are lead forth and acted The Lord ere long will come forth in another appearance amongst you he is coming out of darkness his secret place into a light and open view he will let out a more pure glory upon you when in an holy shame you will reflect upon your present Employments I tell you dearly Esteemed it is a scorn to us either to pick or plead a Quarrel with any party for an outward or carnal Interest The Lord hath shewed us and will shortly manifest to you a more easie and sweet way of Victory we can overcome by being conquered we can lose all and yet be savers in the conclusion Again for I draw homewards The manner of your present actings is in much fear dread darkness and confusion it is your daily thoughts and care how to complot your designes and lay out your Work so as that you may save your selves your honour and reputation but all is to little you must shortly part with all your name fame success and victory must all be forgotten yea you your selves shall rejoyce at your own Overtures You are very fearfull and jealous of your defamation you are afraid to think of it your spirits are involved in confusion and distraction for fear lest your designe should betray you These are your imprisoned thoughts I am very certain but spirituall wisdom can discover them The Lord knows That you lie under a sad weight of fear terrour and distraction Fear t he pit and a snare have taken hold on you disorder and confusion abounds amongst you You grope for the wall like the blinde you aim at Liberty and Priviledg but you grope blindly after it as knowing not which way to accomplish it and thus many times you sit down weeping by the Rivers of Babylon you are oft so over-whelmed in these troubled waters of Liberty and Priviledg that you are constrained to sink under the waves of sorrow and darkness I know the Lord judges many of you and throws you down by the sad and serious consideration of your actings He turns your hearts wayes and enterprises upside down before you and I know you are under daily convictions of spirit Thus the dark presence of God shuts you up in fear and keeps you under bondage The thick cloud of horrour and confusion vails that sweet presence and bright splendor of Peace and Liberty from you but in an appointed time the mysterie of light will break out in you and upon you when in the shinings of Divine Majesty you will clearly and purely behold things in a naked appearance when you shall see no canse of fear or trouble in any thing Those that live in Love to all see no cause to fear any for there is no fear in love perfect Love casts out fear If you were in Charity with all men you would fear no man for Charity thinks no evil it knowes none it fears none All things are not yet reconciled to you earth and heaven are not yet agreed but you labour under a body and bulk of cursed enmitie and hence is the spring of all your fear and jealousie If you could see all men all Interests all power in the Lord you would be offended at none you would not fear any but would with a sweet patient contented and quiet spirit lie down under any thing comming from a Divine dispose We see and behold our selves as in the Lord without fear or jealousie because we are really reconciled to all men all designes all interests And all they that know us are carried forth in a spirit of Love towards us The reason why we are hated despised and trampled upon is because the world knoweth us not they know not the Father in us In this state of ignorance we are the objects of scorn and contempt and it is our Freedom and Liberty to be so The Lord in us and we in the Lord and with him travail together under the worlds infirmities and because we see it the Fathers will it is our meat and drink to doe it we love to sweat drops of blood under all mens offences Throw all the wrath malice envie and scorn of man upon us we fear it not but in the Lord we are able to bear all and suffer under it Lo thus we fill up behinde the measure of the sufferings of Christ in our flesh the dyings of the Lord are manifested in us daily Here O here 's a way to bring forth peace and unity the Lord is coming he is coming to discover it For by this death we ascend to a life in all mens hearts and affections after this crosse of hatred we are crowned as most choyce and precious in all mens love and esteem when the spirit shall descend from one high and be powred out upon them they shall look upon us whom in the Lord they have pierced and mourn over us with a spirit of love and tenderness Then shall we see of the travail of our souls and be therewith satisfied Ah my dear Friends my Soul travails again in birth with you till the Lord be thus formed and brought forth in you I know many of you are almost spent under your burden you are so lost in a wilderness of Confusion That you desire and seek after a retired rest you begin to loath your husks and to have some desire after your fathers table I say no more he that does come will come and will not tarry behold he comes with a recompence you are afraid to lay down your Swords lest you should lose your Liberties but the Lord will recompence this seven-fold into your bosome he is comming forth to make you free to suffer a blessed Freedom a glorious Liberty a sufficient recompence for the loss of all outward glories Is it the loss of your Honor Fame and Dignity that you are afraid of The Lord is comming to make you glad to part with it and with a holy rejoycing to throw it all behind you Ah freinds The Lord will honour you with meeknesse you shall be the fame of the world for true valour and spiritual courage yea now and not before shall the desire of the Nations be towards you their lamb-like spirits of meeknesse and innocency will be an enforcing invitation to the Lion-hearted devourers of the world to feed together with you in your green pastures and to drink of your quiet and still waters when you are become children of this new birth you shall be able to play upon the hole of the Aspe and to dwell with the Cockatrice in his den oppression and tyranny shall be destroyed before you the sons of your afflictors shall come bending to you that sweet spirit of love and subjection that God shall bring forth in you shall attract the hearts of the world towards you they shal throw down their crowns at your feet shal take hold of that skirt of Righteousness which is upon you and say We perceive of a truth that the Lord is in you and amongst you But in the mean time you together with the world are shut up in darkness and not truly discerning one another you fear the world and they are afraid of you you are at a distance involved in a bloody contest an earthly lustfull and carnall Warfarr Where Live and Lie and die together Yet but a while it 's not for ever Farewell POSTSCRIPT Friends BUt one word more and I have done I told you before and now I say it again That your reputation is the same and glory of this present Army you I know are the main supporting Pillars of it I will tell you what I see in this more plainly then I have hitherto declared I see the Lord our spirituall Samson hath laid his hands of almighty power upon You these Pillars of this woodden Fabrick he will disjoint you shake you all to pieces and in you the whole edifice of this swordly Power shall be annihilated the Lord wil die with it in it or rather out of it and from it and in this death he will destroy more then you have done all your lives time The Lord will here take you napping as you are eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage to strange flesh and the lake of divine burning shall consume you Oh it will be a glorious day wait for it I have here offered a few things to a publick view I know the wise ones amongst you will slight it and disregard it the form method and language invites not the curious and nice spirit of any man it hath no beauty upon it though a great deal in it which the Princes of this world cannot discern It is indeed the foolish language of the Spirit if you do not like it retort it again and I will carry it where I had it you are like yet to have no better from me I was once wise as well as you but I am now a fool I care not who knows it I once also enjoy'd my self but I am now carryed out of my wits a fool a mad man besides my self if you think me any other you are mistaken and it is for your sakes that I am so And now Friends In him that was is and is to come I take my farewell of you remember what I say is was and is to come The Lord was when you were lowest he is now you are highest and he is to come when you shall be nothing Even so Come Lord Jesus Come quickly FINIS
though in some darkly in others more purely and all these motions are as so many footsteps of God whereby he gradually ascends out of the creature into a more compleat image or likeness of himself Time was when God dwelt amongst us in the darkness of absolute and arbitrary Monarchy The face and beauty of Divine mystery lived in it deny it who can that sees God in all things In this form of Monarchy God hath vailed his beautifull presence with a thick cloud of darkness He hath made darkness his secret place and his pavilions round about him have been thick clouds of the Skie Though the image and brightness of God have dwelt in it yet under such black darkness that man could never discern it Tyranny persecution opposition will nature and creature hath been as it were that vail betwixt God and Man in this dispensation all this and whatever you will call evil in Monarchy the Lord was pleased to hide himself under while resident in this carnall form I know its difficult to see God in this darkness the bright Sun under this black cloud the naked and pure Spirit u … er this foul habit and filthy attire but he that cannot here discern God is blinde and sees not afar off God having hitherto walked under this form is now and hath in these last dayes come forth to rend this vail in pieces to shake this form to lay it waste and cloath himself with another How God hath and does destroy Monarchy and what it figures out to us The power and life of the King and in him the very soul of Monarchy sunk into the Parliament and here it lost its name barely but not its nature its form but not its power they making themselves as absolute and tyrannicall as ever the King in his reign dignity and supremacy yet the Lord ascended a little nearer himself by taking of this form the Parliament and hereby made way for his after-design We see in a short time he layes aside that glorious shew and Idol the Parliament and cloaths himself with the Army And thus both King Monarchy and Parliament fell into the hands and upon the swords of the Army and thus the Army are to be the executioners of that beast Monarchy which they had formerly wounded and whose wound the Parliament had healed and salved over by a corrupt and rotten Treaty all which doth figure out to me the stain of the glory of all flesh as Monarchy or arbitrary regall power fals by the sword so also shall that Kingly and Imperiall power of all flesh be cut in sunder by the stroke of Divine Justice for by his fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh and the slain of the Lord shall be many The Lord will kindle a burning under that glory wherein he hath formerly appear'd God himself shall be the burning the holy One shall be the flame and all fleshly regality in us shall be the fuel which shall be burnt up and consumed But we shal hence proceed to our former Discourse and shall next in order consider How God lives in the ARMY Thus far we see God hath moved from party to party and sits down at present in the Army And here also God makes darkness his secret place living under a poor low carnal form and few can behold his beautifull presence under the power of the sword The Lord here besmears himself with blood and vengeance deforms his own beauty hides his aimable presence under a hideous and wrathful form And now in as much as God hath called me forth from an impartiall spirit to declare my Light I shall from some clear experience of the Armies present condition discover that dark and cloudy appearance of the supreme power God amongst them whereby may be discerned how far below the pure appearance of The spirit their present station renders them And I am very confident that which I shall say the Lord will testifie and bare record the truth of the same upon the hearts of many amongst them Friends Look about you for the Lord is now comming forth to Rip up your bowels to search your heart and try your reins yea to let loose the imprisoned Light of himself in you and if the Lord by this does not shake many of you then say That I have prophesied Lies in the name of the Lord. Then let him that hath an ear to hear hear what the Lord that spirit saith Thus saith the Lord yea the Lord saith it That the present condition of the Army or the present appearance of the supreame power amongst them renders them in darknesse and far below the pure Light and life of God That it is so I offer my appeale thus First let them and all others who are spiritually wise consider by and from what principles God acts these men I mean you Heroes of valour in the Army you Grandees of the present power in the Kingdom In patience possesse ye your soules till I shall race your foundation and discover your principles which God hath hitherto and still does act you in they are either publike or private commonor more properly peculiar your common and publike principles are the outward libertie and freedom of the Nation The establishment of outward lawes liberties and priviledges and some outward form of Government which may correspond with your sense of Justice what no farther yet This is a poor earthly Tabernacle which God at present hath taken up in you I wish I might not have cause to say It is a speckled pretence under which your private interests refides For I know this is the main spur that drives you on self-preservation This is your Dalilah your proper private and peculiar principle Resolved you are to save your Lives and preserve your self-interest though in this expedition you destroy all other powers and interests whatsoever Herein though you walk as men very carnally yet Dear hearts I blame you not I know God acts you in this cloud he goes out with you in this darkness and Le ts out his presence through this vail of self-preservation amongst you he hath crowned you with same success and victory while you have lived and acted in this earthly body of outward Liberty But how far inferiour and below this is to a Life in the purity of Divine light now God hath disclosed himself I am in some measure able to discern You know not yet what it is to be dead to your own Interests though you have professed a great deal of self-denyall yet I profess many of you never yet knew what true self donial was and what it is truly to be dissolved and dye out of your own carnal Interests I know your bonour and dignity is great in your hearts your renowned enterprises call for merit Your lives and safeties are also dear to you it is so so it must be God will have it so he lives in these low concernments and yet your hearts
cannot be imbittered or disengaged from them you hugg them you prize them they are an object of you embraces But I tell you Sirs God is going about to unbody himself in you whiles you are embracing This body of self-safety and outward Liberty he is dying and departing from it though you see it not And This know That God will ere long leave you exceeding dark and dead in your enterprises I was alive once as well as you and in my life I laboured amongst you in my sphere as much as another but I am now dead with the Lord I am at rest from my Labour Ah happy death ô blessed loss how farr better is it ô Lord to be dissolved and gathered up into thy rest then to live the life of a worldly and carnall labour and I know also that the hour of Gods judgment is come upon many of you some of you have received your mortall wound already I see you gasp and struggle in your confused and dark enterprises Let this silver Probe but sink to the bottom of your wounded hearts and something without question will speedily be discovered Ah Friends If you saw your Interests in the Lord your Lives and Liberties in the Lord if you saw all yours in the Lord you would think it a beggarly thing to contend for any thing or to plead Gods quarrell with any that shall demand them of you Doubtlesse it is a poor low base earthly spirit that raises contests and seeks after the ruine and blood of creatures for the enjoyment of that which at best is but a bitter sweet a well being subject to all manner of casualties Lo This is the principle that God at present acts you by It is the Lord in you inhabiting his secret place and because I see it is the Lord I can embrace it I can tender you in my bosome-affections while you are carried forth in this carnall dispensation Nevertheless I will in part discover to you how far some are dead to their own Interest and whither shortly you must be brought Those that live in the more pure knowledge and life of God see themselves their Lives Liberties and all outward enjoyments not their own but the Lords and theirs in the Lord not a jot below him or at the least distance from him If we have the Lord we have enough because he is all to us and we the same fulnesse in him Lo this is life liberty and satisfaction Now no outward loss or misery can make us unhappy we may be persecuted yet not forsaken cast down yet not destroyed dying and behold we live in bondage yet free because the Lord is all this and more to us To live to us is Christ and to die is gain If we have a portion of outward safety amongst others we see it is the Lord if not it is the Lord and where the Lord is there 's Libertie God is to us light in darkness glory in shame beauty in deformity liberty in bondage we possesse nothing yet enjoy all things suffering is our crown death our life yea we live upon death daily we cannot live without it Again We are also contented with the dispose of providence in any thing that may be called ours If any party or power command us our lives liberties or interests it is the pleasure of the Father in us to give up all to them we see a divine call in it and can with alacrity yeeld obedience Oh it is a sweet smelling sacrifice acceptable with the Father when we the son are thus drawn forth to offer up our dearest Interests for the world It may be you cannot in this apprehend me it is no matter the Father willeth it should be a mystery Yet farther Our Interest of Life and Libertie is at your service If you call for it take it we are contented to be prodigall of it to satisfie the blood-thirstie spirit of any man in the Kingdom While we are in the enjoyment of these outward things we use them as if we used them not being free to throw them off at the first demand we are as free to suffer to be trampled upon to hang and burn as to enjoy that outward libertie which you so seriously and resolutely press after I tell you Sirs Suffering is our Conquest While we are ground to pieces under any power whatsoever all this while we trample upon them debasing is our exalting in that which you call miserie and calamitie we are more then conquerors We dare meet you even you whose courage hath excelled whose fierce countenance makes the earth to tremble you who are the present terrour of the Nation and appear in a naked posture before you yea throw our selves lives liberties and all upon the edge of your cruelty and we are sure if you dare encounter with us here we shal overcome you Ah Sirs When you see this way of conquest you will throw your swords behind you in an holy despite and scorn you shall lay all your honour in the dust and by that sweet spirit of meekness shall destroy and subdue your Enemies But secondly I wish you might be carried forth into a serious view of the Manner of your present Actings As your Principles are poor and beggarly so also the manner of your Engagements is dark and fleshly This cloudy and vailed appearance of God amongst you puts you upon preposterous designes upon low and carnall Enterprizes You have taken away Charles his life because otherwise he would its likely have taken yours True it is the good will of the Lord it should be so I have nothing to say against it the Lord in this cloud leads you forth to it and in this you have playd the parts of men acting under a fleshly discovery of things You are led forth in a way of vengeance upon your adversaries you sentence and shoot to death at your pleasure it little moves you to trample upon the blood of your enemies this is your Victory Glory and Triumph All this is well you must tarry here till God moves higher amongst you I have onely this to say to you Is it not a poor carnall thing for Saints so high in profession as you have been to stand brangling with the World for a few carnall enjoyments What the sons of everlasting peace and ingaged in a carnal combat Well it is the Lord I am satisfied But oh that sweet and meek spirit of Christ who when he was reviled reviled not again was persecuted but with patience under-went it and committed himself to him that judged righteously You cannot you dare not commit your selves your cause your lives and liberties to the Lord and nakedly without any carnall opposition surrender your Interest to a divine dispose Nay rather Shall not your swords soon be sheathed in the bowels of those who obstruct or impede your furious march in the road of self-preservation Poor dear Hearts It is the lowness weakness and darknese of God by which you
A Rout A Rout Or some part of the ARMIES QVARTERS BEATEN VP By the DAY of the LORD Stealing upon Them Wherein is briefly discovered the present cloudy and dark appearance of God amongst them By JOSEPH SALMON a present Member of the ARMY He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith Arise ye and depart for this is not your rest it is polluted c. The weapons of our warfare are not carnall but mighty through God to beat down strong holds c. London Printed by T. N. 1649. A Word to the Commanding Power in the ARMY By your leave Gentlemen I Hope in these dayes of Liberty I may be free to speak a word to my fellow-Souldiers I shall not trouble you with much at the present for I know you have more trouble already upon your spirits then you can well tell how to be rid of My speech is intended especially as I said before to my fellow-Souldiers those of the inferiour rank and quality I have very little from the Lord to declare to You as yet All that I have to say is this That you go on as fast as you can with the Work you have begun for the time draws nigh that is allotted you Make haste I say yet not more haste then good speed Make a short work but cut it short in righteousnesse for the day is at hand wherein he that helpeth and they that are holpen shall fall together Gentlemen you are the rod of God yea the rod of the Lords anger in his own hand the Almighty Arm acts you and so it appears for no manly glory can encounter with you in this day of the Lords wrath you strike thorow King Gentry and Nobility they all fall before you You have a Commission from the Lord to scourge England's Oppressors do it in the name of God do it I say fully hotly sharply and the same measure you mete shall be met to you again for the Lord will ere long cast his rod into the fire of burning and destruction It will be a sweet destruction wait for it Gentlemen Vnder an abrupt form I subscribe my self Yours in life and death JOSEPH SALMON To the Fellowship of SAINTS scattered in the ARMIE Dear Hearts I Know it will be a wonder to some of you to behold this Frontispiece faced with my Character and truly it is as much my wonder as yours I little thought that ever God would have called me hither Friends I am yet amongst you I own you I can say Amen to your Proceedings although I cannot close with you in the managing of them I have a fellowship with you in the Lord but I am distant from your dark and fleshly enterprises You are a scattered seed amongst tares and it is your name that upholds the fame of the whole You are that little Leaven hid in the meale whose reputation seasons the whole lump if it were not for you this power of the Sword would vanish and be annihilated Behold I shew you a Mystery it is yet hidden from many yea most of you Thus saith the Lord of Hosts The day is coming and now is when I will gather up my jewels in the Army from under this dark and carnall form of the Sword into my self where I will be unto them Life Liberty Priviledge and Satisfaction the fulness of Arrears and plenty of Accommodation when they shall no more contend with the world for outward Interest but beholding all in Divine fulness shall in the enjoyment of it sit down contented And this I partly see fulfilled in my self and others But now it may be you will wonder why I yet remain amongst you seeing I am brought hither I am sure many of your verdicts will passe upon me I shall not want the censure of most But it is no matter Cast all your cruelty and malice upon me the Lord in me is mighty to bear it I will own it all being willing to become sin for you though the Lord in me knows no sin that you together with me may be presented in the Lord an eternall righteousnesse I have but this at present to say I am now with you as Mary at the Sepulchre waiting to see the Lord but he is risen Your carnall affairs are the Sepulchre where the Lord is buryed to me he is not here he is certainly risen but where to see him in his next appearance I wait I must stand at the sepulchre till the voyce be uttered behinde me which I beleeve will be shortly both to me and many others Till the day break and the shadows flee away Farewell my Beloved be thou as a Roe or a young Hart upon the mountains of Bether Sirs I am yours JOS. SAL. A ROVT A ROVT OR Some part of the Armie's Quarters beaten up by the DAY of the LORD stealing upon them THat Power or Mystery which acts all things and by which whole man in his counsels actions and engagements is led out and disposed according to divine will and pleasure I say this Power which is God comes forth and offers it self in a diversity of appearance and still by a divine progresse in the affairs of the earth moves from one power to another from one dispensation to another from one party to another hereby accomplishing his eternally decreed designe in and upon the Creature This is manifest in all dispensations civil and spirituall Time was when God had faced the Jewish Ceremonies those carnall manifestations with a great beauty and splendor of divine Majestie the Lord was there seen under that form to vail and hide his beauty and glory In a time appointed he departed from them went out of them he would dwell there no longer but he casts off that form or garment and clothes himself with another swallowed up that glory in another the lesser in the greater and then all the brightness and lustre of divine appearance resided in and dwelt upon the flesh of the Son as being a more true pattern and exact resemblance of God the divine Power But the Lord was not here in his appearance where he would be neither and therefore having no resolution eternally here to tabernacle or abide in the fulness of Time he lays this form aside also Though he was the Son the dear Son the only begotten Son a Son so like the Father yet he must not be spared he must be crucified the Lord will move hence also whence note That this Divine power or Mystery admits of no eternall habitation in any thing below it self Now as This power God hath a daily motion out of one dispensation spirituall into another so also it is in Civil or outward dispensations This I have found in my own experience by tracing this Divine power in its going forth amongst the sons of Men that it sometimes owns this sometimes that form sometimes this sometimes that party daily moving from one to another as it pleaseth now the Lord lives in all these