of whom all them that were saved came by their salvation yet their state was not in a strict sense Christian nor the Law and Administration under which they lived and to which they subjected Christianity which I shall confirm by some essential exceptions Christianity necessarily includes the faith and belief of Christ already come a Christ crucified that died rose again from the dead is ascended c. Without Controversie great is the Mystery of Godliness God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit believed on in the World received up into Glory 1 Tim. 3. 16. This was Christian Godliness But we preach Christ crucified to the Jewes a stambling block this Christ as come and crucified was the main basis of the Gospel and Christianity Christianity necessarily includes the belief of that particular and numerical man Christ Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary and was of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh to be the Christ of God that was promised to come in due time I said therefore unto you that you shall die in your sins for if ye believe not that I am he ye shall die in your sins John 8. 24. Therefore let all the House of Israel know assuredly that God hath made the same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ Acts 3. 6. These were new Articles of their Creed without the belief of which they were such as had nothing to do with Christ as their Mediator Again the whole frame of the Administration was â—…red from Moses to Christ even the man Christ Jesus as well as God hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son Heb. 1. 1 And Moses verily was faithful in all his House as a servant for a Testimony of those things which were to be spoken after but Christ as a Son over his own House Heb. 3. 5. We have now nothing to do with Moses Law as such and also the manner of Administration which is not in a multitude of carnal observances types and resemblances but in that way which is more real and more purely spiritual But the houre cometh and now is when the true Worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth John 4. 23. They were to worship him in the spirit before for where the heart was not in the ceremonial and typical worship they were not accepted and God never indulged hypocrisie the meaning must therefore be That spirit must be taken in opposition to those carnal Ordinances and the material Temple and Truth in opposition to those Types which were not a Lie but were only the shadows of good things to come I might enlarge to the Officers Offices and restrained Extent of the Mosaical Administration and shew that in all it is Alien to the Administration of Christ come and that wherein Christianity consists For if that Ministration which is done away was glorious much more that which remaineth is glorious 2 Cor. 3. 11. Now to resume the intent of what I have said observe that neither the natural light and practices of Heathen nor the revealed light law and practices Judaical were Christian as such though the latter a great part of them had a respect to Christ and the medicinal and remedying part of Religion And the Jewes who were immediately before the Church of God yet when the Administration was they changed they were cut off from the Church though they retained their Morals and those Ceremonial Respects to an expected Messiah if they did not admit into their Creed or faith the Articles aforesaid viz. a Christ come That Jesus who was crucified was the Christ and that he was the Supreme Head and Administrator to the Church of God and those who did so were transmitted into the Christian Church the other being dissolved SECT II. Having expressed with what brevity I could what Christianity as such is I shall in a few lines give an Account what I intend by the term Quakerism I do not mean thereby that all that are called and reputed Quakers are no Christians for my Charity is large enough to believe That many of them would abhorr the principles of their Leaders did they but well understand them for whose sakes in part I have undertaken this Discovery Quakerism is a Heap of Tenets with the usurped Names of true Christian Principles which are yet really no such things but subverting both Foundation and Fabrick of Christianity and I call him a Quaker that professes the light within every man to be the only Lord and Saviour and very God So that when I say Quakerism is no Christianity I do not say that common Civility Justice among men or whatever of their principles or practices which are morally good for these are generally owned as the principles of those Christians whom they separate from and bitterly reproach as Antichristian and it cannot be for want of Instructions or Examples in such kind of goodness that they withdraw from the serious Professors that are as far from their opinions as the East is from the West CHAP. II. The Beginning of Quakerism different from and opposite to Christianity SECT I. THE first Argument which I shall begin my attempt with shall be from the beginning of Quakerism which I shall take notice of under two Considerations First the manner of the beginning of Quakerism Secondly the time of its beginning Both of which I shall prove exceedingly to oppose or differ froâ— the beginning of Christianity The Christian Religion or Christianity was first introduced by the preaching of the promised Messias to be come into the world whose humane Person was pointed at by John the Baptist and visible to the bodily eyes of a multitude of beholders The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the World This is he of whom I said after me cometh a man which is preferred before me for he was before me But Quakerism was introduced by preaching a Christ within every man born within every man which was never seen with the bodily eyes of any man and this Testimony of John concerning the true Christ perverted for the maintaining of their feigned Christ And as you give up to that measure of light in your own Consciences and wait to be guided by it and exercised in it you will know Christ revealed within you whom you are looking for without you and put his day far off from you and so you live in want of him and know not how to come to him nor the place where to find him but live in the dreamings and night-visions and have a talk of him and what he hath done for you and so spend your precious time in slumbring and dreaming c. This Quakers Text will bear a large Comment but I will take notice of that only which is to the present purpose here is preached a Christ within in opposition to and
by the Quakers at the cheap rate of accepting though poyson taken into the Body and delusions into the Soul are ever dear and costly But to the unwillingly mistaken among the people called Quakers and such whose inclinations are towards their Principles and Practices known by the name of Quakerism I do solemnly profess That I have the witness of God and my own Conscience that I heartily desire the welfare and Salvation of all sorts of men whatever notions they fall under and however disobliging in their carriages towards me in particular And although I hope I shall not justifie the Opinions called Quakerism till I dye yet I am perswaded there are many called Quakers whom the Lord will turn from their way which is not Christs and sanctifie them by his Spirit and justifie them through his Grace by Jesus Christ even that Christ who as God is every where and as Man is ascended above the visible Heavens and Skies If sincere protestations of my righteousness and sincerity in this matter and the verity of what I have written would prevail with you my Spirit is clear and I doubt not but my Pen might be as serviceable to it as some of those whose interest is too great in you Yea I know not that suffering I might embrace without sinning against God but for Christ sake and yours I should not long to be baptized with I beg of you in the bowels of a Christian that you would not slight the Truth and Scripture-evidence here presented to your view The Quakers have no Miracles to bind you to their perswasion and sure the Truths contained in the Scripture and right reason may match all other visible demonstrations You venture hard to Father all your Opinions on the immediate inspirations and your affections and practices on the motions of that Spirit who is God which if it prove to be otherwise which will be as certainly as God is Truth your early repentance may be accepted but your late repentance will make little for your comfort I would not then be in your condition for more Worlds than there are Stars in the Firmament I beseech you do not think that God hath given you the reason of men to be serviceable to you only in the affairs of this world and not to be exercised at all in discerning truth from error good from evil of a Spiritual and Religious nature The new creature is the creature renewed that is Body Soul and Spirit so enlightned as to know God in Christ so sanctified as to be devoted to him in whatever service he shall command and to make a Heaven of nothing on this side the full Vision and enjoyment of his favour and glorious presence in the other world or the world to come and what will necessarily result from thence If you think me too smart in some passages in the Book be pleased to consider if against Persons it is against those your misleaders who are to be blamed at a sharper rate than good Eli chid his Sons and was therefore rebuked by God to the breaking his heart his neck and the loss of a great priviledge besides if against sayings or opinions I have fully proved them gross falshoods foolish and pernicious lusts and errors and I know not how to call gall and poyson by sweet and lovely names I must alter my stile according to the matter and occasion or they would agree like Harp and Harrow and I assure you it is neither my conscience duty nor design to commend their Opinions to the world Do not say I intend hereby your persecution for it is far from my principle and natural temper also and I know nothing that men who are your Adversaries can do more to promote your Tenets and Party though suffering without further evidences of truth as the cause is a poor foundation of Religion Your Souls Servant JOHN FALDO November 23. 1672. THE CONTENTS PART I. Chap. I. QVakerism affirmed to be no Christianity The tearms Quakerism Christianity Quaker Christian explained What Christianity is strictly considered and distinguished from Heathenism Judaism or any other character of Religion Chap. II. The beginning of Quakerism compared with the beginning of Christianity with respect to the manner and with respect to the time of its beginning from both Quakerism proved to be no Christianity or not the Christian administration Chap. III. Proving the Quakers denying the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the word of God that the intent is more than a meer verbal matter that this is the gate and inlet of their other errors the grounds of their denying it to be the word of God all of which are examined and refuted the definition of a word and the Scriptures proved to be the word of God of that species contended about more properly than Christ the Son of God is the word of God the Scripture proved to be the word of God by its own undeniable evidence where it cannot be understood of any other than the written word denying the Scripture to be the word of God proved a denying of the Scripture the titles the Quakers give to the Scriptures examined and proved though taken altogether to come short of a fit and distinct character of the Scriptures the ends and necessity of the Quakers denying the Scripture this title for the support of their other fancies The sense we take the Scripture to be the word of God in the written word proved to be the word of God Chap. IV. The Quakers equal their own writings and sayings with the word of God and prefer them before the word of God So to do proved a denying the Scripture that they do so proved by their pretending them infallible that they speak and write by immediate inspiration that the Spirit of God dwells in them essentially and in all his divine properties and Christ speaks out of them as through a Trunk Proved by the characters they give of their own writings and sayings beyond and excelling the characters afforded by them to the holy Scriptures Infallibility explained the Quakers infallibility confuted by divers mediums their immediate inspiration considered and confuted the woful and absurd consequences of this error the Papists foundations of their orders and grossest absurdities and the foundation of the Quakers Religion proved to be the same thing and instances given on both sides viz. contempt of the Scripture as insufficient infallibility and immediate revelations and divine inspirations the Quakers proved to have the blackest marks of Antichrist upon them Chap. V. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be a rule of faith and life or a Judge and determiner in religious controversies This charge proved to be a denying the Scriptures That charge it self proved Herein they agree with the Jesuites That whatever is by the Lord affirmed in the Scripture ought to be believed That what is there in commanded and not repealed ought to be obeyed That the holy Scriptures do in their kind determine
controversies of a Religious concern That the Teachings motions and determinations of the Spirit of God by the Scripture are more suitable to the nature and present condition of man and more certain to his knowledge than any immediate teachings which any enjoy in our days The consequence of this error Chap. VI. The Quakers take men off from reading the Scriptures and looking into them for instruction and comfort The charge proved 1. directly 2. by their affirming the light within every man alsufficient as a Teacher 3. by their affirming the Scripture to be within 4. by their affirming the Scriptures to have no light in them each of these confuted and explained in their order Chap. VII The Quakers affirm the doctrines commands promises holy examples expressed in the Scriptures as such not to be at all binding to us That this is a denying of the Scripture proved That they are guilty of the charge proved and their error confuted That we are to follow the good examples there expressed proved and the manner how that we may not sin on that hand The ill consequences of the error charged on the Quakers Chap. VIII That the Quakers deny the Scriptures to be any means by which we may come to know God Christ or our selves proved and confuted in their order The wicked absurd consequences of this error Chap. IX The Quakers affirm the Scriptures to be no means whereby to resist temptation and that they are dangerous to be read The charge proved and that it is a denying of the Scriptures William Pen rebuked for asserting this falshood Chap. X. The Quakers deny the Scriptures to be read to any profit farther than they are beforehand experienced by those that read them Chap. XI They render the Spirit of God and the letter of the Scriptures in direct opposition each to other Chap. XII The Quakers hold it to be a sin and the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and examples expressed by the Letter of the Scriptures except we have them by immediate revelation or inspiration and at first hand as the Apostles received them PART II. Chap. XIII The Quakers deny and subvert all the Ordinances of the Gospel An apologie for and account of Gospel Ordinances as such The Quakers proved to deny Gospel Ordinances in general That they deny and subvert the Gospel Ministry proved the grounds of their denying the Ministry because mediate preaching out of the Scriptures taking maintenance studying for their Sermons that none can speak the truth truly but from immediate revelation All these grounds overthrown in their order They deny a Gospel Church what Church they own and what Ministry what a Gospel Church is and to what ends Chap. XIV The Quakers deny the Ordinance of hearing the Word preached They disown Gospel Prayer In their Families and at Meals altogether Pray in publick not ministerially Deny premeditated Prayer Owne no Prayer but what is by immediate inspiration and motion They pray not in the name of Christ or any Mediator All these proved and refuted in their places The Quakers deny reading and meditating in the Scriptures An apologie for positive or sacramental Ordinances The Quakers deny all Water-Baptism What Baptism they owne The grounds on which they deny Baptism considered and refuted They deny the Lords Supper to be now an Ordinance The grounds of their denial An account of their ridiculous fancies which they call the Lords Supper Chap. XV. The Quakers deny the transactions of Christ when manifested in the flesh 1600 years since and what he doth now at the right hand of God in Heaven to have any influence into our justification and salvation The influence of Christs active and passive obedience considered and objections answered What the righteousness is that the Quakers are as they say justified by and ascribe salvation to Chap. XVI The Quakers disown and deny the Christ of God and set up a false Christ in his room and stead and attribute all that to their false Christ which is due to the true Christ These abundantly proved What Christ they owne as God and as man Those Texts of Scripture on which they chiefly build their great delusion opened largely and discharged the Quakers service Ch. XVII The Quakers are gross Idolaters Quakerism gross Idolatry Abundantly proved by their owning false Gods viz. The Light in every man the Souls of men and the Spirits of men These Charges abundantly proved and that these are no Gods proved plainly The Quakers proved to worship and that according to their own professed principles false Gods Chap. XVIII The Quakers deny the resurrection of the dead Their Evasions discovered Their Objections answered The consequences of their errour Chap. XIX The Quakers do not profess a future reward after the dissolution of the frame of soul and body but are as to that either deeply silent or imply their contempt of such a belief PART III. An Examination of William Pen's Spirit of truth c. wherein his Arguments for the Spirit of God's being in his people essentially and so teaching them immediately as is exclusive of all other teachings their infallibility as the result of such a Proposition and teachings considered and confuted and the unparallel'd vanity and folly of William Pen discovered The Doctrine of immediate inspirations considered more especially and largely the Characters given of Apostolical persons distinguishing them from all others since Christs administration Characters distinguishing the inspiration of the Apostles which gave authority divine to the Scripture from the highest illuminations of the Saints as such in our days A Key to the Quakers new coin'd Phrases and also to their meanings of such Scripture and religious phrases as are commonly used by the Orthodox The Conclusion wherein is shewed that the Quakers contemn all rational demonstration and make their experience and inward sensation the only demonstration to themselves of the principles they hold Scriptures opened in the First Part. Book Ch. Ver. Pag. Words Deut. 5 32 17 The word is nigh thee c. Job 26 13 14 74 By his Spirit he hath c. John 4 23 64 Worship the Father in c. John 14 6 97 I am the way c. Acts. 24 16 71 Conscience void of offence c. 1 Cor. 3 6 122 The Spirit of God dwelleth c 2 Thes 2 4 64 Sitteth in the Temple of c. 2 Tim. 3 15 103 And that from a Child c. 1 John 2 22 64 Antichrist that denyeth c. 1 John 2 27 62 But the anointing c. In the Second Part. Job 23 4 29 I would order my cause c. Psal 85 9 10 11. 58 Mercy and truth are not c. Jer. 5 2 14 Liveth surely they swear c. Mat. 6 11 24 Give us this day our daily c. JOHN 1 9 84 THAT WAS THE TRVE LIGHT c. Rom. 10 8 94 The word is nigh the c. Rom. 5 14 21 Nevertheless Death reigned c
things or worse with the conceits of any who shall be so presumptuous as to pretend to Inspirations and Revelations and of this sort there are a crowd among the Men and Women also of the Quakers If they declare if they write yea whatever religious Action they move in they pretend all to be from the immediate Guidance and Impulse of the Spirit of God and that in as ample a manner as ever the Apostles and Prophets could pretend unto so that this principle being as universally entertained as the name of Christ it might be said without an Hyperbole that the whole World could not contain the Pamphlets that would be written and called The VVord or VVords of the Lord and of what value the Holy Scriptures would be in such a crowd of its pretended betters it is not hard to conclude Hear what James Naylor saith The things following which I have declared of are not the things of man nor by man did I receive them but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ The VVord of the Lord to his beloved City c. This is the title He concludes Through your Brother and Companion in the Tribulation and Kingdom of Patience in the Lord Jesus imitating the words of John in Rev. 1. 9. This I say in the Presence of the living God and by the Spirit of the living God Parnel Shield of the Truth p. 41. Give a most undeniable Exposition of a Scripture against their way the Answer is thy carnal minde discerns not the things of God Thou puttest thy meanings to the Scriptures the Scriptures must be judged of by the light or the Spirit from whence they came but thou art in neither If we bring a plain text in so many words against their Tenets and Practices the Answer then is Thou art in the Letter And therefore Pennington prays seriously My upright desire to the Lord for you is That he would strip you of your knowledge of the Scriptures according to the flesh By Flesh their sense is the use of our understandings though sanctified as will appear in the KEY at the end of this Book to which I must referre you for construing all such ambiguous and hard words Sixthly Doting on the Scriptures with your dark minds SECT II. That the Quakers do thus equal their Writings and Sayings c. with the Scripture shall appear by four undeniable things First they pretend to Infallibility This they assert to be necessary in all their Ministers who ordinarily declare or write and that without it it were impossible to be fitted for that work Hear what the chiefest of their Apostles saith How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible and how can they but delude people who are not infallible and George Whitehead in a Letter to me writes thus Quest Whether Infallibility be attainable by any in these days which we affirm is to true believers which if thou deniest we question thy Call to the Ministry They pretend to speak and write by the immediate Inspiration of God and this is another part whereby they aspire to equality The Apostle Paul gives this Character of the Scripture 2 Tim. 3 16. All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God c. And the Apostle Peter 2 Pet. 1â—21 For the Prophecy came not in old time by the VVill of Man but holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost Let us now compare Notes and see how far in these respects the Quakers will give the Scriptures the upper hand of their sayings or Writings And how should he do otherwise seeing he hath denied the infallible spirit from which all the Ministers ministred and all the Prophets prophecied and spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost He was here pleading for their Mens and Womens prophesying and concludes that to deny the Infaliible spirit to be and speak in the Quakers was to deny the infallible spirit by which all the Prophets prophecicd c. Therefore may I say much more it is not in the Power of that little Book either to throw down self-will in any in whom it is not yet subdâ—ed or to exalt the truth in general because its only Queries gathered by the Author from the Letter â—f the Scriptures without and no Message of heavenly Prophecie Doctrine or Exhortation received by the Author from the Lord through the divine Inspiration of his light and spirit within therefore I say it is a very vain and idolatrous Exhortation The Writings of the Quakers are full to this purpose but my business in these instances being to prove matter of Fact only this may suffice Thirdly they pretend the Spirit of God to be in them in an essential consideration and in all his divine Prophecies and that it is Gods indwelling in them thus considered from which their sayings and writings proceed In this they arrogate to themselves and their expressions more then any of the Prophets and Apostles durst once imagine all they believe and declare they say is from the light within yea it is the light within that reveals it and not they and therefore they will not call them their sayings ordinarily but such as pass through them as if God spake through them as one may speak through a Trunk which is only a passage for the voice but no proper Organ of speech Through your Brother and Companion e. W. D. Conclusion The Voice of the Son of God was uttered forth through him by which the dead was raised And indeed this light within they pretend to be both Father Son and Spirit for they make no distinction but this being matter of fact I shall prove it out of their writings but you must not suppose that I shall find any such words as essential or properties in their Authors for such words are too proper for them and expressive of the truth to such who understand them but I shall finde the things as very God cloathed with those Attributes which are peculiar to him and whoever reads what immediately follows and considers the Evidences to be but the Quakers own Confessions and shall not be touched with horror and indignation against their principles let that man or woman know that a Conscience seared with a hot iron is too soft for their insensibleness Every man hath that which is one in union and like the Spirit of Christ even as good as the Spirit of Christ according to its measure Child I am sensible that there is something in my Conscience that lets me see my secret Thoughts and the Intents of my heart c. Father That is the true light of Christ within that lets thee see the thoughts and the intents of the heart and God hath freely given it unto thee and requires thy obedience to it Ch. But if I should turn unto it and obey it when it reproves me for sin is there Power in it
Charge of Fanaticism among us You may finde the Doctor as good as his word in the following Pages St. Francis is said by Bonaventâ—re a canonizâ—d Saint to be an illiterate man had no Teacher but Christ and learned all by Inspiration for a long time wherein he got his credit among the Papists once casting away his very breeches and being stark naked before them all he said thus to his father Hitherto I called thee Father on Earth but hence forward I can securely say Our Father which is in Heaven I know not but the Quakers learned their going naked and denying to call any father which was their practice at first but the light grows wiser and wiser from St. Francis rather then the Prophet Isa Let us cite a little of the doctrine and phrases some of which are pretended from Inspiration by the Popish Votaries and first of Mother Juliana That the soul is so deep-grounded in God and so endlessely treasured that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God which is the Maker to whom it is oned Our kindly substance is beeloâ—ed in Jesu with the blessed soul of Christ resting in the Godhead for into the time that it the soul is in the full â—ights we may not be all holy The only proper disposition towards the receiving supernatural Irradiations from Gods Holy Spirit is an Abstraction of life a sequestration from all businesse that concerns others and an attendance on God alone in the depth of the Spirit And a little after the lights here prayed for and desired are such as do expel all images of Creatures and do calm all manner of passions to the end that the soul being in a vacuity may be more capable of receiving and entertaining God in the pure fund of the spirit but they seek rather to purifie themselves and inflame their hearts to the love of God by internal quiet and pure actuations in spirit so disposing themselves to receive the influxes and inspirations of God whose Guidance chiefly they desire to follow-in all things Rejecting and striving to forget all images and representations of him God or any thing else yea transcending all Operations of the imagination and all subtilty and curiosity of reasoning And lastly seeking an union with God only by the most pure and intime affections of the Spirit what possibility of illusion or errour can there be to such a soul In which passive unions God after a wonderful and unconceivable manner affords them interior illuminations and touches yet far more efficacious and divine then active Exercises in all which the soul is a meer Patient and only suffers God to work his divine pleasure in her The which unions though they last but even as it were a moment yet do more illuminate and pacifie the soul then many years spent in active exercises of spiritual Prayer and Mortification could do Yea so far is the soul from reâ—ecting on her own Existence that it seems to her God and she are not distinct but only one thing That God only by his holy Inspirations is the Gride and Director of an internal and contemplative life Râ—ynaldus tells of Norius the father of the Oratorians out of Baciâ—s the Writer of his life that he was so offended with the smell of filthy souls that he would desire the persons to empty the Jakes of their souls Such a divine Nose had this Saint among them a degree of Enthusiasm above the Quakers who can but discern not smell souls Some of you called Quakers pretend a great advantage from 1 John 2. 27. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that a y man teach you but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie and even as it hath taught you ye shall abide in him The Anointing here cannot be understood of Christ neither do we find the Anointing any where to be understood of Father Son or Spirit essentially considered and indeed the phrase is not fit to be applied to God who is the Anointer or Christ who is the Anointed The teaching of the Anointing being understood of the Graces and the habitual and special Enlightnings of the Spirit these devote and addict the soul under the power of them to adhere to the true Christ For the all things it is to be considered as restrained to the matter agitated in the Chapter which is their adhering to the true Christ and this is plain in he 26. ver These things have I written to you conâ—erning them that seduce you The summe then is this they knowing certainly the true Christ from any Antichrist that which they were mainly to look after was a heart cleaving to and improving him which the Graces of God in their souls actuated by the Spirit of God was sufficient in this matter to make their knowledge of Christ sanctifying and saving As for the words in him which render it Majâ— in the Gr. it may be rendred in any Gender These Considerations duely weighed if there were no more are sufficient to any who have respect to the pure truths of the Gospel to render the principles here detected and opposed not only suspicious but hateful It is no little absurdity in the Quakers to make an out-cry against Popery Babylon false worship formes that are not only unscriptural but also idolatrous while in the mean time they plant and â—…ug the root in their own bosomes from which all those evils and more and worse naturally spring It were no hard matter to prove a symbolizing and agreement in a multitude of particulars between the Papists and Quakers in those things wherein they are contrary to the Protestant Profession of Christianity and the Scripture-Rule but more especially in the spiritual part of their errors which in the sight of God are of all other the most sinful and to men a snare most dangerous The Apostle speaks of more Antichrists then one though of one as the Chief of whose Characters Quakerism hath the blackest I shall mention only two the first expressed in 1. ep of John chap 2. ver 22. Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ he is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son That you who are called Quakers deny Jesus to be the Christ I prove at large in a Chapter by its self that you deny the Father and the Son is no less true of you who will admit no distinction between the Father and the Son so that the Father is with you as much the Son of the Father as the Son is the Son of the Father and the Son is as much the Father with you of the Son as the Father is the Father of the Son that by destroying these distinctions you destroy the relation of Father and Son in the Godhead which the Scripture speaks of so plainly and it is hereby apparent that
understand the whole written Word as written that is the body of the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament Law and Gospel without distinction and by the Spirit the inward immediate teachings of the Spirit of God they are in both mistaken For it is as certain as that the following words are truth that by the Letter here is meant the Law as given forth by God from Mount Sinai and by the Spirit the Covenant of Grace especially as expressed in the New Testament under the administration of the Redeemer But if the ministration of death written and engraven on stones was glorious c. for if the ministration of condemnation be glory c. All these passages express and explain the same thing called the Letter in the 6. Verse and that it was the Law given forth by God before it was written not only as written the matter and manner of which was glorious but in terribleness insomuch that Moses said I exceedingly fear and quake and it was death for any to touch the Mountain yea the Israelites were ready to dye with fear at the appearances of God on that Mount Sinai at the giving forth of the Law And as the manner of giving it forth by God so the matter of it was mortal nothing but death was written in the forehead of it going alone The Law worketh wrath That is the Law of meer Commandments And the Commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death for sin taking occasion by the Commandment deceived me and by it slew me Thus it is plain what is meant by the Letter the Law of meer Commandments as given forth on Mount Sinai That by the Spirit is to be understood the Covenant of promise in the hand of the Mediator is as certain and not of the Scripture or written Word in general for in the 6. Verse it is opposed to the Letter of the New Testament not of the Letter that is the Gospel not the Law and it is called the Spirit in three respects First As the New Testament or Covenant of promise especially in the hand of Christ promiseth and conveyeth soul-quickning grace in a good measure to sanctifie and enable and dispose the soul to keep the Laws of God Secondly As by the New Testament or Covenant life and spirit comfort and refreshment is put into the hearts of poor drooping sinners under the sense of the severity of the Law and their liableness to the punishment of it Thirdly And chiefly the intent and mind of the Spirit in the terrible dispensation of the Law of Works was by discovering mans woful estate to make the promises of the Gospel or the new Covenant sweet and welcome and to put souls on embracing the redemption through Christ So that the matter of the pure New Testament or Covenant in the hand of the Mediator was that which God especially aimed at to promote by the Letter or the meer Law of Commandments in which alone there was not the least appearance of mercy or mans welfare implied CHAP. XII The Quakers hold it is a sin and the sin of Idolatry to believe and live according to the instructions and holy examples expressed in and by the Scriptures except we have them by immediate inspiration and at first hand as the Apostles received them SECT I. I Am now come to the highest round of their Ladder and I know not what one step of sin beyond it except the unpardonable one they could charge those with who walk by the light of Scripture day Samuel whose rebuke to Saul for his sin in the matter of the Amalekites was expressed in the keenest and highest terms compared his sin but to Witchcraft Iniquity and Idolatry And if this charge againstus were as true as it is that they so charge us it is high time to serve the Scriptures as Hezekiah served the Brazen Serpent And brake in pieces the Brazen Serpent that Moses had made for unto those days the Children of Israel did burn Incense to it and he called it Nehushtan that is Brass nothing of a Deity in it but a little piece of Brass So it were fit the Scriptures should be demolished as having nothing of divine authority stamped upon them When I have established this Charge by the mouths of two or three Witnesses it will be time to leave off pouring in more where the measure is already running over All people may search the Scriptures and see how you have been deceived by your Teachers who have caused you to seek your lost God in carnal and dead observations which they have not any Scripture for Who this lost God should be except Jesus Christ who is ascended above the visible Heavens is not to be imagined by those who are acquainted with the Quakers Tenets and Phrases as will appear more plainly where I treat on their Idolatry and if so as there is reason to believe there are two grand parts of Idolatry we are charged with in complying with the Scripture Precepts and Institutions as in Preaching Prayer Church-order Baptism Lords-supper The first is a false object of worship which all of them that ever I met with in print or otherwise will not deny that to be which is given to the man Christ Jesus who was crucified between two Thieves at Jerusalem The second is false worship for the matter which is Idolatry although it were intended to the true God as the object the sacrificing of Children was intended ultimately to the true God yet it was gross Idolatry And they have built the high places of Tophet which is in the Valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their Sons and Daughters in the fire which I commanded them not neither came it into my heart But you will say how is this charge for walking according to Scripture instructions and examples seeing he doth expressly exhort to trying by the Scriptures whether they do not thus I answer that they take not any thing in the Scripture to be obliging but what comes by immediate inspiration as the Scriptures were given to the Prophets and Apostles and whatever we do however consonant to the precepts there expressed is all contrary to the Scriptures with them as I have proved already if not by immediate inspiration and motion of the Spirit If this be not clear we shall pump clear by and by And this is Babylon the mother of Harlots viz. to read and practice as the Saints did and the Apostles in the Scripture of the New Testament and the abomination of all uncleanness That many Children have been brought forth of flesh and blood and of the will of man that is our choice and not passive obedience to the motions of the thing within which is the birth that persecutes the son and heir And not one of them must stand though ever so seemingly glorious for the day is come and the true birth is
letter but have it not from the mouth of the Lord. If the Scripture be not the mouth of the Lord there is no such thing as Gods mouth And here is the difference of the Ministers of the world and the Ministers of Christ the one of the letter the other of the Spirit For they are meer deceivers and witches bewitch people from the truth holding forth the shadow for the substance and what is the chaff to the wheat Here is not a bare denial of those to be Christs Ministers who preach the Word of God out of the Scriptures but charging them with witchcraft and what are the instruments of their witchcraft but the holy Scriptures most horrid doctrine and yet these wretches will tell you they honour the Scriptures and a Scripture Ministry But this is not all the tide rises yet higher And so he the Devil takes Scripture to maintain his kingdom and this he delivers by the mouth of his Ministers which he sends abroad to deceive the Nations leading people in blindness c. These words are plain and no parable therefore I leave you to behold without a glass the villany of these misleaders I have already proved that not only we ought but Christ and his Apostles did teach out of the Scriptures therefore by the Quakers account they were also as bad as they charge us to be witches and deceivers c. O but there is another inditement against us we are not infallible How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible There is none but God alone absolutely infallible And for certainty of what we teach we dare weigh with the Quakers at any time But sure I am that I never met with one of their Teachers yet in Writing or otherwise but I found him more than fallible even foolish contradicting the Spirit of God speaking by the Scripture contrary to the clearest reason and themselves also But more than all this We are Hirelings preach for Hire and take Hire for preaching And a main question for a scrutiny into the truth of our Ministry is Whether is your Gospel free and without Charge yea or nay This is the nail they find will drive People love a Cheap Gospel they that will sell them such a one shall buy their souls into the bargain and vassalize their understandings to their most corrupt dictates To preach for Hire we call a Vile iniquity to receive Hire for preaching we dare not condemn because Christ hath said The labourer is worthy of his hire And the Apostle said He took wages of other Churches to serve them the Corinthians It is ordained that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel and so hath the Lord ordained So that a Ministers maintenance for preaching the Gospel is Gods ordinance The Apostle exhorts Timothy To give himself to the work of the Ministry as it is the duty of every one ordinarily imployed therein And is God and Christ a hard Master to oblige his Ministers to give up themselves to that work and let them and theirs starve for it But moreover you may know if you please that there are thousands this day in England who preach the Gospel in poverty and distresses and cleave to their work when stripped of their wages which number there needs not one Quaker to make up yet take heed you commend them not for it Another objection is we study for our Sermons What is study but meditation and searching to understand the truth and to get it into our heads and hearts if this be a sin obedience to God is so And the Apostle bids Timothy who had excellent gifts and was brought up from a child in the holy Scripture study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the Word of truth Then it seems it is no idle task to preach like a workman and divide the Word of truth aright and that we may be approved to God and free from shame among men we must study But that which turns us all off hand-smooth is SECT V. That till we are taught by the light within immediately we cannot speak one word of truth but all lyes though the matter we deliver be the highest truth And all be in the Satanical delusions that be not in the immediate teachings from the Spirit But the greatest professors upon the earth are there of the Devil that speaketh the words of truth but not as they are in it as so saith Christ to the Jewes they were of their Father the Devil they speak of themselves they speak of themselves as the Devil doth but abide not in the truth but a lyar from the beginning The Devil speaks a lye from himself that is a truth for no body need teach the Devil to lye but how will it follow that whatever any man speaks of himself is a lye then it seems for a man to be first in telling any thing true or false 't is a lye whereas we use most to suspect the truth of that which comes by a second or third hand or more but the conclusion is what we have not by immediate inspiration and teach it we speak it of our selves and therefore are devilish lyars The learned Fisher will help the Fox at a dead lift and piece his tale And to such wise sayers and knowers as these God saith though ye say God lives yet as I live ye swear falsly and why falsly was not that a truth that God lives but not a truth truly testified unto by them any more than what is testified in foro hominum in mens Courts by such as being not eye-witnesses thereof have it only by hear-say from others because they witnessed to it but in stollen words Here is then the proof that we speak more than we know and therefore lye This is indeed pretty near a lye but that they who live in the light of the Creation and read and believe and know the Scripture to be the Word or the words of God and affirming no nicer a truth than that God liveth should lye because they know it not by immediate inspiration is very strange He that lives may know from thence that God lives who holdeth every soul in life that lives But the meaning of the Text may be and I will trust the sober Readers judgement to decide it betwixt us that they did not believe the Lord lived and swearing what they thought untrue or doubted of they therein sware falsly But I desire those who give credit to such teachers as infallible and inspired immediately from God to try by the instance I am now upon whether we are not likely to speak more rightly concerning God from the Scripture than their teachers without book In the quotation of this Text Fisher hath falsified beside his Exposition in three plain cases for they say he writes
ye say for the Lord lives God lives there is both taking away a word and changing another and makes God swear too where there is not a word or title of it in the Text and so adds to the Word of the Lord these words yet as I live This is ordinary from these inspired teachers and to tell us God saith so lest we should take them to be his own words adds to the boldness of the perverting the Scripture I could write a Catalogue of a thousand such faults in the Quakers citing of Scripture some adding some leaving a word or two out through carelesness or wilfulness I have from what is here evident reason to say to you as the A postle to the Galatians O foolish souls who hath bewitched you Certainly it must be a strong delusion that thus blinds you He feedeth on ashes a deceived heart hath turned him aside that he cannot deliver his soul nor say is there not a lye in my right hand SECT VI. The next Ordinance I shall prove them to deny is a Gospel-Church And the Church so gathered into God is the pillar and ground of truth where the Spirit alone is teacher The Gospel-Church is a Church which hath other teachers and not the Spirit alone but such a Church is not James Naylors nor the Quakers The Church wherein the Apostles were sure had some teachers beside the Spirit whereas the Apostles gave themselves to preaching of the Word And Elders were ordained in every particular Church As I teach in every Church God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets thirdly Teachers The Elders are exhorted to feed the flock of Christ which is among you Priest that is the Minister he brings in saying we utterly deny all their wayes and doctrines who exclude all teachings of man Answ Contrary to the Prophets who bid people cease from man whose breath was in their nostrils a Text hugely to the purpose But most will conclude that these Authors do not speak the minds of the Quakers for that they have more teachers than all others Men-Ministers Women-Ministers and any one of them when there is a motion to it It is confessed that in point of fact it is so but it is a most palpable contradiction to their professed principle I should be glad to hear they were more true to it that the light within might be their only teacher and they would let others alone till that turned them Quakers But Satan is cunning and can give a dispensation where it may serve so greatly to the promoting of his Kingdom Sometimes they have silent meetings as is known to most then they say they attend to the teacher within which is sufficient and by which they find more comfort often than when there is speaking But at a meeting not far from my dwelling there was the strangest teaching that I believe was ever heard of among pretended Reformers and I had it from a man of note among them who was one of the meeting There declared not a man but a woman that 's ordinary not an English woman but a Dutch woman that is not so frequent not in English but in Dutch this was orderly according to the Popish Mass and prayers in an unknown tongue to the people But the strangest thing of all was he told me that although not one of them understood Dutch nor could the Dutch-woman interpret into English at least she did not they knew she spake by the Spirit I asked him how he told me because they all found refreshings so have children many a time at Puppet-playes What a pass are these people come to who yet deny all teachings by man But that you may not doubt the truth of the Story there being a dispute or somewhat so called by some between me and George Whitehead the Quakers Champion I did before all the audience charge them with this thing my Informer a Quaker being there and many more Quakers who were at that meeting but none dared to deny one word of the Charge only George Whitehead said it may be there was some body there that understood Dutch But what have they to say think you to this contradiction of their principles in teaching Why it is not they but the man Christ or the light or the Spirit that teaches and if such light replies will not serve turn you may go somewhere else to be satisfied for them But beyond all contradiction if the Church and Churches mentioned and owned in the New Testament be Gospel-Churches the Quakers deny a Gospel-Church for all of them had men who taught them at least they did not deny any such helps But we will produce a testimony or two more to see if we can make a further discovery For the Church is but one and the Temple of God we own which is at new Jerusalem the City of the living God I have read of the Church at Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans and of the Churches at Corinth in Thessalonica Ephesus and many places more and I have read of the Church called Jerusalem which is above and the City of the living God but never yet of the Church which is at new Jerusalem this is none of the Churches the Apostles ever built or set in order But let it pass as a rumour till farther confirmation The holy Ghost made the Officers of the Church Overseers the Overseers to be invisible for they saw with an invisible eye and so they was in the Spirit which is invisible and not in the flesh Great mystery c. p. 8. Quest Which is the fold of the sheep Answ The wisdom life and power of the Father even the same that is the shepherd Object Is not the Church the fold Answ This in the Church or the Church in this is the fold but not out of this Seeing this is the best account we can get I must repair to William Smith who telleth us That all we do according to Scripture-patterns is but building of Babylon and that I am sure is not Zion and this is the scope of many Pages in his Morning Watch. But I have proved them to deny all forms and visible things in Religion and worship upon the general head but the Gospel-Church is a form in whom all the building is fitly framed I am sure that is a strange building without any form but to be framed and formed is one and the same thing with being put into a form For though I be absent in the flesh yet am I with you in the Spirit joying and beholding your order and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ and not holding the head from which not in which only all the body by joynts and hands having nourishment ministred and knit together increaseth with the increase of God So that a Gospel-Church is a number for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a name of many
There is a great difference to be of God with respect to relation or creation and to be of God as of his being or the same being with him the one is to commom the whole Creation for of him are all things the other is peculiar to the blessed Creator Magnus Byne saith the Soul is not infinite in it self but is a Creature and Richard Baxter saith it is a spiritual substance Answ Now consider what a Condition these called Ministers are in they say that which is a Spiritual substance is not infinite in its self but a creature that which came out from the Creator and is in the hand of the Creator which brings it up and to the Creator again that is infinite in its self which the hand goes against him that does evil in which hand the Soul is which is immortal and infinite which hand is infinite which brings it up to God is infinite If any man can match the ignorance confidence blasphemy and nonsense of this passage out of the mouths or pens of any but the Quakers he may be reckoned a great discovereâ— But this is received by those poor deluded souls as infallibly true and a divine mystery being the dictates of George Fox whom none of them dare or will contradict such is the stupendious captivity of these poor people Is not the Soul without beginning come from God It is not horrid Blasphemy to say the Soul is a part of God for it came out of him and that which came out of him is of him Thus I have proved not by remote consequences but their open and plain affections and that pleaded for after their wild manner that they hold the Soul of Man to be God a part of the Divine being infinite in it self without beginning part of the Creator here is enough of blasphemy and idolatry for one author to fill tâ—â— mouths of many I shall cite yet more of their that none may think it is but one Qualâ—… though G. F. may stand for a thousand who is prodigiously wicked And whereas you Querie whether the said Spirâ—… the Spirit of man is mortal or immortal I answer it is immortal and neither mortal 〈…〉 corruptible but the immortal and incorruptible sâ—… of God even something of the living word which 〈…〉 said to be made flesh What the word is that was made flesh John saitâ— was God 1. John 1. That which the Lord from Heaven begetteth of his own image and likeness of his own substance of his own seed of his own Spirit and pure life Speaking of the Saints the members of Christ Whether do you wait and believe to have the same mind which was also in Christ Jesus who thought it no robbery to be equal with God And Christ thought it no robbery to be equal with God yet he was no Pharisee though of the Pharisees judged a blasphemer and as he is so are we saith the Saints And they who dwell in the truth witness one with another For the light of God owns its own for God cannot deny himself They own the Spirit of God Christ the seed the spirit of man to be but one and the same thing but sometimes will deny any to have a Spirit at all but the regenerate that they may not say the unregenerate have the Spirit of God or God the Spirit in them See Fishers rare distinction to serve this turn As to the Spirit of man which concurs to the constituting of man in his primitive perfection it is the breath of life which God breathed into his Soul after he had formed him as to his body of the dust of the earth whereby he came to be a living soul a Soul that did partake something of Gods own life this Spirit of man is that living principle of the divine nature which man did before his degeneration and shall again after his regeneration partake of This Charge being of so black and horrid a nature I did not judge it unmeet to prove the truth of it by abounding instances and now Reader judge and put on the largest Charity that a man or Christian ought in any case to exercise and give thy verdict if I have not made appear That the Quakers are gross Idolaters so far as owning and professing that to be God which is not God will contribute to a demonstration I shall manage my second grand argument but briefly for the work I have done will render it not very incredible that they should worship a false God seeing they own and profess a false God All those who worship that as God professedly and according to their professed Principles which is not God are gross Idolaters But the Quakers do so Therefore the Quakers are gross idolaters I shall not prove the first proposition which none will deny The second I prove by their own concession considered with the proof I have made of the light within every man and the Souls and Spirits of men not to be God but you may take the argument in this form All they who worship professedly and accordingâ—â— their professed principles the light within every man the Souls and Spirits of any men as God worship a fâ—lâ—â— God But so do the Quakers Therefore they worship a false God Who are not sprung from the noble gentle seed and to those honour is not due neither can we bow unto them for if we should we should set the Devil in the râ—â—â— of God and give unto him that which is dâ—oâ—… God So that to those who are Quakers and have the birth of the light within the noble and gentâ—â— seed as they call it to them with respect to that they may bow And withall he tellâ— you it is such a bowing as is peculiar to God for where it is used to such who have not God in them in the Quakers sense it is a setting the Devil in the room of God If it be objected that they bow to none I answer that they pretend to own no worship but what is inward and yet they pretend to worship God and meet to that end so that if they worship this light within this Soul or Spirit in any men as they profess to worship God they give them or it divine worship There was a time when many gave outward worship to James Naylor One now a grand Quaker not being then pleased with it James told him that if they did it to him as a man he disowned it but if they did it to the light within him he accepted it if any doubt of the truth of this the process against him in Richards Parliament will prove it And John Bolton the elder the Quaker I speak of can tell you more of it and I doubt not but that for the reproach and worse things which would follow it we should soon find it a general practise with the Quakers to give visible worship to the Gods that dwell in the temples of each others carkasses
spirit of the Quakers c. Charges the Quakers for having their hearts much set on a Heaven within them but not on the things above to which Pen replies and vindicates after his fashion the Kingdome of God within but saith not a word to assert their belief of and affections to the Heaven above from whence it is plain that they believe no such thing to have a being I wonder not therefore that this is so frequently their saying That if we are not perfect here we shall never be perfect It is easily deduceable from their more openly professed principles that they deny and disown a blessedness or misery in another world For if they deny the body to have life any more after it is dead and turned to dust and that the Soul and Spirit are of the being of God and that as the body returns to its former dust from whence it came and never revives again so the Soul and Spirit returns into God its first being all which I have already proved what then remains to be the subject of happiness or misery e'ne nothing at all except God and he is not man E. Boroughs the day he dyed expressed himself thus that he was now putting of this manner of person and returning to his own Being or words of the same import which I have quoted on the Chapter of their Idolatry When I have asked some of them what should become of their souls after death Their Answer hath been they shall be taken into God Let them profess that they believe a happiness to be enjoyed by men and women after their bodies are rotted to dust distinct from the Being of God or that which they had not a thousand years before they were born i. e. to be in God from whom as of his Being they say the soul came and it will be news to me and all that are acquainted with them In the mean time I. have given you Reasons enough to conclude they believe no future blessedness or misery in another world I shall now resume the Question and gather up all the proofs of what I have affirmed into an entire body If Quakerism be another dispensation than that of Christ setled and preached by the Apostles If it deny the Scripture If it deny all the Ordinances of the Gospel If it deny any influenne of Christs transactions in Judaea above 1600 years since into our justification and salvation If it deny Jesus the son of Mary the Christ of God If it own false Gods and be Idolatry If it professedly owns the worshiping of false Gods If it deny the resurrection of the dead If it affect not a future blessedness or misery in another world to men and women according to their deeds in this Then Quakerism is no Christianity But all these things are true and have been proved of Quakerism Therefore Quakerism is no Christianity PART III. BEING AN EXAMINATION Of the First Part of W. PEN'S Pamphlet CALLED The Spirit of Truth With a Rebuke of his Exorbitances SECT I. WHiles I was writing this Book I met with a Pamphlet of William Pen's intituled The Spirit of Truth vindicated against that of Error and Envy c. Which is pretended to be an answer to a malicious Libel intituled The Spirit of the Quakers tryed c. I having the Piece by me I once perused it In the general I resented it as one of the best and most ingeniously managed and beyond all material and just exceptions at least by the Quakers that ever I read against that sort of people But reading Pens Answer and finding his Epistle giving such a Character of his Adversaries Book and himself for malice lameness trifling and what not that might render it and him wicked and contemptible I began to mistrust my conclusion supposing a person of P.'s education and pretences would not say so much evil of it without great cause and therefore I compared them diligently But for P.'s sake I shall believe it more than possible that a man of the highest pretences having some more than ordinary means to deal rightly and ingeniously may yet so far deceive my expectations as to give the highest contradictions to them all I am altogether ignorant of the name or person of the Author of the Piece opposed by Pen and if he be a Socinian as Pen affirms I shall be far enough from vindicating him therein but for the Piece it self wherein Pen saith he could find neither head nor tail I will sell my eyes and brains for two pence if it deserve so contemptible a Character And for the Answerer Pen if he were not furnished with fore-head and tales beyond measure his Pamphlet would have had nothing remarkable in it I expecting next his Epistle and Preface an orderly combating his Adversaries Charge I find him taking up his Post in the Quakers conceited strong hold of the infallible guidance of the Spirit of God afforded to his people exclusive of any other means In the debating of which he roams and tosses to and fro like a man in a confused troubled dream for above thirty pages His pretences therein lying athwart my present work I thought meet to give some account of his Forces especially considering him to be a man of noise and no small prop◠to the Quakers cause in their own esteem His Question which he pretends to include the Quakers strength and which he saith he is resolved to stand by as such he states in these words SECT II. The Question stated Whether Gods holy and unerring Spirit is or should be the proper Judge of Truth Rule of Faith and Guide of Life among men especially under the administration of the blessed Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ or not I affirm it and proceed to prove it by Scripture and Reason Considering his words foregoing which are too many and too worthless to transcribe and what he aims at in the handling of this Question I never read one so lame and deformed in my life come forth with such state and confidence and such a train or rout of mediums as deformed as it self There is in it neither Logick nor Honesty Certainly if he had not turned Quaker and in that fall put all out of joynt he could not likely after so good Nursing have been thus lamentably crepled in his Intellects and somewhat besides First of all here is a fallacy à bene divisis ad malè conjuncta many Questions confounded together Secondly no explanation of the terms most or all of which are metaphorical or amphibious and in that part especially affirmed the greatest ambiguity of all Vt quisque est lingua nequior Solvant ligantque quaestionum vincula Per syllogismos plectiles He tells us indeed pag. 37. that there is no more difference to him between a judge rule and guide than essentially there can be in the wisdom justice and holiness of God he should have added nor between truth faith and life
among men and then he would have shewed himself a workman indeed to have so stitched them together into one as would admit of no distinction I do not admire that his acumen cannot distinguish Essence and Subsistance three Persons in one Divine Being and God-Head who cannot distinguish these Attributes of God nor these acts with respect to men mentioned in the Question He is unlike to wade through a deep River who is so often over head and ears in a shallow Dish But these escapes are but the Dust of the ballance to what follows The word proper in a Question as modifying these Offices or acts of the Spirit is greatly improper Proper is sometimes in opposition to figurative sometimes in opposition to common sometimes in opposition to meet or fit in which sence he would be understood it doth not fit his purpose nor principles to tell us but this is an unworthy part of a Disputant and becoming none but those who are resolved not to be understood If he would assert the Quakers Tenet he must say it is the peculiar and immediate guide rule and judge and this is that he pleads for now and then after his fashion in his following arguments And all the Quakers I have read or discoursed plead for in plain terms but if it had been so expressed in the Question his nose would have been held too hard to the Grind-stone in attempting strictly to prove it and most would have smelt the Rankness of Quakerism But Mr. Pen do you deal fairly and honestly with your Adversaries to imply in your Question that we deny the Spirit of God to be a proper that is one that is fit and hath right to be a rule of Faith guide of Life judge of Truth You know that we own it to be such and that it dothboth in the Conscience and by the Scripture Creation and Providence perform such acts and is to such purposes and that of right Onely we deny that the Spirit alwayes performs these acts without the use of the Scripture or any external means or ordinances or that it doth so at any time contrary to its mind expressed in the Scripture this you should oppose or you do but trifle and abuse us and your unwary Readers The latter part of your question which expresses the administration of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ especially to countenance your tenet is playing at Blind-Mans buff You should have told us who or what you mean by Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Quakers Lord and Saviour the light within every man that is none of our Lord and Saviour If it be understood of the Man Christ Jesus who was of the Seed of David according to the Flesh who was the Son of Mary crucified to death on the cross of wood by shedding his blood and is now in his humane or mans nature united to the God-head in one person ascended above the visible heavens he is none of your Saviour and can be no more within you personally considered than the body of one individual man can be intirely in all the men and women and children in the world and at the same time it must be a transubstantiation much more ridiculous than the Papists that must support such a fancy It is also no less strange that you should talk of the Gospel administration of our Lord and Saviour who hold nothing of a Saviour but what is eternal à parte ante nor any other Gospel but the light within and its immediate dictates which you generally affirm was within every man from the beginning of the world I shall not spend time and paper to shew the many other absurdities in your question I have left a harvest for gleaners For the proof of your affirmation such a blind one as it is you produce abundance of Scriptures which are as much to your purpose as if you had quoted onely the 36 Chap. of Genesis wherein is contained Esau's posterity and how many Dukes there were of his race Yet I shall produce your arguments for the Readers satisfaction that he may believe his own eyes and I shall be more honest than to frame a meer whimsie out of my own head to abuse you and say after this lofty manner of disputing you undertake our overthrow which is your guilt and baseness in the fourth page of your Book SECT III. Your first proof you pretend from Gen. 6. 1. And the Lord said my Spirit shall not alwaies strive with man for that he also is flesh yet his dayes shall be an hundred and twenty years I will for once transcribe your Argument verbatim that it may be notorious how loftily you dispute If God's unerring Spirit has been wont to strive with men either to convince them of or convert them from the evil of their thoughts words or deeds or else to provoke them yet more fully to do the will of God so as to press on from one degree of glory to another then men have had an unerring Spirit to be their teacher and judge and rule and guid of that truth concerning that faith and in that most holy way which leads to eternal life But the Scripture proves the first Proposition that Gods Spirit hath frequently strove with men and for the ends before mentioned and consequently they have not been without an holy unerring Spirit to teach judge regulate and guid them If I should only say your whole Argument is a meer confused thicket of impertinencies and non sequitur's I believe your conclusion would be most absolute that it wae for want of eyes and that I dare not touch a bough of it for fear of pricking my fingers A man had need of good arithmetick also to number the terms You tell us the Scripture proves your first Proposition you are a non Such for diving if you can fetch up from this Scripture what is expressed in your first Proposition especially the latter member of it It is more than probable that the Spirit did strive with them to make them better than they were yet none of those ends are expressed in the Text but that it should be that they might more fully do the Will of God and press on from one degree of Glory to another is a guess wonderfully well becoming your infallibility Why did you not say or to turn them into Suns Moons and Stars which were all out as much in the Text as the other and I dare say some of your Friends would have taken themselves bound to believe it who find no fault with greater absurdities dropt from their admired inspired Dictators but Quos Deus vult perdere hos dementat There were eight persons saved in the Ark but one Noah said to be righteous before God and all the rest overwhelmed by the Deluge for their extreme impieties yet these were pressed on from one degree of Glory to another The consequence of your first Proposition is all manner of Fruits
which you had a mind should be grafted on this Stock but as the Text will not impart its Sap to your Proposition so your Proposition is as dry to your Consequence but that 's no matter if they will not grow one upon another you 'l make them hang together right or wrong Ay and if the Spirit do but strive it must be how you will have it and for what ends you please or you 'l rack the letter for it but there 's no cruelty to a dead letter But Mr. Pen if your conscience have any eyes I intreat you make use of the light here afforded you to compare the Text and what you lay at its door and see how alike they look Your Question is of the Spirits teaching among men c. indefinitely and your proof speaks of the Spirits striving with wicked men Your aim is to prove it an immediate and peculiar Teacher c. of Gods people the Text speaks of neither If I affirm the Spirit strove with them by providential Chastisements ominous presages of Calamities at hand by his goodness which leads to Repentance by the Ark which Noah built moved by faith and fear and by which he condemned the unbelieving besotted World by his Preaching righteousness I can prove my being guided therein by the unerring Spirit of God at another rate than you can your contradiction But your wandrings from truth and reason can hardly have a higher instance and evidence than that you should be so infatuated as to conclude from a Text which saith my Spirit shall not always strive with man that it doth now teach c. and God hath not left his people in our present nor will in future ages without his Spirit to teach them immediately and solely which is in your Question or your prosecution of it and should have been expressed there if you had had so much ingenuity Instead of being angry that I have shewed your vanity and made your folly in this argument such a spectacle to the world you have reason to give me thanks that I examine it no further SECT III. However before we part I will try you at another weapon which you forge out of Neh. 3. 19 â—0 Yet thou in thy manifold mercies forsookest them not in the wilderness the pillar of the Cloud departed not from them by day to lead them in the way c. This part of your quotation is not onely no friend to your affirmation and principles but an invincible adversary No man in his wits will say the pillar of the cloud and fire were the Spirit of God and if God led his people by them they were not led onely and immediately by the Spirit of God It may be the latter part of your citation may do more for you Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them This good Spirit was mainly the Spirit of God which he put upon Moses and Joshua and some other their chief Persons by Gods appointment as is evident from these Texts And I will take off the Spirit which is upon thee and will put it upon them and they shall bear the burthen of the people with thee Num. 1â— 17. And the Lord said unto Moses take thou Joshua the Son of Nun a man in whom is the Spirit and lay thy hand upon him Num. 27. 18. Thou leadest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron Psal 77. 20. Now God is said to give them his good Spirit to instruct them by bestowing it in such a way and measure on their instructers and guides though I deny not but every true Israelite had the Spirit also dwelling in him yet they were never the less but the more submiss to the conduct of their mediate or if you will men-teachers and guides for that SECT III. Your third chosen Scripture for your service is But there is a Spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding I shall explain this text by another which carries the full sense of it and almost the same words For the Lord giveth wisedome out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding But doth this incourage men to cast off all external means and the use of their reason Nothing less It is given as an encouragement to the use of the means expressed in the four first verses which are made conditional of being blessed with that knowledge and wisedom which comes from the Lord. If thou searchest If thou triest It will now be more easie to take in the right sense of your cited Scripture There is a Spirit in man that is a rational soul say some yet knowledg and understanding doth not so depend upon its improvement as to shut out the breathing and blessing of God from the chief efficiency A young man as Elihu may attain a measure by that divine blessing beyond the aged and more experienced If you can prove that those holy men who carried on that debate of which the Book of Job is a history did neglect the external means which the Lord afforded them for informing their judgments about divine and spiritual concernments upon the grounds of the inward teachings of the Spirit of God Eris mihi magnus Apollo and unless you can do that your arguing from this Text is but meer trifling beating of the air and contending for what is granted on all hands but nothing at all to your purpose who are very busie at doing nothing And it is not beside the purpose to consider that those holy eminent Saints who contended with Job were rebuked by God for not speaking rightly of God as Job did and Job did not pass free without a chiding also for his miscarriages and presumptions Job 42. vers 7. and forward To conclude this Argument you talk at a miserable lame rate to say that because the inspiration of the Divine Spirit giveth understanding therefore it is not from the strength of mans reason memory or utmost creature-abilities that his knowledge of religious and heavenly things comes but from the revelation and discovery of the inspiration of the Almighty Let me tell you once for all that if reason memory and humane abilities have nothing at all to do in the search and understanding of Divine things a meer animal or such an ideot as Jack Adams may know as much of the Divine and Heavenly mysteries as W. Pen but if I should say such a one is as able a Teacher or Writer as you I doubt not but you would take your self to be not a little affronted And it is as lame arguing to conclude because some men had Divine inspirations and teachings of some Divine truths when there was not one Book of the written Word in being as I dare undertake to prove and they who had those inspirations made use also of their reason to know Divine things by all external means within their reach therefore all Gods people i. e. Quakers have in
these dayes wherein God hath blessed us with so large a portion of his written Word or Word without us sufficient teachings by immediate Divine Revelations to lead them infallibly in the way that is most acceptable with the Lord without the use of their created faculties or any outward means SECT V. The next Scripture you abuse is Psal 139. 7. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence from whence you scribble thus If Gods unerring Spirit be so nigh and the sense of it so certain it must be either to reprove for evil done or to inform uphold lead and preserve in reference to all good now in which of the two senses it shall be taken the presence of Gods eternal Spirit and his being the Saints Instructor Judge Rule and Guide are evidently deduceable from the words Rudis indigestaque moles worse than ever Bear brought forth her Cubs which with her licking may be brought into some shape but your products are so defective both in truth right reasoning Syntax and Sense that it is no dis-reputation to your Adversary to be confounded by them It is an effectual but an impudent course to silence all the world from opposing you by writing such confident confused non-sense Were it not for the sake of many who conceit your infallibility which you are here so blindly pleading for I would as soon abandon my time to dispute with a distracted man in his raving Fits as with W. Pen till he come better to himself than I can find in this Pamphlet If Gods infinite Being Omnipresence Omniscience wonderfull works of Creation all-disposing Providence which is the scope of the Psalm and his Omnipresence especially the sense of the Text do prove that which you produce it for and infer from it you have found out away of seeing that may tempt us to dig out our eyes punish them for meer cheats and for ever hereafter commend the blind archer for the best marks-man We may presume that you intend this Text to prove that all Gods people are upheld ruled guided c. In reference to all good by the Spirit of God which you say is evidently deduceable from the words But who would have thought that such desireable considerations and the certain sense of them should put so holy a man as David on such expressions of going and fleeing from the Spirit and presence of the Lord No doubt the presence of God is every where in the skies the seas the wilderness what then doth he therefore perform all these acts where ever he is present in his infinite being even where there are no intelligent creatures Doth he judge inform instruct stones and trees and mountains I and must do so too or else he doth not answer the end of his presence being so nigh truly Mr. Pen we have had more reverend thoughts of the eternal and omnipresent God than to assign any thing as the end of his being but himself But it may be you lay your stress on the certain sense of it and thus joyned to his omnipresence will do your work Is the sense of it so certain to every good man was it so to David when he so long time was tainted with a heap of impieties Was it so with Jonah when he fled as he thought from the presence of the Lord or was it so with you when you wrote some things in this book of yours which I shall acquaint you with before I have done If it should be granted you that all Gods people have the certain sense of it without doubting or alteration it would be nihil ad rhombum far from proving Gods Spirit to be the peculiar teacher of his people and so to teach them as to render them infallible which is the mark you aim at SECT VI. The next Scripture you produce is Teach me to do thy will for thou art my God thy Spirit is good lead me into the land of uprightness Psal 43. 10. To bend this Text to your bow you talk thus The Question will be whether it was Davids intent and the scope of his desire that God should teach and lead him by his good Spirit or some other thing but methinks it is resolvable in the affirmative in two respects What a strange Question is this Who doubtes but David commended the Spirit of God as a good teacher what then must all other teachers which the Spirit of God makes use of as the means by which he teaches be cast off Suppose I should say such a Man is a good School-master I would fain be taught by him doth that imply I would not learn out of a Grammar or other books which he uses to that end or doth it not rather conclude that I like not onely his abilities but his method and means by which he teaches the Psalmist saith blessed is the man whom thou Chastenest O Lord and teachest out of thy Law You would little less then hoot at him that should from hence conclude the Psalmist to reject the Spirit as a teacher and to admit of no other Teacher but the Law It is after this lofty manner of disputing you undertake our overthrow When you have so learnedly framed your Question which by the disjunctive Or you make torâ— consist of two members Which would he have foâ— his Teacher The Spirit or some other thing you answer it like your self Methinks it is resolvable in the affirmative But I pray which of the parts of your Question do you affirm Which do you deny Why truely it is the safest course you take to affirm it of both for then the truth is owned and in this point the quarrel ended But then what need your fighting against what you affirm unless you are resolved to be quarrelsome Alas poor Man it was by a meer mistake you said truth you intended to resolve in the affirmative that he desired to be taught by the good Spirit of God but in the negative of any other thing Canis festinans coecos parit catulos The two respects which thus blinded you are enough to keep any mans eyes open that is but willing to see First How that the Word was hid in his heart That internal Law Word and Spirit ef God which plentifully shews kow much he was an Enthusiast and Quaker in the sence this man esteems us most heterodox Law Word and Spirit are all one with you But where do you find the Word hid in the hearts of the Saints called the internal Word 'T is true that it is within in the memory faith love and hide there with the hiding of security but it was as much without before it was within as the childs lesson which it gets by heart out of a book which when done you might as well call it the childs internal lesson Your second respect is the very words viz. of the text imply the thing we urge them for and can import no
more and more if you will needs deifie such a poor Creature as natural Conscience and reduce so much within the compass of a poor earthen defiled vessel But if you are resolved to go on at this rate let the Title of your next Book be instead of The Spirit of Truth c. The Spirit of Babel and this will much more properly express the Contents of it Babel in the Hebrew is the word from whence Babble in English The Pretences of the Quakers to Apostolical and immediately Divine Inspirations considered and a Spiritual and Rational account of truly Apostolical men and their immediate Inspirations SECT I. Next to their Tenet of the light within every man to be the Christ and God essentially considered This of its immediate Dictates which they hold to be as purely Divine as any the Apostles had or the Scriptures express is the grand Pillar of their other Opinions and Practices called Religious This pretext according to an Author of their own E. H. one of Antichrists Voluntiers defeated pag. 5. gives the credit to what they affirm And yet would fasten all these upon the Lord so that his deceit might be of more Authority and noâ—â— might question the matter thereof because the Lord always moveth to Truth and Righteousness Well then if we can prove that the Quakers are not inspired persons but far otherwise we shall prove them gross Iâ—â—â—stors abominable persons slanderers and blasphemers of the Holy and Divine Spirit and break that snare by which their poor deluded Proselytes are fast bound and chained to their Dictates But sure you will judge that they who pretend thus high have somewhat like a Reason for what they affirm The main props of this Opinion of themselves I shall bring to light and examine The first is a Prophesie of the pouring out of the Spirit Joel 2. 28. I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesie c. Let us consider how much this will befriend them They will not say I am perswaded that all flesh in the Text is to be understood without any limitation at all for then Sheep and Oxen must prophesie nor yet will they allow that the Spirit shall be poured forth upon all men and women old and young without some limitation for then the most wicked and sottish must be of the number yea those who are the keenest Adversaries to their Doctrine among which I doubt not they will give me a room but if they say every one hath the light within which is a Principle capable of this Character if they gave heed to it and at set it liberty I answer so had all men this principle ever since the world began if what they say themselves be true but the Prophesie saith It shall come to pass after those days So that it must needs be meant of a time then to come but if it be to be understood as without doubt it is as well of some particular persons and not all universally as of some Age or Ages and not all universally They must bring some proof that they are the persons inintended or give us leave to tell them they have here in stollen the words of the Lord which belonged not to them by falsly applying it to themselves And if the Exposition which Peter the Apostle gives of this Prophesie be worth the heeding it was fulfilled at least in a good measure 1600 years since and whether the world shall ever hereafter behold the like in that part of it I shall not assert Act. 2. 16 17. and so on But this is that which was spoken by the Prophet Joel c. What They spake with other Tongues about fifteen in number the wonderful works of God and this was ushered in by Signs from Heaven A sound as of a mighty rushing wind cloven tongues like as of fire all of which were witnesses sent by God for the confirmation of the Lord Jesus Christ whom they preached to be God's Messias before promised But let us see how neer the Quakers approach to this evidence That they began with a noise yea a rushing noise we know but that it was a sound from Heaven we are sure of the contrary that they have tongues and fiery and cloven-tongues also we shall not deny but these are not such cloven-tongues like as of fire sitting on them and appearing to the bodily eyes of others Nor do they speak variety of Languages by the gift of the Holy Ghost though some of them have gone into forein Countries with a confidence they should be gifted with strange Languages but their Spirit deceived them Those in the Text in those Languages or Tongues spake the wonderful works of God but the Quakers with their native Language only speak the amazing delusions of Satan The persons in the Text had and used these gifts to confirm and evidence Jesus of Nazareth to be the Christ 22 verse and that same Jesus to be exalted by the right hand of God verse 32 33 but the Quakers improve their gifts with al their might to disclaim that man Christ Jesus Christ as having any being and to exalt their own Christ whom they call the light within every man And considering also that the Prophet saith the Spirit shall be poured out on all flesh methinks they of all others should claim the least share in it who call others flesh who are not of their mind but themselves Spiritual and will not seem to endure any thing that hath a relation to the flesh though sanctified by the Spirit and Grace of God which they rebuke in such-like terms as these Silence all flesh before the Lord. Thus I have discharged this Text from so bad a service SECTION II. The next main prop for this mistake is that they speaking and writing by the conduct and motion of the light within them that being with them the Spirit of God as well as Christ the Son of God it must needs be by Inspiration of God and motion of the Holy Ghost And by the same light light within do we discern and testifie c. Parnel Shield of the Truth pag. 10. Yea they will have Moses and all the Prophets to be inspired Divinely as they were guided and moved by the light within The Word said Let there be light Gen. 1. 4. mark this and the light was brought out of darkness so the morning was come and the day was created in the Eternal Word and into this life I suppose it should be light was Moses gathered and had his understanding opened that he could see to the beginning And there was no Tradition to give him the knowledge of it but the light which shone out of darkness in his heart Morning-Watch pag. 2. What words can express the untruths absurdities and blasphemies of this saying The Word Christ created the light Christ the first created morning is Christ and all this together within was the inspiration by which Moses
asserting we are like to have no better evidence and he that is so silly as to believe on so feeble a ground I am sure his faith stands not only below the power and wisdom of God but the right reason of man And this must needs be a human faith in the most sordid sense which hath not any divine evidence for its support We can by the grace of God give a reason of that hope in us which is grounded on Scripture-verity because we can prove that it is the Word of God which was sent from him by the Messengers by him appointed and furnished to that end Acts 19. 13. Jesus we know and Paul we know but who are ye Fourth Character of the Apostles inspired The Apostles as they were commissionated to teach all Nations so they were furnished with Tongues and Languages in a supernatural way by which they could speak to the understandings of any Nation or people to whom they were sent Acts 2. 8. And how we hear every man in our own Tongue wherein we were born And it is remarkable that the Apostle Paul was gifted this way above all or most he being the Apostle more eminently to the Gentile-world and travelled more foreign Countries than any of the other that we read of I cannot but wonder at the blindness of the Quakers who give it as a mark to the true Ministry denying and disdaining all others not to be confined to a certain place in the ordinary exercise thereof but as the Apostles to have no less than the Universe for their Bishoprick while it is apparent that they do not more out-strip others in pretences of Spiritual and supernatural Gifts than they come short of them in visible qualifications for the ministerial imployment especially the knowledge of the Tongues and who ever among them understand any Tongue or can speak or write it besides their native Mother-tongue let them say it if they dare that they came not by it by natural and ordinary means And if God had given them an Apostolical Call and Gifts surely this of Tongues would have made some signe and noise of it for God never calleth to any Gospel-Office and work immediately where he doth not afford abilities for the discharge of it If the Quakers had the Gift of Tongues who direct their Pamphlets to all Princes and Potentates to every Creature and all Nations in the World surely some of them by that Gift would have preached their Doctrines to foreign Nations But some have attempted it and sped so ill as to become dumb preachers in other Countries Others have learned more wit than to make the adventure yet their Writings are full stuffed with the bold asserting of their Apostolical Call Gifts and Inspirations SECT IV. Having given you some Characters of the Apostles who were called to that Office and were inspired by the Holy Ghost I shall take some pains to give you an account of inspiration it self as it is distinct in its very species and kinde not in degrees only from those teachings and illuminations of the Spirit which are ordinary and common in some measure to all the Saints The right understanding of this will keep not only in the Controversie before us but in many other cases that may occur I shall before I enter on the differences between the Spirits inspirations and common illuminations of the Saints by the Spirit prove that there is such a difference and that the one is not in any degree or measure the other All the Saints have the saving and sanctifying teaching and enlightnings of the Spirit yet not all of them nay but a very few of them had the extraordinary enlightnings of the Spirit by way of inspiration Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his 1 Cor. 3. 16. So that every Babe in Christ hath the Spirit of Christ in its saving manifestations and operations or effects though but a few were immediately inspired And God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets c. Are all Apostles are all Prophets are all Teachers 1 Cor. 12. 28 29. The Apostle Paul doth plainly express this specifical difference or difference in the very kind of the Spirits teachings in and to his own person But she is happier if she so abide after my judgment and I think also that I have the Spirit of God 1 Cor. 7. 40. The Apostle doth in the case there agitated give his advice as a Saint who had the Spirit of God in the same kind of enlightning which other Saints had or all the Saints had but in an eminent measure yet this enlightning and teaching of the Spirit was not by way of immediate and Apostolical inspiration but by enlightning his judgment and enabling his natural faculty of discerning to pierce into and rightly decide the difference For if the Apostle had received what he here expressed by Divine inspiration or the Spirit of the Lord immediately inspiring it would have been not only unnecessary but very much injurious to the infallibility and authority of the Spirit of God to have made his judgment bear a part with it Yea it had been an usurping on the Divine Spirit which an exercise of our judging faculty concerning its truth or falshood must needs be where it is evident that the Spirit of God doth its part by way of immediate inspiration to which ready and full credit ought to be given without hesitation SECT V. Characters of Divine Apostolical Inspirations distinguishing them from all other Instructions That Divine inspiration whereby the Apostles and Prophets as such were illuminated came in without the use of the bodily senses as receptive of outward Objects and carrying them to the rational and considering faculties to make conclusions from them and this is properly immediate Divine inspiration or revelation But Divine Truths received by the Saints as Saints ordinarily are received by such means as are Objects to the bodily senses as significative sounds to the ear visible Objects to the eye c. let the Quakers or any other shew me if they can that the knowledge of God comes ordinarily to men by any other way without these Faith comes by hearing that is ordinarily for a Babe may have the habits of saving faith whose hearing ferves little to that purpose or by reading that knowledg of God which the Heathen had or might have had without the Word revealed handed to them as to us it was by considering the works of God's Creation and Providence which were the Books wherein God wrote to them many Lessons concerning him and their duty So that in few words persons being illuminated by inspiration it was first within them others have it first from without them at least in the premises from whence the understanding assisted by God infers Truths The great Objection of the Quakers against
the later Position is from his Scripture Rom. 1. 19 20. because that which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them for the invisible things of him c. The words in them in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are either in or among them the later sense is to me the most probable because that while the far greater part of the Gentile-world were so brutish that they little regarded or understood any thing of God but were so besotted with sensuality that they understood and minded nothing but what might gratifie a blind and impetuous appetite some among them whose intellects were better imployed came by the knowledge of excellent things concerning God which they not only taught but left in writing as a witness to Posterity But to put all out of doubt the 20 verse speaks what I affirm plainly For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead c. Here you have an account what may be known of God by the Heathen who had neither revelation immediate to themselves nor handed to them from others by the Word heard or read viz. the eternal power and Godhead and that which they were condemned for ver 26. was not for not knowing or practising what had relation to the Mediator or not believing the word of promise which never was within the reach of their ears but for their miscarriages against God the Creator whom they might and ought to have known and acknowledged God is in his essential Being the invisible God but he was manifest among them How From the Creation of the World by the things that are made Take another Text for the confirmation of my Exposition of this Act. 14. 17. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave us rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons c. They were not without witness concerning the Divine Being and Attributes of Mercy and Goodness yet if the rain and fruitful Seasons were without them the witness was without them before it was within them But for the Quakers pretences of their conceits of Divine things to be by immediate inspiration of the Spirit to them when we hear of Pagans and Heathen who never had the least notice of or from the Scripture talk of Jesus Christ a crucified Redeemer and the Promises and Covenant of God we may a little listen to them but for a people who live where the Scriptures are so much known to talk Scripture-phrases and Gospel-phrases and then tell us they had it all by Divine revelation immediate to themselves is as ungrateful and foolish as for those who were born and bred in England and have learned their Mother-tongue from their childhood after 30 or 40 years to affirm they learned every word of it by immediate inspiration or could have known it as perfectly if man had never taught them while in the mean time those forem Languages they never heard spoken they can neither speak nor understand one sentence of if it would save the world Again Those Gospel-illuminations for the matter which are by immediate inspiration are beyond the utmost reach of our natural faculties of the mind though sanctified to attain by their improvement and therefore it is said to be 2 Tim. 3. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Divinely inspired It is not produced in the exercise of the rational faculties the Soul is purely passive or receptive therein and is to those illuminations as the wax is to the Seal according to 2 Pet. 1. 21. For the Prophesie came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 acted carried Some of them viz. the Prophetical part were so far from being attained by the use of natural faculties though sanctified that their very wills which are the first movers even in intelligent agents did not ordinarily so much as direct their understandings to the finding out the Truths which were revealed to them but when their thoughts in their present posture had no tendencie to any such particular things no more than a man in a deep sleep they were then moved by the Holy Ghost that whereas ordinarily they are fixed and bent to such or such ends by the humane will here the Divine will takes its place and doth all And for those Historical parts of the Scripture as of the Creation Fall of man written by Moses c. and the Doctrinal parts written by the Apostles c. although the things in general might be the scope and aim of their intentions yet the gale by which they were driven steadily and infallibly was not the utmost of their natural and sanctified and highest improved faculties but the supernatural guidance of the Divine Spirit whose product was like it self without the least stain or spot of humane frailty and weakness Whereas that illumination of the Spirit which in the kind of it is common to all Saints flows in by the Lords blessing on the improvement of their understandings and judgments whether on Creation Providence or matter divinely revealed without them originally viz. that contained in the Scripture which although their faith be resolved into and determined by yet the highest pitch of their spiritual understanding is raised by a right and sanctified ratiocination from those principles comparing spiritual things with spiritual And experience teacheth that though an idle loytâ—râ—r mâ—y grow giddy with empty swimming notions which are rather the disease of a spiritual pride and intoxication yet God doth mostly if not only bless those with high and solid illumnations who humbly wait on him and beg the concourse and assistance of the Father oâ— Lights and Spirit of Truth That God doth bless in such ways to the such illuminations of the Spirit is clear from this Scripture Heb. 5. 12 14. For when for the time ye ought to be Teachers ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the Oracles of God and are become such as have need of milk c. It was their sin which was rebuked as the cause of their ignorance and what that should be but their slothful unfaithfulness in the use of advantages I know not But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age this must not be understood of number of dayes but measure of knowledge even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil They were thus illuminated by the Spirit in the way of the use and exercise of their sanctified natural faculties and the Ordinances of God for that end If any Quaker shall say True we are illuminated not by study and poring as they call it on the Scripture or any thing else but have our knowledge without such carnal toil and the
sin in them or do at any time in any sort commit sin Slaying the Witness Disobeying the light within but especially a resolved rejecting it as our only Rule Teacher and Saviour Sons of God Only the Quakers Soul A part or measure of God Speaking in the Spirit By immediate Inspiration Spirit of Anti Christ That which leads to Forms though Christ's and Gospel-Forms All that opposes the light within to be Christ False Spirits They that ground their Doctrine on the Scripture or any mediate thing Spirit of Bondage Being under the power of any sin Spirit of God The light within every man God the Father Son Holy Ghost without distinction Spirit of the World Whatever is not conformable to the light within as Christ The Spiritual man Christ or Christ in every Quaker The Lord hath Spoken What comes to them by immediate inspiration The Lord hath not Spoken Whatever is not by immediate inspiration though it be written in the Scripture A true Christians State Being taught by God immediately not by the Letter The Statutes of God The Law in the heart or within They Steal my Word every one from his neighbour Teaching Doctrines as the Word of the Lord taken out of the Scripture Stoln words All that we have out of the Scriptures and not by immediate inspiration to our selves In the stilness An unactive attending to the light within Standing in the Counsels of God Conformity to the Teachings of the light within and abiding therein Studying for divine Knowledge what comes thereby from the Scripture Carnal toil birth and wisdom of the flesh  Scraping in the Scriptures The woman in Subjection Weakness must subject it self to the man Christ The Supper of the Lord. Spiritual joy or joy in the Spirit from the presence and influence of the light within all eating and drinking to God and in remembrance of Christ Sword of the Spirit Christ the light within  What is declared by immediate inspiration of the Spirit Synagogues of Satan The Assemblies of any sort of people for Divine Worship who are not Quakers T. Christ Tabernacling in the outward vessel Christs dwelling for a little time in the body born of the Virgin Mary The like of every Quaker Taking away the Tables All Forms and Books as useless in the things of God Taught of God Taught immediately from the light within Teachings of Men. All that is not immediately inspired though the sense and words of the Scripture Cease from man From the Teaching by man Outward Court of the Temple given to the Gentiles All Forms of Worship all visible Worship being the Worship of Heathens not of Christians Testifie to the light in the Conscience Appealing or speaking to Christ the light within Bearing Testimony to the light Declaring for and from the light within The Testimony and the Testaments Christ the light and Law within Thanksgiving Give Thanks in Spirit or inwardly Thieves and Robbers All that are Teachers by a mediate Call  All Ministers but the Quakers  All that walk by Scripture-light Traditions of men The Scripture or written-Word Trading with the Scripture Having maintenance for a Ministry Ministring from the Scripture or written-Word The Birth In Travel The time of wrestling betwixt convictions of the light within and perfection Trembling and Quaking The horrour and consternation that they are under from as they say the wrath of God while the flesh is judged and they are in the hell of condemnation which is all the hell they hold that I can find and this trembling and quaking they say is such as Moses and other Prophets were seized with at the appearance of God The Truth No other but Christ the light within Speaking Truth Truly When it is spoken from immediate inspiration and motion of the Spirit but however true without these it is falsly spoken Witnessing to the Truth Declaring or suffering for the light within and its dictates V. The flesh of the Vail The Body wherein Christ dwelt and tabernacled which for a while he took of the Virgin Mary but at the death of that left it no body knows where The Vail is over them The belief of the man Christ Jesus which was of our nature to be the Christ and now existing in Heaven in that body of flesh of our nature which he took of the Virgin Mary The Vessel The Body wherein for a while Christ dwelt also our bodies Victory over the Devil Sin Flesh World Perfection in this life resulting from the travail of the light within In the Vnbelief Not acknowledging the light within to be the onely Teacher and Saviour whatever the faith and life otherwise may be The Vncircumcised and Vnclean All that are not Quakers Vngodly The same Vnlearned and without Vnderstanding To be without the light within its teachings and immediate revelations The Voice of the Lord. The secret immediate lively touches and teachings within W. Hirelings serving for Wages Ministers who receive maintenance little less then Robbery at least very Jewish and Antichristian Wait on the light Desisting from a search after Truth by any external means and passively attending to the motions and teachings within Watch to the light To be so listning and attentive to the inward teachings as not either to let slip any of its motions or reject them Blinde-Watchmen Those Ministers who see and warn by Scripture-light and not their light within Watch to the Morning To be diligent to observe and improve the first breakin gs forth of the power of the light within The Way CHRIST The way of Truth Those into which they are led by the pure light within The Whore of Babylon All forms of Worship visible Worship all that is believed or practiced from the written Word Will of God The commands from within from the light Will of Man Will of the Flesh All that we Chuse by the direction of the understanding or in which the humane faculties have any thing to do Will-worship What ever Worship is not from the motions of the light within Children of Wisdom The Quakers born to the light within We Witness We experience we speak it from the testimony and feeling of the light and motions within And Pen saith This is right witnessing to witness what they experience But they that testifie what they believe from the Scriptures and right rational demonstrations go by hear-say and reports but cannot witness it The Word The Word of God No other but Christ the Eternal God The Word of the Lord. The secrets of the Work of God The inward power and motions neither wrought nor perceived by or with the use of the humane understanding and will Righteousness of works Whatever man hath any hand in or doth Chuse The World All that are not Quakers Worship in Spirit Not the Worship where the heart and will goes along with the outward appearance but what is from the motions of the light within Wrath of God Day of Wrath. The inward judgings and terrours by
the light Christ within and that in this world The Writings when spoken diminishingly The Scriptures or written Word I have the witness of my Conscience that I have not in this Key in any measure abused or wronged the Quakers but have declared what in their Writings and verbal Converse I have found to be true and could have proved by particular instances but for being too large And for that they who weigh what is written in the body of the Book may find satisfaction in the most if not all of them THE CONCLVSION I Have not in this Treatise dealt with the more minute and light Errors and Absurdities of the Quakers because they would amount to too large a Volume for this Subject and I love not to tythe Mint Annis and Cummin where weightier matters call forth my thoughts Where the Lord shall make what hath been written convincing and effectual those Superstructures and Appendices of the conceit of Perfection denying the sober use of civil Ceremonies unnecessary scrupling at modest Ornaments Pedantick Words Phrases and Gestures obstinate Jewish and Ceremonious respect to this or that place for Worship and a multitude more will quickly and easily dissolve of themselves I doubt not but all whose Judgments are not in Captivity to the silliest Errors will conclude with me that Quakerism is no Christianity yea Not consistent with Christianity being no more capable of dwelling together in one Breast than light and darkness in their absolute and supream Dominion I am perswaded that all who have honest meanings among the Quakers little think that in turning to Quakerism they turn Christianity out of Doors yet it is a truth a sad truth that calls for more serious notice than themselves or most others afford it who profess and that sincerely a love to Truth and Souls My greatest discouragement in writing this Treatise was from the sense of the Quakers being out of the reach of Scripture and Reason to almost or altogether a spiritual delirium Yet I was not without some encouragement from my hopes that the Lord would bless it to the informing and securing of many whose feet are yet out of their snare I have not a little been amazed to read in their Authors such Expressions as prompt us to devest our selves of being men that we may be Christians As if Rational and Spiritual God and the Scriptures Understanding and Christianity were mortal foes I intended a Chapter by it self to demonstrate Quakerism to be no Christianity from its excluding right Reason any thing called Reason from having to do in the search after Christianity its choice Defence or Approbation I care not if I collect a few for my Readers satisfaction Quest How do you manifest this inward foundation which you say is Christ to be the true and only foundation which God hath laid Answ From the feeling we have of it by which we know that it is sure in us and from the sure and certain knowledge which we have of it in the feeling we manifest it from its own Nature and Being to its own Nature and Being You may here perceive what a reasonable Religion the Quakers is whose demonstration is nothing else but sense and feeling and this sense and feeling nothing is capable of but the very nature and being of this Foundation He proceeds further pag. 65. Quest And can none have true faith unto salvation and life Eternal but such as are of your Opinion Answ We are not in any Opinion but in the principle of Life by which we are saved and receives life and in this state we stand not in any Opinion but in a feeling of life and salvation for all opinions are in notions and apprehensions in which none feels the life and salvation in Christ but what they apprehend in the natural part unto that they give up their own belief and soâ—rrs from the life in themselves and neither believs unto salvation nor receives Eternal Life Smitâ— prim p. 61. I shall not trouble you with an explanation of these uncouth Phrases you may turn to the Key and resolve your selves Sure iâ—…is be the way to understand truths we may caâ—hiere our understandings and judge the most ensual to have most of the Spirit Mr. Pen is much of the same mind He calls those disputing from the Scriptures Dry-cavilling letter-mongers Penington is a little ingenious when he saith in his Questions concerning Vnity pag. 4. Wherein confess my heart exceedingly despised them and cannot wonder that any wise man did or doth yet deâ—pise them Speaking of the way the Quakers have to get Proselytes being without rational demonstations This is far from the Apostes Doctrine and Practise who demonstrated by Reason that Jesus was the Christ who reasoned with Foelix and exhorts to be ready to give a â—eason of the hope that is in us to every one that â—â—all ask us I expect some Replies to my Book agreeable to this irrational humour But I desire those who shall think fit to undertake an Answer that they would not play the Rats and knaw here and there a scrap leaving the grand designs and Demonstrations of it untouched I do assure them I am not arrived â—et in my own Opinion to such a perfection but I am willing to learn from even my Adversary although I must likewise acknowledge I am not very big with expectation from the Quakers power of convincing But if they shall instead of answering fill some sheets with personal reproaches and reflections which do not render the things asserted more or less true I bless God I am too much above them to be moved and have cast up my accounts of those costs before I began this building If they shall deny what I charge them with in my Book they must discard their Authors I quote or prove I give not the sense of their words I shall be glad of the former and I fear not the later I desire the Quakers from henceforth if they will maintain Moral honesty even such as many Heathens were possessed of that they would no more call themselves Christians until they fall under another Conversion for it is gross Hypocrisie and Cheating if not of themselves yet of others And although some of them have scorned my Prayers and told me they hated I should pray for them I shall love them with so much benevolence as to â—eg of God to convince them of the Truth by this or what means he pleaseth that they may â—ot only be loved of the truly good with goodwill but also delight but above all that they may glorifie God on Earth in a better way and enjoy God in Heaven to a greater blessedness than their Principles express I have done But let every maâ— prove his own work and then shall he have rejoycing in himself alone and not in another FINIS Luk. 14. 23. Rom. 1. 14. Mat. 6. 23. 1 Cor. 4. 4. Jer. 10. 23. §. 1. §. 2. §. 1. Mat. 28 18 Phil. 2. 10 11.