again in the same Page they say There is not any Heaven within into which the Man Christ is ascended or can any man contain a man four foot long He Answers Christ is a Mystery and is he not to be revealed within who is a Mystery He who did descend to be revealed and made manifest in his Saints in slesh and Spirit that did descend which is now manifested that the World wonders at that is ascended far above the Heavens who is the Saints life living Bread and Drink and where ever used the Ministers of Christ any such expression as thou doth which shews that Christ to thee is a Mystery Reply In all these four Passages G. Fox expresly denies that Christ is ascended into Heaven from his Disciples That Believers now in the Body are absent from the Lord that he is absent from Man as touching his Flesh that there is a Heaven into which Christ is ascended and that Christs Body is not containable in a place according to his stature and proportion 2. In his Answers he notoriously jugles and equivocates as if he maintained Christ in Truth he that lived and died at Ierusalem and visibly ascended into Heaven though the whole scope and the plain open faced meaning of his words with loud cries tend altogether to another business to wit to set up himself by setting up the Image and Picture this Imaginary Christ which he calls the Light within them The same Author saith Pag. 206. A false Christ hath a new false Faith to apprehend this Crucified Christ within He Answers Which is contrary to the Faith of the Apostles which Preached Christ that 's Crucified within and not another Him that was raised from the dead was risen that Lord Jesus Christ within the same yesterday to day and for ever by whom the World was made glorified with the Father before the World began it was he that was manifest in the Saints that was and is not another for the other is Antichrist Again in the same Page it is a Sceipture of the Devils making to apprehend this Christ within He Answers Now I say if there be any Christ but he that was crucified within he is a false Christ and the Scripture holds forth this and the Devil never made it but he and his Messengers are against it And he that hath not this Christ 58 that was risen and Crucified within is a Reprobate though Devills and Reprobates may talk of him without This Quotation was read again in their own Book by Iohn Burnet and they magnified the Christ within but they would not suffer me to observe the sence and argue from
that God hath shined in our Hearts but there the heart must be understood the Understanding the Minde which is properly and nextly the seat of the Light and Knowledge of God and this shining though Fox make it to be natural or born with every Man is said to be by Pauls Preaching as is there abundantly proved where it is as clear as the Noon day shining that God shined Christ shined and Paul shined before the Light or Notice of the glad news of a Saviour come to the heart or ears of poor Sinners and so thereby are turned from their natural hellish Darkness to a Supernatural Heavenly Light Who knows not with Ieremiah the heart of Man to be naturally dark deceitful desperately evil and wicked Gen. 6. the imaginations of the heart of all men to be only Evil and that continually and that it may be said of all men as it is said of the holy God in him is Light and no Darkness so in them is Darkness and no Light so that to hearken to to turn to to listen to any voice or motion within in heavenly things in matters of supor 84 natural light is as proper as in matters of law to go for Counsel to a cheating thief or rogue in matters of health to a known cheating Mountebank as to turn within to a mans heart which was the arrantest Iugler and Cheater in the world At this word W. Edmundson cryed out Blasphemy He speaks Blasphemy I conceived he meant I called their immediate holy spirit which they pretend to the arrantest Iugler Cheater in the world My heart was warm and my tongue breaking silence and longing to shew him his willing mistake and that I mentioned not nor thought of the Holy Spirit but every mans own deceitful heart though clearly I have thought and proved their holy Spirit is no other but Sathan himself and every Man 's own deceitful Heart but I was prevented for some of the Auditory spake aloud that he mistook me and amongst others our Deputy Governour Capt. Cranston openly said that W. Edmundson mistook me for I expresly said that the Heart of man was the arrantest Iugler Cheater in the world This did not satisfie W. Edmundson but he replyed let the words be read then by him that took them in short-hand so they cal'd upon one of theirs to read what he wrote now I knowing what short-hand could doe as well as most in England from my Childhood and that it is impossible for any to write Verbatim so fast as I then spake with vehemency I concluded he had not exactly my words yet I am confident in a faction and partiality he seemed to read some words favouring my calling their spirit the arrantest Iugler and Cheater in the word extreamly contary to my certain knowledg of my intentions and of what I uttered beside the sâ—dden and quick exception of our Deputy Governour and others but alas this was a small business but I was about to say as before I did say from the holy Scripture Pro. 28. He that trusteth to his own heart is a fool and till a spirit of Regeneration and Conversion change the heart of man there is no other Christ nor Spirit within but the spirit of Sathan which is the spirit by which the Quakers are acted and is the arrantest Iugler Cheater in the world This Iugler is so cunning that he out-jugles the Iuglers he catcheth the craftiest foxes that catch so many others he takes Captive and leads away in chains the Wise and Prudent the High and Mighty til the holy Spirit of Christ Iesus discover and break his snares and lead him Captive also 85 2. I was adding another Argument from Isai. 59. and I did mention the place where the great promise Grant or Charter is given by God the Father to Christ Iesus and his Posterity viz. that his word and his Spirit should be in Christs mouth and in the mouth of his Seed and in the mouth of his Seeds Seed from thenceforth and for ever I said that that blessed Son of God and Son of Man the man Christ Jesus lived and dyed a Batchelour he never had any natural Seed or Issue Believers are his Offspring his Seed his Children and Grand-Children and so downward to as many as the Lord shall call And that Fox should not say the Word and the Spirit are all one as commonly G. Fox doth and that the Father and the Son are one without Distinction as boldly and Babilonically he doth Here is most distinctly and exactly distinguishing 1 The Father promising 2. The Son the Mediator receiving this Promise 3. The Promise it self which is of a Word to the Son though that blessed Son is also called the Word viz. of the revealed Doctrine Will and Mind of God recorded from and by the holy Scriptures viz. that this Word should be in his mouth and in the mouth of all his Seed or Christian Children after him especially his Messengers and Preachers to the end and Consummation of all things I told them it was notoriously known how they slighted this holy Charter how they joyned not the holy Word and Spirit together but trod upon the Word of God under a cloak of advancing the Spirit c. But of this I shall speak in the next Position following I was also mentioning a third Argument against their spirit from the Irrationallity and Unruliness of it contrary to the Wisdome and Rationallity and Order and Holiness of the holy Spirit of God this is apparent from their bitter Reviling and often senceless and frantick Reviling in some of them Devil Devil Devil The devillish Inquisitors Monks and Fryers c. exceed them not in spattering out Diablo Diablo against such as dare to oppose them indeed they are both Possessed by one spirit of blasphemous Railing and Reviling against the Witnesses far from the holy Spirit of the Gospel who in Meekness instructeth those that oppose themselves Was there ever fouler Language given by any poor Oister-woman at Billingsgate than is given by M. F. 86 against Capt. Wiggan to be seen in print to the shame of the Quakers Spirit of all their womanhood What is all their notorious common censuring and cursing even of eminent and learned and holy persons for Cains Iudases serpent Pharises dumh Dogs Witches Blasphemers Reprobates Devils but a fruit of wicked and rotten flesh deny and defying the holy Spirit of God It is true the Holy Spirit of God in Scripture is pleased to use Censures Curses but not to every one nor in such a manner as this foul-mouth'd Spirit doth I mentioned before their Impudency which stinks up to Heaven and cries for vengeance in the stripping stark naked of their Women and discovering of themselves in the Assembly of Men and Youths under the Cloak and Cover of the Spirit of God as also the unnatural Preaching of their Women in publick Assemblies
as are the Papists Iews and Quakers Allegations to a Venemous and poysonous End He brings in Henoch Howet saying The Scripture to be the only Weapon whereby Christ overthrew the Devil He Answers who bruiseth his Head and was before Scripture was yet the Scripture is for Correction and Doctrine furnishing the man of God in his place and Christ the Seed was before the Scripture was And all them that hath Scripture and not Christ cannot overcome the Devil you and the Papists doing his work for they that overcome him that is with the Power and those have the Scriptures of Truth which the Devil is out of 101 I Reply How doth Christs bruising of Satans Head and being before Scripture was disprove Fox his Opposites saying viz. the only weapon whereby Christ Jesus overcome the Devil was the Scripture what is this to the point of the Compass may not half and Eye see what a simple Sophister this is to make such Yawes as not to come near the Ships Course and point in hand 2. Who sees not Fox in his Burrough of the divers Acceptation of the Word Christ For in the Sense of his Opposite that man Christ Jesus who fought the Devil and Fox Confesseth died at Ierusalem was not before the Scriptures But his Birth and Life and Death were Proppesied and declared by the Scripture long before he was born 3. As for this saying They that have the Scripture and not Christ can not overcome the Devil What News doth Fox tell the World which no Body denies and how doth this deny that Christ Jesus overcome the Devil by the Scripture 4. Is all Scripture or writing given by Inspiration of God and is profitable though Fox alleadgeth this Scripture by halves for Correction and Doctrine c. then it clearly follows that as Christ Jesus overcome the Devil by the Scripture so by the same Weapon this subtle Fox and all other of Satans Foxes must be Corrected Confuted Catcht and destroyed except they repent for ever But what is this Confession that the Scripture is profitable for Correction c. but a kind of grant to his Opposite that Christ did overcome the Devil by this Weapon for he Confesseth it profitable for Correction c. though yet all this running about in and out into his holes in this Answer is a whispering and yet loud enough to be heard viz. that Christ did not overcome the Devil by the Scripture 5. As for the Quakers Power here pretended in Opposition to the Scripture as being those that have Scripture within them and so overcome the Devil How doth the Devil deal as one that pretends to Fight with Children who lies down and Cries as if those poor Childish Souls had Overcome him Thus sometimes a Devil of Drunkenness of Swearing of Stealing runs away from the Sermons of the Quakers as a naughty Devil sometimes at the Chiding and Conjuring of a good Witch That he may get the faster hold by spiritual pride hypocrisie 102 self Conceit and Contradiction to the Scripture by will worship and Superstitious Inventions against the holy Institutions and Commands of the true Lord Jesus Christ. Pag. 289. He brings in Francis Duke saying When Christ told the Devil that man should not live by Bread alone but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God that was believing the Scripture And this Word of God in the Scripture was the Ground of Christs Faith and so to all that are his He Answers Many may have the Scripture and never hear the voice of God as the Jews in the fifth of Iohn and they said they believed the Scriptures though they were out of the true belief But receiving the Word from God is as they that gave forth the Scriptures which man lives by and not by bread alone and so knows him who was before Scripture was given forth And for saying that the Scripture was the Ground of Christs Faith he was afore the Scripture was writ and so fulfils their Words and is the Author and the Finisher of the Saints Faith which was before the Scripture was given forth him by whom the World was made and is the Author of the Saints Faith that bruised the Serpent under his feet which was before the Scripture was 1. I Reply How Notorious for Tautologies are these brutish Clamours Thrice in this small Answer have we of Christ which was before Scripture was who was before Scripture was c. shall we believe their Notorious Lyes viz. that the Light within them gave forth Scripture and that they speak and write as they are moved by the most holy and Infallible Spirit when their writings are so weak lame and Childish just like the talk of Aged doting Women and so full of Idle Repetitions 2. What Answer is this how brutish and Impious viz. that a man may have the Scripture and yet not be in the belief therefore the Word of God was not the Ground of Christs belief so again the Devil and wicked men may have the Scripture and yet believe not in them therefore Christ Jesus and his saints believe them not neither this Inference is clear you say Christ was before Scripture was c. I Reply He was and he was not But let Heaven and Earth Hear and abhor the Sophistry of these Deceivers they would fain 103 have no such Christ as man a Christ without an out-side Christ but a Spirit and God only and that in their Flesh yet again for shame of the world they are forct to Confess that there was such a man or person c. and yet to Cloak and Cover that Confession from Crossing their Principle they say that before Scripture was Christ bruised the Serpents Head that is Christ that made the World Christ the Light the Word But this again we say is false also for the Promise is Gen. 3. that the Seed of a Womau which was Christ in his Manhood born in the Fulness of Time Gal. 4. And let G. Fox or any of their Iuglers Answer If they speak honestly and bona fide if there was really such a man called Jesus at Ierusalem c. as there was such a man called G. Fox lately in New-England was there not such a man called Jesus after the Scripture was written or penn'd was dot this man forty dayes tempted of the Devil and did not this man called Jesus Christ Overcome the Devil by the Weapon of the writing or Scripture and was not the holy Scripture the Ground of his Faith as he makes the Will or Word of God declared in this holy Writing or Record the Ground of his saints Faith also He brings in Iohn Timson saying The Scripture is the Rule of Life He Answers Contrary to Christ who said the Spirit should lead them into all Truth And they that are the Sons of God are led by the Spirit of God and the Churches was to hear what the spirit said
told me that it was known that they preached the Doctrine of Repentance and of turning from all sin unto God c. I Answered that the Papists and they made a shew and Colour of Repentance but it had not the Life and Substance of Repentance in it It was no more but an empty Title and shadow of Repentance we know the Papists define their Repentance by these three First Contrition Secondly Confession and Thirdly Satisfaction or Restitution But I said the Protestants protested against this Repentance of the Papists and so against the Quakers for who knew not the sorrow and Confessions of Saul and Ahab and Pharaoh and the Philistins and Iudas yea and also the Restitution which Iudas made not daring to keep in his hands that which he had unjustly and wickedly gotten and yet who can truly ascribe unto these mens Repentance the Character and blessedness of a true Christian returning and coming home to God 2. I said it is known in daily practice that when some times 116 Notorious and openly Flagitious Persons profess to be Quakers for all their craking of fear and trembling and Quaking there hath appeared no Sense of godly sorrow of godly Contrition and brokenness of heart in them for their sinful Nature and Life against so Infinitely pure an Holiness and Majesty but immediately upon their bowing down to Satan and owning him as a Light and Christ and Spirit within them they are having less Prophaneness now pure and holy as God is they can no more sin then Christ can the Mistery of godliness is God manifested in their Flesh I know some of them say they come to perfection by degrees yet they say the least of their new-born Quakers can not sin and what is that but Perfection yea they are Christ and God and therefore why should they give respect to any King or Kings c. why should they not Thee and Thou the Aged Learned holy and High why should they not sit silent even scores and hundreths of them possessed with a dumb Spirit as in a Form and Order of Christian worship waiting for this Spirit and then be perfect Christians 3. The Protestants both English French and Dutch c. have manifested against the Papists and therein against the Quakers that Repentance is a turning of whole Soul from all sin as sin to all of God as God from the sin of Nature and that Heart filthiness which we bring into the world with us and from whence even from within as Christ Jesus tells us what ever Satan and the poor Quakers prate proceed our evil thoughts Adulteries Fornications Murthers Thefts Covetousness Wickedness Deceit Lasciviousness an Evil Eye Blasphemy pride Foolishness Mark 7 c. 4. I urged that their Proselites and Converts are but like the Pharisees of old though oftentimes dearly bought by Sea and Land I say but tâ—rned from one sin to another from one Image to another from one Devil of Drunkenness of Swearng c. to a Devil of Pride horrible pride the worst of all prides in Earth or Hell to wit a Spiritual Pride swelling with the Dropsies and Tympanies of their Conceited knowledge Conceited Repentance Conceited Faith Love patience joy holiness Iustification Sanctification Mortification and Salvation 2. How horribly do they despise the true broken hearted Pub 117 licans who can see nothing but sin and Damnation in themselves and cry out for mercy and Forgiveness How do they Superciliously and Pape-like belch out as from Hell God I thank thee that I am not like these Publicans 3. How bitterly do they Instantly raile and revile Condemn and Curse breathing out Fire of Damnation as Fire and Brimstone from the Mountains in Sicily or else Hell it self against all that oppose them as far from the Teaching of Christ and his first Messâ—ngers as Lambs and Doves are from the Ravenous popish and Devilish Lyons and Eagles 4. To name no more at present How doth the Devil of worldliness and Covetousness domineer over many of them By a strict Profession all persons are taken off from Drunkenness Whoredome Swearing c. und put on Theiftiness and Industry and if their hearts Centre and fix not on Christ Jesus and the Heavenly Records of Christ the Scriptures and on the Life to come but upon Self Exalting self a self Christ and Spirit and Heaven and Resurrection c. which is the Truth and bottom of the Quakers Religion what can the most of them run in but a Course of greedy gaping after and getting and raking and gathering the muck and dung of this present Life It is true that many that hold the same Fanciful Notions with the Quakers yet are of Ranting jovial spending Spirits but the Spirit that haunts the Quakers most is a soure proud and Melancholy Devils and his Commission is to turn such persons into the Gadarens Swine rooting up all that ever they come at for their own Ends and Belly How many are the Instances even in this Colony in some especially as able and as active Souls as any in this Colony or Country and as guilty of murthering the Natives by the Liqour Trade as any and as suddenly and strangely snatcht away by the hand of Gods Power and Iustice as any usually can be but being departed I will touch no more upon this string From their Doctrine of and their Heresie or Obstinacy in a false Repentance I touch next npon their false Faith I said it was true they spoke much of Faith and Justification c. as the Papists did and as G. Fox in his Book by me did yet if they pleased I would demonstrate by Instances out of his Book all along that he Confounded and made all one both Faith and Ju 118 stification yea and Sanctification and made believing in Christ Jesus but a meer Babel and Chaos of Nonsence and Cnnfusion For although which is Foxes Common Burrough he that Faith hath Repentance hath Justification Sanctification and all Christian graces yet to Confound and make them all one is as to go into a fair Garden and say a Rose is every Flower in the Garden or to say that the Letter A or O is every Letter in a Printers Box or Book Or to say that a Rebels receiving the Kings pardon that is the King himself his receiving it is the pardon it it self that is the Rebels Conviction Conversion Condemnation Execution Resurrection Acceptation Exaltation and Adoption into the Favour and Communion with the King for the Future All this Monstrons and Nonsensical Language is the Tongue or Speech of the Quakers and G. Fox especially 2. I told them that although with the Quakers and Papists G. Fox talkt much of Faith in Christ yet I had proved and further should that the Quakers put out and obliterate the true Christ or Object to be received and believed on as before in the matter of Faith they put out the true living Eye of
Their great Blunderer Humphry Norton he deals as plainly and roundly as G. Fox his aemulous Corrival falsly and fraudulently when that holy Scripture If in this Life only we have Hope c. was here objected to Humphry Norton he clapt his hand on his Breast saying He had it there already that is opposing it to and denying the Hope in the Life to come especially as to their Bodies which are not raised up they say Spiritual Bodies being though of late more subtly and hipocritically all one with those deceived Souls that said the Resurrection was past already It is true they will pretend to owne the Scriptures Christs humane Nature the Resurrection and Judgement and Faith and Hope ahd Repentance c. as true and sound as any Protestant but still it is no otherwise but as G. Fox and Ed. Burroughs say in this Book that is as I have and shall open in a most Iugling and deceitful Sense and meaning It is reported that some of them at their Death have used those words Lord Iesus receive my Spirit some have Charitably thought that they intend thereby their going presently into the presence of Christ Jesus but as the Truth and bottom however they blind the world and the weakest of their Followers until they be fit to wean and fall to strong meat others of them Covertly say write and others of them more plainly say viz. That they believe no more Rising of their Bodies then the rising of a Dog and as to their Spirits they believe Souls are 122 patts of God and go unto God and into God and therefore their saying Lord Iesus receive my Spirit is no more then Lord Jesus receive thy self according to some of their plain Expressions To whom should I pray my self to whom should I give Thanks my self wherein their woful black and filthy Spirit Contradicteth it self amongst themselves though they agree in the Devils Bait which Catcht himself and with which he Catcht our first Patents and all his Posterity viz. Ye shall be as Gods live as God know as God be Gods and Christs for Evermore I shall now crave the Readers patience to hear some few Quotations out of G. Fox which my quarter of an hour would not then permit declaring thâ—ir Apostacie and Heresie in the matters of Repentance Faith c. In Pag. 127. he brings in Iohn Bunyan saying It is a Counterfietlng of the New Birth for men to follow the Light wherewith men coming into the World are enlightned G. Fox Answereth which none comes to the New Birth but who comes to the Light wherewith every man c. which believing in is a Child of the Light believing and receiving comes to receive power to be the Sons of God I Reply none are truly Converted born again c. but in a true Sense they come to Christ Jesus For the Scripture saith he gives Repentance to Israel He is the Author and Finisher of our Faith But that Jesus Christ as God so the Quakers owne him and as man for so they also owne him should be in every man and Woman and Child in the World I have proved and shall prove it to be a blockish and Devilish Fancy 2. If this Light this Christ the Mediator between God and man be only a Spirit and not man why do the Scriptnre why do the Quakere madly say there was such a man though they cannot tell now what is become of him except he be as they say within c. 3. If this Light this Christ this Mediator be in every man what should be the Reason that so many Thousands and Ten Thousand of Millions see him not Only a few persons Cursing and Reviling all the rest and that say all but the Quakers are deceived Can the Sun be in a Chamber and persons not blind but 123 seeing and awake and using his Light and yet not see it Certainly it is but a painted Sun that doth not shine equally on all it is but a painted Fire that doth not burn and the Quakers are but Pictures of Christians and pictures of men to argue aftet such a Rate that Christ not only as God and Creatour should be in every man but also as the Mediator as the Spirit and yet not operate according to the Nature of the Sun and Fire It is true the Lord Jesus came into the dark world and their darkness comprehended him not to be He that was to come the true Messiah but when Christ Jesus as Mediator the true or only Light shall dwell in the Understanding and Will and Memory and Affections of a man or Woman and those persons be savingly inlightened by him as you write and yet not Converted and saved by him it can be the Language of none but those that peep and mutter Isai. 8. but have no true Light but a false and painted Light within them Lastly saith Fox this turning to the Light within is the New Birth But the Holy Record saith that till the preaching of the Word or Gospel or glad News come to the mind of a man ordinarily by the Ear and hearing and preaching Rom. 10. there is no Faith nor Covenant nor Christ nor God in the Soul Ephes. 2. and we are not only in darkness but darkness it self Ephes. 5. and only by the holy Word and Spirit preached the blessing Isai. 59. God shineth in our hearts and not by any such Immediate Fantastick Faith or Spirit as the Anti Christian Quakers dream of yea against the Light of a twofold Experience in their own Souls 1. That many of them being enlightened and formerly Convicted by the reading or preaching of the Doctrine Word or Will of God revealed in the holy Scripture 2. That of their new Light as they falsly and foolishly prate pretended to be brought unto their Ears and knowledge by the means of these new Apostles Preachers and Ministers so pretended of Christ Jesus When God hides that is by Spiritual Iudgements the Light of Scripture of the Spirit of Reason and of Experience c. who can find it out No man no nor Devil can subsist one minute without the power of Christs Eternal Power and God-head 124 but when Christ Jesus comes into the Soul as Mediator of the new Covenant and be thus idle and not operative in all mankinde in the World and not to Convert and work belief in them which must be either because he cannot or because he will not as the Leaper said is as black and blasphemous a Fancy as any Atheistical or AntiChristian Soul can harbour He brings in George Willington saying He is Iustified by Faith alone without good works He Answers What without Faith that works by Love I Reply In this passage and in many others this subtle man clearly discovers what he makes true Justifying Faith to be viz. not one hair breadth more then the Faith that may be to God in the first Covenant the Covenant of
word in Gen. 2. might be viewed which he turned to and read viz. God breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living Soul About this time Sam. Gorton sen. desired to speak and said If it be affirmed that God can be divided that man was a Part of God the God-head was destroyed and the Soul of man and upon this Basis all the rest would follow which was asserted in this Position And whereas Iohn Stubs read it as it is in our Translation viz. God breathed into him the breath of life Mr. Gorton said it was Lives in the Margin the breath of Lives which Iohn Stubs acknowledged It is frequent in their Books when they will speak plainly for them to confess that God breathed forth himself into Adam and that ther fore mans Soul or Spirit is a part of the Divine Essence that the Soul is an increated substance that as for the Body it comes from the Earth and returns to the Earth and dust and rottenness and however they sometimes preach and print hat the Body shall rise again yet others again of them speak plainly that as the body of a dog or beast so it vanisheth But as for the Spirit they say that returns to God that is into God And although they talk to blind our eyes of a Resurrection and Iudgment and of Souls being punished with the Devil and his Angels yet others of them affirm that all Souls return into God and that the soul of Iudas is now as happy in God as the Soul of Peter yea others of 146 them speak plainly that they are Christ God therefore one of them being desired to give thanks at dinner asked roundly to whome should I give thanks to my self and Calvin relates how long ago one Quinitinus in his time a Leader this way being demanded how he did resolutely answered How can Christ doe but well and yet at that time he was very sick About this time W. E. said what dost thou tel us of storyes what this man said and that man said we will not believe thee But just here rose up a neighbour Ioseph Iinks who said he had no prejudice against the Quakers yet he could witness to the truth of these speeches of the Quakers for one of them had spoke as much to his face lately at Newport on Rhode-Island but I still laboured to keep down heat and therefore I told them I would not trouble them with Proofs from elsewhere but from their own writings and from that of G. Fox there present and therfore I prayed them to turn to Pag. 39. where G. Fox brings in Magnus Bine saying The Saints are neither in the fulness of the God-head nor part away with this Blasphemy which saith this is c. Fox answereth The work of the Ministry was to bring People to the Knowledg of the Son of God to a perfect man to the unity of the Faith to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ and Christ will dwell in the Saints and God will dwell in them and thou sayest they have no part of the Fulness of the Godhead and Iohn saith of his fulness have we all received in whome dwels the Godhead bodily and ye be all in the Blasphemy that be out of this part of the Fulness I said that G. Fox rose up contrary to what Magnus Bine affirmed to wit That the Saints are not in the fulness of the Godhead But W. E. bid me let G. F. his words alone his meaning alone and keep to the words I told them the substance of my proof lay there in the substance of G. Fox his answer to his Adversaryes I took Fox his own word for the Quotation out of his Adversary which may be thought to be taken with as much Favor and advantage to himself as may be and therefore if they stopt me from opening and comparing the words in a rational and just way they stopt me in the bringing forth of my Proofs and Arguments I think here it was that W. E. said further If thou goest on to make out G. Fox his Sence and meaning we tell thee that we will stop thee c. 147 But since our business is with G. Fox as well if not more than with W. E. especially because of his Book we shall now more freely inlarge upon the words c. and Sence and Meaning also For the Fulness of the Godhead is one thing and another thing our and all his works and Creatures partaking of that Fulness in some mercifull likeness and coformity as Moses and we behold his Back or dark Resemblance and by Reâ—lection as we behold the Sun take in some weak low thoughts and conceits of the Eternal and Invisible incomprehensible and inconceivable Power and Godhead Thus to partake of some drops of the Ocean of his Wisdom Power Goodness Holiness c. is not to become an Ocean of Power Wisdom Goodness Holiness yea Wisdom it self Power it self Goodness it self Holiness it self as God is This devilish Pride was the Sin of the Devils or wicked spirits this was the Sin of our first Parents unto which the Devil beguiled them and this is Sathans bait still to catch all Wise Rich High and especially Holy People with viz. to be as God to be in the fulness of the Godhead to be God himself 2. However this Iugler speaks here of the Fulness of the Godhead bodily in Christ yet if he be examined and searched it is clear that by Christ he meanes the Body the Quakers and every one of their Bodyes is Christ in whome the Godhead dwels bodily and the great Mystery of which the Holy Scripture speaketh 1 Tim. 3. Is God manifest in their flesh and therefore Sam. Fisher useth in his Writing Christ Iesus as Peter did in his denying of him saying that Person whome you call God-Man is as high Treason against the King of kings and King of Saints as hath ordinarily been acted since God most wonderfully gave life to a lump of Clay which now perks up to the eternal Power and Godhead Pag. 90. G. Fox brings in the same Author saying There is a kind of Infiniteness in the Soul and it cannot be Infiniteness it self He answers Is not the Soul without beginning comeing from God and returning into God again which hath it in his hand which hand goes against him that doth evill which throws down that which warrs against it and Christ the Power of God the Bishop of the Soul which brings it up into God which comes out from God hath this a beginning and ending and is not this infinite in it self and more than all the World 148 I Reply in these few lines let him that hath his sences make common sence and English of some of them However this is express that the Soul is without beginning or ending coming out of God and returning into God Hath this saith Fox a
take from us or bring upon us I said and say that neither the teachings of the Papists or Quakers will help them to get up one Step of this heavenly Ladder for by the utmost strength and activity of Nature no man can advance and climbe higher then to love God and Christ and Heaven for it Self and Self-ends which is no more but Flattering of God base and dog-like Fawning and Hypocrisie I cannot call to mind ought that was opposed by my Antagonists against these Considerations but Iohn Stubs said Dost thou count our Religion an easie Religion for my part said he we have not found it so easie to forsake all the glory and pleasure of this world to forsake wife and children c. to goe about the work of the Lord in strange Countreys c. 157 And W. E. said thou sayest our Religion is an easie Religion For my part said he I have not found it so I have not found it so easie to forsake all the glory and honour and pleasures of this World and to expose our selves to hardships to forsake our Wives and Children Friends and Relations and to goe about in strange Countreys c. And W. E. further said in that thou saist our Religion is an easie Religion it is a plain evidence that thou that talkest so much of Religion and of the Religion of the Quakers thou yet never knewest what Religion is with more to this effect and they according to their wild spirit insisted vehemently on the wronge which I did them and the People called Quakers and that as for themselves they were but a few but the people called Quakers were a great Body they were many thousands all over England they were many thousands in London as also in Barbadoes and New-England and Virginia and other places I replyed that my time would not give me leave as they knew to say much to their greatness and number yet I said their Religion like the Papists was easie and agreeable with Nature they had the wind and tyde of natural corruption to joyn with their spirit which knew this well enough 1. It was easie to perswade the Quakers to change one fowle Spirit and Devil for an other a Devil more gross and ugly for a Devil more refined painted and guilded their pride in Cloathes and fantastical Fshions to pride in self conceit and fantastical Opinions their Drunkenness and Gluttony with Wine and Flesh to Intoxications with high and proud Vapours How many millions travel on the broad way to Destruction and yet prate of a strict and narrow Path What wonderfull hardships doe both Turks and Papists endure in their religious Pennances How doe they macerate and whip themselves even till the bloud of their tender Women hath streamed down upon the ground from them Yea how zealously in the cause of their Religion have the very Iewes themselves cast away their Lives as Spain and Portugal can witness Besides I told them it was a poor lame thing to talk of numbers when the Council of the only Wise was so clearly revealed concerning his Little Flock opposed to the vast and monstrous Herds both of civiliz'd and wild Nations 158 I put them in mind of the innumerable multitudes that followed after that stupendous Cheater Mahomet even thirteen parts of the world divided into thirty as very knowing Cosmographers or Describers of the World have computed And if so be that the Pope and Church of Rome be the eight Head the great Whore that sits upon many Waters Kingdomes and Nations what a poor Slut is the Quakers Fancy compar'd with the Baals Priests the Romish Proselites the Beast whome the whole world wonders after 3. Again it is to me and may be to all men wonderfull that since the Religion of the Quakers is so easie c. that ten thousands more of people in old and new England Scotland Ireland and other parts have not lifted themselves under this new Mahomet pretending so much from the Dove from Heaven as Mahomet did T is true G. Fox and Foxians pretend the two horns of the Lamb and that their weapons are not Iehues nor Baals Priests but that they have forsaken all Carnal Weapons but this I shall shew to be an horrible Lye when I come to the last Position The Devil and the Papists and the Quakers know that the Quakers only want a Sword to subdue as many Proselites as either Mahomet or the Pope hath done The Quakers some prate subtilly others childishly against Carnal Weapons Carnal Weapons c. but I shall shew if God please in my 14th and last Position what a Devil of Pretence this is At present the Devil knowes they want but a Sword not Hearts nor Hands nor Principles whereby to subdue as maâ—y Proselytes as the Pope or Mahomet hath and literally and materially thrash the Mountains with Flails of iron and make the Nations turn in an easie Hypocrisie and Dissimulation Dissembling Quakers I wonder and adore the Councels of the Eternal that any of these three should be Cheated by this spirit First Any of those truely fearing God for their Principles spirit and practices being so notoriously opposite to the meek and patient Spirit of true Purity and Holiness and evidencing them to be lead by a dumb and dogged Spirit 1. Their high and shameless Pride and Vapouring is notoriously known of which in the next Position 2. Their mouth full of Cursing and Railing above any or all that profess to march under the Christian Name and 159 Colours 3. They spit not out their Venome so fiercely against any as against the most conscientious Preachers and Professor of the Protestant Faith as appears all along in this railing of Fox in Folio against them 4. They easily fall in with openly profane and ungodly persons and with carnal and luke-warm Laodiceans who can swim with the tyde sail with every wind If they can but say Thee and Thou c. 5. It is wonderfull how their spirit professing to be Protestants can so wickedly strike in with the bloudy spirit of the Papists against the Witnesses and Martyrs of Jesus compiled by that heavenly I. Fox in the Book of Martyrs which this bloudy spirit in Iames Purnels Watcher upbraidingly calls Your Record as if it were none of theirs nor the bloudy Papists against whose bloudy practises under their Popes and the old proud Romans the Romane Gods and Emperours that heavenly Book shews how those heavenly Martyrs or Witnesses over came by the Bloud of the Lamb the word of their Testimony and not loving of their Lives unto the Death 6. That most Savage and worse then Indian Spirit of their stripping their women stark naked and so to enter into the streets and Assemblyes of men and youths which Piety Christianity and common Womanhood and Modesty abhor to think of Secondly As I wonder how any godly Soul so how any Learned Soul who hath studied the primitive Copyes
G. Fox Answers Though the Scripture saith the Spirit dwells in the Saints 1 Cor. 6. And he that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit 1 Joh. 1. As though the Saints had not Union with God which the Scripture say they have I Reply concerning the Essence or Being of the Immortal Invisible Infinite Eternal Omnipotent and Omniscient and only Wise we know no more then a Fly knows what a King is and therefore 1 Tim. 9. He dwells in the Light that no man can approach to how fully doth the Holy Spirit in the Book of Iob and especially in that dreadful Word or Voice of God in a Whirlwind knock out the brains of all these proud Fancies let this proud Fox or any of the stoutest Lions or Lionesses amongst them look but a few minutes upon the glorious Sun in the Heavens and then tell us how their eyes do and yet thus like proud and pratling Children do they make a noise about their Bibs and Aprons and Muckingers and how they are one with God his Being and Essence c. Is it not enough for Sun Moon and Stars and Men to be enlightned by his Infinity but they must be God himself and Light it self in the highest sence because God is Light c. What impudence would it be in a Wife because she is one with her Husband in Relation to say She is the Husband himself and not to keep her just distinction and distance or in a Subject because the Subjects and the King are Relatives and in a sence one 189 therefore to say that they are the King himself Again we know that the word Spirit is taken in Holy Scripture for a Spiritual Nature Hence it is said that God is a Spirit not that God is properly a Spirit no more then he is Light though my Opposites in our Dispute affirmed he was but of such a Heavenly and Spiritual Nature For the Devils also are Spirits though defiled with sin and wickedness thus Ioh. 3. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit not that Spirits beget Spirits and that a new Creature is a young holy Spirit or God himself as I told one of the chief of the Quakers at Newport And that 1. Cor. 6. shews us in what respect he that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit For know you not saith Paul that your Bodies are the Temples of the Holy Spirit and Ephes. 2. For an Habitation of God through the Spirit Thus God dwelt in his Temple of old as a Man in his House and a King in his Palace not that a Mans House or the Kings Palace is of his Substance or Essence no more then an house is of the Suns Essence c. and no more was Gods Temple of old nor his Temples his Saints now after the blockish and blasphemous nonsence of the Quaker In Page 2. He brings in Sam Eaton saying The Scripture is to be judge of Doctrines and Manners G. Fox Answers The Iews had not the infallible Iudgement that had Scripture but stood against Christ the Light and judged him to be a Devil that judgement was not infallible and that Doctrine and Manners of theirs was not right which goes against Christ the Light I Reply as the Sun in the Heavens is the Epitomy or Center of all Natural Light though some eyes are sore look a squint or are stark blinde And as the Rule or Canon though Fox simply bogles at that as not a Scripture word is the same for it is in the Greek though millions know it not and millions as the Pharises pervert and misapply it The Holy Scripture is granted by G. Fox to be Gods Words though in a subtle fancie not his Word but if it be every word of their Gods then is every Word as Dâ—vid saith a Light to our feet and a Lanthorn to our Paths though we despise it and wilfully refuse it as some sometimes do Lanthorns and wilfully stumble 190 into the Ditch Eternal and other poor Souls after us Thus the Heavenly Sun-Dial is one and constant in its guidance and direction to us poor Travellers though we neglect to look on it or be ignorant of the figures and lines of it and be willingly ignorant c. We are not only commanded to read and meditate in the Holy Scriptures and to search them as the Bereans did but we are commanded to try all things to try the very Spirits The Papists slap us in the mouth with the infallible Spirit of the Pope and that he is not to be judged the Quakers say the same of themselves which is no more then as I said in the Dispute when W Edmund interrupted me crying out Blasphemy for a Man to go for Counsel to an arrant Cheater and Jugler then cheating most when he calls all others Cheaters In Page 3. He brings in the same Author saying That God did not intend immediate Teaching nor to give out an immediate voice in after ages which should direct and guid men in the way of Salvation He Answers which is contrary to the Scripture which saith All the people of the Lord shall be taught of the Lord and he that is of God heareth Gods word and that is immediate and living and doth endure for ever there is no fallibility nor delusion in the Revelation of God but all fallibility and delusion is out of it I Reply it is granted that God speaks mediately unto us by the light of Nature within us doth not nature teach you that it is a shame for a man to have long hair c. 2. By his works of Creation 3. His Providence without us in his mercies and judgements so that every drop of Rain and crumb of Bread and grain of Corn is Gods word and witness And 4. The pains of the Body and Dreams in the night have much of Gods word and voice in them Iob 33. God speaks once and twice but man hears it not and is not Gods speaking his Word And 5 All grant that the words of Scripture are the words of God And 6. The teachings of men Ephes. 4. are granted to be means c. both for the gathering of the Church as Apostles and for the Governing of the Flocks as Pastors and Shepherds c. 191 7. The Water the Bread the Wine c. are appointed by Christ Jesus to be means while profession of Christ Jesus is made on earth to hold forth a remembrance of him until his second coming 8. The private Prayers and Fastings and Meditations of the Saints day and night are holy Meanes in and by which the Eternal God speaks Peace Instruction Reproof and Comfort to to them that fear him 9. Sometimes it pleaseth God by the Ministration of his Ministring Spirits the invisible Angels to work by unknown and unseen wayes to us thus in Pauls Light and Voice and Blindness and the Iailors Earthquake but afterward in Ananias his sending
and Hope shortly to see them shall now this Glad news or Gospel though but a few raggs made Paper be stiled a Dead letter yea a Killing letter though it contain nothing as the Christian Gospel or Glad news doth not but glad news or Tidings 8. Hence it is that we read so often of Preaching the Gospel of Believing the Gospel and that as before Paul calls it his Glad news or Gospel because it was his work to tell it Yea but saith this Deceiver throughout his Book A man may have the Letter and Form without the Power and Life c. I Answer Who knows not that and that a Form picture is not the man himself who knows not that Iudas notwithstanding his pretended Love and Kissing of Christ Iesus that yet he had not the Life power of true Love and heavenly affection but doth it follow that living and moving Bodyes have not Souls Spirits within them because that pictures have not That none preach Christ Iesus truly because that G. Fox preacheth an immaginary and Allegorical Christ in order to establish himself the only true Christ and the Eternal Son of God as many bewitched Souls call him 9. What is this but to cheat poor Birds with the Chaff Falacy of dividing the Body from the Soul the Letter from the Meaning the Instrument or Tool from the Workman or Husbandman using it the Gospel or glad news from Believing of it Ah poor cheated Souls called Quakers all of you why do you willingly out of pretended Enlightnings Experiences shut your eye of common Sense and Reason not daring to call good news good news because some or the most will not Believe it was it not so with the women preaching or telling the good news or gospel although few or none were found to believe that Christ was risen 10. The truth is search your cheating Familiars narrowly you will find that your selves and the Papists would make an Holy Day of that Day in which all the Bibles in the world were burnt that you may establish your infallible spirits Traditions I know I wronge you not I have too much proof of it which you would se if the heart were not the arrantest Cheater in the World and your selves not willing to be cheated T is true Antiochus attempted the burning of Moses and the Prophets out of the world some of the bloudy Emperours followed on in Antiochus his bloudy Steps raging against the Scriptures also the Romane Popes in theirs and common reason may tell all men and the Quakers themselves 195 that if the same power come into their hands as Antiochus the Romane Emperours had the holy Scriptures shall not if they can effect it trouble them or others one day in the world longer But of this more in the next and last Position A 5th Instance is pag 10 where G. Fox brings in Iohn Bunian saying It is not Faith and works that justifie in the sight of God but it is Faith and good works which justifie in the sight of men only c. He answers Abraham was not justified to men only by his Obedience but to God and where is Faith there is Iustification which works by Love and the Saints Faith works were not only to justifie them in the sight of men for the Work of God is to doe what he saith his Will which who doth not are not justified in so doing but to be beaten with Stripes who seek to be justified by their Faith and Works in the sight of men are Dead Faith Works both I Reply In this great business of justification Pardon of Sin which Luther called the great Wall of Seperation between us and the Papists I humbly hope to shew how lame this Fox is and that he his Foxians agree with the Papists Arminians Socinians against the true Protestants in this fundamental business For what is Iustification but a Pardon written and sealed and declared from the King of Heaven to poor condemned Traitors That this Pardon may be merited by any Price that we or all the World can offer is denied by true Protestants but affirmed in effect by the proud unbroken Souls of Papists Arminians Socinians and these Foxians called Quakers It is true after a condemned Soul hath received a Pardon or Iustification from his King freely without Desert upon the Princes Mediation he declares his loyal and thankfull Obedience c. but is this his Pardon Iustification as our subtle Simpletons imagine Again that Abraham was pardoned or justified it is all one for his Work sake as this blind Soul â—aith how doth Rom. 3 4. and the Epistle to the Galathians cry out and the experience of every true broken Heart cry out Lyar against such proud and Popish Blasphemies Further If all the Righteousness of the best of men that is their good Thoughts good Words good Actions Aims Prayers Preachings Sufferings be but as Womens Menstruous filthy Clouts as the Most High calls them what Popish and frantick Madness is it in Fox to talk of Iustification before God by works or by Obedience A 6th Instance is Pag 16. where he brings in Henoch Howet saying It is an Expression of a dark deluded Mind to say that God is not distinguished from the Saints G. Fox Answ. But God and Christ is in 196 the Saints and walks in them and he is is a Reprobate and out of the Apostles Doctrine I reply to this Canting Gypsie in Pag. 74. He denyes the Position of Ralph Farmer viz. That God the Creator is eternally distinct from all Creatures and that Christ being God only in one Person remains a distinct person from all Men and Angels Also in the same Page that God is distinct in his Being and Blessedness from all Creatures I Answer is it not Sufficient that poor Dust and Ashes poor Chaff and Stubble may be admitted to a Parly with the Heavenly Majesty and receive Smiles of his Countenance in the Face of the only begotten Prince Mediator to be cloathed with the Virgins diverse Collours and heavenly Affections but with the Devil and our first Parents we must aspire to the throne of the Incomprehensible Majesty and Godhead also Besides Let mans Common Sence be Umpire is there no Distinction between Infinite and Finite between the Infinite Ocean of Majesty power goodness Wisdom c. and the poor Dross of which Men Angles are Partakers The King dwells in White-Hall and in other of his Royal Palaces is therefore no Distinction between the King and his Houses though some may be braver then others And yet Fox saith his Opposite is a Reprobate I ask why The only Reason Fox gives is because he licks not up the filthy and hellish poyson of Foxes childish and hellish Blasphemy against the Eternal Godhead A 7th Instance is Pag. 22. where he brings in Ioseph Kellet saying They be all alienated from God and
in this present world I told them that in our Native Countrey and in all civilized Countreys the civility Courteous Speech Courteous Salutation and respective Behaviour was generally practised opposite to the cariage of Barbarous Unciviliz'd People This I said was according to the command of the holy Spirit in Paul Eph 4. and in Peter 1. Pet 3. Be pitifull be Courteous c. Such a Spirit was Christ Jesus of even to his greatest Opposites and to the greatest Sinners insomuch that for his Courtesie Gentleness Sociableness with open Sinners the dogged proud and sullen Pharises counted him a Drunkard and Glutton a friend and Companion of Publicans and sinners We English were our selves at first wild and savage Britains Gods mercy had civilized us and we were now come into a wild and savage Countrey without Manners without Courtesie so that generally except you begin with a What Chear or some other Salutation you had as good meet an Horse or a Cow c. And hath not the Quaker â—pirit been such a Spirit amongst us have we not known persons formerly loving courteous c. and as soon as this Spirit hath come upon them have not our eyes seen them pass by their Familiars their Kindred 202 their Elders and Superiours and though kindly spoken to not give a Word or a Look toward them as if they were not worthy of a word or a look from such High Saints c. How like indeed have they been to the Popish Saints in a Procession they See not Hear not Speak not c. or like these very Barbarians and therefore I said 2. G. Fox in his book affirms that the Conversation of these very Barbarians in many things were better then his Opposites c. I mused in my self being much acquainted with the Natives what G. Fox should mean he not having been in N. England when he wrote that passage but since I have heard that the Quakers have commended the spirit of the Indians for they have seen them come into English Houses and sit down by the fire not speaking a word to any body But this cariage of the Indians proceeds from a bruitish spirit for generally they have boldly come in without Knocking or asking of leave and sit down without any respect in word or gesture to the Governour or chief of the Family whosoever just the Quakers general fashion and Spirit Further I told them that in some respect the spirit and cariage of the Quakers was worse then that of the Indians for if they were sd by the English in the high-way or coming into an House they are very ready to receive your Salutation kindly and return you another But commonly we know that it is not so with the Quakers bruitish spirit 2. The Indians morning and evening and upon all meetings they give a respective and proper Salutation to their own Superiours and sometimes in gesture as well as speech 3. Although the Indians are bruits in their Nakedness both men and women yet they never appear no not in private houses stark naked as the Quaker men and women doe yea they so abhor such a bruitishness except it be in their mad Drunkenness for then they will be stark naked that as to their Female kind they will carefully from their birth keep on some modest covering before them W. E. rose up and said they did abhor Uncleaness as well as our selves or any their women were sober holy and Modest and would not endure some of them to have a Toe to be seen naked but he said if the Lord God did stir up any of his Daughters to be a Sign of the nakedness of others he believed it to be a great Cross to a Modest womans Spirit but the Lord must be obeyed Iohn Stubs immediately seconded him and quoted again the Command to Isaiah Chap. 20. to go naked he added whereas I said at Newport that it was in the time of Signs Types Figures c. He would now prove that all Signs were not abolished by the coming of Christ for Agabus Act. 20. took Pauls 203 girdle and bound himself I replyed that was indeed one of my Replyes at Newport and I was yet far from binding the sweet Influences of the holy One by Dreams Visions immediate Impulses Revelations Signs c. but withall I said that before the coming of the Lord Iesus and at his coming was the time and season of such Appearances from God now he hath fully declared his mind to us by the Personal and most wonderfull coming of his Son out of his Bosome who had commanded his Pen-men to write his Birth his Life his Life his Doctrine his Miracles his Death Resurrection Asscension and promise of Return to us he had also preserved these holy Writings Records most wonderfully that Ioh 20 We might believe in him follow him and live with him But 2. I said what did this concern the monstrous stripping their women naked of which we never heard a tittle either at coming of the Lord Jesus or in those proper seasons of such Administrations before his Appearance Iohn Stubs said he had been a Quaker 19 years and yet had never seen a woman Naked and some of the Quakers said to me aloud when didst thou see any of our women Naked and another of them said We did not think that thou wouldest have been such a wicked man These two though of the Quakers spirit yet of long time had been Loving and respecttive to me but now they were enraged so that I said unto my Antagonists seeing some Heat is risen about these matters I will if you please go on to the second Branch of this 14th Position I told them the 2d Branch was That the Spirit of the Quakers tendeth to bring in an Arbetrary Government I said we all knew how it had cost the blood of thousands ten Thousands this matter of Goverment Lawes that the Most High only Wise choosing one People and Nation of Israel to be his own he wrote them Laws some with his own inconceivable finger written and some by Moses his inspired Pen-man it pleased him not to leave their Wisest and Holyest Kings Governours without written known Lawes with Rewards and Penaltyes annexed But I argued if that were true that all the Quakers were guided in all they said and did by the immediate Spirit of God as I proved Fox maintained then if they obtain higher or lower Governours of their Spirits Surely it shines cleer that there is no need of Laws for them to rule act by for they had no need of Scripture and seing the Immediate Inspirations of God would not suffer them to erre in Judgment for as they said of the holy Scripture they had no need of it for they had the holy Scripture within them their Teacher within them and all that they spake was Scripture and the voice of God c. So
Soul Summond to Death and Judgement looks to Relations c. they all Answer they are in the same Case c. It looks to Wordly Estate c they tell us they will go with us as far as the Grave and provide a Coffin and a Sheet and a Burial c. 3. The old friend is Conscience who will go with us but can be a thousand witnesses against us c. It follows then clearly that the young Prince is the true Lord Iesus Christ not vanished away into a Light in every dark dungeon in the World but Conscience saith he is litterally ascended up into Heaven and will as literally make his speedy Return again to Iudgement The third Instance G. Fox pag. 12. brings in the same Author saying the Light doth not shine in the Consciences of them that be lost The Answer But Iohn saith he Light shines in darkness but the darkness cannot comprehend it and there is that of God in the Children of Disobedience and Reprobates as in Rom. 1. and 2. Chapters I Reply G. Fox is here in his Burrough and takes not the word Light in the same Sense his Opposite doth the Common trick of Cheators His Opposite takes it not for the heavenly Lights Sun Moon nor Earthly Light of Fire Candles precious Stones nor the Metaphorical Light of mens minds differing them from Beasts Birds Fishes Nor the Light of peace joy and Prosperity call'd in Scripture Light c. Nor the Light and Evidence of witness or Reason in Cases depending Nor the Light of the holy Scriptures and the preaching and offering of a 5 Saviour to poor lost Sinners But for that awakening saving Light convincing all mens Condition to be miserable and damnable of Grace and mercy offered and applied to a Soul by the good News of a Saviour someway heard of and the holy Spirit the finger or power of God G. Fox saith this saving Light is in mankind only persons don't mind it and so Christ Iesus is Crucified and slain in them and God and Christ and Spirit and Light c. are all captived hindred from working yea altogether killed slain in them because a Soul doth not mind them and hearken to Christ in them Ah poor simple bruitish Imagination that ever it should enter into the thoughts of Men professing to be Christians c. or of men professing to know more than the Wolves and Foxes in the wilderness I have spoke to this before therefore a word only to G. Fox his proof Rom. 1. and 2. Chapt. From these two Chapters he proves that there is that of God in the Children of Disobedience and Reprobates who denies it For there is something of God that is from the power and wisdome of God in the Fallen Spirits the Devils themselves But I know by that of God G. Fox means God himself prest down as a Cart with sheaves the holy Seed Christ Iesus under the Clods the holy Spirit in prison for the Soul is a part of the Essence or Being of God himself But that there is here a word or title of Colour to any of this dirt and filth flung in the face of the Majestie of Heaven This Scripture speaks of the work or working of the Law written in their hearts but what is this to a second writing of the holy Scriptures or writing inspired into the heart by the most holy Spirit yea what is this to a third writing of their Names written in Heaven in the Lambs Book of Life yea what is this to fourth writing the writing of the new Covenant Consisting of Sin and a new heart a heart of flesh in which his Law is written as formerly in Tables of Stone and yet we poor men of Iabesh Gilead must leave the Testimony as Gilead imports and suffer Nahush the Serpent to put out our right eyes and believe that every man hath the new Covenant Christ Iesus and the Kingdom of God c. with the Pharisees in every mans heart and yet he never knows of it 4. Instance In the same pag. 12 he brings in the same Author saying It is a Counterfeiting of the new Birth for men to 6 follow the Light wherewith men coming into the world are inlightned G. Fox Answ. which none comes to the new Birth but who come to the Light which every man c. in which believing is a Child of the Light c. I Reply G. Fox runs round agian and again like the windmil Sails It is saith he no Counterfeiting of a new Birth why because it is no Counterfeiting none comes to the new Birth but who comes to the Light c. As to the words in Iohn 1. Hitchcock at Newport alleadged that it was not in his Bible enlightneeth every man but lighteth every man c. John Stubs lockt in his greek Testament and confest it was Photizes which is not inlightneth but Lighteth 2. As to the Light We know there are two Opinions how Christ lighteth every man c. First as God in the Creation 2. As God man and Mediatour and that the Greeks word Erchomenon doth not relate to the word anthropon the man or every man that cometh into the world but phoce Light and that it must be read in this Sense viz that Christ Iesus the true Light cometh into the world lighteth every man that is in the world freely that will receive him Even as many whomsoever look up to him as Iohn 3. the stung Israelites to the brazen Serpent and that Christ Iesus is the Light of the world John 8. and 12. to as many as receive him according to 1 Iohn 12. and that the meer phrase imports no more then a Light held forth to all in the world as the Sun in the Heavens and Christs Followers Math. 5. are called by Christ Iesus the Light of the World Thus the word all and every man as I hinted before is used not absolutely but Comparatively and is figuratively taken in many places and four time in that one ver 1 Col. 28. viz. warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdome that we may present every man perfect in Christ Iesus which literally cannot be true Now G. Fox runs into his Burrough of the many significations of the word Light and the word all and the word inlightneth willingly ignorant that Christ Iesus as Mediator of the new Covenant inlightens none but those whom his Father gives him unto whom he gives Repentance to whom he opens the door of Faith and gives them to believe and suffer c. So that G. Fox Confounds the Elect and the World together and brings in a Counterfeit new Birth a Counterfeit Christ and at last a Counterfeit Salvation 7 5. Instance G. Fox pag. 20. brings in Henock Howet saying It is a fancy to say the Covenant of God is to all men in the world and the grace of God hath appeared to all men c. He Answ.
fit to be thought on as to pretence of the Christian Name and Religion 9. At the coming of the Lord Jesus there were two great Com 19 petitours for preaching First the Pharisees who by Laud and Sea sent abroad their Emissaries to make Converts to the God of the Jews and their own Traditions Secondly The Apostles or Messengers of Christ Jesus sent abroad with the glad news of a new Bargain or Covenant of God with the Sons of men viz. this second sort It pleased the God of Heaven not to be thrown out as this Fox frantickly barks but to go out wonderfully miraculously yea also with the private labours and preachings of private Christians scattered by Persecution as the holy Scripture recordeth 10. For the slighting of this inestimable Pearl of this glad News or Gospel published by God to the World by writing preaching professing Suffering c. It hath pleased his Infinite Justice to plough the World with Popery a Religion a bastard Christianity suited as the Quakers is to rotten nature and fit to carry the world after them as Mahomet and the Pope have done 11. In this day the two greatest wonders in the world pretending to be Christs Messengers or Apostles to the Nations are the Jesuits and the Quakers Their Faces look divers but they both carry Firebrands in their Tails to burn up the holy Scripture all truly holy Christians yet all the world before them Gods Infinite wisdome hath suffered them to be like Absolom beautiful and plausible and fit to play Soul Thieves and steal away the hearts of thousands and ten thousands from the true David the Lord Jesus Christ. Beside they are so fortified with the Faces of Men and hair of Women like the Locusts Rev. 9. such pretences such Illuminations and Appearances such Assurances and Confidences such feelings of Experiences that it is Gods Infinite Power and wisdome and goodness to preserve the holy Scripture a standing Record of what the first Messengers and first Churches and first Doctrine and Christians were or else the world would fall down and adore the Images which the Lord hath suffered the Devil in them to set up 12. I know the Counsels of the Father of Lights are very deep yea the Revelation needs a Revelation the Prophecies and Canticles and Daniel need Heavenly Messengers and the most holy Spirit or finger of God to untie such knots Sure it is that Millions 20 of Jews and Gentiles must yet enquire with tears of blood after the Blood of a Saviour Sure they shall not awake out of their pits of Rottenness without some means Messengers sent from Heaven to rouze and wakâ—n them Sure their shall be no other words in their Mouths then what were in the mouths of the first Messengers according to the Prayer of the Lord Jesus on his Death bed to his Father through whose Word all that have believed the report ever since have believed Ioh. 17 and with which blessed word the Spirit of God will be in the mouths of all true Christians Isai. 59. 20. c. Surely the true Messengers of Jesus will say no other word then what Moses and the Prophets foretold and wrought Act. 26. therefore Fox and his Foxians that tells us they have all by the Spirit and need no Record are Thieves and Robbers whom Moses and the Prophets and Paul and the Apostles abhor'd to think of A 11. Instance is in Pag. 40. where G. Fox brings in I. Deacon saying The enjoyment of Immortulity is not till they have put off the Body He Answers Contrary to the Apostles Doctrine who saith Immortality was brought to light through the Gospel this was when they were upon the Earth and the Word of God was in them which was Immortal 1. I Reply First G. Fox affirms an Immortality that is a not dying of the Soul and Body As for the Soul all true Protestants affirm that the Soul once raised up to Spiritual Life never dyes no more than Christ Jesus Rom. 6. as for the Body Papists and Protestants and the Quakers and all the World grants that all Flesh is as grass c. and the Sentence of Death by sickness Age or Casualty is impartially executed upon the Foxians as well as other Câ—ttel As to the Soul who of sober Papists or Protestants questions the Immortality of it and of the Body also in joy or Sorrow to Eternity As for the Body the Quakers say when the Soul is gone into God yea the Soul of Iudas as well as the Soul of Peter as some of them say and all of them by Argument will be forced to say the Body returns to Earth and Rottenness never more to be raised and no more then Bodies of the Beasts Birds and Fishes though we know who holds the Bodies of Beasts Birds and Fishes shall live again as the Soul mortalists do what is it then 21 that G. Fox sputters out for Immortality or a not dying in this Life If he speak of the Soul who denies it If of the Body he speaks a Beastly Contradiction to the doleful Sense of all mankind and their own also who die and rot as well as them 2. It is true 1 Tim. 6. God only hath Immortality dwelling in the Light which no man can approach unto what ever these Foxians bruitishly fancy of no distinction between God and themselves their Light and his It is true yet also that Iesus Christ 2 Timâ— 1. hath brought Life and Immortality to Light through the Gospel But what is this but the joyful Condition of the Souls Bodies of the godly their Souls and Bodies raised up with Jesus to a Spiritual holy Life in this World their Souls going to Jesus and their Bodies sleeping in Iesus and the rising of their Bodies and uniting to their Spirits in a Life Eternal 3. As to this Immortality of G. Fox all that can be known of his mind is old H. Nichols and the Nicolaitans mad fictions and fancies of their becoming God and Christ. I hope charitably of many of them that run in their Simplicity Ignorance and weakness with a true Love to the true Lord Jesus as some did with Absalom who truly loved David but as for Absolom himself the Polititians the subtle Plotters and Ahitophels who love not the true Lord Jesus in sincerity I fear instead of their fancied Immortality before the Grave they will meet with a dreadful Mortality or death of Soul and Body to Eternity A 12. Instance is Pag. 47. where he brings in Ioseph Miller saying The wise heathen Philosophers had a greater Measure of Light in them which is the first Adam then I can think any man hath now G. Fox Answ. which shews that he knows nothing of Christ the second Adam the quickning Spirit He knows no New Creature for who are in Christ are new Creatures nor none of Christ the Covenant of God of Light
Prophecies of Scriptures or the written foretellings and utterings concerning Jesus Christ. Thus the God of Heaven most holy and only wise stoops to our weakness and calls his mind his word his works his word his Providences of mercy or Judgement his Word the Lord Jesus his only begotten his word his writings his Word and this in a way of Condescention to our Capacity seeing that all the World over Kings and Rulers Fathers Masters of Families of Ships c. give the word that is the manifestation of their mind and will and this as the Spring in Clocks and watches turn about all other wheels and motions Hence it is that if ancient Records and Deeds with Hands and Seals be produced at the Bar of Trial all mouths are stopt at such Evidences Thus the Word of God in the mouths of the Prophets written for after Generations is Comparatively beyond the Report of Peter 25 and Iohn themselves is in all Religions The Iews have their Talmud the Turks their Alcheron the Pope his Decretans and the Protestants the Written Word or Scriptures When therefore a Pardon is written and Sealed with the Board Seal of a King or State what a fancy is it for a condemned Wretch to hearken first to a Pardon revealed within to a voice within to a King within to a Writing within a Seal within and so slighting the true pardon in the Kings way to be conveyed from without to the Mind and Spirit within to lose his Pardon and Deliverance as thousands of such poor cheated Souls must do A 14 Instance G Fox brings in Pag. 49. his Opposite Ralph Hall saying It is against the Light of Nature for Women to Preach c. G. Fox Answers Contrary to the Apostles Doctrine and the mind of God and the Prophets who said God would pour out of his Spirit upon all Flesh and his Sons and Daughters should Prophesie So that he is a limiter of the Holy one a quencher of the Spirit and in the Darkness and this is above the Light of Nature I Reply First What is the Light of Nature but the Light in which every man comes into the World with as the Foxians speak a Light differing from that Light which Beasts wilde and tame and Birds and Fishes have And a Second Light differing from what is Supernatural as that Light revealed from Heaven in the Holy Scriptures and infused into the Souls of Men by the Holy Spirit or Power of God 2. What is the Light of Nature in Man but that Order which the most Glorious Former of all things hath set like Wheeles in Clocks or Watches a going in all his Creatures Some have observed that in the Insensible Creatures to which the most High hath only giving Beings that there may be observed a Male and Female amongst them This is more observable in Vegetables or growing Creatures as in Plants Trees Herbs Flowers c. More yet in Sensitives as Birds Beasts Fishes Most of all in Rationals Men and Women whom the most High hath so wonderfully distinguished It is true that in Religious and Christian Matters there is no 26 respect of persons with God as of Man before the Woman otherwise than to order Natural and Civil The Woman is Predestinated is Called is Justified is Glorified and wears that Golden Chain as well as the Wisest and Strongest of Mankinde And it is true the Wisdome of God perfers some Women before thousands of Men in their being born of Nobles in excellent parts as is observable in the Lady Iane and Queen Elizabeth c. in some special favour as Christ Jesus first appearing to Mary Magdalen and other Women and sending them to carry the first Tydings or Gospel of his Resurrection to his Apostles yea in effusions or powrings forth of an extraordinary measure of his Spirit before Christs coming as on Miriam Deborah Anna Huldah c. and at his coming according to Ioels Prophesie on his Daughters as well as his Sons so that as my opposites alledged to me in publick Philip the Evangelist had four Daughters thus extraordinarily endâ—wed yet this favour of God toward Women destroys not the order which the God of Order or Nature hath set in those Bounds and Limits and Distinctions between the Male and Female the Man and Woman though the Holy Scripture were silent yet Reason and Experience tell us that the Woman is the weaker Vessel that she is more fitted to keep and order the House and Children c. that the Lord hath given a covering of longer Hair to Women as a sign or teacher of covering Modesty and Bashfulness Silence and Retiredness and therefore not so fitted for Manly Actions and Employments Therefore because of Ioels Prophesie or because we must not limit or quench the Spirit as G. Fox saith there is no ground in Gods ordinary course of Nature to permit Women to pretend to be Apostles or Messengers to the Nation or Preachers and Teachers in the Publick Assemblies 1. Because we finde no such Commission given by Christ Jesus or any such Practice amongst the first Believers 2. The Lord hath set as Seamen speak a preventer to such an unnatural boldness by express Prohibitions with the Reasons and Grounds to the Corinthians and to Timothy and to answer those Scriptures with a flam viz. that Eve the Transgressor and Women that be Tatlers are forbidden and the Woman Iezebel 27 c. is all one to tell us that Paul was not a Man nor Timothy a Man nor the Teachers Men nor Corinth a City but all signifie Metaphorical and Mystical Business 3. Why may not Women much more be Lord Majors and Bailiffs and Sherriffs and Iustices and Constables Captains Colonels Generals and Commanders by Sea and Land 4. That Reason the Spirit gives to the Corinthians for the vailing of Women in publick Assemblies makes much more for their vailing and silence in matters of Prophesying Preaching and Praying viz. Because of the Angels I know not any fair and sober Exposition of this Scripture except as the blind Quakers who swallow down a fly Camel too but that of the Heavenly Angels and Spirits attending on and guarding the Assemblies of true Christians and rejoycing in the comliness order and beauty of their publick Administrations Some few years since there came to my House two Maries it is said they came from London they bid me Repent and Hearken to the Light within me I prayd them â—o sit down that we might quietly reason together they would not then standing I askt them the ground of their such Travel and Employment they alledged Ioels Prophesie I answered that was fulfilled that was not every dayes work besides their business was not Prophetical but Apostolical c. they regarded not my Answers nor Admonitions but powred the Curses and Judgements of God against me and hurried away to Barbadoes they went and being War
Overseers to be Invisible for they saw with an Invisible Eye and so they was in the Spirit which is Invisible and not in the Flesh else they could not be Overseers in the Church of God and you are the visible apostatiz'd from them I Reply This is one of the most impudent Fooleries that either Fox or as the Proverb is any Dog could be impudent in For First 42 1. He acknowledgeth a publick Assembly of Christians as well as of other pretending Worsh ppers Turks Iews c. Also he acknowledgeth the Ministers Officers and Overseers of their Assemblies 2. His Reason is notoriously silly and impudent viz. because the Church is in God and the Overseers are made by the holy Spirit For are the secret works of God alwayes secret and never revealed The Child in the Wombe the precious Stones and Minerals when brought forth are no more Invisible then the Sun in the Firmament 3. The Christian profeâ—â—ion and professours however they were wrought and prepared and by divers means by Gods Spirits yet the Lord Jesus compares them to the most visible Conspicuous and glorious things and persons To the Sun and Moon in the Heavens and the Heavens and Stars also to Mountains and Cities on those Hills or Mountains To Kings To their houses and Palaces yea to Armes with Banners c. 4. Although the Lord Major of London and the several Officers of the City are not made and ordained in the public Streets nor Generals and other Officers appointed by his Majesty c. are they not therefore visible because their making and appointing was not Solemnized and performed in Cheapside c. 5. It is most true and most sweet that the Church is in God c. and is it not also true that in one Sense we live in God and move in God have our Being in God and yet the whole Creation is gloriously visible in another Sence the Saints their Assemblies and Officers are in God visible to the world abundantly though in an heavenly and spiritual Sence transcending the Being of the first Creation 6. G. Fox denies not but that although the first Churches were in God and the Officers of the Church and some of them were appointed immediately yet they were visible and audible by those with whom they Conversed 7. Yea G. Fox and his Foxians for all their being in God and some of their proud and silly Answerings in Courts that they live in God and dwell in God yet they disowne not their own visible Congregatings and Assemblings their visible Teachers Overseers or Bishops their visible and audible performances and Worships praying preaching singing c. and wâ—y then doth this 43 poor notoriously visible Cheatour thus prate of Invisibilities especially in times of peace and not in Elias Case The 22 Instance is in pag 84. where G. Fox brings in his opposite Magnus Byne saying The Scriptures may be understood by the help of Tongues He Answers All Scripture was given forth by Inspiration and so without the same Inspiration it is not understood again Pilate had the Tongues yet did not understand the Scripture nor Christ the Substance of it And this you have set up since the Apostacy your Tongues you Raveners from the Spirit I Reply First I make use of G. Fox his Confession viz. that all Scripture is inspired c. therefore say I he Consesseth that every word Syllable and Tittle in that Scripture or writing is the Word or immediate revealed will of God against his and his Foxians common Song hath God any more words but one 2. As to the Scriptures the understanding of them is threefold First Literal who understands not Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not Steal c. The second is Metaphorical as I am the Dore I am the Bread c. The third is saving and Spiritual when it pleaseth God to set home the heavenly Commands Promisâ—s c. in particular Soul Application 3. I observe the End of G. Fox and especially of the old Serpent and Fox that acts him It is to destroy the coming of Gods holy Records and writings to poor lost men to their Salvation that he may foist and whisp in what his hellish malice pleaseth to their Damnation For if no knowledge of the Tongues in which the most wise and most holy Lord pend his Letters or writing to us then no preaching of the Doctrine in them to the world witout some new miraculous way then no translating and reading of them which is that the Devil in all Ages and at this day aims at with all his might 4. I therefore charge upon this proud Ignoramus and all his blind Disciples and Followers the horrible Crime of Unthankfulness and Ingratitude for were it not for Tindal burnt to ashes and other heavenly Spirits set on work from Heaven to dig out the knowledge of the Hebrew and the Greek and to turn it into French Dutch English and now praised be God into the very 44 Indian Language of this Country how would these Seraphical Doctors know whether there were such a Creation of Heavens and Earth or of man and his wife which we now so talk of I put this question once to a Soul in this Country who told me although they had no English Scripture Gods Spirit would teach them Greek and Hebrew but I can declare to any that ask me the dreadful End of that party 5. I Charge upon this Foxian party the horrible Crime of a proud Laziness for not studying the Original Languages themselves It is a shameful Trade and deceitful when persons have mony in their hands to take up all on trust I have known very Eminent Men and Women Independants and Baptists give themselves up to serious study of the Hebrew Language I never knew any of the Foxian Spirits so inclind but according to the Lazie fool under the Fig-Tree which I have seen in an Embleme almost threescore year since they lie down and cry Sweet Figs drop down in yielding wâ—se For Lazie will not let me rise 6. I Judge that G. Fox and his wild Spirit can not prove that Pilate had the Hebrew Greek and Latin for though he caused by an heavenly finger of God such a Title to be set up in the three then most known Languages Hebrew Greek and Latin yet he himself might have no knowledge of any more then the Latin which was his Mother Romane Tongue As a Book seller may deal in Books of Hebrew Greek Latin French Dutch Italian Spanish c. and yet understand no more then his Mother English 7. I know the Devil abounds with Tongues and can speak all Languages and I know and have seen his Inspirations and three thousands verses in shâ—w very heavenly inspir'd by him in an English woman of this Country who had no such skill ex tempore They were taken and written from her mouth and I have read them and
mankind of many due respects and favorable glaunces of Gods care of order and prudent distinctions and differences amongst the Sons of men in Families Cities Nations Armies Navies c. 3. Sure he can not but remember and his own and all the Light in the Quakers if seriously minded will tell them that 54 in robbing all the world of their several due moderate and sober Titles and Respects they do but by a jugling Hocas pocas a back dore c. rob all others of their points Ribbons and Laces wherewithal only to adorn and trim and trick their foolish selves Just as the Popish party practice to cry up their Pope servus servorum Dei and yet be Domine fac totum your holiness c. and yet the Pope and Papists herein out shoot the Quakers for the Papists give all men their Civil and Courteous different Respects and Acknowledgements which the dogged and scornful Quakers are far from their Spirit being prouder then the Papists 4. G. Fox knows how others of his Adversaries have in print told him that the English word Master Answers to many words in the Greek Kathegerese Didarkalos c. and that these words Rahbi and Pateer all shew that the Lord Jesus only Condemned the Pharisaical Popish and Foxian Itch of being called Masters Fathers Leaders Teachers in Religion undervaluing and slighting others c. Thus amongst the Papists their Magister noster their Patres c. their Irrefragable Seraphical and Angelical Doctors thus among the Foxians Iames Naylor Hosanna c. and G. Fox at this Town of Providence called the Eternal Son of God Christ Iesus 5. Half a Humane and sober Eye may see that in all his Declamations against the Pharisaical or Popish or Foxian Rabbies the Lord Jesus I say comes not near in a Title the Civil and Natural Respects of Inferiours to Heads of Families Cities Kingdomes c. all of which the very nature of man being von politikon a sociable Creature and the holy Scripture is all over from end to end full of most frequent Examples yea Commands and practices 6. How Childishly doth Fox Answer his Opposite viz that although it be unlawful to call Master yet it is not unlawful to call Father for there is a Birth which his Opposite is ignorant of c. I ask if G. Fox mean not their Immediate Birth of Light which for a Cover they call Spirit and Christ c. in Opposition to that true Christian Regeneration and Change which it pleaseth God ordinarily to Effect by means as Paul said though you have ten thousand Teachers yet I have begotten you c Sure it is their Immediate denies the mediate 55 7. Where there no Ordinary means appointed by God for Natural or Spiritual procreation yet how simple is that Consequence that because God is an Extraordinaâ—y Father therefore I may call men Fathers but not Masters when God is both Father and Master and both Titles are forbidden in a true Sense by one and the same heavenly Breath at the same time A 28 h. Instance is pag. 106. where G. Fox brings in W. Thomas saying Men are saved but not by Christ within us He Answers How is mans Salvaâ—ion wrought out but by Christ within How is the Iustification fels but by Christ wit in And the Seeds we manifest that suffered without is made manifest within there is Redemption and Life He that hath the Son of God hath Life Redemption to God out of the first Adam and who feels Christ within feels Salvation and who doth not are Reprobates though they may talk of him I Reply This subtle Fox is in his Burrough Confounding under the Terms Christ the person of Christ and the Love and Spirit and Grace or Favour of Christ as if they were all one As if where the Name and Authority and writing of G. Fox comes there of necessity must G. Fox in person be Or to rise higher wherever the Name and Authority of a King General or Admiral is there must their persons also be This Popish Ubiquitary Fancy all sober Reasons have long since laught at and justly as being most Fancyfull and Frantick what 2. What is this but to make the Kings of men yea the King of Kings poor Mechanicks yea lower that can do nothing by any Means Servants Ministers Legates Embassadours c. except they be personaly present 3. The Spirit of God resolves the Question Ephes 3. He dwels in the Heart by Faith or believing in him and Gal. 2. I live by believing or Faith in the Son of God This Faith is given of God to some and not to others This Faith or Belief is wrought by Christ Jesus and â—inâ—shed by him and may with as good Sense be called Christ himself as a shoo which G. Fox hath begun and finished be called G Fox himself 4. With what Colour of Reason or Sense is it that if I believe King Charles the second to be the King of English Men and my King I must of necessity because of my belief which He by gracious 56 means hath wrought in me I believe that K. Charles is personally present Ubiquitarily present in person in all his Dominions and all the world over where ever his Loving Subjects have their Residence 5. I grant if we as some Quakers and Humphry Norton by Name resolve Christ only into a Spirit and God only he is Ubiquitary But as man why may not the General of an Army say to his whole Army and every Individual Souldier as Paul to the Corinthians though I am absent in Body yet am I present in Spirit Christ Jesus is in his Command and Courage and Example in every Regiment every Squadron every Band and Troop and every Souldier of the mâ—ny Millions that have and shall believe in him and that in a Sense both as God and man 6. The Hinge and pinch of the Difference lies in the Opposition which the Quakers make against the Manhood of Christ Jesus to be yet Extant many of them alleadging why stand you gazing Acts 1 c. as if it were but gazing after a Manhood and all now were Spirit and Light within 7. Who ever questiond but that the Spirit or power of Christ Jesus worketh in the Souls of his Elect the great saving change or regeneration gives Repentance opens the heart to Believe and makes the heart of this Believer a Palace for three Kings yet but one the Father the Son and the Spirit in Holiness Love Meekness Patience c. and all these Royal Attendants 8. Who questions but Christ Jesus as the Sun in these Heavens inâ—luenceth all parts of the World in several respects and nothing is hid from his heat He is felt in the bruised Reed and smoaking Flax in the poor in Spirit in the hungry and thirsty after Righteousness sometimes in the hope of Glory to come
yea in present joy unutterable and glorious Sometimes the Lambs Wife is visibly asleep though her heart wakes sometimes she is Alarmed by his knocking and is sluggishly unwilling to open to him sometimes she rises and opens but he is gone and she seeks for him by day and night and cannot find him 9. There is also a false feeling of Christ Jesus as I spake before of a false Conception in a Woman How many are bold to cry Lord Lord open for we have prophesied in thy Name c and yet I will not say as G. Fox here saith of his Feeling that all that have not my feeling or working of Christ are Reprobates yet 57 this I say as Solomon A Whore is Loud and Clamorous not so the Chaste and Sober and Modest Women and the Devil spake as Holy and Heavenly words as Angels could have spoken yet it was but the Divil in Samuels Mantle The 29th Instance is in pag. 117. where he brings in Giles Fermin saying Paul Swore after Christ and the Angels Swore I wonder Paul should so forget himself and sin so fearfully in Swearing so the Quakers Light that denies Swearing is of Satan and not the Light of Christ. He Answers Christ the Light which Satan is out of which is the Oath of God ends all Oathes Sworn by Prophets or Angels whatsoever and who Swares be fallen into the Condemnation of the Devil And it is no where said that the Apostle Swore but such as thou art matters not what thou speak so that Spirit that Preacheth for Swearing is not the Spirit of Christ but is the Spirit of Anti-Christ c. I Reply first G. Fox dares not deny but that the Angel and Paul Swore after Christ only he keeps his old Song viz That Christ put an end to Swearing and that it is not said that Paul Swore But 1. He waves that Sweareng of the Angel or Christ himself Rev. 10. for there he knows the very term of Swearing is used 2. As to Paul if the attestation of the Name of God be the formality of an Oath then if ever any Man Swore in this World Paul did saying to the Corinthians I call God to Record on my Soul that to spare you I came not as yet to Corinth c. Secondly It is true that all Nations have used to Swear by or Appeal to the Gods they owned and worshipped It is true also that they have used to put Creatures into the room of God and Swear by them as the Iews did and som write out of a Superstitious Reverence in forbearing the Name of God and indeed the Reasons Christ Jesus gives Mat. 5. look that way Thirdly It is true also that for abuse of Swearing by and Prophaning the Holy Name of God a whole Land may mourn as Ieremiah speaketh Fourthly There seems to be a very fair colour put on a universal Prohibition of Swearing by Christ Jesus and by his Apostle Iames Swear not c. 58 This Conjuror hath taken with many precious Servants of God former and latter even with many of those called the Fathers and with those Famous Protesters against the whore of Rome the Waldenses and with Famous Usher who doth more then seem to vindicate their not Swearing when Convented and Examined by the Popish Inquiâ—itors 5. Notwithstanding this and more which may be granted and though I should humbly motion to all higher Powers for Christian tenderness as to the holy Majesty of Heaven his Name and to the Souls of any making Scruple yet I must proclaim against G. Fox his lame and simple Return to the Objection of his Opposite concerning Paul and the Angel For why may not Paul and all the Apostles and Christ and all the Angels of Heaven and all the Saints of God upon the Earth in the words of Paul call God to Record upon their Souls that this or this was the Cause and Truth c. Considering 1. That neither the most holy God nor the Lord Jesus who I think is the Swearing Angel Rev. 10. nor the heavenly Spirits the Angels nor Paul nor any of Christs Apostles or Messeâ—gers would have practiced a Ceremony or a Shadow like Circumcision or the Passover at the time of the Day c. 2. Swearing or appealing unto God immediately in Oaths or Vows or Lots or Fastings though higher and above the practice of ordinary Invocations Supplications Thanksgivings c. were never accounted Ceremonies or Types of Substances to come but Real and Substantial Services and Addresses unto the most holy and most high Creatour written in the hearts of all mankind before ever Ceremony or Moses was born and therefore as the fear of God is put for the whole worship of God so also is swearing in the holy Scripture and we may as well deny all worship and Service visible and all External Acts of Homage and Devotion of the Body unto God yea and all the fear of God is there in the mind Soul and Spirit or in any External Obeysance or Reverence as this Service and worship of calling upon God and appealing to his holy Majesty as Witness and Iudge in some Cases c 3. Whereupon it follows that this high point of Gods worship is as real as moral as holy and perpetual as Prayer it self as preaching yea as Baptisme and the Lords Supper and no more Ceremonial though I know the Foxians make Baptisme and the 59 Lords Supper but Ceremonies for a time and ere long if they continue to hearken to Samuel within them they will account Prayer and Preaching whether Apostolical or Pastoral but Types and Shadows also 4. It is a most simple and un-Christian and Atheistical whimsie that Christ was the end of Oaths the end of the Prophets the end of the Scripture the end of Reghteousness in their Sense though as Mediatour he was the End or Perfection of and fulfilling of the Law of God which never Soul beside the Lord Jesus ever kept in thought word and deed what ever the proud Pharisees and Papists and Foxians prate c. 5. It is a gross Fancy to imagine that the Lord Jesus in the 5 of Math. gave new Commands or Contradicted the holy pleasure of his Father concerning Revenge Adultery Oaths Prayers Fastings but opened his Fathers Law in the purity and Spirituality of it against the rotten Expositions Traditions and practices of the Pharisees 6. In particular let all the Reasons be expended and carefully weighed which the Lord Jesus so wonderfully exactly gives why they should not swear by Ierusalem nor the Temple nor their Head nor any Oath to wit of such a Nature and half a sober eye may see that the Lord Jesus intends only to reduce them to an holy Swearing only by God in Gods way c. and in their Common Converse to use yea and nay c. 7. I have read a sober and man like Answer of F. H. called
a Quaker against A. S. called a Doctour concerning Oaths not like G. Fox his bruitish barkings against all his Opposites and any that prate may see F. H. yields to A. S. that himself and I presume he speaks the mind of all the Quakers could yield to give a Testmony in weighty Cases by the Name and in the Name of God as in the presence of God and attest or call God to witness c. And he saith that they had offered so to give a Testimony and that his Opposite Doctour Snalwood and I think Bishop Gauden so called assented that this was Substantial and Formal Swearing only the Ceremonies were enjoyned by Law to which the Quaker could not yield but suffer as indeed they have done upon this Account most lamentably in London and Bristol and all England over 8. I have much to add both as to that Fancy of Christs end 60 ing Oaths as Ceremonies and of Cases that have beâ—allen my self in the Chancery in England c. and of the loss of great Sums which I chose to bear through the Lords help then yield to the Formality then and still in use in Gods worship though I offered to Swear as F. H. mentions they have done and the Judges told me they would rest in my Testimony and way of Swearing but they could not dispence with me without an Act of Parliament I believe this highly concerns the high Assembly of Parliament and all Law makers to search well and to appoint a Committee of Searchers to Examine if the Laws upon new appearances from Heaven have not need of rectifying and some of cancelling for sin against God or the Souls of men established by Law is like Iereboams making Israel to sin and most commonly after much patience of God brings double punishment in the end The 30th Instance where G. Fox brings in Tho Moor saying It is not properly nor in a full sense that God is manifest in the Flesh of his Saints He Answers The Saints are the Temple of God and God dwells in them and they come to witness the Flesh of Christ. And they glorifie him in their Souls and bodies And the Lord is glorified in their bringing forth much fruit And the witness is the Seed the one offering for sin to be manifest within and such are not Reprobates yet witness the one offering Christ Jesus and them that have not Him within they are Reprobates I Reply a great Designe of the Devil in all Ages hath been to Cavil at and hinder Gods love tâ— mankind Hence he plotted and effected Mans Fall from God God Infinite in wisdome and mercy out-shoots and out-plots him and designes a Reconciliation and a Marriage between the Son of God the Prince of Life and lost mankind He promised his coming in our Flesh prefigured Him prophesied of Him and in the Fulness of Time sent Him c. Against this Lord Jesus this old Serpent hisseth and rageth before his Birth at his Birth after his Birth and in all Ages ever since as fearing the crushing of his Brains and the downfall of his Throne if the Kingdome of the Lord Jesus stand Hence not long after Christs Assention he stirred up many Anti Christs 61 Simon Magus and his Followers the Arrians the Gnosticks Cerdonians Manicheans c. the great Anti-Christ of Rome and since the Reformation the new Manicheans those in Luthers and Calvins time called the Spirituals and Libertines and in our times the Adamites the Ranters the Quakers and all in order to his Dragons war against the person of the Arch-Angel Michael the word of God the Individual person the Man Christ Jesus and after him all that should dare to follow him Some as the Arians c. have denied him to be so but Man and not God some as the Manicheans c. deny his Manhood affirming him to be God and a Spirit but with Christs manhood and the Scriptures the Devil and the Papists and the Quakers for most of them could with all their hearts make an Everlasting parting The Devils and is to destroy this Saviour and Salvation to poor lost man The Quakers pretend their end to be the Exalâ—ing and glorifying of God in the Flesh of his Saints therefore some of these Manicheans render his Birth Life and Death to be only Imaginary and Allegorical a Figure of what should be done in and by Christians others of them say it is real but he only lived and died for an Example others that he was really so born he so lived and died but he is now only within c. and after his Flesh no Inquiry G. Fox here plays upon the various meaning of the word Flesh. Also he plays upon those holy Scriptures viz. God is glorified in the Souls and Bodies of his Saints c. This subtle Ionadab he knows also that the Protestants maintain that the Godhead and the Spirit of God so dwels not in the Souls and Bodies of his Servants as in that Soul and Body of the Lord Jesus It is true he was not born of a Woman but against their wills they are forc't to Confess that he was not born of a Wife but a Virgin though many Fancies are Coyned about that They Confess that no man was Father of his fleshly Nature He knows also that the Protestants hold that the Godhead dwels in him and dwels in him as the great Mediator and Propitiation surety and Undertaker so as not in any of the Bodies or all the Bodies of his Saints besides and after a more high Transcendent and Inconceivable manner G. Fox knows that his Opposite intends such a manifestation of God in the Flesh that renders the one single person Christ 62 Jesus the Head of his Church c. And that they hold that there is as much difference between that one Individual person Christ Iesus the Head and his Followers as between our Heads and our Bodies the King himself and his Body or Subjects yea every one singly in particular yea as between the Foundation and all the building thereon raised Now how poor and lame is it that because the Saints are Gods Temple therefore they must be God himself because 1 Tim. 3. Christ dwels in his Saints by believing Ephes. 3. therefore they are Christ himself Because God in an holy Sense became Flesh Therefore our Flesh is God and Christ therefore will they find those heavenly particulars 1 Tim. 3. affiâ—med of that man Christ Jesus to be inverted and dreadfully turned upon their proud and divilish Flesh in this manner viz. The Devil is manifest in their Flesh Condemned of the holy Spirit of God Abhord of the heavenly Angels The world shall abhor their memory and except Repentance they shall descend with all the Enemies of the true Lord Jesus into the Lake that burns with unquenchable Fire and Brimstone The 31st Instance is in pag. 136. where G. Fox
Court must all the Generations of the World receive their Eternal Doom and Sentence I know they know this is the bottom 1. But stay this Fox is in his Burrough of Equivocation for Iudgement is twofold First Iudgement Righteous Secondly According to Appearance as the Lord Jesus distinguisheth How many are declared by Appearances to their Eyes Clouded pride malice Envy Lasciviousness Covetousness Ambition c. And therefore away with the Son of God hang him and give us Barrabas though a Boutefeau and Murtherer c. 2. It is not true that all that is not perfect in the Foxians Sense is not Righteous For 1. as hath been before observed the words Tam and Tomjin in Hebrew and Telos and Teleios and Teleion in the Greek have divers significations and accordingly must be and are translated and expounded Contrary to the proud Ignorance of these Cheators 2. The Generation of all Gods Children in all the holy Scrip 72 ture have ever acknowledged their weakness folly pride and many Transgressions with true Quaking and brokenness and bitter weeping c 3. In a true Sense that which is Righteous is perfect Iustification or Remission of Sin for Christ Jesus sake is perfect it admits as they say of no magis minus more or less the truely humble Ethiopian is as truly and perfectly pardoned and Iustified as David himself and the blessed Mother of the Lord Jesus the Virgin Mary 4. We maintain though pardon of Sin and Justification and Acceptation with God before Angels Men and Devils be perfect and though a poor Child of God be born of God be past from Death to Life can not Sin in a Sense nor suffer the Devil to touch him yet there remains till Death a Combate to be fought between the Law of the Spirit and Law of the members the old Man and the new Man the Flesh and the Spirit c. 5. Hence in an holy Sense Paul saith it is not I but Sin that dwels in me that is in my Flesh wherein dwels no good thing So that David might say in one Sense It was not I that committed Adultery and Murther and Peter say It was not I that denied my Master with Swearing and Cursing c. but the rotten old man and Sin dwelling in me He that knows not to untie these Knots and yet prates of Righteousness and perfection He is proud and foolish and ignorant and he will proudly and foolishly sooner or later commit these five great evils 1. He will not discern what the Generation of the Righteous is 2. He will say Sin is nothing but Imagination 3. He will cast wickedness upon God and say God doth all and what God doth that is good therefore no Sin 4. He must call David and Peter fools for Confessing their Guilt and weeping bitterly c. 5. That it is in vain to watch against Sin and to cry Lord lead us not into Temptation c. In the last place I Affirm and have made it good that the Generation of the Papists and Quakers though so pure in their own eyes yet they are not cleansed from their filthiness The Papists are justly charged with Superstition and Idolatry with drinking the Blood of Saints And have not the Generation of the Quakers 73 their Images and Idols also as I have manifested their pride and Ignorance Idleness in not using means and their passionate Railings and Cursings and I believe if their Spirit get a Sword what ere they ignorantly prate they will drink the Blood of all their Enemies as Hereticks Idolaters Reprobates and Devils The 37th Instance is in Pag. 220. wherein G. Fox brings in the Author of Hosanna to the Son of David saying Man is not able to discern the things of God till he be born again He Answers the Scripture speaks of discerning the Eternal Power and Godhead and that was a thing of the Spirit of God and the Apostle saith not that they were born again And yet I say that none knows the things of God but the Spirit of God and that which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewd it to them For that of God in them was of the Spirit who is the God of the Spirits of all Flesh which brings them to discern the Eternal Power and Godhead 1 Reply 1. With Amazement at the dreadful Justice of God hardening this daring Soul for playing away his own Light and the Name of God and the Light which the Lord hath sent him from so many Excellent pens out of which he hath raked nothing but handfuls of Reproaches to fling in the Faces of his best Friends and turned Truth into Lyes and poyson to murther himself and others 2. It is clear that as in all Answers to the Quotations of his Opposites which he picks out that he holds the Contrary to his Opposite so here viz. That a man may be able to discern the things of God before he be born again 3. He proves his point from two Scriptures Rom. 1. Cor. 2. As to the first I will not repeat what I have before written as to the Nature of the holy Spirit his Godhead his Operations seven Eyes seven Horns and seven Lamps his Common workings in all men his special working in the Elect Regenerating Iustifying Sanctifying quickning Comforting c. Nor will I repeat matters concerning the power of Nature in the Philosophers and all mankinde Only from this Rom. 1. I observe 1. That the Eternal Power and Godhead cannot be seen by mortal Eyes 2. We may reach some mental Light of this Eternal Power 74 and Godhead by a serious pondering of his works 3. All mankinde are bound by the Law of their Nature to put forth their utmost in searching after God 4. We may gain a great sight of the Godhead and yet not see him nor glorifie him that is love him as Paul 1 Cor. 8. 5. Natural men until changed and born again of Gods power and Spirit doe but prate as the Devils do and tremble their imaginations are vain and their foolish hearts are darkened 6. Yet this sight of God which men and Devils may get of God by their own Remainders of natural Abilities will leave them without excuse whatever Papists Arminians and Quakers talk of Gods requiring no more then he gives for in Justice God is not bound to give Sampson his Locks or his Eyes when he hath willingly suffered Dalilah and by her the Philistims to cut them off and pluck them out 2. Beside our wils and wisdome are now become Enmity against God and no man spends equal Care and pains for God until Gods Spirit in free grace châ—nge and quicken him with what he does for these temporary Dreams and Shadows The second Scripture is 1 Cor. 2. viz. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit For the Spirit searcheth all things yea the deep things
embrace the Gospel or glad News of a Saviour to them and this outward and inward hearing of this glad News it is the Devils and the Iews and all Atheists and these refined Atheists the Quakers work to hinder The 50th Instance of G. Fox his lame Answer is in Pag. 282. where he brings in Daniel Cawdry saying The Saints were come to the Spirits of just men made perfect but not on the Earth G. Fox Answers The just mens Spirits that led them to give forth the Scripture was the Spirit of God and that was perfect and was while they were upon the Earth The Saints were come to which was Christ the End of all words and so to God the Iudge of all the world I Reply I have spoke before that Spirits are Invisible Beings both good and bad Contrary to the Sadduces who held neither First That of good Spirits there are three sorts 1. The Increated God himself 2. The Spirit of God called because of his manifold operations the seven Spirits of God c 2. Those Invisible holy Messengers or Angels called Ministring Spirits and Flaming Attendants upon Christ and his Heb Opposite to these are the unclean Spirits spirits of Devils c. 3. The Spirits of men first saints as Mary sings my Spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour c. and opposite to these are the Spirits of the wicked as Peter tels us of the Spirits of the wicked of the old world now in prison c. 2. I observe that in this Heb. 12. the Spirit of God speaks not of the Bodies of the Saints neither Conjoynd nor a-part Nor secondly of the Righteous made perfect but the Spirits of First the Righteous Therefore it seems to hold forth not a perfect State of the Saints in this Life Consisting of Spirits and Bodies 99 which our proud Boasters say of themselves nor that they are perfect Nor secondly of the Estate of the Saints in the world to come where all true Protestants hold that the Bodies and Souls of the Saints shall be perfected and Everlastingly and as to us now Inconceivably glorified But the Estate of the Souls or Spirits of the Elect who are as some Translate perfected some Consummated or finished some grounded or now Everlastngly Established while their visible part the Body sleeps in Iesus until the joyful Resurrection 2. Thus it appears the rather to be because we find in all the holy Records the Spirits Souls and Bodies of the highest Saints in this world defective and subject to great failings c. 3. It is said 1 Pet. 3. the Spirits in prison not the Bodies nor the wicked but those Spirits of the wicked which believed not Noahs preaching c. 4. Doth the Scripture speak of the Spirit of God here at all but of the Spirits of men or of those Penmen of the holy Scriptures or of any present state of perfection in this Life at all which might occasion his Answer 5. What Truth or pertinency is in those words Christ the end of all words Doth he mean that now there ought to be no more words or writings or that Christ ends all Scripture Words and there is no further use of them so they hold out and yet they say and practice the Contrary The Truth is their horrible unclean and foul Spirit would fain be rid of all Scripture Words and all Learning also c. that he may bring the more of miserable mankinde under the cheating sound of Light into his Eternal Darkness The 51th Instance is in Pag. 325. where he quotes Timothy Trevis saying God hath ordained to Eternal Life all that shall be saved before they had a Being in this World But none comes to possession of this Salvation but through Obedience of the Spirit G. Fox Answers The ground of mans belief and obedience is Christ who doth inlighten him to the intent that he might believe and obey the Truth and who knows the Seed knows the Election before the World was made I Reply 1. If he means that Christ is the Ground or Author the Giver of Repentance and Faith to all the Elect whom God 100 the Father hath given him we say so c. But if he put in their Invented Light in the Room of Gods Election and Predestination as the Efficient and first Cause and of Christ as the Mediator and Meritorious Cause according to the golden Chain Rom. 8. and Ephes. 1. and the fifth Chap. He speaks blasphemously of God and of the Son of God and of the glorious work of their Redemption and poor mankinds Salvation 2 He is now in the Burrough of the Arminians who destroy Gods Election before the world was and say that when a man believes he is Elected when he is predestinate or being obedient is Inconstant he is then Reprobated 1 Contrary to all the precious beds of Flowers and Spices in the Garden of the Scripture which these rooting Swine getting in they root and tear up all the ways and methods of Gods Councels and Salvations 2 Contrary to the wit and skill of men who framing a Book an House a Ship a Navie an Army or any Sublunary matters have all in their Thoughts Minds and Councels before they begin their Enterprize they provide their Materials their Agents their means they fit all to their Ends though all may faile all mens Affairs being but Vanity and Vexations But to whom shall we liken the Eternal and Infinite Majâ—sty to whom all his works and Events are known in a most Inconceivable way as to us even from Eternity to Eternity his Iustice his Goodness his Power all being Infinite 3. As to the Seed and Election We know they make themselves the seed and the Election secondly They make Christ the seed that is in the End themselves And thirdly They make God and the Spirit of God the seed the seed in every man which is preached to by them the Imprisoned Seed and when one turns Quaker then God comes out of Prison The Truth is they make no distinction between God and Christ and Spirit and themselves as Fox in this Book as before plainly tels us but when this pretended seed of God or God himself is hearkened to then the soul so hearkning is become Goddified and God with God whose Infinite Being and Essence these poor proud Bruits have not so much sight of as the Devils have who cried out to Jesus I know thee whom thou art the holy One of God knowing that God and the Son of God were Infinitely distinct in them 101 selves and all Created Beings Yet such is the Inconceivable wrath and Iustice of the Eternal God upon these fallen Spirits who kept not their first Habitation as the pretended Quakers many of them have not done that as Pharaoh they can not but lye and slander and kill till the time of their Torment come The 52d Instance of G. Fox his slight dealing is in
Pag. 326. where he brings in the same Author saying The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man in the Church to profit withal and not to every man in the World G. Fox Answers The manifestation is given to every man to profit withal without distinction I will pour out of my Spirit upon all Flesh For the Spirit of Truth shall lead the Saints into all Truth And he shall reprove the World and that which doth reprove the World is manifest to the World I Reply I spake to this Text before in Answer to the Letter of my Neighbour I. T. as is to be seen in the Letters before our Disputes who declared himself satisfied with my Answers but G. Fox like a Cow with a Kettle on her head giving every one warning to stand clear he boldly slanders on and tumbles Heaven Earth and Hell together c. 1. This 1 Cor. 12. expresly declares three things 1. That it pleased God to appoint in his Christian Church and Worship the Ministry of Apostles Prophets Teachers c. according to Rom. 12 Ephes. 4 c. 2. He bestoweth several Gifts and Endowments on such persons whom he pleaseth to call unto such Ministrations 3. He vouchsafeth to give a gracious Concurrent Operation of his Spirit unto these his Gifts Ministrations what now is this gracious promise of the Father of Lights to the Garden of his Church Saints the howling Desart of the whole world from whence the Garden is taken in inclosed and separate Because a Queen is a Woman must therefore all the Honours and kindneffes of a glorions Prince due to his Royal Consort be dispensed in Common to all the Women in his Kingdome or Dominions The Garment in which the Queen is brought is a Garment of Needle work richly and most curiouâ—ly embroydered with the graces and Operations of the holy Spirit doth it therefore follow that those Heavenly Embroyderies c. belong to every nnclean and Lousie Begger 102 Yea but this prophane Mouth hath something to say for it self three things he saith full of Prophaneness and Simplicity 1. I will pour out my Spirit upon all Flesh. But 1. Was this as he speaks without all distinction done actually was it Universally so with all the Individuals of mankind in the world at that time 2. Was not there a wonderful Wall of separation between the Iews and all other Nations which the Lord promised by the Prophets to break down and at the coming of the Lord Jesus and ever since hath more and more broke down and abolished Is not Gideons Floor which was dry the poor Gentiles and we English among them now wet with the Dews of Heaven while the poor Iews which were only wet at first are dry and barren 3. What is that Extraordinary Promise of Gods Extraordinary pouring out of his Spirit in Fiery Tongues and Prophesyings fitting some to go unto all Nations to carry the glad News or Gospel had others and all Believers those Gifts least of all with any shew of Reason belong they to all the Men and Women in the world who have never seen and heard of any Glimpse of the Sun of Righteousness 4. Again I observe how vainly and wickedly this deluded and deluding Soul cheats himself and others with this Tearme All Flesh Every man All the World and so with the Terms Light Christ Spirit his proud Fancy playeth c. not dividing the Hoof by just and holy distinguishing a Crime that he often upbraids his Opposites most odiously with in his Book not dividing c. but is most notoriously guilty as ever was filthy Camel in this world or any of the unclean Beasts c. G. Fox his second Answer here is The Spirit of God shall lead the Saints into all Truth I observe here how like a Skittish Jade this wild Soul runs in and out and cannot keep to one steady Affirmation Before he brings in the Spirit of God poured out upon the Common of the World now he brings in the spirits leading the saints Gods Garden and Paradice Yet again in his next words he concludes every man in the World to have the spirit because saith he The spirit reproves the World and that which doth Reprove the World is manifest to the World I Answer The holy spirit testifies that he is the Comforter of the saints but a Reprover of the World that he Comforts the 103 Saints in the Promises Assurances c. that he Reproves the world in his Threatenings and Judgments That the world knows not sees not the Spirit but mocks at receives it not but banisheth imprisoneth murthereth such in whom the true Spirit of God appeareth Hence it is that because of this Spirit of God in any soul three are against two two must be against three in the same house the Parents against the Children and the Children betray their Parents unto Death yea two in a Bed and two in a Belly and yet he whom Gods Spirit chooseth shall be mockt and murthered by the other and yet this lying Peor tells us that all the world without distinction have the manifestation of the Spirit of God to prosit withal 5. There have been persons professing the Order of the holy Ghost yet far from the favour of the holy Spirit there hath been a great Ship in the world full of Sailors and Souldiers called the holy Ghost and yet scarce one man in it known to have any Acquaintance with Gods Spirit Alas what are the Babilonish Orders of these pretenders to the Holy Ghost or Spirit what are they but a poor Ship full of Resisters of Gods Spirit and Enemies to the greatest Enjoyers of him in the World the true Protestant Witnesses whom they professedly oppose under the Name of Professors I hope as I have often said that many of them are of the two hundred that followed Absolom in honesty and simplicity 6. But Oh what Reproofs of Gods Spirit hath G. Fox and others of their Leaders had in and by so many excellent Opposites and Scriptures and Arguments which G. Fox here proudly tramples under his prophane feet without any savour of the holy Spirit of God! It is true it pleaseth God as I said to strive with men by preachings by writings by their own Readings by publick Iudgments and private and also by publick mercies and private for Acts 14. every Drop of Rain is Gods voice word or witness c but what is this Common grace to that Regenerating and changing Spirit John 3. to the opening of Lidiahs and so of all saints hearts by his free and holy spirit or Finger what is this to the same Power that raised Christ Jesus from the Dead Ephes. 1. that raiseth any poor sinner unto a new and holy and spiritual Condâ—tion 104 7. Excellent and most heavenly is that similitude Cant. 1. Because of the savour of thy good Ointments therefore do the
to Contain not the Combate of the Saints but of the unregenerate within themselves But the true Protestants have proved from the Scripture and the Experience of all true Saints that sin and grace Flesh and Spirit the Law of the Spirit and the Law of sin may and do continue Combating in the Regenerate or New born Contrary to that proud perfection of Papists and Foxians in this Life is more clear then Pauls Argumentation and upon that his Conclusion viz. That with his mind that is his Spirit will Affections renewed by Gods Spirit he served the Law of God But with his Flesh which must be his sinful Desires and Dispositions yet remaining in him he served the Law of Sin This was the Reason of his Cry O wretched man c. and G. Fox his silly shifts saying that in the End of the Chapter Paul was perfect and gave thanks for victory it is like that Fantastical saying of the Generalists being forced to Conâ—ess Repentance necessary to Salvation viz. In a moment in the Twinkling of an Eye wofully abusing that holy Scripture about the Resurrection 4. The same 7 of the Romans and other holy Scriptures and Experience prove that the Sin of the Regenerate whether of Ignorance as the Fathers many wives c. or of unwatchfulness as David and Peter's c. It is as an honest man taken prisoner or as Souldiers and Seamen wounded and carried Captive or as a Virgin by force deslowred and crying out whom therefore both Law and Reason and the holy Scripture in a holy Figure declare to be clear and Innocent 5. Hence Paul shews the Sincerity of the Chast Will and Affections unto the Heavenly Bridegroom saying I delight in the Law of God in the inner man Delight we know is the Top and Flowre and Cream of all the Affections and the siercest hatred flies in the Face of that which takes away our delight from us The wicked may desire and may act heavenly things for his own self Ends for his Credit his profit his Salvation but he can not make God to be himself and delight in God 6. What Confusion is it to affirm that the Saints of God though they see Christ fulfilling the Law of works for them which none in the world could ever do but He yet they ought to strive after perfect holiness and Righteousness to love the Lord with all their Heart soul might strength c. as a Child going after his Father the Scholar or maiden following their Copies and Samplers 108 though they never come near the full Exactness and perfection of them The 55th Instance of G. Fox his simple and soul Answer is in Pag. 338. where he brings in Iohn Nasmith from Scotland saying Tha the Evil Spirits are both sinful and Reasonable He Answers This is a lye for Reasonable is not sinful and unreasonable is sinful 1 Thes. 3. they have not the Faith And if the Evil Spirit be Reasonable and the Good Reasonable they are both one who is then unreasonable thou puts no difference between the precious and the vile Thou hast the mark of a blinde guide and of a false Prophet in thy Forehead 1. I Reply and observe First the filthy rash Fury of his mind and Pen Beginning with that 's a lye and after a silly Line and Answer Thou hast the Marck of a Blind guide and of a false Prophet in thy Forehead 2. This proud Pharisee will appear to be a Sadducee also and to hold no Angels nor Spirits It is true as they pretend to owne Scripture and a Christ and Resurrection They with Iesuitical Equivocations name Angels and Spirits but the bottom as some of them and that in print discover is they hold there is but one Spirit which is in All and into which All Return and the Soul of Iudas is as happy as the Soul of Peter 3. G. Fox runs into his Burrough of the various significations of the word Reasonable A man is a Reasonable Creature as Opposite to Wolves and Foxes c. and yet he may be unreasonable in in his Actings as Wolves and Foxes who though unreasonable in their Natures yet are not sinful though a plague to man since his Fall Oh happy were it for G. Fox that he had been of the wild Foxes in the Woods and had not been so sinful by so horribly abusing so great a Talent of Wit and Reason which the Father of Lights hath given him 4. We know the Admirable Wit and Reason as well as the Power of those unclean Spirits the Lord Jesus cast out they did believe and Confess the Lord Jesus and made their Request unto him This their knowledge and Ability is from God though their sinful hardness by Gods just Sentence runs them upon such mad and desperate Courses as it is with the Sons of men when the most holy and Righteous Judge delivers them up to the Councels 109 and Projects of their proud and deceitful Hearts and Spirits The 56th Instance is in Pag. 345. where he brings in Henry Foreside from Scotland saying Concerning those words of Ezekiel 18. 28. If the Righteous turn away from his Righteousness his former Righteousness shall be no more remembred and he said the meaning of that Scripture was They thought they had been Righteous but were not but supposed it had been so He Answers Herein thou art a Minister of unrighteousness thou goest about to make God a Lyar and the Prophets and perverts the Scripture For if he forsakes his Righteousness and commits Sin and Iniquity and Trespasses he shall dye and not live in the Righteousness But if he â—o sakes his Sins Trespasses and Transgressions in the Righteousness that he hath done and doth he shall live So Gods wayes are equal Ezek 18. And thou sayes they thought they had been Righteous but it was not so And the Lord by the Prophet saith it was so that they should live in their Righteousness and die if they did depart from it and Transgressed Here thou art a diminisher from the Prophets and Apostles words whose Name is diminished out of the Book of Life read Rev. 22. 19 I Reply The Question is about Falling away from saving grace and Righteousness wherein it is notorious as I have formerly proved that the Quakers joyn their Forces to the Standards of the Papists and Arminians though herein the Arminians though highly abusing an high wit as the Papists and Quakers do yet are they not so guilty and Insufferable as the Papists and Foxians are because they pretend not to such an Infallible Chair as the Papists and Quakers do which is the more wonderful and monstrous because the Papists are forced to grant that the Head of their Church the Pope may Himself fall away and be a Reprobate and the Foxians are forced to Confess as much even of divers of their Heads and Teachers some getting Saving Grace again as they say
purposes of God as to his holy ordering of this present world and his Saints in it and against the Constant Experience of all those high Saints in Scripture and of all that ever went before us All which shews the Devilish pride of these high Pharisees 2. He adds saying the Saints are not fighting all their Life Time I Reply if there be no Enemies no danger of Fleshly Lusts warring against our Souls as Peter speaks 113 2. Why then doth the holy Spirit speak of the Combate of the Flesh and Spirit Gal. 5. and that Paul did not the things that he would and did the Evil he would not of his being taken Prisoner 3. Why then doth Gods Spirit furnish us with all that Heavenly Artillery Ephes. 6. 1. And Commands his Servants even Timothy to flie youthful Lusts if he were past wounding by them 4. And to stand upon the Guard and watch against Gluttonly and Drunkenness and worldly Cares which would lull the Souls of the Disciples asleep except they kept the better watch c. Luke 21. 5. And why then doth the Lord Jesus Command us to pray daily against Temptations yea and to pray daily for the pardon of sin if his Followers be for ever escaped out of the reach of Sinful thoughts words and actions and many thousand sinful Omissions 6. What was the Reason of the Cemmand of Christ Jesus to the Churches to watch to Overcome to repent threatning them with discharging and Excommunication which we see dolefully Effected upon the Asian Professors and which was followed with a rich blessing upon that Ordinance Executed upon the Incestuous Corinthian which brought forth those seven Heavenly Fruits both in him and that Church also 2 Cor. 7. G. Fox his third Answer is The Saints are come to the Kingdome of God witnessing Sin and Iniquity blotted out and the Everlasting Covenant of Peace and Life with God But 1. Take these words in his Sense viz. that all that are in their Fancied Kingdome are thus free from Sin and come to this Peace and Joy why then do themselves still Confess themselves to be subject to quaking and trembling as if they were at the black and burning Foot of Mount Sinai where indeed they are and not upon the bright and shining Hill of Zion 2. Is not this Contrary to the Covenant of God with David concerning Solomon and in the Anti Type with all Christians viz. that if they Sin he will Chastise them with the Rods of men but not take away his mercy as he took it from Saul c. 3. Is there not a false Peace a false Ioy as well as a false quaking a false Repentance a false mortification and Sanctificatio and in Conclusion a false Salvation and therefore the Lord Jesus tels us of the high pretenders Math. 7. yet by him Everlastingly rejected 114 The 59th Instance is in Pag. 365. where G. Fox brings in Robert Tuchin c. saying The most Faithful Messengers of Christ have acknowledged that they have come short of their duty G. Fox Answers They that are Faithful Messengers of Christ have the Answer well done thou good and Faithful Servant where did John or Paul or Peter acknowledge that they came short of their duty Hath not thou slandred the Servants of the Lord thinking them to be like yourselves and falsly accusing them that you may seem Iustified who are false Messengers and come in his Name when you have no Commission from him and you come short of every good work But thus it is not with Christs true Messengers for they fulfil his Will that sent them It is the Lord that worketh in them whose thâ—y are and whose duty they perform by his Spirit I Reply this deluded Soul as it is written must grow worse and worse except the Lord wonderfully awaken him to all Eternity Instead of seeing any failing against God and Christ the Spirit and Servants of God c. he claps his wings upon his Dunghil and vapours that in all these Transactions he hath not faild no not in a sinful word or Thought 1. But he must remember that such was the Infinite Incomprehensible Purity and Iustice and wisdome of God that the Heavens were not pure in his sight and he laid Folly to the Charge of his Angels and I am sure their Natures their Endowments their Employments G. Fox comes short of and yet they came short of their duty and are now fast in Chains of Darkness expecting Iudgement and Torment to come 2. I presume G. Fox will grant that our first Parents were Innocent and perfect as highly Gifted and as highly Employed as ever G. Fox is like to be and yet they came short and We all by them fallen short of the Glory and love of God into the Dunghill of Hellish Darkness 3. After the Promised Restoration by the Son of God what Excellent Gifts had Noah Abraham Lot Isaac Iacob Ioseph Moses Aaron Sampson Iepthe Gideon Eli Samuel Nathan Solomon Asa Iehoshaphat Hezekiah Iosiah and many other glorious Saints what wonderful Assistance and Extraordinary Appearances of God had they in their high Services for God and yet how greaâ—ly some of them wonderfully fouly did they come short of their 115 duty I remember I was once asked by one of these high Boasters whether I would deny the Scripture viz that said David did not sin but in the Case of Uriah unto which I know many full Answers may be given Here only I observe how ready these willingly Ignorant Souls are to Catch at any Word that may Fortifie their proud Fancy though against many other Scriptures and unquestionable Examples c. 4. Until the coming of Christ Jesus we know the Command of the most holy God to private persons to the Princes to the Priests to the whole Assembly to offer up Sacrifice and Expiation for all sorts of failings yea for Sins of Ignorance yea and for their coming short in their holy offerings Hence David cries out Psal. 143. Enter not into Iudgement or Reckoning with thy Servant c. and Psal. 19. Cleanse thou me from secret sins for who knows how oft he offendeth 5. I know G. Fox useth to say all these were Types and Christ is the body â— I Answer There are more Anti-Types then the person of Christ for the Quakers themselves they make themselves Kings and Priests and the Temple as well as Christ c. But come to the time of the Lord Jesus and look upon the Famous first Apostles who had freely left all to follow him who enjoyed his personal preaching and praying his wonderful Miracles his Heavenly Converse his holy and Powerful Spirit in their own preaching healing all Diseases raising the dead casting out Devils c. and yet how doth the Lord Jesus frequently and sharply chide them for their coming short of their duty for their Ignorance negligence unbelief forgetfulness Inhumanity Ambition
means appointed by Christ Jesus yet I deny it ever to be done in the first turning of the Heart and working of Faith that is by any such Immediate Spirit and Christ and God in every of mankind before or since the coming of Christ Jesus especially for they say that he is the true Light of which Iohn spake then Come to Inlighten the World c. 9. I Conclude this Instance and the whole with a Reâ—lection upon Gods wonderful dealing with Iob In the 1. Chap. the Lord boasts of his servant Iob to the Devil to be a perfect man as the Foxians often urge this place But God Schoold him for his pride and Impatience c. by Elihu and by his own Voice out of a Whirlwind and now Iob Confesseth his Pride and Ignorance and professeth his Risolution to prate no more c. but to abhor himself that is as some loathsome Thing in Dust and Ashes G. Fox in this his Book abhors the Term of Dust and Ashes as being Elevatedabove Abraham Iob punies to him with high Fancies of his Immortality though we see they dy stink Rot as well as others But if God please to shew him and me truly what Sin is What Gods Justice is what an Infinite price must pay for the least Evil Thought and Natural Disposition on the Old Score 119 If God please by any of those many gracious means he useth to Imprint these other such Heavenly Considertions upon our Souls We shall then for all our pretences cry out with Peter depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord and with Iob Once have I spoken yea twice c. but no more c. I abhor myself as a loathsome Rotten stinking Carrion in Dust and Ashes But alas I fear G. Fox is so taken up with his sitting with Christ in Heavenly Places with Immediate Dictates of his supposed holy Spirit That Gods speaking thus to his poor Worms after the way of Men and by these outward means stinks in his Nostrils which if so and so Irrecoverably I desire and desire all that love God and their own Salvations to flee from him as from Korahs Pride and Korahs Plagues for his Viol is pouring on him in spiritual Indgements and shall be pouring on him in spiritual and Corporal Torments to all Eternity FINIS The Occasion of the Disputation G Fox his Book in Folio weighed A Spirit of Confusion in the Quakers Meetings My Offer of Disp. on 14 Propositions The sirst usage to the Author his Proposals The deceit fulness of Fox Foxians one of the subtil Tricks of this subtil Fox viz. to steal handsomly from the Dispute yet not to seem at all to run for it A great private Conflict before my publick I T. his Letter to me upon the sight of my Propositions to G. Fox A Note of Card Mazarin Fuel for the Quakers Fire of Hell My Answer to the fore-going Letter from I. T. Crying sins in N. England The infinite Justice of God must be satisfied The Bruitish Simplicity of the Quakers Spirit The Manifestation of the Spirit 1. Cor. 12. Gods wonderful Justice The words All and every one Considered The Impudency and Uncleaness of the Quakers Spirit I. T. his second Letter to me The high Opinion G Fox his Followers have of him yet he saild run for it Unreasonable kind of Reasoning I can give many Instances of their abusing the Ordinance and Name of the Spirit of Prayer for a sudden Silencing of their Opposites W. Harris his late Case of denying that the King hath power to dispence with his Subjects in Religious matters His Majestyes Declaration against W. Haris his presumptious Attempt I. T His third and last Letter to me a Whore is as bold in her whoredoms as a Chast Wise in her Inocency If there were any Colour for any of these horrible Out-cryes I should have heard of them from W. Edmunson who rak'd up all he could against me both in the Dispute at Newport and Providence My Answer to I T. his 3d Assault upon me A deceitfull way of Answ. The horrid Nakedness of the Q Women shews the worse then barbarous nakedness of their Spirits the name Quakers The Quakers Sufferings Womens Preaching W Harris his former practices against all Goverment but that of Saints as the Quakers now speak My Righteousness as to my dealing with W. H. The horrible Murthering of the Indians by Liquors which the Qu have notoriously practised They were the Dog-dayes when these hot and doged barkings were made at me Death and the Resurrection The first Intervenience at Providence of the Qu. and my self G Fox his cunning Departure My care of ingaging them to my whole Offer and of discussing the latter seven at Providence Scruples about meeting in the Quakers Meeting house at Newport the way to Conquer The Persons disputing with me W Edmundson described I Stubs his Ingenuity The beginning of the Dispute The Occasion of it My ends Nicholas Davis drowned at Newport a little before the Dispute What Prayer was used The first Position The name Quakers The Rise of the word Protestant The Grindletonians The Libertines The Ranters are but the Quakers Daughter True Quaking The horrid shaking of the Quakers Satans Counterfeit motions The Quakers Answer Quaking and Trembling No Ordinance of God Counterfeit Quaking and Trembling A Paper put in of two great Considerations The unequall Termes of the Quakers enjoining Subscription their open Partiality The Quakers evill spirit toward the holy Scriptures The Light of each man in the World above the Scriptures The Pope and the Quakers great affection and ownness against the holy Scriptures An Instance of a long-haird profane Qua. slighting Nature and the Scriptures An horible Instance in Ireland against the Holy Scriptures The Scriptures the word of God The Occasion of the Title of this Book G Fox his prodigious Folly and Impiety Pertinent Queryes and unanswerable The tumultuous spirit of the Quakers in Disputing T is hard to hold the Foxians or any guilty disputant to a fair Dispute W. Edmondsoo justly reproved by the Deputy Governor Capt. Cranston The Foxians boast of their Number Two of the Foxian women naked in New England Isai. 20 discussed touching Nakedness The true voice of God and many false and pretended Immeâ—iate Inspirations and Revelations The Eclipse of the Sun in the midst of the first dayes Disputation A Note of W. Hunter burnt in Essex at Burnt wood My great Indisposedness of body to the second dayes Contest Prayer and Patience Spiritual Bow men Gunners The second days Contest 1 though private Vizt R. W. Ms. Ann. A black and senceless Imputation The confused spirit of the Quakers In the copy of this book belonging to the Library of Brown University are many manuscript erasures corrections and annotations in the well-known hand-writing of Roger Williams They were possihly made with the intention of correcting a second edition of the
to all but embraced by few that are freely chosen The frantick fancy of Christs Kingdome in his Enemieâ— hearts Thomas Weld Faith how wrought A distracted old woman a picture of the Quakers Rom. 10. The admirable Chain of Diamonds True Faith what Heb. 1. Act. 26. The four sort of Hearers The Quakers how cheated by Sathan as Queen Mary was of her Conception Challenges to the Foxians Pauls famous Case 80 Tko. Pollard The Fox like and dog like Impudency of G. Fox c. The visibility of Christs Church and her Officers The Church in God G Fox a most visible and idle prater of Invisibilities Magnus Byne God hath many words The understanding of the Scripture threefold The Devils End in Cavilling against the Scripture Tongues yet J. Stâ—bs vapourd that he understood as many Tongues as I and may be more The horrible Ingratitude of the Foxians The Transltion of the Scripture The Quakers Spirit for all pretences a lazie Spirit The three Languages upon the Cross of Christ. The Devils skill in Languages and Subtlety in Revelations Theora John The Lord raiseth his Witnesses against Babel by his Spirit and blessing upon Tongues and Translations The Papists former Ignorance now their abuse of knowledge English helps a great mercy A close Query 86 Magnus Byne The first and second Resurrection The great Expectation of all the four great Religions The great point of Salvation Two great Sorts of minders Eternal Life Three great sorts of Me 1 Insert and are R. W. Ms. Ann. 2 And lost in themselves but saved by grace R. W. Ms. Ann. Jesuits and Puritans the two great Antagonists pag. 89. Magnus Bine The Quakers in the Fulness of the Godhead of their hellish mouths and pens ay be believed The Quakers grutch Christ the Title of God-man Ephes. 4. The work of Christs Ministers The horrible pride and Haughtiness of the Quakers The Indians base esteem of the Godhead God and the great Adversary to all Proud spirits The Soul of men horribly abused 1 Change best to rest R. W. Ms. Ann. The changes of all things created and their Periods 1 Add in its tendency though not in effect R. W. s. Ann. Two horrible Murthers attempts Mans doleful Degeneracy Robert Simson the body of Christs Church 1 Put it may be as he said above myself in parenthesis R. W. Ms. Ann. The Parables Figurative Speeches of Holy Scripture The Protestant Churches The Quakers and Ieâ—uits Spirit The Foxian Churches 1 Add is R. W. Ms. Ann. All bodies liable to Distempers The sendency of the Quak. Spirit 1 Change now to tend R. W. Ms. Ann. Jonathan Clapham cs The Pope and Quakers compared Of Fathers and Masters The Popish priority anâ— the Foxian is of and in their Doctors Meer Civil Respects 1 Change von politikon to animal politicon R. W. Ms. Ann. The Quakers Masters and Fathers True Regeneration 106. William Thomas The person of Christ and the Grace of Christ distinguished Christs persoâ— Not Ubiquirary Faith not Christ himself K. Charles King yeâ— not personally present in all his Dominions Humph. Norton yields Christ ubiquitary 1 Add by faith R. W. Ms. Ann. Which word the word humane they startle aâ— Christ Jesus in the Soul makes it a palace for 3 Kings c. 2 Change these to their R. W. Ms. Ann. The variety of Christs workings appearances False Conceptions Giles Fermin Paul the Angels Swearing Of Swearing in General 1 Chaâ—ge conjuror to conjecture R. W. Ms. Ann. Famous Usher Moderation as to Swearing 1 Change the to yt. R. W. Ms. Ann. Swearing no Ceremony The fear of God and Swâ—aring by him put by God for his whole worship 1 Erase is there R. W. Ms. Ann. Swearing as real a worship of God as Prayer preaching Baptisme Lords Supper c. Christ not the abolisher of Oaths The fifth of Mathew The Quakers plainly Confess Swearing in Cases lawful 1 Change prate to please R. W. Ms. Ann. Cases of Swearing Sin established by Law is Sin multiplied and multiplied Judgement here and for ever 30. Thomas Moor. The Devils great work in all Ages Sathans Emissaries to destroy Christ Jesus The person of Christ Jesus the Devils great Eye sore 1 Change and to end R. W. Ms. Ann. The Manicheans the great Opposers of Christs Manhood That Individual Man Christ Jesus must have the preheminence of the only Messiah and Mediator 2 Erase not R. W. Ms Ann. The Godhead of Christs Body after a Transcendent way 1 Change the to yt. R. W. Ms. Ann. The six great points Dreadfully inverted upon the Quakers 136 Thomas Moor Eating Christs Flesh aâ—d drinking his Blood The Foxians horrible pride exalting themselves to be God and Christ 1 Erase Herods and. R. W. Ms. Ann. Christs coming again to them 1 Change I to We. R. W. Ms. Ann. The Foxians natural and spiritual Defilements therefore not God but filthy Dreams The Foxians in Calvins time Gods strokes in this world wonderful upon three sorts 1 Change Blasphemies to Blasphemous R. W. Ms. Ann. 186. Samueâ— Hammond About true bearing What the quenching of the Spirit is Old Authors John Burton The gâ—oat dispute about the true Christ. Christ without and within The Protestants belief of Christ. Churches in Wales 1 Change the to this R. W. Ms. Ann. The first Cry of every Chiâ—d of God Whence Devils and wicked men come The low Countries hazard by the Pelagians Davids Conceptions vindicated from G. Foxes Aspersions What Nature is The pureness of the sweetest Infants The rottenness of nature The experiences of Gods Saints in Scripture 217 Iohâ— Iackson The great and little Foxes 1 Ends with a not a period R. W. Ms. Ann. The Heresies of several Ages Concerning false Christs c. Concerning him who letted Antichrists rising The everlasting Gospel John Jackson The horrible pride of the Foxians False appearances 1 Insert with R. W. Ms. Ann. The word perfect in the greek and Heqrew The Saints pardon of Sin and Justification perfect The Saints battel and daily Combate Heavenly Piradoxes Devilsh Tâ—nents of the Spirituals in Calvins time The Papist and Quakers perfection 220 Hosanna to the Son of David G Fox his Judgment from God Kom 1. Discussed as to the Eternal Power and Godhead The natural power of men and Devils 1 Cor. 2. as to Gods Spirit discussed 1 Change Principles to Princes R. W. Ms. Ann. Wisdome The Case of G Fox and most of his Foxians 222. Hosanna to the Son of David Christs Name hotribly abused Colossians 1. Considered The Nature and admirable Mistery and Excellen-of Christ Jesus The Blood of Christ. The Blood of God The Blood of Christ despised by Papists and Quakers Christ the picture of God Christ God and Man Christ Fulness filling all A wonderful Conduit The proud phrenzie of the Quakers The Papists and Quakers Christ 223 Hosanna to the Son of David 1 Change Dife to Life R. W. Ms. Ann. The Estate of mankinde