still And what think you of this is it not high time for you to be awakened and look about you seeing the day is so far spent of your lives and you know not how soon the Lord may call for your breath out of your nostrils and what can ye in righteousness think will become of you seeing the Scripture saith As the Tree falls so it lyes and There is no Repentance in the Grave and If ye dye in your sins where I go ye cannot come saith Christ And if ye do but confess him to be a man of truth and these sayings true then ye may soon passe the sentence of eternal condemnation in your selves seeing that tribulation and anguish is to come upon every soul of man that doth evil even to Jew as well as Gentile And the Apostle in plain words without wresting saith Nothing that worketh abomination or maketh a lye must enter into the holy City And Paul saith Let no man deceive you with vain words for such as ye sow such shall ye reap Now see if your Priests be not the very men who are deceiving you with vain words who tell you that you can never be freed from sin yet say it shall go well with you They call you good Christians though ye do bring forth the Devils work Or which of you in or amongst you will deny to partake of that which they call the Seal of the Covenant though they are never so wicked and ungodly in all their words and actions Surely surely the Lord is highly displeased with these things Therefore is this Warning sent amongst you that you may come away from such a devilish Priesthood as preacheth up sin unto you for tearm of life that is till ye can sin no longer Surely they who made a Covenant with Hell and Death in the dayes of old were never more lead into the Mysterie of iniquity than these And thus the Devil hath his Kingdome by consent both of Priests and people Oh horrid wickedness is this that ever men should thus sell themselves unto the Devil for dishonest gain and filthy lucres sake to preach up sin unto people these are they who trample upon the Blood of the Covenant and say in effect that its uneffectual and unsufficient to purge the creature from all sin and uncleannesse but such people ye must cease from for they who were real and true Ministers of Christ said The wages of sin is death therefore laboured to bring people therefrom whose Ministry was powerful and effectual enough in that work to accomplish the same For Paul when he writ to the Romans amongst whom he had laboured to turn them from darknesse to light and such came to be turned from Satans power to Gods by whose power they came to be redeemed and made free from sin and so became Gods children And this was the fruits and effects of those who were sent of God and were not hirelings for such run and are not sent therefore saith the Prophet they profit not the people at all no more than yours do now for I say as you love and prize the salvation and redemption of your immortal souls consider these things Is the wicked man returned from his naughtinesse amongst you is not a Lyar a Lyar still a Swearer a Swearer still and so likewise all others whatsoever And if any should go to your Priests to be eased of his burden which come upon him by reason of sin what ease can he have seeing his Priest is a sinner as well as himself if not a worse and in effect will tell him he cannot be without sin while he is in the body of flesh and so by this means as you were born and conceived in sin so ye live and so ye dye And this is the fruits of your Ministry and yet you have the liberty of the reading of the Scriptures which saith and sheweth how that the true Christians are to be redeemed from their vain conversations and did witnesse a purging and redemption therefrom not with the blood of Bulls and Goats but with the Blood of the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the World Mark that people and see if ye are not wholly strangers to this thing and to the very end and coming of Christ who was made manifest in flesh to the end that the righteousnesse of the Law might be fulfilled in all those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and to such there is no condemnation But unto you who are following your blind guides and are strangers unto this thing condemnation from the righteous God the Judg of all will for evermore be seated upon your heads except ye repent even on you who are strangers unto the Spirit of God and are walking in the flesh and are fulfilling the lusts thereof and are resolved so to do until your dying day in which thing I warn you to repent in Gods pure power and dread and turn unto the Lord God by forsaking the evil of your wayes which if you do not as sure as God hath set Sodom for an example of his eternal wrath and Judgment so sure will this come upon you if you slight this the day of your visitation which is now over your heads I say repent before it fall upon you and the night overtake you in which no man can work And this is a true and faithfull warning unto you all from the Lord God of love who desireth not the death of a sinner but that he would turn from his evil wayes and live and if you do this then blessed will you be for ever but if ye refuse then will you be left without excuse and I shall be clear of your blood before the Lord who required this of me to do and to say unto you which in faithfulness I have done without respect unto persons time or place as the free Spirit of God hath given me utterance thereunto without hatred or dissimulation at all Therefore live or dye my peace is and will be with the Lord for ever And now if any should say amongst you What shall I do to be saved Why unto such I say in the tender bowels of Gods love turn unto the Light of Gods own son which shineth in your darknesse even in your dark hearts and receive it love it follow it and obey it with all your soul with all your mind and with all your strength and then power will be ministred unto you whereby ye will become the Sons of God and to be born of him which birth sinneth not but in it there is power over the man of sin which hath born rule in the first birth which was according to the flesh in which none can please God forasmuch as it lusteth against the Spirit continually and will do until it be wholly crucified with the lusts and affections thereof If ye come to receive the Gift of Gods Grace and Spirit in your own hearts a measure of which
some of these Papers might come to the hands of those who may in like manner be inflictors of such misery upon others that so if there be but any remorse or place of repentance left in them that they may yet repent of their evill for it is very great for though the man whom I served was approved and received a Member of an Independant Church in those parts yet he was unconverted as to the Lord which shewed their light and discerning but little worth for indeed I never saw any change or alteration in the man at all But I shall return unto the thing intended by me which is to speak of the goodnesse and love of God unto my soul that so all those who might be like-minded with me might not come to despair in any condition whatsoever they may fall into if they do but love and fear the Lord he will bring them out of the sixth trouble and also the seaventh in the end For when I was out or this hard servitude I could not for all that return to or own that dark and devilish worship whatever did become of me for then I was come to a riper understanding and growth both in years and knowledge in which I saw and confessed unto a hand of Divine Justice against that people and also to a hand of Divine providence in bringing me there where I heard and understood both outward and inward that the Sword of the Lord was drawn against the wicked in this Nation of England and also I did observe in that day how that the Parliament party did and would most of all prevail because that there was something raised up in them against the grosse Popery and Idolatry and wickednesse which was then on soot in the Nation which thing was the cause I did indeed mostly affect them then beyond any other people though they were called Puritans in derision But in a short time the chiefest of those people who were amongst us lost their first integrity soon especially when the Lords hand had given their Brethren great rest and victory from their enemies and so soon turned that little liberty they had gotten to a wrong end and made use of it as an occasion to the flesh by which means they became as much in bondage as ever every one seeking his own and not anothers good which thing I did in that day observe though few knew that it was so with me but outwardly I did in that day frequent and indeed loved those most who were the most honest amongst men But it being so in the main that nothing but rioting drinking singing and dancing was amongst the best of men I knew not what to do but to be one of them which I judged better of the two than to return unto the Romish stuff for my very soul did abhor it therefore I did rather choose to labour with my hands and so get my bread with painfulnesse than to return or make my self known unto my nearest relations any way for I said in my heart their sorrow is over concerning me But in the midst of all this my soul in secret did mourn after a holy life of love but could not see it born up in any living amongst whom I did converse or had any thing to do with And as in relation to my own condition I did often lament it in secret and would often say unto the Lord Hast thou created me thus to destroy me for I saw how that I was still ingrievous bondage unto sin and lead thereunto at the Devils will and I felt in my self how that the wages of sin was death because of the terrours of the Lord that came upon my soul by the reason of it and whilest that I was in this state my grief was more than could be uttered or indeed seen by any for I would often seem to do away sorrow with laughter lightnesse and vanity yet still in the very midst of all this I continued seeking in my heart a man of love or a people in whom one might put confidence which thing I was drawn unto by the good which was of God in my own heart and as God did raise it me so in the end he did answer it to me outwardly by sending one of his dear servants into those parts whose name was Elizabeth Harris who soon answered that which was breathing after God in me by which means I came with many more to be informed in the way and truth of God having a seal in my heart and soul of the truth of her message which indeed I had long waited for And then when I had found this beloved life and people I was like a man over-joyed in my heart not onely because that I heard that God had raised up such a people in England but also because I saw the sudden fruits and effects of it both in my own heart and in others insomuch that in a short time we became all to be as one entire family of love and were drawn together in his life which was his light in us to wait upon him in the stillnesse and quietnesse of our spirits like so many people which desired nothing but the pure teachings of Gods Spirit in which we were often refreshed together and one in another And when this I had found and clearly understood how that that which judged me and condemned my soul for sin from my youth up untill that day I say when I came to see that this was the very way to God I was as a man that had found that which his soul loved and then had I had ten thousand Crowns I could have laid them all down at the feet of them who then went forth to declare such good and glad tidings of peace and good-will which was freely extended unto all the Sons of men then happy man was I if that I could but have served or have been any way serviceable unto such of those who went forth to declare who were ministring servants in the hand of the Lord to us whose pure life I loved and honoured in them above all and then I was not onely made willing to have forsaken father or mother and all outward Inheritance and favour of men but also to have laid down my life for the Lords sake such was the love that was raised in me that I had rather have been a Prisoner with the deepest sufferer in the greatest sorrow and counted it more happinesse so to be than with the Princes of this world in their greatest joy and dignity And this was of the Lords own begetting in me though few saw it then And this I can tell thee Reader whoever thou art by true experience that if thou find but such a thing in thee which bringeth a remorse upon thee by reason of sin and draweth thy heart into tendernesse and pitty unto the oppression and captivity which is upon all creatures which they lye under by reason of sin in which and by which
ye shall be freed but you know not when who might have come to have witnessed your bodies to have been the Temples of God instead of seeking as ye do now in the Temples made with hands O ye foolish and unwise people what might my soul say unto you of these things Ye have refused the teachings of God and seek after the teachings of men ye have slighted the true Shepherd who hath laid down his life for his Sheep and have followed the false Shepherd whose the Sheep are not but an hireling he is and fleeth because he is an hireling when the wolfe and florm cometh For hath not this been manifestly seen in thee O England that when the forcible powers of the Earth was for them then they cryed woe woe unto us if we preach not the Gospel and we preach not for hire as we are falsly accused by these reproachful Quakers but a necessity is on us so to do and if we had not any thing for so doing yet we could not hold our peace but seeing the Law of the Nation gives us yearly maintenance we take it as our due and though it be a Popish constitution we take no notice of it seeing the Property of the thing is changed as being taken from them who were no Ministers of the Gospel and given unto us who are truly so unto whom not onely the Tenths of all things belongeth but all things should be laid down at our feet as it was in the Primitive time and this hath been the general cry of your Priests unto whom you give ear and not unto us who told you the truth in that day as we do in this day saying take away but their compelled maintenance and cease putting into their mouths and they will soon prepare war against you if the Powers of the earth will but help them if not then their God they will trust no longer and soon their necessity of preaching will be taken off them and they will fly into their holes like Dragons wishing for another nights season that so they might come out upon their prey afresh And in this which is here said there is no wrong done unto them your by-past Priests have themselves by their words and actions largely proved the truth of this matter And now unto you Priests unto whom I was made to speak the word of the Lord woe and misery will assuredly be your Portion if you slight Gods tender love unto your souls For that which I now speak and that which I formerly spoke unto you is not God knows in contempt nor in any way to divide you but in tender love to warn you from the evil of your ways that so by turning from the evil and cleaving to the good ye may come to escape the dreadful Judgments of God which are nigh to overtake you And that you are and were manifest to be such as I said you to be is true to wit That you were blind guides leaders of the blind inasmuch as ye are hireling Priests made by the will of men who forceth a people by a Law for to take your stuff which makes you worse than a common hireling who are far from being Ministers of Christ Jesus called by him to his own work for such minister freely as they received freely of their Lord and Master And so as Christ said By their fruits ye shall know them so do we know you who have nothing you have freely given neither can you freely give nay you have not so much as the Sheeps cloathing but you are out wardly and inwardly ravened and gone into the Wolfs nature of tearing and devouring and persecuting like the Pope your chief head and leader in this work though some of you are ignorantly blind yet many of you are wilfully blind which will not serve your turns Awake awake and consider do you think it shall serve any of your turns to cry out against Popery in words and in nature to be found all one in Persecution Malice and Envy as one of you told me I should not have liberty to speak after he had accused me openly before the people and the other of you told me he did forgive me after he had delivered me into the hands of men and I was to be sent to prison O shame will come upon you for these things and the dreadful rod of Gods anger will overtake you for it And tell me what you have at best to give to the people for your yearly maintenance which you have of them but what is already made ready to your hands of other mens lines partly by the Pope and his Adherents who steal the words of Apostles and holy men of God and mix them with their own inventions and this is made a plat-form for you to pray and preach by and at the best this is your stuff which you confidently force upon the people to say and to speak after you for which they must give many hundred pounds unto you and your Generations of hirelings even for this which profiteth them not at all but people under your teachings live and die in their sins whilst their Priests preach unto them for hire and they love to have it so This is their very end and the very end of these things and while people are giving ear unto you it will never be otherwise For it s thus the Papists they steal the words of the Prophets and Apostles and of Jerome and Ambrose Augustine and the like and you steal it from them and the people from you and so what they have of you is at the third and fourth hand though in another misformed and disguised shane whenas in the ground it is but the Bastard of the same whore which the Roman Catholicks so dandle upon the lap of the Beast as though he were the true born heir of the Kingdom of God whenas he is no more like him than light is like darknesse or Christ like Belial And if people must needs be so in love with this which you so cry up amongst them they need not go to the Pope nor come unto you for it but at an easier rate than they give unto you they may have as good of their own but freely they may have of the Lord that which is quick living and powerful and will abide for ever Therefore this is the advice and counsel of the Spirit of God unto all people whatsoever for to come unto Christ the light of the world who hath enlightened them with his true light which makes manifest sin and evil in their own hearts to the end that thereby they might be taught led and directed in the way of God which is the way of true peace and holinesse which is none of the hirelings wayes for they say men cannot tread out of uncleannesse all the dayes of their lives And so from the Lord this is a warning and tender Visitation of love unto you all in this City or elswhere where this