hearts the day-star is arisen walk in the Light thereof that you may be wise bold strong and valiant to follow the Captain of our salvation who is born King of the Iews for it s given to him to rule all Nations and to subdue the Kingdom of this World but not by carnal Weapons but by his invisible Arm of Power and Sword which proceeds out of his mouth whereby he wil utterly confound destroy and lay wast all that rebel and stand up against him Therefore my dear Friends let your Faith stand in the invisible Arm and Power of God and be you all of a sound mind be ye stedfast unmoveable rooted grounded and established in the living Truth and Righteousness of the God of all the Families of the Earth that you may not be moved shaken nor troubled in your minds at all these rumors of Wars and distress of Nations and perplexity and wrath which must come to pass upon this generation but lift up your heads and rejoice and let your eye be single alwaies looking to and following the Prince of Peace and be not of a doubtful mind for the Lord of Hosts is with us and the shout of a King is amongst us and although we have no helper in the earth neither can make use of any carnal weapons to defend or deliver our selves yet in the faith and patient suffering in and for the Lamb of God that was slain but now is alive and liveth for evermore in him we shall reign in victory life and dominion over all our Enemies within and without And my dear Friends you are called to a glorious freedom and liberty in the Spirit of Truth stand fast in it that you may keep your consciences void of offence in the sight of God in all things and if God requires one thing and man another obey God and fear not man who can but kil the body that your souls may live in the dominion of Gods truth and in it meet and wait and worship him and go not with the uncircumcised in hearts and ears for the uncurable stroke of the Lord is near to be executed upon them neither return back again into Egypt for the plagues pestilence and famine wil be multiplied amongst them til the Egyptians be confounded Therefore dear Friends keep your constant watch in the true Light of the Son of the living God that you may receive counsel wisdom and discerning in every motion and command whether it be of flesh or spirit for that which moveth in the fleshly part in your own particulars you must take up the Cross of Christ to in its fiâ—st motion and appearance and let true judgement pass upon it for if it proceed forth either in act or word it wil wound your Consciences and abuse the power of God and lead you into bondage again and that which commandeth to observe and do the thing conceived in the lust of the flesh from the fleshly birth either within or without you are not to obey for that wil lead to the second death but the motion command in the Spirit of Life you must in all things do and follow and in it you wil live have perfect peace and therefore because we are born of the Spirit and led by it the world wil persecute us therefore let every Souldier of Jesus Christ be contented with his portion which is tribulation in this World but be of good chear the Captain of our salvation hath overcome the World Therefore I say again in the Name fear and power of the Lord be you faithful unto death for he that shall come wil come crown you with everlasting Life And my dear Friends if it seemeth good in the sight of our God that all the dayes of our appointed â—ime in this life may be dayes of trouble persecution and affliction yet be of good comfort this wil be but for a moment and wil soon come to an end but the joy rest peace and glory which our God hath prepared for us as we love him and are faithful to him shall never have an end And so my dear Friends in the â—ear love obedience worship and service of the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ for ever dwel and abide in it I am firmly united to you and in that Love Life and Truth of the living God I dearly salute and embrace you all and am as ful of love with you as I was when I began to write and whatsoever you suffer for your obedience to our God and keeping the commands of Christ whether spoiling of Goods imprisonment banishment or death it self I am resolved in the strength and power of God to partake with you From your faithful Friend in the patient suffering for the Testimony of a good Conscience in the high Gaol at Exon the 24 th of the tenth Month 1662. Christopher Bacon THE END
life to come And now therefore as a servant of the Lord God to you all who writes these things with tears unto you do I in his Name beseech you to be faithful and obedient quiet and peaceable children behaving your selves as Lambs or as new-born babes in his sight in this generation lest you should provoke him through your disobedience by being unfaithful and unquiet in his house and they that are or become so they must be excluded and shut out too among them that are without without love faith hope peace comfort and refreshment in the reprobate state where the rents schisms strivings divisions envyings and hatings are which are the fruits which they produce that go out from the Spirit in which love joy and everlasting peace is Therefore I exhort and beseech you all to walk together in this one Spirit to meet together to serve the Lord in this one Spirit that you may be like-minded that the fruits of it may abound in and among you plenteously to the glory of him that hath visited you with the day-spring from on high and hath opened a Fountain for you and hath prepared a Feast of fat things for you and withal a rest for your weary souls Wherefore faint not in the day of your adversity lest your Enemies vaunt themselves as if your God would not preserve you in unity love peace patience in which you had need to continue lest that the Enemy within or without should get an advantage against you which might easily be if prejudice should be permitted to have place in any of you one against another thereby might the Lord be provoked to jealousie against you And therefore above all things let brotherly love continue that through your love to the Father one to another to all men it may evidently appear that you are of your Father the Lord Iehovah who is love and who delights in love and mercy both which I â—ear him record he hath richly vouchsafed unto you my dearly beloved unto whom in his love I have writ this in brief which to that end I received from him and whâ—ch J have now finally communicated to you or rather the Spirit of the Lord through me his servant your dear and faithful brother in the one truth William Caton Greetings of strength in the holy life and salutations of endeared love to the rising seed of the invisible God every where as this may come A Salutation of Love from the motion of the Spirit of Life and Love sent to all that are of the Royal birth and are of the Seed immortal and of the Flock of God who in this his blessed and glorious day his Fold of Rest are come to know and are waiting to feel the same more and more to be read in the fear and wisdom of God All you tender Lambs who are gathered out of the World and its evil wayes and customs by the powerful Arm of the living God in that which is pure dwel low in the pure holy fear and your good Shepherds Fold you wil feel and therein do you abide and you wil be safe in the storms and from the terrors and affrightments of the wild Beasts of the field and the Wolves of the night wil not be able to come near your dwellings to enter your holy habitation nor to touch your Life for from them it wil be hid in God And Friends therein watch and wait and the good Shepherds voice you wil come to hear who speaks peace to all his Lambs and little ones that are of an upright heart who wait upon fear and trust in him and in so doing you wil also feel his Eternal Arm made bare for your salvation deliverance and defence And all you children of the Day of God which hath sprung from on High by which he hath visited and called unto you even by the good Word of his Grace by which he hath begotten you again and chosen you to be his Inheritance and generation which hath sprung up from the Seed of Life which the Father and Fountain of Love and Life hath shed abroad in this the day of his large kindness and rich mercy which in your hearts in measure you have felt Oh dear friends let the eye of your minds be alwayes fixed and fastened upon the same even upon that in which the God and Father of Mercies hath so exceeding largely extended himself unto you and in which he hath abundantly appeared in the manifestation of his loving kindness towards you in begetting you again which were strayed and in gathering you that were scattered afar off and lost from him and in raising you up to be a people to himself that were not his people and in begetting you to be his children that were sometimes strangers and in the alienation and all this hath he done for you of his own good wil in the riches of his free grace when there was no worthiness at all in you even when you were wallowing in your filth when you were in your blood no eye pittied you even that was the time of his Love Oh my dear Friends I say prize this his large Love and forget not those his benefits but dwel in the sence and feeling thereof so that from the virtue of his Love felt in your hearts you may receive daily strength and growth in the Heavenly Life of Righteousness and true Holiness that so the Image of your Heavenly Father you may come to bear more and more every day and may live walk and abide therein to his praise a chast peculiar people a chosen generation zealous of good works and hating the very appearance of evil that so you may be manifest unto all men that you are of the Houshold of Faith children of Truth and of the Family of the living God who are sitting in the Heavenly places in Christ and know and feel the Table of the Lord and are feeding together on the Bread of Life which comes down from above which the World are ignorant of and drinking of the Cup of Blessing in which you may feel and taste of the salvation of God to the comforting of your souls and gladding of your hearts by which you may be strengthened and enabled to do the Wil and Requirings of the Lord either in doing or in suffering Oh you dear Babes and tender Plants you that have felt of the sweetness of the Milk of the Breast of Consolation when you were ready to pine for want and have been watered with that which came from the everlasting Spring and Well of salvation in a time of great drought Oh dear hearts I say again abide in the feeling of the same that so you may always see and behold the hand of God's mighty power that he hath reached out unto you and watch thereto and wait therein to receive more and more of the Heavenly Virtue and dew from above that so you may grow as the Lillies and spread forth as
fruit and blessed wil all they be that are found in the Faith for it s they that are in the Vine and therein abide which wil yeild unto the Lord living fruit of obedience and every Tree wil be clearly known of what sort they are by their fruit for no man can gather grapes of Thorns or figs of thistles Therefore all to the Vine come that the nature thereof you may feel that so fruitful unto the Lord you may all be in this his glorious day to the praise and glory of his most holy Name for I have also seen in the Spirit of the living God that there wil be a mighty fierce storm a very great tempest and a shaking time such as hath not yet been upon the Earth by which those trees that are fruitless dead and dry which hath stood for a time and made a shew yet do but cumber the ground and are rotten at the root are not wel setled and fastned upon the true Foundation in the good ground they wil be turned up and laid low as without it hath been seen in which the Lord hath shewn his mighty Power though the blind do not see nor regard the operation of his hand And after that great and notable day of the Lord in which many of the lofty Hills and high Mountains wil be overturned and levelled thereby and the tall Cedars and the sturdy Oaks wil be made to bend and bow and many great old buildings wil be thrown off its rotten Foundation then I say in that day those that do stand and abide firm and wel fastned they wil be exceeding faithful to the praise and glory of the Lord and such his good Trees that are bringing forth fruit unto him in this his day them he wil purge prune dress prop and preserve and the wild Bores of the Forrest whose nature is to root rend and tear shall never be able to root them up neither shall the subtil Foxes of the Wood have power to crop and spoile their tender branches that abide in the living Vine neither shall they ever be able to hinder them from clustering for the Lord God wil guard them by his Power and uphold them by his Eternal Arm as hitherto he hath done neither wil he suffer the Swine to destroy his young Plants that are newly coming up but by his power they shall be fenced nourished and kept And so all my dear Friends be not at all discouraged although the Furnace may yet be hot for the Lord wil not suffer his Gold to come to loss therein but he wil save and bring it forth all that the good Metal shall lose therein shall be but its dross that it may shine the better in lustre to the honor of the Lord and also his good sheep he wil not suffer to be devoured by those old black Blood-hounds that thirst for blood Oh! no no my Friends he wil preserve them because they are his own gathered by his own hand and are profitable unto him Therefore I say he wil take care of them and though he do suffer the dogs which are without the fear loose a little to course them and drive them up in holes and pines for a season it is but that they may be driven from those rotten bogs of this Worlds enjoyments and delights which might otherwise be hurtful for them to feed upon that they might be driven nearer to himself and one unto another to wait upon the Lord and to feed together upon the Life that is Immortal and to lye down in his Fold of rest peace and joy which wil last for ever And so my dear Friends Brethren and Sisters Lambs and Babes what ever the Lord our good Shepherd suffers to come to pass or to be acted against us in the Heathens wrath and Enemies rage he wil turn it to his own praise and for our good and the remainder of the wrath rage of the wicked he wil restrain Therefore blessed are all you of the Lord that can say of a truth he is your good Shepherd So dear Lambs and Babes Plants and Children of the Lord in the Light live walk and for ever abide and you wil have unity and fellowship with the Father and one with another and so in the holy awe and pure dread of the Lord God Almighty stand continually and the peace and blessing of the Lord wil be felt by you and multiplied in and amongst you to the glory of his most holy Name to whom be all glory given honor and praise rendered with living obedience and thanksgiving for ever and for evermore Amen saith my soul. So dear Friends take this as a testimony of my love to you all who are of my Fathers Flock from one that is of the same Fold with you and your Friend and Brother in the Kingdom suffering and patience of the Lord Jesus who am called and known to many by Richard Greenway Written the sixth day of the ninth Month 1662. in the County-Gaol called the High Gaol at Exon where I suffer outward Bonds for my obedience to the Command of God and for abiding in the Doctrine of the Lord Iesus â—hrist by the wills of unreasonable men and I in patience wait therein until the Lord God arise in his Power and plead my innocent cause in the hearts of my persecutors or in his own way and time work my deliverance A Second Salutation to the flock of God every where in outward Bonds and at liberty who are born of the immortal Seed and redeemed from the Earth and separated from the evil that is in this World and called to be Saints and quickned by the power and operation of the Spirit of Life and sanctified by the Word of Truth and are in this day of tryal found faithful to the Lord in doing or suffering for that precious Truth which makes free from sin and death and keeps us above all the fears threatnings and terrors of man whose power is from beneath and soon passeth away Oh! unto you my heart is opened and streams of unfeigned Love from the incomings of the Fountain of Life runs forth unto you all abundantly who am the least among many Brethren but not the least in love to you Oh my dearly beloved Brethren and Sisters as you suffer for God's living Truth upon the Earth in any measure I suffer with you and am one with you and am afflicted with you Oh my dear Friends apply your hearts and give up your selves to and for the service of the living God and diligently wait upon him in whom all our strength is that you may be strengthened and encouraged enabled and furnished with power and might in the Lord of Hosts that you may not faint nor be weary in your minds but stay your minds upon the God of Truth that his blessing of peace may for ever encrease in all your habitations And you dear Friends you upon whom the ends of the Earth is come and in your