Government Or else by a friendly agreement with these or any other Governours If you resolve upon the first to destroy all that are not according to your conscience that your conscience may have liberty Then you would destroy all mens consciences but your own and all men for their consciences which is the most contrary to liberty of Conscience that can be Most contrary because you will endure none but your selves and that you would raise a war that you might establish a Law of cruelty which is a thousand times worse then to persecute by an established Law and Authority That power that you would have must be thorow the lives of thousands of your enemies and after that thousands of your friends for they that strive for a power never did nor never will agree in the sharing or administring of it But when through blood and destruction of friends and foes you have gotten it If you should prevail and you in your own persons escape yet that power gotten by war in that spirit you and we in reason must expect that it will be most cruel because raised and begotten by cruelty Indeed it is so horrid and irrational that the bare proposing of it will make reasonable men abhor such a thought For nothing but irrational and blind zeal with discontent and passion can so much blind the nature of man as to lead him into such unnatural things If your spirits do indeed drive to this to the removing and destroying the present state of things as an accursed thing then the ingenuous and seek not liberty from them nor complain of them for not giving it For every such acknowledgement of them doth confirm them and so contradict your prayers and endeavours to destroy them Sometimes secretly and cunningly to curse them and another time openly and for advantage to acknowledge them is falshood and deceit And will attain nothing but shame and confusion For there is little but shame and confusion in it It is a vile thing in private and secret to pray or warily to preach against a State and openly to comply with it in so doing our lives contradict our prayers or our prayers our lives But if this be the drift of your spirits though never so warily carried do you think it is not felt and understood by them that you so oppose you cannot conceal it from them It is wise counsel Solomon gives Curse not the King no not in thy thought or conscience for a bird of the air shall carry the voice and that which hath wings shall tell the matter It must be understood spiritually for it cannot be meant literally Angels are intelligences and intelligencers they are principalities and powers and attend both the Throne and Altar they are present in dominion at Court and in your Closets at your devotions They are the birds and that which hath wings that tell the matter Publick authority hath publick ears and eyes and reach all corners Spiritual intelligencers as well as outward informers If they know and feel that you intend their destruction must they not abhor that spirit that under pretence of liberty of Conscience really endeavours liberty of destroying and of overthrowing Governments to exalt themselves And if they understand any thing they must think These men seek our destruction and as they pray for it and preach it so they will if they can or dare attempt it as they have done And therefore they having such a sense of you you cannot in reason expect but that they should labour to suppress you If they find rebellion war and wrath in the principles of it though in religious duties and conscience will they not suppress both the rebellion and conscience and the duties or worship in which it is And shall they not be justified in so doing I am sure your Law and Practise will justifie them For the same thing hath been done often and would be again if you had power while you are in this spirit When you shall recover either your own nature and reason or the nature of the Lamb out of this Spiritual drunkenness and cruel zeal you will find First That Antichrist the great enemy of Christ is also an enemy to man to his life peace civil order Law and to all humane Ordinances Secondly That this enemy is a spirit the Angel of the bottomless pit And therefore his chief seat and place is in spiritual things in conscience and in the spirits of men and in those things wherein spiritual men or the spirits of men are exercised in gifts religion and holy duties and his last and greatest strength is not in corrupt forms but in those that are most spiritual most lively zealous and gifted Others are but the flesh these the horns of the beast Thirdly And therefore conscience and the spirits of men even in Religion and in lively or spiritual Religion is grievously polluted by him This Templo of God is defiled by him You must come to know it and feel it as I have done Fourthly The nature of this beast is to destroy whence he hath his name Apollyon a destroyer His highest place is conscience gifted mens spirits enlightened and his highest work is to kill and destroy and in order to that to curse and blaspheme with those spiritual gifts Fifthly This spiritual beast this destroyer cannot but be seen and felt by the common reason of men although they cannot judge him yet they must have a sense of him as an enemy to that life and peace in which they live and to that Authority and Government which is committed to them Sixthly As they cannot but discern and feel the horns of this beast that pushes them and wounds them so they cannot but arm themselves with such weapons as they have against him If it be a State it will defend it self by Laws punishments policies and power Seventhly This self-defence though it be earthly cannot be denyed them yea they will be justified in it so far as it is rational humane and necessary and for the preservation of peace and common safety Wherein any are cruel and revengeful that is devilish also and then it is the beast against the beast But an humane care to maintain Law Authority and Peace though it be no more yet it is good against a destroying spirit that would bring in war and confusion under the highest notion of Religion and Reformation The ordinary and common Ordinances of man are to be justified in acting against a Religion Zeal that seeks the subverting of them The first is useful necessary and profitable the other is hurtful and destructive Eighthly The Law and Authority of a Nation defending it self from this spirit by its own weapons being outward must necessarily fall upon the persons lives and liberties of them that are ngaged in this spirit I am grieved in my soul for both both wound my heart both the agents and patients In love to mankind I am afflicted for them and feel the
having written some part of it I offered it to the Press by the Book-seller that printed the Inquisition Upon consideration he told me that there was that rage kindled in mens minds against the other Book that his men durst not shew them in the shop and that nothing of mine would pass till that spirit was laid and therefore he durst not meddle with this to print it My mind being very weak and tender and apt to take check at such things this did not only put me to a stand but turned my mind quite about to hearken more attentively to this cry that did thus earnestly pursue me And to consider that sure this mouth that was thus opened against me did require something of me And that I could not fairly nor justly slight and neglect it any longer And that I could not proceed in my intended work till I had answered this plea against me SECT II. T IS a position in my mind that no persons or things that we converse with are absolutely evil but there is some good in every thing else it could not be and therefore nothing is to be reprobated or not till it be first sifted and tried By my own rule I am bound to think that though these angry speeches against me are my enemies yet sure there is some just reason in them such sounds at these are not without their significancy If so then I must not reject them because opposite and unpleasing but must admit them to the bar of my own reason and not only give them a fair hearing but all the advantage also that I can because the Court is my own mind where they are strangers and being weak distempered things I ought to humble my self to them though mine enemies and to descend from my own right to hear and satisfie them if I can or at least to do them justice For I consider though they be dark passions yet they are humane and every man is honourable and every affection in man though sick and distempered is of value besides they are zealous serious brethren friends Christians therefore I must query Have I not erred against them have I not done them wrong have I not detained something from them that is their due We have professed a Kingdom of Heaven within us if it be there indeed then we have in us a throne of judgement which must do right to all things that come before us In this Kingdom there is also sufficient to answer every plea and claim that is made to it or against it and therefore we need not fear to admit the greatest and strongest accusation to a full and fair hearing Where there is authority to judge and sufficiency to answer there is likewise wisdom to understand what there is in these clamours though they be of themselves very dark and confused things for the mind may taste and try all things throughly and every thing that comes into it must be opened and seen in that light that is in it because the mind is a supream light to which all things are subject that come before it Therefore setting my self to examine and consider these things I found first that although there was just reason in the book yet there was something that hindered men from the seeing of it and though there was love and good in it yet there was something also that denyed men the benefit of it and therefore t is righteous that it should be animadverted and endure a tryal And secondly I find that there is some thing in my self that is justly due both to my friends and brethren and to the Book it self that was not therein communicated which is my life and spirit the ground upon which I stand upon which I wrote and by which I am enabled to assert things so different from others As these high challenges of my spirit and peace do tell me that this is the thing wanting and now demanded of me so I am upon this review of things conscious to my self that I have not fully opened my self and my mind but have in a great measure concealed it as well as my name And therefore I must thus far justifie the plea against me That if a man bring forth a notion of things different from and contrary to the life of others they may justly refuse that notion if the Author do not bring forth his own life spirit and peace which only can maintain those notions and satisfie for that life that he would take away by those notions This is for you and therefore I hope you will well observe the justice of it I am content to condemn what I have done as guilty of this capital offence It may possibly stand as a Law to me and others hereafter That if any man write be it never so good reason and with good intention if he do not produce the head of the spring from whence it comes and his own heart soul and peace with it let it wither and be rejected truly I believe it will There is a further justice in the persons offended If any man utter his matters to his friends and conceal himself he deals injuriously with them in bringing forth the weaker and worse and hiding the better part which the royal Law of love will condemn as a great wrong for certainly if there be any thing worthy in a man t is his spiritual life and therefore I justifie your anger you do like friends and men not to take words notions and reason if there be a better thing in me your own life and peace being aimed at you may well challenge me to shew a better I have this relief against this charge that though I am guilty in not discovering the best yet the best is still with me and being my own as yet it will support and justifie me Neither can I complain justly of any injury done to me by these sharp censures for if any man will put on an appearance strange to his neighbours and withal cover his face t is no wonder if men beat him and the dogs bark at him if he be ill used he may thank himself and his covering There is this remedy also if hiding the life and face be the fault that enmity that is occasioned by it will rend that vayl and then the quarrel will be ended If I have a right sense of the offence that is against me it being at me and upon me it sure belongs to me to feel and understand it then I am called forth to give a judgement of my Book and to hold forth to the view of all the world my spirit and life from whence it came and to shew what righteousness and power is with me that can maintain me and others in the receiving and practising such things as I have writ I have been very inward and retired in my spirit a long time not without some motions to look out but I have suppressed them and till now declined all publick appearance
Being sensible that my mind is both weak and a great stranger to all the Forms and ways of Religion that are abroad and having found by experience that when I did look out I met with great trouble and opposition from all sorts of people I have been willing to enjoy my peace and comfort at home and alone I did the least think to come forth in opposition to any party having in my heart a general love to all men But I am by this Book unexpectedly engaged to come forth in some kind of opposition to many if not all sorts of spirits now stirring in the Nation The people that have severely censured this book and me for it are Independents Anabaptists Quakers Fifth monarchy men and such as profess themselves spiritual and are in no particular form I desire them all friendly to consider how high they have raised the controversie and what must necessarily be the issue if it be determined If any of them had taken the book and dealt with the reason of it and had answered it and convinced me I had been bound to have been their Scholler and to have subscribed to them as my Master And if my reason had been too good for theirs I might have expected the same from them and no more But they all leaving the reason and falling directly upon my person and the state of my soul my life and peace the â—ar is like to be of a higher nature and the question who is the Antichrist who the Apostate who hath sinned against the Holy Spirit and consequently who must go down into horror and trouble into Satan and the displeasure of God and so it is a war of souls and spirits about the most solemn things of life and peace with God And therefore the issue must be this if you subdue me and overthrow my state I must bow and seek for mercy and peace of you upon such conditions as you shall think good to give it This I know you do expect and as necessarily I must so I do believe I readily shall perform it on the other side if my state and peace be good and yours fail I may require the same of you that you should submit to me and accept of my peace and pardon according to that equal and just Law Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them I do earnestly desire that we may on both sides heartily engage in this quarrel if I find you do shrink from it I shall endeavour to compell you to stand to it till there be a compleat victory gained by one of us If you be men and true to any thing that you say or think you cannot avoid the tryal for I know and feel that you are come forth against me in your censures of me with all your hearts and with the strength of your God Religion and Life as against an enemy to God and his cause t is so evident it cannot be denyed And by it you have drawn forth my life and spirit which till now lay close and still to answer you and therefore you are bound to stand and abide the dispute This I write neither lightly boastingly nor threatning but soberly and seriously in love to you and to the good and peace of souls The combat may be sharp but it may be friendly also For I do constantly find this truth in my mind that as all good doth and will overcome evil because it is larger stronger truer and more durable then evil so doth love conquer swallow up enmity enmity is a mean inferiour base thing that is but a servant to the greatness and majesty of love And at this time I find a special love both of pitty and friendship provoked and stirred in my heart by these wounds that you have given me For I feel such a nature in me the more you pierce the more freely my love and life will flow forth to you so that there is a ring of love made for us in which we may safely try our strength and therefore though it be both a serious and sharp contest yet it must also be a friendly strife It may be love hath laid a train to catch us all and all the enmity of all men For observe our quarrel it is of a very high nature for no less then the life and peace of our souls yet if we fight it out the end will be this either I must return to you and receive mercy from you of you must come to me and receive it from me Either you must be my Pastors or Ministers and so heal and feed me as a brother or I your Bishop and Father The quarrell is Whether you shall serve me with your life or I serve you with mine Whether I shall forgive you or you forgive me Possibly after some anger spent in the conflict it may be comprimised and we may both have our ends both serve and be served forgive and be forgiven But let us resolve to try it out for if you draw back and refuse the combat you will go down into your dark holes of enmity but press forward and we shall certainly come to feel and understand one another though through some smart and at last after we have spent our heat end in love If we had dealt in opinions that concern the State you might have feared trouble but you shall have the state of my mind to deal with which you may do without danger of any suffering but in your spirits our war will be now purely in and about spiritual things If we should controvert National Church Episcopacy c. the power of the Nation might be with me but declining that as you do and dealing only with my spirit and life possibly the Bishops may be as different from me and from my spirit and life as you are yea and be more with you then they are with me and I am apt to think it may prove so How ever you may be confident you are free from outward danger in dealing with the spirit of a private person You have advantage enough you are many I am alone you are whole and sound I am I confess much broken and weak you stand firm I have been tossed about my infirmities and failings are many and visible to all the world and most of all to my self yet truly I do desire and shall endeavour a fair trial not doubting the issue which way soever it fall it must be good SECT III. FIrst for the Book I have had many complaints against it but only in general as a monstrous strange wicked and cursed thing I have invited many to shew me particularly what false or unrighteous propositions there are in it and to this day not one man hath said to me that this or that sentence is untrue or will give me any reason against any passage of it But when we come to the point either they have not read it or but part of it
or I do not understand it or What do you mean by this or that passage T is strange totally condemned but not examined in any parts of it I may say in my case as Job chap. 31. v. 35 36 37. That mine adversary had written a Book surely I would take it upon my shoulder and bind it as a crown to me I would declare to him the number of my steps c. Had his reproofs been heavy true or false I would have taken them upon my shoulder and born either my own or his infirmities I have done it and by the same grace of God I can do it again Or had his book been more true righteous or mercifull then mine I can boldly say I should have put it upon my head openly worn his understanding professed it and gloried in it as a crown I know I have in me that authority over my self and have been so conversant in self-judging and retracting what I have seen to be short and also such a love to truth that it would be a glory and crown to me to meet with a light that could convince mine of darkness yea I have this experience of my self I can prefer another before me and give honour time and place to my adversaries even when I know they are the weaker But I may and do think that men are not able to deal with the reason of the Book and therefore it is left to my self to Animadvert upon it and possibly I may deal as severely with it as another The first thing that I blame the book for is its untimeliness it came too late I have in my heart a love to manknid to all English men and to the opposite parties in the Nation my place and work is to heal unite and reconcile and so to prevent ruine and destruction if I might be heard none should execute it nor any suffer it Many things did offer themselves in my mind that did tend to a universal peace and a composing all differences to the great advantage of the whole and of every part They have been long conceived in my mind and did offer themselves to birth at the beginning of this great change but I delaid so long till another spirit had stepped in and engaged the minds of men both in doing and suffering so that what was proposed towards mother course could not be heard by either and for this I suffered a very sharp rebuke from the Lord before the Book came forth t was like that to Moses Exod. 4.24 God met him and sought to kill him A more dangerous assault I have not received a long time nor a deâ—per wound I have still a frequent sense of it which keeps me in an awe of God My evil was suppressing a that light of love and peace which did arise in my mind from the divine nature This we must know and I declare it from a living sense That God is in his nature most gracious tender and patient yet he knows how to take vengeance on all iniquity even in his dearest children Where there is the greatest love there is the greatest authority and majesty yea the greatest jealousie and severity I find it so in his constant dealings with me The supreme Law of God is himself Love and with it peace salvation forgiveness good-will to man The very nature and Law of this love is to do good and communicate none receives it for himself only but to give forth to others of all things it must not be confined nor imprisoned being in its own nature infinitely large You have freely received freely give If this be the highest Law it doth punish accordingly being offended or transgressed against it requires the sorest punishment which is to take away that love They that have felt love must needs have the sharpest sense of the want of it and its nature being large and communicating that evil servant that hides and buries this talent of love and peace and not communicate it it shall be taken from him This was my danger All men live under a Law the Law of love is the exactest and severest where it is in life and power or the Law of the spirit of life which is in Jesus it is there the quickest and sharpest and works most fully and strongly where it is engraven and written upon the heart and put in the inward parts Every stroke of a Law of eternal life in the most inward parts must needs be terrible threatning eternal death I write this not only that you may know that I live under a Law and exact discipline but that all may learn to fear the Lord and his goodness For know assuredly that God will be known and feared of all and that in great mercy and severity For his love and grace where it is in its truth and power will not be abused and turned into looseness and wantonness you may abuse and corrupt lesser favour but it will rise and be revenged and at last have that absoluteness in it that it will rule and give Law to us else it cannot save us My suppressing the movings of general and healing love was thus it often rose up in my mind and required to be written and published I did attempt and essay to do it but what I did one day I disliked the second or third day either from the weakness of my mind or from a growing spring of light or both but finding larger and deeper discoveries I refused and rejected the former and so in hope of doing better more strongly more certainly and completely I delayed to do what was present till the season was past There is in this a great evil for which I received a great rebuke and yet am I not wholly delivered from the snare for the further enlargement of my mind and the instruction of others I will examine the particulars of it In not giving forth truth light and love as it arises naturally in our minds but deferring till it be more accomplished and compleat or till we can give it a finer dress which may render it the more acceptable to others that so the fruit may be more certain and our selves more honoured and justified In this there is a great transgression against the Law of love and life First it is a fin against that truth or light an undervaluing of it as if it were not worthy to be seen and looked upon by men in its own natural form wherein there is the greatest beauty it is sufficiently if not most lovely in it self and in its own naked and native goodness All light hath a natural Majestie in it and is best when purest and unmixed it commands by its own brightness but above all the light of love is absolute and perfect It hath in it a sufficiency of glory to take away the spots and defects of other things and therefore it self needs no accomplishments All additions to light and love do darken and ecclipse them both for they give
beauty and glory to all and receive from none Secondly it is a sin against God a distrust of him not to commit our selves wholly to the leadings of his spirit it is an ignorance of his presence with and dominion over every spirit he being in and over all men he will plead the cause of Truth with them especially when it rises simply and purely from himself and his own good Spirit And will make it effectual to that end that he sends it It is most righteously due to him that he should have the managing of what light and grace he gives to any man and to employ it to his own holy ends and purposes to be a savour of life or of death as he please Thirdly there is in it want of love to Brethren for why should we be either afraid or ashamed to appear to them we love just as we are if I love my neighbour as my self why should not I appear to him as I do to my self and be confident of him that if I be found weak to him he will both pitty cover and help me as I would do to my self or as I would do to him Sure such confidence and openness of heart one to another will sooner gain entrance into the heart then formal and neat discourses into the head being most natural and familiar And if they obtain a place in the heart they will effect more then by pleasing the fancy yea weakness as well as confidence suits best with them that are weak A man may over-power a weak mind by too great an evidence and strength of Reason We are all weak if any will seem to be otherwise I doubt he doth but dissemble and get a covering but if any could attain a perfection he would by it be more a stranger to his Brethren except he could make them like himself or descend into their imperfection and be like them Fourthly I am not justified in rejecting or scorning infirmity There is a time for all things and a season proper for weakness A mixture of light and darkness makes the morning pleasant and growing simplicity and mistakes in children is better then cunning and politick exactness Yea natural weakness is better then artificial strength Christ became weak for us and what is any man that he should refuse what he chose or to be weak with the weak much less to appear so if he be so Exactness and compleatness is desirable and exceeding beautiful in its season when we grow up naturally to it But we must come to it by degrees and arise to it out of weakness In a child perfect strength or wisdom seems strange and monstrous if it be feigned or affected in any it is Serpentine deceit and hypocrifie Besides if we refuse to do good because we would and may do better or best of all we reject the first degree of good which is the root and foundation both of better and best And cruelly slay and destroy the first spring and buddings of life which are the fountains that only can nourish and feed unto perfect strength and Eternal Life Lastly there is in it as distrust of Truth God and Brethren so of a mans self and his own life If a man have any true life in him it is sufficient to carry him forth into the world because it is better and greater then the world He that is in you is greater then he that is in the world By distrust and diffidence of a mans own life he weakens it It is the design of the enemy to keep us in fear and bondage of spirit If that life that is in me be true it is best when it is natural all art and contrivance do weaken and clog it If it be not true it is abominable hypocrisie to personate an holy or heavenly thing We see all studied and made things come to base ends they will wear out and leave a mans soul destitute But true and genuine life will stand and increase Therefore I would be natural as in all things so especially in Religion which though it is supernatural yet is never good if it be not also natural Yet I may not wholly condemn the exercise either of fancy or judgement in composing and forming things for that they also are natural faculties and are excellent when the spiritual life doth purifie them fill them and rule over them By this you see the first and great evil in this Book and in my mind in writing of it delaying or dallying till another spirit had entred and so long till all parties were so engaged and disturbed that they had neither time nor clearness of mind to examine the reason of it For which I was so sharply afflicted and threatned not only to the rejecting of my present work and Ministry but of my life also Yet it was a sin not of wickedness but weakness and therefore I found mercy and God accepted of a sacrifice from me and not only permitted me to proceed in my work but continued and enlarged his assistance and healed my foul also Which gives me hope that though the book and my self suffer awhile yet I and others may at last reap fruit and comfort from it It is for the present in the fire and let it be tryed throughly that all may see what is in it SECT IV. YOu have seen the first and great evil of the book its unseasonable birth occasioned by my delaying to write it when the things contained in it first offered themselves to come forth You have likewise seen the severe chastisments suffered for it and animadversions upon both If this evil be really removed and taken away and what I have written may a little calm and compose your minds but into a willingness to read it and seriously to ponder the things contained in it other defects the consequents and effects of the former may be cured There is a continual spring and growth of light in my mind which makes me distaste this day what I wrote two or three dayes since this made me suppress things and not giving them vent in their season they multiplyed so fast upon me that at last they crowded out one over another so thick and in a huddle that people know not what to make of them whereas had they marched out in their own order although rude and natural yet they would have been more perspicuous and so more easily discerned and understood There is I am sure a strange mistake in men even of the very drift and nature of the book so much wide of reason that I wonder at it besides other causes this may be one things pressed out so fast when they found the door open that they obscured themselves by multitude and force Being born in turba they are children of strife from the womb and then it is no wonder if they disturb others But this is a curable evil if any will be at the pains to part the notions and conceptions and take them asunder
spirit in obedience to his Father and in all his work knew no sin yet he himself was made sin His Father by a superiour Law judged him as the sinner and acquitted pardoned and justified them This is Christs way first reprove severely as a legal Minister purely and holily and finding that short or weak he layes down his life for them he had condemned And when he had administred the Law in its highest purity he then nailed it to the Cross as a weak thing that could not save and died under it to bring in a better Law of peace and forgiveness The fourth and last is the best the reproofs of the Spirit which Christ prefers above his own John 16.7 8 c. It is expedient that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgement Christ reproved of sin from righteousness The spirit reproved of sin and righteousness Christ reproved of sin in the flesh in weakness as under it and the Law and so grieved at it The Spirit reproved of sin and of righteousness in glory and power because saith Christ I go to my Father where he was glorified Being now exalted not only over their sins but by the worst of their sins by their crucifying of him The Son of man was lifted up His love and life overcame both Law Sin Death and the Devil having taken away their sins his Spirit could now manifest to them this one only sin unbelief That there was in him love peace pardon and salvation for them and their worst sins hatred of him that he had born them himself and was acquitted of them and so they were all done away and this sin only remained that they believed not this blessed and mighty grace that could overcome all that evil and bring forth glory to himself and good to them out of their sins and his death And this the Spirit did not only declare but convince so strongly that they could not resist it For his own descending upon them was an undeniable proof of it He convinces of righteousness by shewing that they had a righteousness as well as sin and that as their sins were Christs so his righteousness was theirs that their righteousness was with the Father in a heavenly invisible state because I go to the Father That this is true his own coming as Gods gift is a sufficient proof And therefore it is conviction with judgement or of Sin Righteousness and Judgement For except both the evil and the good be produced both Sin and Righteousness in the light and power of the Spirit there may be wrath administred but not Judgement It is said of Judgement because the Prince of this world is Judged And that is true Judgement that convinces the creature of Sin and of Righteousness and by the Spirit releases him and judges the wicked one the enemy that is the principal the author and worker of all this mischief This Judgement doth right to man to Christ and to God to man it humbles and abases him and brings him to God where his righteousness is It doth right to Christ and the sufficiency of his love life death and resurrection to save the world And it exalts God his love mercy fulness and justice that he hath the righteousness of the whole world with him and that he hath accepted Christ to it as Lord and Prince of the whole world as head of man and hath given him power and spirit to reveal and dispence that righteousness freely to whom he will Now it much concerns you and me and all men that are busie in reproving others to examine our selves by these things what kind of reproofs we do administer If you will admit your work to be tried which you now cannot avoid upon a little humble and sober consideration you will find that in the administration of condemnation upon the Magistracy and Ministry of Church and Kingdom persons and things officers and offices you are very much short of the second of these which I call a Legal or Angelical reproof and punishment for sin For true legal lawful or angelical justice is administred First upon men as Gods creatures made in his image and so his children though drawn away by Satan into the worst evils It is secondly not to ruine or destroy but to reform Thirdly it is by a just holy stable Law and not from mens uncertain and broken imaginations Fourthly it is from a just holy and godly life and nature If these things be true as they are then consider What spirit have you acted in Is it not mercy and justice to you and all men that this should be known That you dealt with them not as men but as brats of Antichrist And sought not to reform either persons or things but to destroy root branch abjure and curse for ever And that by no steddy known Law of God or man such you never could own or profess but by uncertain opinions and imaginations which you never were nor could be true to or agree in either for Church or Common-wealth yea generally ye acted besides all rule Law and authority only by that you call necessity self preservation and interest And this you did not from a pure nature as is too grosly manifest but from a mixture at least of pride envy malice covetousness and self-seeking seen now by your selves and all men If you fall so short of the second I know you will not presume once to think of the third kind which Christ our Lord administred in the flesh first to discover sin and then to bear the curse and punishment of it himself This was â—nce an example and the Saints of old were called to practise the same thing read 1 Pet. 2.19 20 c. and chap. 3.17 18. But alas you are not yet instructed in the doctrine of such a thing but are taught the contrary that this is only for Christ to do and not for men But you are sheep gone astray and led away by false spirits and for the present have lost the Sheeps nature and acted as Woolves When you return unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls chap. 2. v. 25. he will teach you another and more excellent way And therefore as you are short of the second so you are opposite to the third in the very form of your spirits For Christ the holy one dies for the ungodly your holiness serves only to punish and destroy the ungodly his holiness to your practice must needs seem either unrighteous or foolish and impolitick to suffer the just for the unjust and only for well-doing and to commit his cause to God Why did ne not justifie himself and condemn others Had he power in his hands Yes he could command legions and that of Angels Why then did he not cut off the wicked out of
thing that opposed you was one and the same enemy In that troubled state you conclude I was turned to the world and backslidden to the present rising power Great guilt and great suffering meeting together must needs much disturb the mind of poor man If you in the trouble of your souls mistake me and if my mind be clear and at peace I may well bear it and pitty you and so I do My business was to be dayes-man between adverse parties I know I did not intrude into the office but refused and excused as Moses Who am I they will not believe nor hearken to my voice I am a man of no power or esteem and so put it off till I was compelled to appear and now I find the common fate of them that interpose to part the fray both parties fall upon him You think I am turned Courtier the Court thinks I am still a Fanatick T is but just I should receive both your neglects into me standing between you I am content to feel the evil of both because I love both and have in my soul good for both But you do not only judge me to be an enemy but worse an apostate brother and more wicked then your open adversaries for they only afflict the outward man I fall upon your spirits and principles We shall have occasion to discourse of spirits and principles hereafter but here I shall only mind you of two or three things First It is I confess a very difficult thing to judge of principles and spirits because they are inward and therefore strangers and enemies cannot judge of them It must be some friend or brother that hath conversed with them They that are still under them are judged by them and therefore they cannot judge of them It must be some that have travelled through them and have had experience of them spirits and principles are Gods and who can judge the Gods If any they that have been amongst them and tryed them you may from this find some reason why I should be chosen to do this service for you you generally know me my way and work hath been trying of spirits many years Secondly as it is difficult to judge spirits and principles so it is hard to bear the judgement of them Men can easier die and lay down their natural lives then suffer their principles to be touched Men of any common honesty do freely expose their flesh to death to save their Gods although they be but Idols But thirdly There are false Gods false spirits you know it and have familiarly accused others of it you know I know it I confess I do as we say to my cost it may be to your profit you have of late been hammering at a spiritual Antichrist an Antichrist within and it is most true many such there are can you think that you should be acting so many years against Antâ—christ all the while be ignorant of an Antichrist within who doth but now begin to peep â—ut and be discovered in you and you not guilty of receiving false principles or spirits Can all this smoke of confusion darkness and enmity be amongst you and no fire of false spirits Can there be so much reeling and staggering giddiness and instability and no wine of fornication no sophisticated or adulterated wine No spiritual harlots or false lovers Must all the corruption rotteness and filth he laid upon the poor flesh Is there no evil spirit that came in under the name of God to joyn with her to beget these bastard brood of hypocrisie covetousness and self-seeking Must man only bear the blame and not the unclean spirits that are gone out Or must God and his name only stand accused that he led his people by his Spirit into no better wayes Is it not then both justice to his name and mercy to man that these evil spirits and principles should be discovered and detected As it is proper for a friend or brother that hath been partaker with you in them and hath suffered greatly for it to discover them so it will be found a friendly and brotherly office to reprove them The plucking up these principles that lie deep and secret is I know terrible I have felt it so It seems to threaten the rooting out of religion and godliness it self I have found the same thing in my tryals God comes against them and his people engaged with them in great jealousie enraged as an enemy in fiery indignation and vengeance because nothing but his vengeance can destroy them but I have found great love in these fires of jealousie yea love to our nature and persons with forgiveness to our iniquities even then when he takes vengeance of our inventions I know you can neither be inwardly cleansed nor outwardly saved but by a death in your spirits and loss of these principles which have deluded you and brought you into this grievous snare and therefore shall in love and good will to man to your souls lives and liberties prosecute my purpose of manifesting those unsound principles that have deceived and mis-led you and shall not spare for your crying or frowardness SECT V. ANother objection against the Book is it is written much in Allegories because the present state of things is there represented in and by ancient Scriptures I acknowledge this to be a fault and possibly it might arise from the first great error of delay by keeping it in too long it might be thus overgrown with hair and get this dress or at least the same distrust that made me unwilling to write might make me willing to shrowd my mind under those coverings of Scripture wanting confidence to appear more open or strength to go without that help I might affirm that the things written are not meer allegories if they be so they are to me hatefull Idols for I know nothing more abominable then meer similitudes and forms of truth I may affirm that the same eternal spirit that brought forth those works in Adam and Noah of which you there read doth for ever keep the living image of them in himself and many ages after brought them forth in Moses mind and by Moses into writing so that the works done and the words writ are one and of one mind and spirit The same eternal spirit having in himself the same eternal image doth by it preserve the image written or the words and history The same eternal spirit eternally works and brings forth his own likness in all times and in our age and the same spirit that did them and writ them then doth them now and reveals them in that Book He that is wise will understand these things But let them go for Allegories and let me bear the blame of it I am content it should go so because I know we shall gain by all our miscarriages grow wise by mistakes For sin hath something of Physick in it many times if not alwayes it hath its own cure with it because
that good in the office and institution of a King and that good in the nature and person or his Majestie as a man and a Prince if we consider no more that you may live under him with more Peace spiritual comfort more holiness and godliness and with less sin and evil then you have done all these wars or since This I affirm upon knowledge of a sure root and foundation laid by God and Jesus Christ in the beginning of the world now manifested and revealed so firmly and strongly that no humors passions or lusts of men nor any spirits and powers of darkness can overthrow so that what ever men say or do the foundation is sure they may prejudice themselves and deprive themselves of the comfort and benefit of it but the foundation remains firm for it is that tried stone that hath born all Nations in all ages I have likewise affirmed to his Majestie concerning you and your way and work that the spirit of that Ministrie in which you acted against him is dead that your power both Civil and Military hath resigned to him and that the principles or opinions being proper only for that work of destroying and of their own nature weak and short are reducible And then that there are in you those gifts and abilities that may be of singular use to him and the Kingdom So that upon a good understanding between you the King may be happy in you and you in him As the thing propounded is not only just and honest in the sight of all men but also good and profitable for all Parties To you no less then saving of life liberty and estate To his Majestie security honour and the great advantage of the hearts affections and judgements of a great and considerable people And to all the Nation that rich blessing of Peace in knowledge and right understanding So the means propounded to this end is as innocent and safe That wise sober and spiritual men of large hearts and indifferent in their judgements should have the hearing and trying of mens principles and opinions The end being unquestionably good peace and love and the means to that end proportionable a trial of mens opinions before the wisest and best in the Church We cannot reasonably doubt of a good effect except we conclude one of these two things that there is not with men or in the Church that Grace and Spirit of Christ which is able to judge and lead into a way of Peace or else that men are not willing to receive that blessing of Peace though it should be manifested No man can conclude the first without the guilt of unbelief and denying the truth of the Promise of God that his spirit shall abide with his people for ever nor the second without great injury and uncharitableness to mankind But if his word and Spirit be with us and that Word and Spirit be sufficient for that end whereunto it is given which is to purifie enlighten heal and unite the body of Christ to deny it is blasphemy against that Spirit then walking according to the rule of that Word and Spirit we need not doubt of obtaining that end which is so much according to his own nature which is love peace and salvation Why you should think that such a proposal should come from an enemy I can impute it to nothing but this the extremity of your anguish under your fore and grievous loss and disappointment which makes all things seem harsh while the mind is drowned in that sense It is true you meet with sharp reproof there but you must come to find true love in the severest reproof before you can be soundly healed Proposals of a Treatie and Peace for the preventing of present and imminent danger use not to be the way of enemies If such things should come from a professed enemy I think the nature of the things deserves acceptance and not scorn or reviling I confess I think you have wronged me and the Book and I therefore might require reparations of you I know in time you will give it There is that right and reason in you which will give me satisfaction when it shall recover it self from the passions of fear grief and anger which now darken and suppress it In the mean time let us consider whether there be not something in the Book that is yet improveable for the good of the whole Party that stand in opposition to the present Government and so are in danger to be destroyed by it We hope his Majestie and in him the Law is satisfied and by that sacrifice of blood that hath been shed is attoned as to past things yet the breath is not healed but your spirits are still set in opposition to the power of the Nation and the Law and Power of the Nation looks upon you with jealousie and an evil eye thinking that yet you may attempt against the Peace of the Kingdom Great discontent appears in you it cannot be hid all endeavours are used to uphold and revive the cause and consequently that enmity and war that hath formerly been acted against his Majestie and Party This is seen known and felt and doth undoubtedly provoke the Power of the Nation to endeavour the suppressing the Party for preventing future inconvenience It cannot be otherwise all men do it When you had the Power you did as they now do you interrupted their meetings and required Oathes of them This now fills the prisons ruines many Families exasperates mens Spirits into bitterness and wrath which destroyes the sweetness and comfort of religion wounds the life and power of godliness and grieves the good spirit of love and peace in Christ What ever you think of it now I know it is in it self a good and mercifull work and will be so acknowledged by you in time to reconcile a poor broken people guilty by Law and their own consciences to the authority and power of the Nation in which they live For a naked people to be in their judgements and affections zealously set against the Law and Government of a Nation which is provoked and enraged newly recovered and restored experienced fore-warned and fore-armed against them what ever may be expected hereafter there is in it apparent ruine for the present Alas a Law and Power is an Iron Scepter and in the hand of a self preserving spirit such as was in you and is in all men yet must needs be hard to them that are professed enemies to it The consideration of it wounds my soul and affects my bowels of compassion to you which urges me to do what I can to prevent misery to your persons and families And therefore I do earnestly entreat you to consider seriously whether your botom upon which you stand in this divided and opposite state to the present power and Government of Church and Kingdom be sufficient to bear you up against what you are likely to suffer if you persist The foundation upon which you
cry of the cause be not only a great sound or more sound then substance Empty vessels give the greatest sound Most noise least truth and substance is very common Or things when they go off make the greatest report This I have observed of this cause it floats like Wine in mens heads fills mens Prayers and Sermons flies about in Books and Discourses and so raises a smoak of talk zeal and affection But in all this time First It never attained or gathered a body into any consistency but mens minds are still blown about like dust one people talk this and another that but there never was any consent or agreement about it 2. As it never could gain a body so it never had any form it was never yet stated by any man or by any company of men only confused thoughts and talks there are about it Thirdly it never yet attained any power in the Nation it never was owned as the cause of God by either Parliament or Army Men in their private prayers and Sermons talk of the Kingdom of God of the fall of Babylon and building Zion but those powers owned nothing but necessity safety interest of the people and such like things And therefore you may well think what a bottom it is that you adventure your selves in or rather how bottomless it is Many words many affections many duties multitudes of sacrifices many Scriptures quoted preached on But what power and substance is there in these What heavenly glory is there in them or among you that is able to convince your enemies Or what earthly strength is there in them that can defend and support a poor naked people against a strong and mighty Prince against a standing Law and Authority My reason experience and knowledge tells me that as you are so you will be left in confusion in any engagement for such a cause that hath no more solid body state or power in it And therefore be perswaded to retire from the noise that you make in each others ears and affections and enquire within in your own reasons and memories And remember if you can where had you this Cause from whence came it where and when was it born in what year of these late changes in which of them was it brought forth Or from what Scripture do you derive it is there such a thing spoken or named there as the Cause of God God pleads the Cause of his people by outward Judgements and by his Spirit the Advocate and by Christ their Counsellor But his Cause is not now at the Bar no he hath set Christ upon the throne and he is exalted far above all principalities and powers He is now actually judging and ruling the world he pulleth down and setteth up whom he will You may feel his power and authority he judges you for your unrighteousness and sets up your enemies above you What is it that thus blinds your eyes that you should contend or that which is already done for Christs Kingdom doth not the enemy abuse your understandings and perswade you it is the Cause of God and his Kingdom when indeed it is your own honour dominion and greatness But hath there not been a cause of God in this Nation Yes there hath been that which we may call so and it was this The Church and Kingdom of England stood in a very dark fleshly and corrupt state and the Governors of it were also corrupt and had sinned against God For which God had a Controversie both with their persons and standing And therefore sanctified you with a fleshly holiness against their fleshly corruption and called you forth for the executing of his judgement upon them And therein you were justified being engaged to speak in your language in the cause of God or being employed to administer that judgement which he had given in the cause Thus much I can grant to you and it will be found the right of the case But if the Judgement decreed be executed and the measure of outward punishment be fulfilled then your cause ceases If this kind of wrath by war blood and spoil be finished why should not you be content to be discharged from this employment First it is a mean service to be the Executioners of an outward destruction It is O Assyrian the rod of my anger and the staff in their hand is my indignation I will send him against an hypocritical Nation and against the people of my wrath will I give him change to take the spoil and to take the prey and to tread down like the mire of the streets Isa 10.5 6. Secondly as it is a vile service so it hath been vilely polluted It is a filthy thing to destroy and the filthiness of it is manifested It is Babylonian and the confusion is sufficiently discovered The brightness and cleanness of it and all the honour and glory of it was the wrath and justice of God when that was finished then it presently shewed its vile nature covetousness self-seeking pride and cruelty Nothing but ignorance or a love of the prey and spoil can make men to doat upon it and desire to continue in it Thirdly being it self unclean it cannot purifie nor reform the Nation It reaches but to the out-side to the outward life honour and greatness It never touches the spirit and therefore may waste and spoil and so restrain for a time the fleshly part but the nature and spirit of the thing still remains yea confirmed and strengthened It may tread down in the mire but its unclean feet of wrath and pastion pollute more then purge and so make worse Fourthly to purifie is left to the fire of of his own Spirit which will thorowly purge with the spirit of judgement and burning You administred 1. without judgement you could not discern between the gold and the dross And 2. without burning for if the dross be not separated from the gold it cannot be consumed as yet we have had neither separation nor burning for want of both these their dross still remains after all the wrath administred But doubt not the holy purpose and power of God He will certainly purge both you and them by the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his appearing This pure heavenly fire is descended is kindled is set as a refiners fire and no iniquity shall escape the flame of it For it is holy mighty effectual and eternal it doth and will burn for ever You have heard the sound of it in your spirits ye are in the smoak of it and so is the whole Nation which is the reason of the present blackness darkness and confusion But when the evil is brought forth and discovered he will certainly destroy it yea it is actually destroying and in destruction in being brought forth Fifthly That outward wrath which you administred you could nor but execute it you could not cease from it till it was finished but you have since turned from that cause and made
sort of men because they are against them and their wayes they will exercise the same to all that oppose their way He that will kill a Cavaleer because he is not godly will likewise kill a Presbyterian Independant Anabaptist or any other if he cross his way and notion be he never so near to him in the kind of his life And he that will kill an Episcopal person or party for his own safety or for the Cause of God will for the same Cause kill his Brother Independent or Anabaptist Fourthly This kind of corruption of a body or society of people into deadly hatred and exercise of their spirits and gifts against each other is the worst kind of corruption that can be of Holiness or Religion Because 1. it is against love which is the supream Law 2. It tends to a dissolution For a Kingdom divided against it self cannot stand if not a Civil then much less a Religious Kingdom 3. Where this sin is all others are also For where envying and strife is there is confusion and every evil work Jam. 3.16 Therefore if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not and lie not against the truth This wisdom descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish ver 14 15. The wisdom that is from above is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be intreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie ver 17. From all which we must conclude that the Religion and Holiness in which you glory and upon which you stand is earthly and sensual It began in strife and self-seeking and its end is devilish It is corrupted and faln As great and greater things then these have corrupted the Scripture witnesses it I testifie it upon experimental knowledge and your works manifest this of yours to be faln If you glory in this and think there is not a better you lie against the truth as the Apostle saith I know there is a more excellent heavenly and perfect state which now judges this of yours and you will know it also when you are ashamed of this SECT XI LEt me mind you what we are upon He that hateth his Brother is in darkness walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he goeth because darkeness hath blinded his eyes I am proving that the darkness of hatred hath blinded your eyes that you know not 1. What you are 2. What your enemies are 3. What the way is you are going or whither you go You are blinded as to your selves and in a mist of strife and confusion have lost 1. your Cause 2. your Religion you retain the form or carkass of both but have lost the justice of one and the life of the other I shall now shew you how you are blinded concerning your enemies that you do not cannot understand them in the present state in which you stand I will not urge upon you my apprehensions of them which I have declared in my Book They are there published and let them abide the tryal I meet with nothing yet that is of sufficient authority to make me retract them You wonder and are offended at the good that I have written of the King from those antient foundations of rest and grace in Gods sight laid in Noah My authority for it I tell you pag. 65. in these words My love is my first and chief guide in this application to your Majestie I believe it will uphold and justifie me against that weakness or strangeness which either is in it or may seem to others to be in it For I do in my soul give unto love the most absolute authority as the most supream royal Law in heaven and in earth the most certain and infallible rule For that only is without errour that is able to cover the errours and supply the defects of all things else I only advance it as a standard let it stand naked by it self I do it to invite you to deal with it Both reason and sense are against it Overthrow it if you can I do desire it may be throughly tryed because I know it is a stranger in the world You have other thoughts of this application that it comes from the vile and base principle of flattery I profess the most honourable principle of love if you have I any strength of truth and righteousness in you suffer not so gross an evil as this to pass uncorrected My business with you is to slay that enmity that is in you to the present power and to take you off from that dangerous opposition in which you are engaged that so you may come to live a quiet and sober life under it And to let you see how hatred hath blinded your eyes No man that hates ought to judge while he hates he cannot judge All passions darken the judgement above all hatred which is a foul black devilish thing it is of the wicked one whom God hath cast down from all authority of rule and judgement And made him a slave a vile Executioner of his wrath I pleaded this in my Book in the behalf of them that since have suffered pag. 152. and now plead it with you And shall I hope never cease to plead it with God and with men and with God in man till this base spirit of malice be cast out of all power both Civil and Religious For I know that hatred though it seem to judge and to be very forward in judging yet it hath neither true right nor light to judge any Only it is a servant to the justice of God It is true God hath given this beast a kingdom greatness and power but it is only in wrath and destruction Foolish man is deceived miserably by him poor dust if he can get up into any kind of power though it be only to plague and destroy yet he thinks it a great attainment if he hath so much knowledge religion or power as to inflict punishment he fancies himself a god because he administers divine displeasure But if ever you come to so much light of God as to know what you do you will abhor your selves for that which you now glory in If you will shew your selves men and but exercise your reason you will quickly see that you cannot judge of your enemies that you hate and therefore that they are not what you judge them to be while you judge in hatred First No man can judge when he hates or after he hates For when men hate they suppose those they hate are to be destroyed and therefore they are already judged and condemned For hatred is the executing of one condemned and that with the worst condemnation unto the utmost and irrevocable ruine Men think when they hate there remains nothing to do but to prosecute to utter destruction to spoil pull down shame disgrace and ruine them And it is impossible that they should judge that are thus employed to execute For to judge a person or
can command it it will master every mind in which it is and lead him at last to carnal wayes if it be not outwardly restrained ' For he that will curse will also destroy And he that doth the greater what should hinder him to do the less They that condemn men to Satan and to hell they will hardly forbear killing of them if they have power and opportunity or doing such mischief as their hatred directs them to The root of all this is the Serpent Out of the Serpents root comes forth a Cockatrice and his fruit a fiery flying Serpent from this root the Serpent shoots forth this hissing Adder or Cockatrice of cursing And the fruit is a fiery flying Serpent the former soon gets wings and flames out in open hostility I aim at no less then the root of this hatred â—n all men the Devil And finding that he hath at last taken Sanctuary in Religion and the profession thereof and hath therein acted with so much vigor and security I must pursue him into your heart and spirits It is his main fort Zeal for God and his Cause if we can heat him hence we shall hope to drive him out of the earth For if this hold be taken from him he will have very little strength to make resistance any where else That this enemy is amongst you we have sufficient proof We follow him by a train of blood and by the track of all the beasts his companions pride covetousness falshood self-seeking And we see the smoak of his confusion and hear the noise of his violence among you Therefore you must endure to be assaulted and searched I know it will cost you dear it will shake the whole frame and foundation of your Religion to have him quite destroyed in you it did so in me his root lies deep But if you can bear the tryal and become free from this soul enemy your persons and gifts will shine in the true and everlasting glory of the Lamb of God Possibly you may have the honour of yielding up and slaying the last and greatest strength of this enemy of mankind I am satisfied that the horns of his beastly power are both sawn off and scattered And that the Lamb of God is conqueror and doth begin already to bud and spring forth in many persons who do abhor the filth and deceit of war blood and wrath And do see that nothing springs from thence but mischief and confusion To help forward the birth of this spirit of love and to guide your feet in a way of peace have I engaged in this discourse It will be an honourable and lasting conquest to overcome him He hath betrayed and spoyled all other your conquests Now we shall be revenged on him and destroy him who hath destroyed by you and then destroyed you also I suppose there is a rich treasure of life righteousness and holiness hid in the nature of man Yea I know it and am one with it Even the very Kingdom of God is amongst us and in us This rich treasure hath come forth in profession name and prophesie in your spirits But it hath miscarried and faln short This is certainly from this evil one it is he that hath done you this michief And it is he amongst your selves For an open enemy could not hurt you could not stand before you It is he that hath betrayed you His great strength lies in enmity whereby he brings darkness confusion and every evil work You know confusion and enmity divided distracted and ruined you What need we any plainer evidence Therefore it must be enmity and hatred that hath destroyed you And it must be victory against him and it that must save you We have already shewed you that hatred though it begin against those that are further off yet it will not stay there If it be admitted it will reign He that will hate any man because he differs from him or because he is sinful will hate his nearest friend because he may and doth differ and is sinful He that to preserve himself and his own way of Religion will destroy a Cavaleer will upon the same ground destroy a Presbyterian Independant or Quaker and consequently all that oppose him Indeed he that will not suffer for sinners for enemies must resolve to kill all sinners and enemies or all that will not conform to him Therefore it is the same enmity wherewith you prosecuted your first enemies and your brethren the very same violence and self-love that enraged you against them kept you from agreeing one with another And the same conceits that you were the people of God and that yours was the only way of God that made you abjure and renounce the King and Church the very same opinion and confidence made you oppose one another Each man being confident his own way was the only way made you unyielding one to another For that which will not submit to any thing but what is Gods mind and what he knows to be Gods mind must necessarily oppose every man that differs from him You know whereunto this tends And therefore there can be no peace but in that love which can bear with that which to him doth not appear to be Gods mind or can submit to them that do not in all things the holy and perfect will of God And if we have so much love and pitty as to bear them that do err in a little if we have more love we may bear them that err much The truth is we must either quarrel with all or bear the weakness of all in love to all It is therefore this enemy that hath abused you and misled you into those dark wayes in which you now he Hitherto you have not known whither you have gone he perswaded now by light reason and experience not to follow him who draws you into a snare and there spoils you of your peace and safety We suppose you are travelling towards the Kingdom of Christ I believe you would see him upon the throne The enemy tells you These men that you oppose hinder him and his Kingdom and that by their destruction Christ shall be exalted You are herein quite out of the way to his Kingdom First While you seek to gain a Kingdom for him you deny to acknowledge that Kingdom which his Father hath already given him He is set down upon his Fathers Throne And that throne is everlasting You may therefore seek a Kingdom for your selves but not for him And in doing so you do both deny and resist his Kingdom And fight with him because he doth not set you up with him Secondly His Kingdom is first in patience The Kingdom and patience of Jesus And a blessed Kingdom it is to rest in suffering They that are truly Kings with him have the Kingdom in themselves and first enjoy it on the Cross triumphing there They who by the riches of their natures or by God in them can enrich poverty make bonds free
that can be accursed for them It is his way it is his nature he dealt so with Christ and therefore must be justified and honoured for it And so I do with my soul And desire office and employment in his Church upon no other terms Blessed for ever be his holy name for it in my heart And blessed be his name in this Church and Nation And let all his people say Amen For he will establish only such ministers over them in his house as are of his and his Sons mind and spirit God may and doth for a time employ other spirits to do baser services to break afflict and punish so long as there is proud flesh to be subdued But none shall be admitted to minister healing life and salvation but such as are of this spirit The form or title is title and the question is not great who or which But this is the Nature and Spirit chosen of God to rule his people Lastly Let me assure you under the word and oath of Jesus Verily verily except you be born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God Joh. 3.3 Except you be born out of this earthly sensual darkness into heavenly light out of this heathenish or legal spirit into the largeness of heaven you cannot so much as see the Kingdom of God so long as you think that it consists in a multitude of prayers in the opening of Scriptures in fleshly striving for earthly liberty and earthly power you do not you cannot see the Kingdom of God Alas you admire your selves your zeal and intentions your gifts and notions But what are those to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ which is over all things in heaven in earth and under the earth Over all things first in heaven He employes innumerable Angels and all their holiness power and light in distinct ages and places And brings them forth successively to act their parts and to shew the utmost of their strength and wisdom in governing the world And when he hath done with them folds them up as a vesture layes them aside and changes them for others Possibly all that you have attained to may not amount tb one Angel Be it what it will you cannot but confess one Angel may do as much and more know as much and more speak as much and more then all you have done And that in greater holiness purity brightness and majesty And when he hath done it must bow down and be dismissed Why then should you be troubled at the fall of your works Secondly Christs Kingdom extends to all men in all Nations He hath power to spirit and anoint all men with what spirit he please to sanctifie them and gift them either as heathens so he did Cyrus and his Medes or as Jews so he did Saul or as Christians so he did the Saints of old And yet none of them must raign only minister and serve in those spirits He hath laid infinite variety of gifts in mans nature and knows how to use them all and will have a time for every purpose And as he will draw out the good of every man of what degree soever so the evil of every man All mens lusts and corruptions must be drawn out and judged In one state of things mens Religion and Gifts lie uppermost and cover their sins that Religion must have a time to work and have honour or reward for that work and when it is worn out it must as an old garment be laid aside And then that evil that is under that form of Godliness must be seen shewed forth and punished In another state the good may lie under the evil God hath a work and an object prepared for that evil when its work is done then the good will rise and have its time and place Thirdly As Christ rules all Angels and men so all Devils all infernal spirits and will bring them forth out of the bottomless pit into his own House and City and give them their time and place to shew forth all the evil that is in them And thereby judge them and then cast them into the Lake of fire for ever And there are various sorts and kinds of flesh or humane weakness for them to feed upon in the nature of man What is theirs they do challenge and must have first for words and actions and then for shame and punishment And if we do in the least see the Kingdom of Christ we shall be content to take our lot in any of these or in all of them as it pleases God to dispose of us If your minds were enlarged into the sight and view of the greatness of the Kingdom of God and the continuance of it in all ages everlastingly you would with submission and joy consider and behold the present works of God upon your selves and upon the Nation But so long as you are shut up in that narrow spirit and limit the Kingdom of Christ to such a poor inconsiderable temporary thing as your present dispensation and service you cannot understand any thing of it Therefore know that you are in darkness and know not whither you go you are quite out of the way to Christs Kingdom SECT XIII WE will suppose likewise that you do desire holiness and that your trouble is either that you or the Nation is no more holy And therefore in zeal for reformation you go forth against the present state of things as unholy denouncing wrath against it and seeking the destruction of it Herein likewise you are extreamly blinded by enmity For First That holiness which you profess and in which you live is not the holiness of Christ you are not holy as he is holy and therefore it cannot stand before him it neither is nor shall be accepted to raign with him It may do him service be a scourge in his hand it may stand before men before worse men in the field it may stand before mens worldly passions and lusts before the Laws of men and their punishments It may stand before prisons and chains yea before death it self And so will the holiness of moral men heathens or Jews and of all sorts of Christians But it cannot it shall not stand before God 1. It is impure 2. It is imperfect in its kind 3. It is fleshly and fading 4. It is not an holy nature 5. It is not holiness that can take away sin 6. It is not holiness that can take away the sins of the world And therefore not the holiness of God and Christ Secondly As it is short in its kind and insufficient to answer the perfect and good will of God either in your own souls or upon the Nation so it is corrupted openly defaced and for guilt rejected Because it is polluted it is not your rest To abide and persist in a way and state disowned and refused by God is not only sloth and ignorance but unbelief and disobedience God never pulls down one dispensation but he provides another If you were
not intangled in your self-righteousness and your minds not captivated by Satan the very principles of holiness that are in you would make you distaste your present state which hath been proved to be vain and false and full of opposition and contradiction There is in you a seed of truth love and purity which must make you loath that state that hath been and is found by constant experience unclean formal and full of enmity to one another and all men However you judge of me as unholy I must teâ—l you I have a long time not only witnessed against the corruption of it but have turned from it even from the best of what is abroad of every sect And that in the sincerity of my love and affection to the pure and holy nature of Jesus Christ And so far as I have in any small measure partaked of his holy Spirit I have born your iniquities and been pressed and burdened with them grieved for them and shamed of them I do not now blame you from a common or humane spirit though that also is able to find gross defects in you and in the best of your way It is by it men blame you And you by it blame one another But from that holiness wherewith I stand before God for you and in that love and pitty to you wherein I intercede for you and could lay down my life for you I may say more For I know and find that none comes unto the Father to intercede for sinners but by the Son both in the name and spirit of the Son None minister truly before God but in that love of Christ who can be accursed for Brethren From deep experience of God of my own soul and of your state and from a long and sore travel in all do I write this to you That whatever you account of your selves by comparing your selves with your selves or with one another or with them that are visibly worse then you Yet when you shall but strive to enter into the strait gate that you may indeed come into the Kingdom of God and his naked face and presence I say when you shall but seriously and in truth desire it and press after it you will abhor your selves and that kind of holiness in which you now live Yea I know in your approaches to God which are not spiritual naked and heavenly but earthly fleshly and in letter or image only yet in that presence of God which you enjoy you are full of self-condemnings and self-upbraidings But that being but an out ward Court into which your Religion brings you it may shew you the outward spots and blemishes of your Religion but cannot discover to you the root and bottom of the evil that is in you Thirdly You are now in a zeal for your forms of worship and for those gifts and graces that attend them opposing condemning and reviling in words and religious exercises to what that tends all men know the persons ministry and worship now set up in the Nation Against these you run headily and carnally for consider what you oppose not Satan in these persons offices and worship but the things themselves That which you oppose and sight against being outward and carnal such is that also by which you do oppose them So that the business is not to pull down sin and iniquity and set up holiness but to pull down the outward power means and ministry of the Bishop and set up the Pastor In truth it is to pull down them and set up your selves This being a carnal and fleshly contest though covered with the name of God 1. It is unclean 2. And being unclean that which comes from it must needs be unclean also and thereby you promote not holiness but the contrary sin For contention and war have done and still do wound and slay the holy life which is pure and peaceable and carnal strife wastes the meek and good spirit If you should attain what you aim at and destroy again the whole outward frame of Church and State and set up your selves except you had the holy and mighty Spirit of God to destroy the root and spirit as well as the form and to open hell and shut them up for ever as the Spirit did Christs enemies they would recover again as they have done But such a Spirit and such a Power you have not I suppose if you could damn them all to hell presently you would not do it you have more mercy in you as men to men your Brethren And I am sure when you have power to do it you will not do it because he that hath power to do it will not doth not do it And he will never give his power but he will give his goodness and mercy likewise Again if you could thrust out them and exalt your selves and way in their place how would holiness be advanced It would be but one thing removed and another of the same nature brought in for it is of the same kind with theirs humane earthly and living in the same region else it could not sight with theirs if it be but of the same earthly nature it must needs be worse not better because it rises by war and contention And therefore must needs be harder sharper and more cruel and thereby suppresses the softer and attains its place by force And yet when you have done this except you have a more holy Spirit to guide lead and unite you you will not be able to settle your selves It is a tryed and judged case that this spirit in which you act hath not that truth and power that can wholly destroy what is nor that love and light that can reform it nor yet that wisdom that can provide a better And therefore you did overturn this Government throw it in the dirt and leave the Nation void for more wickedness to enter and then suffer the old to recover maimed and broken into a fouler house then it was Or else you must go on to perpetuate and establish contention and confusion in the Nation This is both reason and experience and may convince you if any thing will If you have not a more holy more true and more excellent spirit you can never attain what you seek either an extirpation of this Power and Government or establish a better If you cannot effect this you will but sill your selves your Religion and the Nation with violence fury and enmity by all your opposition you make But raise a deal of dust to blind your own eyes and others But stir and provoke black and malignant spirits both in you and against you as you have done And if you had that holy Spirit which only can prosper you in such an undertaking Then I am sure you would forbear this kind of carnal and wrathful opposition For the spirit of Christ is of the nature of Christ most holy and most gentle gracious and merciful He is so holy pure and incorruptible that he can
and doth make these things uphold them and walk in them and in all the wayes and forms of men in the midst of all their vanity and iniquity and not be defiled with them And this Spirit when you are led by him will enable you to live either above them or besides them or in the secret of his Tabernacle which is within all there forms and that with purity peace and content And this Spirit that upholds and gives being to all forms and persons doth distinguish and perfectly judge between the good and the evil of all persons and things and doth eternally chuse and gather unto himself that which is holy in all and casts the chaff and dust to the Serpent and him and it into the Lake of fire If therefore you have this Spirit and will do that visibly which he doth eternally then you must by him first gather all these things and all the parts of the broken Church and Nation under his wings that he may do with our Chaos as he did when he made the world first sustain cherish and brood upon this desolate state and then form a new one For if you cannot receive all into your hearts and bowels of love you will never renew or reform any thing For love is the first moving cause of all good It is love only that hath in it that mercy that life that goodness that can heal and reform the poor diseased and decayed state of man and of the Church This excellent divine nature of God Love hath rejected with indignation your harsh and severe spirit of self-sasety and self-seeking into confusion and shame And hath taken the work out of your hands into his own after you have by violence and unskilfulness spoyled wasted and ruined he will himself save and restore And in order to it takes the whole frame of things in all its sin death curse and misery both persons parties forms and states into the bowels of his most tender compassions into himself and his own nature life and being who is Emanuel God with us In our flesh and so in and under our sins and curse bearing of them for us and from us He hath love to those persons that you would destroy finding his own image in them for they are his own creatures and children therefore he will save them and first pardon and then remove their iniquities In those offices that you would destroy he knows there is good in them and in the honour and riches belonging to them and therefore will take away the abuse and corruption of them And in that service that you so much vilifie there is heavenly excellency which must be preserved purified enlightened and all the death darkness and prophaneness separated from it The holy one of Israel will do this Therefore to conclude this point of holiness you may and must know That you were sanctified with a measure of gifts for a service for the execution of Gods displeasure Its work is finished the gifts corrupted and now as to publick work upon the Nation rejected and under a judicial blindness and confusion because of an evil spirit that did and doth still possess them It is the righteous judgement of the Spirit of God upon them who hath though your gifts and performances be many and solemn cast them as dung in your faces If you will retreat with them in humility and repentance to attend the purifying of your own souls and the purging away your own sins you will find mercy to your selves But if you think by them to exalt your selves again into dominion and power in the Nation you will but involve your selves in more misery and wrath and like a Bull in a net entangle your souls in greater errours and outward troubles The holy Spirit I know and have felt did bear you a long time as a heavy burden and at last eased himself of you as a clog and cumber to him And now I with joy feel that he is free to exercise his own power to effect and perfect what you have failed in It will be your only safety now to retire into deep silence and humility and leave the Church and Nation to him that is Lord of both who made both and I can assure you will perfectly reform both SECT XIV BEsides the two things mentioned of the Kingdom of God and of holiness there are some other things that you have sought in these late wars which are still in your minds As common liberty or the liberty of the people and liberty of conscience But it is most certainly true and by experience now manifested that these things are not in that spirit in which you have acted and still stand Nor is this way of strife and contention the way to obtain them but the contrary For as war and enmity is against the Kingdom of Christ which is a Kingdom of peace And as they harden pollute and vitiate the mind of man which is contrary to holiness So they do naturally exalt will and force rage and jealousie and so must necessarily eat up and devour all liberty and turn all into the worst kind of tyrannie if the Father of mercies and Spirits doth not enlarge mollifie and sweeten the nature of man which wrath and war doth imbitter and harden It is true common liberty is written in the common nature of man in some degree though it be very weak This liberty came forth in you in notion profession and affection beyond what it doth in other people and it hath been not only talked of but desired by you yet that spirit in which you rose and in which you seek it hath not any true liberty in it And if it hath not liberty in it it can neither attain it for you from others nor give it by you to others it never could do either Mind well what I write else you will not understand it For it is I know besides the common reason and apprehensions of men and therefore seems to be and is strange to the dark and private spirit of the world but you and all men must know that there is a divine reason in these things which ought to be and therefore shall be the rule of mans Reason Know then first That we began our wars upon this principle of delivering our selves from the yoak of the Law and Government of the Church and Kingdom being of another spirit and way from them And upon the same principle of self-safety and self-freedom was the war carried on and the whole business from step to step This seemed to us very just and righteous that we should have liberty to serve God according to what light and understanding he gave us And there is an undoubted right in it Yet we see to what infinite confusion and strange enmity and division this principle hath brought us And therefore there is some notable evil either in the principle or in the liberty or in both I think both will be found faulty I
shall only charge the principle that is our seeking self liberty or liberty for our selves Whatever good is in the thing it doth and will miscarry so long as it is upon this bottom self Such is the large and good nature of the God and Father of all that he will blast and wither every private and particular spirit It is contrary to him hath no root in him and therefore though he do sometimes feed it awhile and make use of it yet he will at last reject it and never suffer it to stand up with him in his Kingdom He may and doth admit it to work and act in some low remote and dark state But if he be true to his own Good nature or to the nature of his Son the Saviour of the world he must not admit it to raign with him nor will he Yea though it cloath it self with salvation either of our own of others souls which is a thing most agreeable to the mercy of God yet will he never save any in that spirit But resist and oppose that salvation and all the graces and gifts whereby men seek it till he kill that root of self For he hath given it as a Law to Christ and so by Christ to men he that will save his life shall lost it and he only that will lose his life shall save it It was the great lesson he taught his Son and the first that Christ teaches his Disciples Let him deny himself If Christ and his Disciples must deny so excellent and holy life and self that they may ascend unto the Father of all If that holy and blessed state must be abjured and renounced and so come to the curse What can you think of self-seeking of an out ward liberty and freedom from outward sufferings it is no wonder to see tins brought to shame and confusion God hath pursued this root of self-seeking even in spiritual things by many sore and severe tryals in my spirit By which I came to understand what an irreconcileable and desperate enemy it is to God and what deadly poyson there is in the nature of it and how dangerously it will corrupt the best things in men Where ever it is admitted it will and doth kill the life of Grace if God kill â—ot it And though at first it seem zealous and holy yet it will break out into gross self-seeking For he that prayes preaches believes studies and receives the promises of eternal life to himself or to a party which is but a large self will at last in all things mind himself and so will be cruel covetous ambitious and any thing that self suggests to him And this I find to be the root of all that narrowness that was in this Party and of that gross self-seeking that all men take notice of There is at the bottom of the whole business and at the root of all their Religion a spirit to seek their own salvation liberty exaltation and honour And being fixed and bound to this principle they could never enlarge themselves to the good of the whole nor were they ever capable of any larger principles nor can they be till this state be slain in them And though they shift from one thing to another they will find no rest till they subject this state to loss and thereby come to partake of the largeness of the love of God and Christ Who teaches us to seek not our own but the things of others not our own liberty or salvation but the liberty and salvation of others And therefore the Lord of all that he might discover judge and destroy this principle so contrary to his own love and life hath so ordered it That he that will not deny himself his life liberty and salvation for the good of others in conformity unto Christ and in obedience to his Gospel They will be found to be persecutors cruel destroyers of others lives and liberties and so be brought to shame and destruction They that will not suffer for and from others others must suffer from them And they that cannot give their life will take away others life It is and will be resolved into this that men must either live in the merciful and saving spirit of Christ or in the cruel spirit of the Devil And no shew or form of godliness nor pretence of right or religion can evade this judgement For strong is the Lord that thus judges It is therefore evident and God will make it good that there is not common salvation nor good will to man in any private spirit of any Party but in the Spirit of Christ the Saviour of the world And that this true publick spirit where ever it is it shews it self by this it will suffer for and from others and not make others suffer from it it will and doth give life and liberty and not take it away The first step into freedom is out of our selves and the beginning of all ingenuity is to be able to examine try and judge our selves If by experience and by what is here written you attain the least spark of true freedom and can but reflect upon your selves and remember the first rise of your work that it was to deliver your selves and that in the whole progress of it it was terminated and bounded in self either in a finer or a grosser way and could do nothing but prefer or exalt your selves and Party or them that would confirm and strengthen your selves by serving of you And that all the while you were busie in this work you could not but oppress others not only your enemies but the whole Nation And that none of you could ever produce any publick ease liberty or advantage to the people but on the contrary taxes and burdens If you have but so much ingenuity as to judge your selves state and spirit and justifie God and Christ we shall soon agree If you do so and come forth of that hole that pit of a narrow private Religion that self or party holiness and salvation which is really now a pit and snare whatever exaltation it hath had If you can now but look out of it and view things in the light of the universal goodness of God your reason will tell you That for you that are but a small part of the Nation it may be a tenth either for number or quality a tenth that is a more active vigilant more spirited part of the whole For you in times of trouble to get the sword into your hands and to overthrow the Government and Governors of the whole which the whole chuse and rest satisfied in and to seclude the nine parts of the representative of the whole and admit of none to rule but your own tithe To subdue the civil Government and exalt the sword To depose one natural chosen beloved and one in judgement and affection with the nine parts And to set up many in many various wayes and opinions all strange to the whole Nation if
unhappiness of them that are under a Law and necessity of so acting and them that are under a Law and necessity of so suffering If either my labour and pains or my knowledge and experience yea or my life if self may do any thing to cure this evil and quench this flame I should gladly expend them all And for you my friends to whom in love and mercy this is directed I know it will not only seem strange to you but be very grievous to bear to find so great a spiritual enemy in the midst of your spiritual gifts and enjoyments I know you little expected it and as little thought to find me the discoverer of it to you whom you have so much slighted But know this is the fruit of my long travels and dangerous encounters with this enemy With whom I have endured a long and tedious warfare with great expence of life and blood even in my soul and spirit and have received many desperate wounds in my inward man while you lived at case and in pleasure both outward and inward You now have that cheap which cost me dear For alas how much easier it is for you to receive this conviction from the hand of a weak broken man in love and compassion to you Then to receive it as I have done from an angry and jealous God How much easier is it for you to bear reproof from the experience of a friend then to conflict with this destroyer hand to hand and to graple with all his malice darkness and wrath in your own naked souls and spirits which God knows I have done again and again I know you have had strange thoughts of me I forgive you you might well think strangely of me when you beheld me encompassed with the darkness and smoak of this bottomless pit and sensibly lost and swallowed up by this enemy But I have by the mighty power and goodness of God escaped thorow many deaths and dangers and yet live to communicate to you the benefit of my conflicts sufferings and deliverance If you say you intend not war and destruction to them which you oppose but their repentance See that you be true to this I do believe many are wholly taken off from war by the great experience we have had of the beastly deceit the horrible cruelty and corruption that hath attended it And that the same honesty that led them out at first to engage in it leads them now to abhor it and to chuse rather to suffer then by war to seek a deliverance For the clearing and strengthening their spirits in that way of peace are these things writ And to inform and instruct others that are yet unconvinced We will then suppose that you intend not to get liberty of Conscience by violence and war which was our first branch but by a friendly agreement with the present Magistrates and Governours this is our second branch If we desire liberty first know That it must be from the Magistrate for all liberty Civil and Spiritual is in his power either to give or restrain Liberty is the fruit that grows only upon the tree of Government Law and Authority or is enjoyed only under the protection of them Take away Authority and Magistracy and all kind of liberty ceases we are presently exposed to the lusts of wilde and brutish men Therefore they that are truly conscientious are most faithful to Magistracy 1. Because they are bound to obey not only for wrath as others but for conscience sake in obedience to God who hath instituted Magistracy and ordained that power And they know and feel the Providence and goodness of God in the Magistrate as well as the weight of his Scepter 2. Because they may receive more benefit from him then others liberty not only for their outward man but for their spiritual man also which others need not 3. Because they being conscientious are more tender then others and so more subject to injury then those that are not bound by conscience The loose and prophane need the Magistrate to restrain and subdue their wills the conscientious is his own Law as to restraint and needs the Magistrate only for his protection So that indeed the sword of Authority if rightly understood the edge of it is against the loose and lawless life and the peace and favour of it is to the good and the godly The enemy of man and author of confusion hath brought forth much mischief amongst us both to the Magistrate and to the conscientious in dividing one from the other and setting of them against each other which have but one root For the Magistrate is the Minister of God for good Rom. 13.4 And conscience binds a man to subject to all the words and works of God and to all things that are administred from him or by him Upon a little sober consideration this mist of errour and mistake will be scattered But if the Magistrate give us this liberty of Conscience then in reason and conscience we are bound to defend the Magistrate that defends us in this liberty And if we desire liberty of him it is but equal and reasonable that we should profess that it is our judgements and consciences so to do For we cannot expect he should give liberty to a conscience that would destroy him and his Government Wherefore when men have professed conscience in destroying and changing of Governments there should be a Declaration and Profession against it answerable to the evil done by it or sufficient to wipe off that scandal Secondly If we desire liberty of Conscience from the Magistrate it must be either in a way of Reason or Religion or both if we seek it from him in a way of reason we must admit him a man a reasonable creature else it is in vain to seek reason of him If the Magistrate be man he hath the image of God as man and as Magistrate which is to be beloved honoured and defended by us not opposed hated and destroyed If there be man and reason it is possible and likely we may agree with and unite to man because we also are men of the same flesh and blood with him and he with us If we do not agree with our own nature though under many defects there is something unnatural in us which we may call Spiritual but if it be Spiritual it is not divine nor Christian for God loves man is reconciled to man Christ is a man and loves his Brethren If we confess them to be men then we are to deal humanely with them and to exercise reason to them openly clearly fairly If we think they err we are in reason to go to them and to inform them if we can or to receive information from them If we need anything of them we should reasonably propound our request to them If both parties be men and will exercise reason to each other there will be an understanding and agreement for there is but one reason in all
and set them at a greater distance one from another I do think he may have another view of them The matters contained in the book are very weighty concerning the great change and turn in the Nation by which the lives and liberties of thousands are in danger The things written and manner of writing them are not vulgar most people say they do not understand them They that have read it often say it hath in every new reading a new face When I review it my self I find more in it then I apprehended when I writ it I profess when I consider it I cannot think of mens slighting of it without an indignation I must deal freely with you when I hear of your unworthy and irrational scorn of it my soul doth upbraid and wonder at that shallowness and froward headiness that makes you so uncapable of the justice reason and mercy that is in it I do know and am able to write it upon mature deliberation and consultation That there is in it that love and righteousness that must and shall be considered and understood And that very fury that makes you impatient of the reason and rebuke of it will run you upon a foolish and desperate opposing the present Providence and Power and so bring you into misery And then you will repent of your too late considering as I have of my too late writing I could return scorn for scorn and auger for anger it is in me to do it you know you are liable to it and may know I am able to do it But such is my love to you that I cannot but earnestly desire you to mind and study the things I dare promise you you shall not lose your labour if that which is there written do not answer your time and pains do but complain of it to me and you shall have satisfaction It is but just you should and I have such opinion of my honesty and ability as to assure you if it doth not perform to you I will Another fault is found in the Book that it is too sharp and cutting in the reproofs of it It is a sensible complaint in some I have the more reason to Animadvert upon it because it is so If they be afflicted at it there is great reason it should afflict me also Of all repentings I find the easiest and sweetest is to repent of anger God hath made it easie and honourable by his own example who hath often repented of his just rebukes upon his people It is easie in it self for anger is no pleasant thing If it were not necessary no man could chuse it Indeed it is so mean a thing that few men enter into it in judgement Most men are thrust upon it without understanding I think I may say all It is so unruly and troublesom a guest that none but fools will entertain it Solomon sayes Eccles 7.9 Anger rests in the bosom of fools If it be just and good it is mean and poor but if it be malicious wicked and false then it is devilish Be it what it will I alwayes find it as yet an offence to my weak nature it alwayes wounds and stings me therefore I am inclined to be jealous of it and of my self for it If there be a sowr and severe spirit in it it may possibly arise from the first ill root deferring or delaying to give it forth in its season when t was tender the keeping it so long within made it more fierce But if the nails be too long we may pare them I will be better then scratching and clawing Angry and vehement reproofs do abound in this Age You reprove and condemn your adversaries to utter destruction and they condemn you I have rebuked you and you rebuke me as a man irrecoverably lost The Nation is so full of judgement that men can administer little else wrath is so strong that most men are quite drunk with it love and peace is so weak that they that incline to it find great difficulty in exercising any of it It may be for the good of all to understand the nature and kinds of rebuke There are four sorts of it subject to my observation The first and worst is devilish A malicious searching into and aggravating the sins of them we hate and accusing of them to make them odious that we may appear just or a finding but iniquity in them that are opposite to us that we may destroy them There is a great deal of this it is meet you and I should consider how far we have been in this spirit it is a very gross and common evil yet no discerned because them that we prosecute with such enmity we first paint them in our fancies as devils enemies to God and then think we do well to destroy them believing they are appointed to it But I hope this darkness will not last long For no parties now stand in opposition one to another at so great a distance as the children of God and the children of the Devil Because if any were indeed the children of God they would be like their Father Mat. 5.44 45. Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven c. How contrary is mens ordinary practice to this We say we are the children of God and therefore ought to destroy our and Gods enemies to do good to sinners and to them that hate us is Divine to hate accuse and destroy is certainly Diabolical The second kind of rebuke is Legal or Angelical To reprove and punish men as Gods children and creatures in a holy zeal for God and righteousness with intention to humble subject and reform and that from a holy and pure Law and from a just and godly nature and life This is no Christian or divine dispensation but a legal one yet who is there of you that can justifie himself by this Law Consider it seriously Do you reprove and punish men as men as brethren as Gods creatures and children though enemies Do you do it with intent to humble and reform or to ruine and destroy Do you do it from a holy pure Law or from your own conceptions of the Law which are broken uncertain and changeable Do you do it from a just and godly nature and life or is there not also envy covetousness self-seeking partiality and unrighteousness you may ponder these things in your hearts and measure your selves by this rule The third kind of rebuke or reproof is Evangelical that which was administred by Christ when he was in the flesh he was a Minister of the circumcision and did oncumcise in his Ministery he Ministerd sharply cuttingly but when he had done that he was lead by his Father to lay down his life for them that he had so reproved and after he had discovered sin in a holy
it hath its own destruction in it yea not only it s own but of other evils also T is certainly true to the godly Dan. 11.35 And some of them of understanding shall fall to try them and to purge and to make them white And therefore I shall learn and get experience by this weakness I now see plainly the Scripture may be and is a vail in some it is made use of to cover filthiness others make use of it out of fear to hide the truth of their hearts It serves sometimes to reveal and sometimes to conceal the mind But withal I see there is no hiding place for me I am necessitated to forsake my coverts and come forth naked Many have hid their poyson of error and enmity under Scriptures by them conveyed their deceit lyes neatly wrapped up in similitudes allusions and that to destroy I would convey peace and truth by it and it will not be endâ—â—ed I am beaten from these bushes and necessitated to all kind of openess and plainness I was unwilling to come to it I confess but I see I must say aside the Velvet scabbard and draw the naked sword or else must be content with such shamefull usage as no man can bear As sin so shame hath its own cure because its curse with it He that obscures himself for shame or from it and for fear of it is driven into a hole must suffer double And there is reason for it because first he is weak and then a coward and so deserts himself his name his mind his cause and betrayes his life and righteousness if he have any in him If a man be upright he need not go into a corner if he do he cannot stand upright in that hole and corner holes are for Bats and Moles for dark creatures the light is for truth and the open heavens for uprightness I hope I shall find room and place abroad I cannot hodestly abide any longer at home sure the open heavens and earth are made for me as well as others why should not I enjoy them As I see a necessity and my duty to cast off all coverings so I now experimentally find how little you have of the Spirit of God or of true reason and that both these are exceeding low in the minds of men at this time If not quite slain yet very feeble weak and ready to die imprisoned also and shut up under false imaginations and fancies of things And therefore if we think to instruct men it must be not only by truth but with that evidence and demonstration that may heal and recover mens spirits arid understandings I profess this that the same eternal Spirit that wrought those things in Adam and Noah and writ them by Moses keeps that image in himself and by it contains and upholds the Scripture the outward image of his eternal mind and the same spirit working according to himself produces the same works now from the same foundation and from the same light gives forth a discovery of them yet because the works were wrought long since and in a remote part of the earth from England as in Paradise in another world and at Mount Ararat therefore they are to us strange and forraign things or at best but allusions Whereas to a spiritual man all times and places are present and all things in heaven and earth and under the earth are gathered into one even into Christ In whose spiritual person we at once see and measure all things and ages because they are all in him and made by him I am sensible that there is as much shortness of reason in men as want of the Spirit For we are the natural children of Adam and Noah and do as truly derive our natures from them as we do from our Fathers or Grandfathers yea we derive our selves more from them because they are heads roots and common or publick Fathers or Stocks of mankind our immediate parents are but means branches or conveyances of life from those roots to us And we are more certainly and infallibly the children of Adam and Noah then of our later Ancestors And do receive greater benefit from them Moral Natural and Personal blessings from Adam these renewed by Noah and conveyed to us by him with the addition of civil and politick blessings And these given by Covenant for ever establisbed with him and his seed for perpetual generations Gen. 9.11 Me thinks it shews great shortness if not sensuality and slavery in mens minds that will enquire after every foot of Land that was their Fathers and Grandfathers and boast of their descent if they have it from a Lordship in England or a Mountain in Wales and not enquire after their natural or moral properties civil and religious priviledges which they do derive and may challenge by descent from these Ancestors yea not only not enquire and search for this royal and noble pedigree but reject it when produced as if they were beasts not men and rose out of the earth and Sea as the beast in the Revelations and as if we were sons of the earth that came into the world in some by-way and were of another case then that which God made in Adam or saved and Covenanted with in Noah For truly if the same life be in us that God made in Adam and saved blessed and covenanted with in Noah it will as naturally lead us to its outward and visible head by a line of reason as our spititual life leads us to Christ by a line of faith For all ages times and states of things wrought in our nature are the proper objects of our understandings and reason and we if we were not captivated to foolish and brutish darkness and silly conceits might as freely converse with them as with present sensible things yea we cannot discern any present thing if we know not the reason and principles of it and they are only to be seen in the first founding and forming of them men are therefore drunk in fancies and are not yet come to the exercise of reason which fathoms and measures all the things of man from the beginning to the end indeed he is not truly a man that comprehends not in some measure his own nature in all ages For the whole history of the world and all the parts acted in it are but the things of a man and so pieces of our selves if we are men Every thing is beautiful in his time also he hath set the world in their heart Eccles 3.11 But saith he I know that whatsoever God doth it shall be for ever ver 14. There is under these things which you call Allegories real substantial Truth if you will not crack the shell to have the kernel accept of my help I will give forth that which is there writren concerning your selves at least in a few plain affirmations I have and do affirm concerning that party that acted against the life and power of the King and are
now faln 1. They had many of them a work upon their spirits and many gifts wherewith they were anointed 2. These works and gifts were but flesh but earthly but man after the image of the first Adam which is of the earth earthly and not the second Adam the Lord from Heaven Not the Lord nor from Heaven 3. As they were earthly and fleshly so they were private and personal servile and ministerial not the Lord no largeness to comprehend the whole nor authority to subject the whole nor wisdom to rule the whole either the whole Nation or their whole party 4. That they had Commission only to destroy subdue and punish the Church and Kingdom standing in darkness and corruption There never was in that party or people any union strength glory or success in any thing but in fighting and killing And therefore could never attain any Civil or Religious body either to be a Church or Kingdom but an Army to fight And for this work they were anointed and sanctified So was Cyrus and his Medes Isa 13.3 and 45.1 which is not only a Legal Ministry but a heathenish and bloody one 5. That when they had subdued and broken down they had nothing to build no new Law or Religion either from heaven or earth either for themselves only or for the whole Nation No man or sort of men did ever so much as pretend that they were Legislators nor did ever tender to the Nation a Law either from heaven or earth but after they had cursed and rejected the old state they dressed up the carkase of King Lords and Commons in a Protector another House and a Parliament and had more stability in it then in any of their inventions beside They never could produce any thing like unto the wisdom and reason of a Law but every bird would chatter its own note such broken stuff and absurd confusion never was 6. They never had a publick or healing spirit talk they did of the common good of all men But their spirit was not only narrow but stood in opposition to the spirit of the Nation They were alwayes bound up most firmly and strongly to a private and so to a selfish spirit and could never be perswaded to accept of any thing that was large Those miserable principles of Interest Self-preservation and Necessity began carried on and ended the War and Party 7. Their gifts and work being fleshly and earthly and having only figures and prophesies of the heavenly Kingdom of God â—nd not the nature and substance of that Kingdom with them they could not administer it but those prophesies and figures must cease and die before the truth of the Kingdom can come forth 8. Their gifts being only private and personal and their work only to subdue and â—ull down when they aspired beyond their â—bility and commission to reign and to make â—ew Common-wealths and new Churches â—hey corrupted into pride enmity opâ—ression covetousness self-seeking greedily â—evouring the wealth riches pleasures hoâ—ours and places which they had cursed and condemned and therein were more foul â—hen those that they cast out 9. And from corruption they fell into divisions jealousies persecuting others and â—ne another and so into destractions and confusions 10. And by that into their present reâ—ection from all power authority riches â—nd estates into contempt imprisonment poverty plunged into a deep Baptism of afflictions and disappointment 11. Into which if they can retire with meekness humility and repentance they will find rest safety and purifying A condition more sweet and clean and as to God and their souls more comfortable and profitable then their former greatness though it be to the flesh grievous 12. There the Book would leave them in quietness and cover them from the wrath of their enemies justifying them in the exercise of their private and personal gifts as honest men And promising them a resurrection in a more large pure spiritual and durable state Ministries and Dispensations of a far more excellent glory then this have perished and why there should be such unwillingness to bury this I know not It died to me and in me long since and hath been ever since corrupting rotting reeling and staggering till it fell in pieces It hath had its time done its work fulfilled its Ministry emptied and poured out all the wrath it had upon others and when it had executed others it was a torment and vexation to it self wanting other matter to work upon The Party it self was weary of it complained of the vanity corruption and filthyness of it were ashamed of it annoyed by it it stunk so in the nostrils of every ingenuous and enlightened spirit none pleased at it but for what they got and kept by it none easie under it but sick of it and it self sick and hated at last executed it self to fulfill that word He that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword even by that sword they took up and by that force they fomed That Power that Army they raised against the King turns to the King and against them that raised it It was long dying and every Party watched to have had it themselves and were pulling and catching at it some had it one while and some another whilest quarreling amongst your selves it is faln into your Adversaries hands and that I suppose is the great trouble You would be content it should die and you would execute it but thought also it belonged to the Executor to have its riches honours power and success But it seems there was an elder Brother an heir alive that you did not dream of Though this work of yours with its power fall very contrary to your hopes designs purchases and carnal confidences yet not contrary to many hints of prophesies in their own spirits nor contrary to common justice and reason For first it hath been often said to you and in you Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit That an Army is a harsh cruel worldly brutish self-seeking power and that while it stood it was a burden to all but them that received pay in it or by it And secondly if it doth fall as you thought and desired what must necessarily follow The antient Government of the Nation was suppressed by force if it had been by Light and Reason that Light that removed one would have shewed us a better but that we could never see The old one being suppressed and only suppressed for all you could do could not root it out and no other prepared if that force that suppresseth it be weary sick forsaken and spent whether should it go but to its center to the standing foundation If the force ceales that suppressed what can be expected but that the old suppressed Government should rise When therefore either the purity or truth of your spirits or the power of your reason shall prevail over your passions and losses you will rest satisfied That you still arc chafing and rubbing this dead