almost only of This Inward Light In which I perceived 1. That you falsly intimate that we deny the necessity of an inward light when as we maintain that the external light of the Word alone is not sufficient without the inward light of the Spirit 2. You there intimate to us a supposed sufficiency of the inward light that every man in the world hath Concerning which I shall say more anon and now only demand of you 1. Whether you mean it is sufficient to leave men without excuse That we maintain as well as you or is every mans light sufficient to his salvation If so Q. 2. Was it sufficient before Christ preached the Gospel and sent his Apostles Or is it now sufficient to all that never heard the Gospel If so Is not the Gospel a vain and needlesse thing or are you Christians that dare so affirm Q. 3. If the world have sufficient light what need they your teaching or discourse or conviction Q. 4. If all have sufficient light within them what need there any converting grace Q. 5. Then why did Christ send Paul to open mens eyes and to turn them from darknesse to light if they had sufficient light before Act. 26. 18. Q 6. I pray you do not disdain to tell me when you have rub'd your eyes if all men have sufficient light within them Why you got up into the Judgement seat and pronounced me so oft to be in darknesse and to be void of the light and to have none of the Spirit If all have it why may not I have it But let me tell you further in your ear that we that you so frantickly bawl against have read Bellarmine and other Papists so oft that we cannot be ignorant who are your Teachers though your selves are ignorant We know how earnestly the Jesuites would perswade us that there is a light in every mans conscience which if he improve and husband well God is bound to give such additions as shall make it become saving and that by the good use of natural light men may certainly get supernatural and that it is in mens own power what light soever they have to improve it to salvation Your 11th Query is Whether we have seen Gods face Ans. Whether these be Learning or Teaching or quarrelling or doting Questions I leave to your consideration but what Call you had to propound them to such Serpents Dogs and Children of the devil as you call us I know not But however I 'le answer you truly 1. By the eye of reason I have seen that there is a God and that he is infinite incomprehensible most great and most good c. 2. The same I have seen more cleerly by the eyes of faith 3. But I never saw God by the eye of flesh for none can so see God and live Nor hath any man seen God at any time saving the only begotten Son who is in the bosome of his Father he hath declared him 4. Nor have I seen him in glory intuitively or as the glorified in heaven do If you say you have seen more I shall not be very forward to beleeve you till I see better fruits of it I also therefore demand of you Whether he that hath seen God do not abhor himself as Iob did in dust and ashes and whether the true knowledge of God do not ever abase the soul and make a man very mean in his own eyes And then is it likely that ever those men had the true knowledge of God who make it their businesse to exalt themselves as having the Spirit and beign perfect without sin and to revile and bedung other men with their reproaches as being all the Children of the devil and of darknesse that be not of their strain and rave not as they do The Pharisee that thanked God he was not as other men nor as the Publicane spoke humbly and modestly in comparison of you and yet was he counted a proud self-justifier If ever you come to the least saving sight of God it will mightily change the proud strain of your spirits and make you abhor the thoughts of your present evil waies Your 12. Query is Whether we have the same infallible Spirit as the holy men of God had that spoke forth the Scriptures Ans. Why must you know this Are all Dogs and Serpents with you that have not that Infallible Spirit But we hear the croakings of your Papist guides in that word Infallible that's the pillar of their Kingdom and the master-point of their New Religion That their Church is infallible For denying which Knot the Jesuite against Chillingworth and a late â—otable gawdy Orator S. W. against Dr Hammond and others of them would fain perswade us that we subvert Christianity and are little better then Infidels because we are not Infallible But I will answer you and your Masters together in a word 1. The Prophets and Apostles had infallible Inspirations of new matters of divine verity not before revealed because they were to be Gods penmen and Messengers of such New Revelations I have none such that I know of 2. The Prophets and Apostles were guided infallibly in the manner as well as the matter so that every word that they wrote to the Churches was infallibly true I have no such Infallibility nor your Grandfather the Pope neither He may erre while he pretendeth to the greatest Infallibility in deciding Controversies 3. What man soever he be in the world that beleeves any Truth he doth infallibly believe it For he that is in the right is not deceived so far and he that is not mistaken is so farre infallible which is no more then non fallitur 4. But if by Infallibility you should mean the clearnesse and subjective Certainty as distinct from the objective and the bare truth of our conceptions then I say that 's another thing then Infallibility and not to be so called and of that Certainty men have different degrees All true Christians are certain of their Fundamentals yet sometime with some doubting so that they may finde cause to say with the Apostles Lord Increase our Faith or We beleeve help thou our unbelief But in lesser controverted Points which Salvation dependeth not on the best man on earth may erre much more be uncertain So that in a word Every Church in sensu composite while a Church is infallible in the essentials of Christianity and so is every true Christian And also they know infallibly every other truth that indeed they know because Truth is Truth whether they know it or not and when they do know it they are not deceived But in many things we all erre because we know but in part and so farre are deceived Well I say still Fair fall the honest humble Christian that will confesse with Paul that we know but in part For I shall never like pretenders to un-erring Infallibility more I know but two such pretenders and they are both the most abominable deceivers and deceived
but prepare too many for a further progresse Seekers Ranters Familists and now Quakers and too many professed Infidels do spring up from among you as if this were your Journeys end and the perfection of your Revolt And it is your Churches and those that lean toward you that presently receive the Doctrines of the deceiver and are the stream in which some others with them are carried away You may see you cannot hold your followers when you have them Your work is blasted You labour in vain nay worse then in vain You do but prepare men for flat Heresie and Apostacy I have heard yet from the severall parts of the Land but of very few that have drunk in this venome of the Ranters or Quakers but such as have first been of your opinions and gone out at that door The rest are but here and there a young person that was not noted for any great matter of Religiousnesse or only liked it and inclined to your waies And if any others be seduced the evil ariseth from among you and from your Graduats do they receive their taint as yours do from the Papists and the great Deceiver Is it your Ministry or ours that they bend their force against Is it not part of their present businesse to do your work and cry down Infant-Baptism One of the Queres which they here put to me is What expresse Scripture I have for Infant Baptism which I must shew without consequences or else confesse my self a false Prophet And another tendeth to prove us no true Churches The Quakers then are Separatists and Antipaedobaptists though more I speak not this to reproach you but to minde you of the tendency of all your endeavours that you may seriously as before the Lord consider whether he do not witnesse from Heaven against you and your waies by giving up your followers to such abominations as since the daies of the Nicolaitans and the rest of the Gnosticks the Sun hath not seen at least so openly and commonly owned Have you well considered into what your Societies were resolved in Germany and other parts And do you well consider what fruits they here bring forth and now likely they are to be shortly quite corrupted if a speedy stop be not made and what it is that you have done to the Church of God and how much it is beholden to you for the prosperity of truth and piety Is it like to be Gods way which so ordinarily leadeth to end endeth in such desperate evils I make not this my first or chief argument against you but it 's a considerable second and should make wise men at least suspicious of such a course Nor would I thus argue from the Apostacy of a few or upon some unusuall accident but when such hath been the Fate of the stream of your party from the very first rising of them in the world to this day I think it not inconsiderable Nor would I thus argue from any temporall judgement or oppression by a persecuting Enemy for I know that is no such signe of Gods displeasure But if I suspect whether those persons are in a way pleasing to God whom I see him so usually deliver up to Satan I hope I may be excused Certainly Gods Churches are the places of his Blessing and his Delight And certainly such spirituall plagues as our eyes now behold are as evident Notes of Gods heavy displeasure as men can expect to see on earth And we have the more reason yet to be suspicious that this is Gods disowning of your way and Testimony from heaven against it in that he followed the first Hereticks the Simonians and their followers with the same kinde of judgements and by such fearful desertions did then witnesse his detestation of those that withdraw from the Unity of his Church And it is very remarkable that it is a pretence of our Impurity and of a greater purity with you that is pleaded by those that first turn over to you and that this height of all impieties should be the usuall issue of a way pretended so exact and clean Doubtlesse it is none of Gods minde by this to discourage any from Purity and true Reformation but to shew his Detestation of that spirituall pride which makes men have too high thoughts of themselves and too much to contemn others and to desire to be further separated from them then God in the Day of grace doth allow of Where the Tares of ungodly men are such as cannot be pulled up and cast out of the Church without danger of pulling up and casting out some of the Wheat even the weakest true Believers with them there God would have us let both grow together till the time of harvest But these proud men will stand at a further distance and will dislike Gods gracious cealings with sinners and their eye is evil because he is good and they will not grow in the same Field or Church where such Tares do grow but will transplant themselves and remove from the field because God will not pluck up the Tares especially if any Ministerial neglect of Discipline be conjoyned as too commonly it is and in stead of blaming their own pride and misunderstanding of Gods merciful dealings with sinners they lay the blame on the corruption of the Church and call it A Field of Tares and not of Wheat In one word it is most evident that spiritual Pride doth turn most men from us to you and that this is the very sinne that undoes such a multitude of Professors of Religiousness and which hath let in all Gods Judgements upon us and the sinne which he is now witnessing against from Heaven As none more like to Christ then the humble that are mean in their own eyes and compassionate to others so none are more like to the devil then the proud that think highly of themselves and contemptuously of others And the better the thing is that they are proud of the worse is their pride in this respect that it is the setting up of Gods pretious mercies against him and the building of Satans house with Christs materials The Pharisees Liturgy is of too frequent use in the Separated Congregations I thank thee O God that I am not as other men are c. nor even as this Publicane He that maketh us to differ from other men and expecteth thanks for his differencing grace doth yet abhorre a proud ostentaiton of it and a diminutive esteem of his smallest mercies unto others and all proud desires that they should be thrust below us further then he hath appointed It is the good of sinners and the honour of God that is the end of discipline and not that we might personally be extolled and judged of above what is meet I beseech you take this plain Admonition in good part from a Desirer of your Recovery and Salvation Richard Baxter An Answer to a young unsetled Friend who before inclining strongly to Anabaptistry at last fell in with
once accomplish this fully and separate the people from their Pastors and so assault the people alone or with weak and unlearned Teachers only they might then easily bear down all before them and one Popish Friar or Jesuite would non-plus five hundred of our most famous Sectmasters They remember yet that it was the disgracing of the Popish Clergy partly by their own notorious ignorance and vitiousness and partly by our perswading men that the Pope is Antichrist which was the main advantage which the Reformers had for the ruining of the Papall Kingdom And therefore they would partly in Policy and partly in Revenge attempt the destruction of our Churches by the same means These Papists seeing the temper of our foresaid unsetled Professors do creep in among them and use their utmost skill to unsettle them more and bring them into dislike of their Teachers without which they have no hope of succeeding Their first waies are by reproaching the setled government of the Church and by drawing men to separation and Anabaptism and then perswading them that these are glorious Truths of God which their former Teachers are unable to receive and that they are but a blinde self-seeking proud sort of men that would enthrall all men to their judgements when they are in utter darkness themselves When they have gotten them but thus farre once to despise their guides then do they proceed further with them and perswade them that they that were blinde in the points of Baptism and Church-order are so in other things as well as that and that this light which they have seen already is but a spark and that these being daies of glorious discoveries there are yet more and greater matters to be revealed Hereupon they put a handsome dresse upon many of the grossest points of Popery and recommend these as the new and rare discoveries But this they do not in the Name and garb of Papists but as the Popish Jew at New-castle they turn Anabaptists and then rise a step higher and leade others after them so that the silly people shall never know that it is Papists that are their Leaders yea they will cry out of the Pope and call all that differs from them Antichristian purposly to divert suspicions and blinde mens eyes Thus these Papists have begotten this present Sect of Quakers first pretending to strange Revelations Visions and Trances such as are commonly mentioned in the lives of their Saints in the Legends And so you have here and there a Papist lurking to be the chief Speaker among them and these have fashioned many others to their turns to supplie their rooms who yet know not their own Fathers And so the Quakers among us are The ignorant proud giddie sort of Professors first made Separatists or Anabaptists and perhaps more for the most part of them and then drawn futher by Popish subtlety and now headed with some secret dissembling Friars and by them and by the devil enraged against the Ministers of Christ and set upon the propagating of the substance of Popery If You ask me how I know that it is Papists who thus seduce them I answer 1. Because they do the Papists work and maintain their cause as far as yet they dare venture to bring it forth I could tell you of abundance of Popery that the Quakers and Behmenists maintain As that the Pope is not Antichrist which is at least to their advantage whether Popery or not and the disgracing and secret undermining the sufficiency of the Scripture the decrying of the Ministry the unchurching of our Churches the slieghting of Justification by Imputed Righteousnesse and drawing men to the admiration of their inherent righteousnesse and of their works the crying up the light within us and the sufficiency of common revelation the setting up the strength of mans free-will the asserting the necessity of a Judge of Controversie above Scripture which they are content should be the Spirit of Revelations a while till they can boldlier exchange that for the Pope the extolling of Monasticall Community and Virginity and alienation from worldly emploiments the doctrine of Perfection without sinne in this life with many more of the like nature All this the Papists have taught the Quakers If You say They might learn it without them I would ask you whether in all these great Points you think the Papists are righter then the Reformed Churches If you say they be speak out and confess your self a Papist If You say they be not then who think you should reveal all this Poperie to the Quakers Not the Spirit of God for he is not the Authour of Poperie or any falshood If it were the devil then it seems that Poperie and the Quakers Faith is hatched by the Prince of darknesse And whether it were Frias or Devils or both that make Quakers it 's not worth the while to dispute as long as we know that it is Poperie that they hold and the devil befriendeth it Perhaps You will say That they hold many certain Truths they cry down Pride and Drunkennesse and worldlinesse and cry up Mortification and Charitie and Humilitie I answer And do not we do so as well as they These are Points where we are agreed with the Papists Do You think that God would extraordinarily send these men to preach down the very same sinnes which are commonly preacht down alreadie better then they can do it by those men whom they reproach All that is good among them is only that which is as common among us and I hope a little better maintained and managed And all that wherein they differ from us is their Popish and heretical errours 2. But to give you further satisfaction it is known by certain proof that it is the Papists that do seduce and head them Many of themselves have confest such things and their present industrie among us is well known which that they may proceed in with lesse impediment they are the Zealous Defendors of Universall Toleration or Libertie for Propagating soul-poysoning Doctrines for all the torments of the Inquisition in other Countreys Have you not seen a Sheet of Paper Published by M. Prin Containing an Oath of a Citizen of Bristol taken before the Magistrates of that Citie I will transcribe You the Deposstion lest You have not seen it The Information of George Cowlishaw of the City of Bristol Ironmonger taken the 22. Day of Januarie 1654. WHo informeth on his Oath that in the Moneth of September last this Informant had some Discourse in Bristol with one M. Coppinger an Irish man formerly a Schoolfellow of his that came thither purposely for his passage into Ireland who told this Informant that he had lived in Rome and Italy eight or nine years and had taken upon him the Order of a Friar of the Franciscan Company And he told this Informant that he had been at London lately for some Moneths and whilest he was there he had been at all the Churches and Meetings Publike
which it replied to and yet so farre belived those that bad that he owned his Name at it Having received in your first Letters almost nothing but some Sheets of Thou Serpent Viper thou Childe of the Devil thou Son of perdition thou dumb dog thou false hireling thou false Liar Deceiver greedy dog thou ravening Wolf thou cursed hypocrite with much more of the like I returned you no Reply as confessing my self not so well skilled in that language and learning as you are And for the dunghil-heaps of false accusations annexed I passe them by as being well known to be impudent slanders Such as my upholding acoursed Prelatical Government false worship c. for which you dare say the vengance of the Lord is against me while you instance only one word of a Paper of mine wherein I moved that men be restrained from preaching against the Essentials or Foundamentals of Christianity which one of you tels me is a restraining men from speaking any more in Christs name and a persecuting Christs Ministers we may see what Christianity and Christs Ministers are in your account who take it for such damnable enmity to Christ for a man to be restrained from Preaching that there is no Christ or from reproaching him I doe not think if I had desired that men should be restrained from calling you damnable Hereticks or the Bastards of the Papists that you would have been so froward as to have said that herein I was your Enemy Nor do I think you would have taken it for any dangerous restraint to the Liberty of their Consciences But Christ will deal justly with you though you deal unjustly with him and his When your Praters were here I desired to know the further ground of all these heavy accusations that must prove me a childe of the devil a greedy dumb dog a Son of perdition with all the rest And I could have no proof of all but this That I was called Master That I stood in a high place to preach and that I studied and that I preached by an hour-glasse and so would limit the Spirit if I had it and that I took money for Tythes False doctrine and worship I was charged with in general but not one word of instance in any particular that I can remember To these charges I shall give you some account anon When I had received your 24 Queries I sent you my Answer that if you would but subscribe your consent that I should come to your meeting and answer them all by word of mouth without disturbance and you would receive what was made plain to your selves to be the Truth I was willing to come over to that end This motion you detest and reject with a Sheet of further Revilings in the same-language as the first were I hope you will not take it ill if I reply not in that grinning or barking Rhetorick For if I be a dumb dog you cannot expect that I should equal you in snarling or barking or howling But have you not bewraied your deceitfulnesse in refusing to consent that I should come and answer your Questions Do not you shew by this that you are children of the Darkenesse and the Works of darknesse you are carrying on When you hate the Light because your Deeds are Evil Why would you send me Queries which you would not give me leave to answer by Speech What was it that you feared But in stead of this you charge and command me in the Name of the most high God to answer them in writing that you may publish them with your Reply if need be But when I desired to see the Commission by which you claim this Authority you shew me none but tell me It is invisible And may not all the world command me on these terms as well as you In stead of admitting me to answer in your Congregation some of you came over taking a time when the Lord had shut me up by sicknesse and could not go to the publique meeting to make a disturbance in our Assembly Mar. 25. and to try your Rhetorick on the mindes of People in this place whereupon it pleased the Magistrate to binde one of you to the good behaviour for the publique Disturbance and railing at the Magistrate And upon this you send another paper with an outcry against us as persecutors when you might know that I was not concerned in the businesse and when indeed no man did so much as once ask my advice in it But as for them that did it I dare no more accuse them of persecution then I dare accuse them for persecution who shall burn a Thief in the hand Alas what impatient soules are you to cry out so much of persecution when many a poor-scold is duck in the Gumble-stool for words more incomparably sweet and Lamb-like then yours I shall now come to say somewhat to your Papers and first give you a word of my reason why I may not answer them so punctually in order and word by word as you command me to do 1. Because I dare not be guilty of losing so much precious time 2. Because I have much more profitable work to do though you accuse me for Idlenesse because I do not dig or thresh when yet your Praters when they were here did neither dig nor thresh any more then I nor do I hear that they do elsewhere as they follow their seducing imployment 3. Because you have heapt up non-sence vain repetitions and confusions so as to answer you accordingly would be of small use to any and would but prove me to be like your selves Many more Reasons I overpasse There is not a scold in all the Countrey but may as honestly and reasonably command me in the Name of God to come and scold with them in the Market-place as you may Command me thus to answer your scurrilous scolding Papers Yet you shall have no Cause to complain that I have overpassed any thing that 's worthy to be regarded YOur first Query is What 's the first Principle of the pure Religion To which I answer 1. That God is and next that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11. 6. 2. Do you ask this as Learners No that you renounce Or as Teachers Why then do you not shew your Commission to teach And why do you not plainly Teach but ask Questions Or do you ask it for matter to feed your prating and slandring Your second Query is Whether they are a Church of Christ that beat and persecute them that witnesse forth the Truth in his Name c. Answ. Doubtlesse it 's possible for a true Church to be guilty of injuries But you have as little cause to put this Question as the Turk hath What would you answer if a Iew or a Turk or a Witch should put this Question Is it a true Church that persecuteth them that witnesse the truth Surely it 's nothing to you who witnesse abominable falshoods and dreames 2.
36 37 38. But I pray you if an hourglasse be unlawful tell us whether a Clock be lawful or a Diall or a Watch or whether it be lawful to observe by the Sun how the time passeth and why one is more unlawful then another But your Prater told me it was a limiting of the Spirit of God As if I cannot limit my self and not limit the Spirit Or as if the Spirit excluded Reason and Prudence and set a mans tongue a going so that he cannot stop it Did the Apostles stint the Spirit because they appointed their meetings on the Lords Day and did not stay two or three daies together why then may not we resolve upon an hour as well as they did on a day For one is limiting as well as the other I think if I had your Spirit to liquor my tongue I should be angry at the hourglasse and preach the people of out the place And for a Text 1. Know you not that Christ himself took a Text Luk. 4. and applied it Know you not that it was then the common practice of the Church to reade expound and apply the Scriptures as Ezra did Know you not that there is Doctrine Reason and Use in all the Sermons and Epistles of the Apostles Know you not that we are commanded rightly to divide the Word of Truth as workmen that need not be ashamed and to study thereto 2 Tim. 2. 15. Ah wretched souls that dare so blindely cavill with the work of God For what you say of a carnall Bell it is like the rest which I before answered not fit for the mouth of a reasonable creature to have mentioned But I must tell you that our Bels are not carnall if they were they would scarce sound so well or last so long If your meaning be that you would have us baptize our Bels to make them spirituall as your ghostly Fathers of Rome do we will keep our carnall Bels till we know more reason for that practice The 23. Qu. is this Whether are not they that bear rule by their means and seeks for their gain from their quarter and seeks for the sleece and makes a prey upon the people and are hirelings be not false Prophets yea or nay and whether such be not to be cried out against now as they were then Answ. To this I have sufficiently answered already to your Brethren in my other book Only let me tell you 1. It is a most certain thing that God allowed the Priests the Tythes and much more when he thus cried out against them Dare you deny that If you dare not confesse then that it was not the meer taking of Tyches that caused God so to rebuke them Reade but Mal. 2d the 3d without Spectacles and then judge It 's most evident then that the thing that God condemneth was not taking Tythes but covetous greedy desires after gain and neglecting the good of souls and the work of God And are not we as willing to cast such out as you are to reproach them Whether we seek theirs or them and whether we are not willing to spend and be spent for the salvation of our people we must be tried by a more righteous Judge then you Your 23. Qu. is Whether do you own trembling and quaking which the Scripture witnesseth Ans. I own the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisedom and think him blessed that feareth alwaies and that he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief But I think that the great Quaking that was in the Army of the Philistines was no vertue or blessing to them nor any sign of God among them 1 Sam. 14. 15. And I think that Perfect love costeth out fear and that those shakings and quakings that come not from the humble sence of sin or Judgement or the like but in violent motions of the body affectedly are either Papisticall tricks of deceit or effects of Phantastical conceit or the motions of the great deceiver within you I read of it as one of Gods curses that The Lord should give them a trembling heart Deut. 28. 65. And I am of opinion that the curse is fallen upon you which is written Psa. 69. 23. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not and make their loins continually to shake Gods Kingdom is Righteousnesse Peace and Joy in the holy Ghost Your 24. and last Qu. is Whether do you say you shall be free from the body of sin while you are on the earth and whether shall any be perfect yea or nay Ans. I beleeve that all true Converts are free from the dominion of sinne but not from the remnants of it And that our grace is of a perfect kinde as a small Candle is of a perfect kinde of fire which yet will not enlighten all the Town or House nor scatter away all the darknesse as the Sun will do I beleeve also that in the instant of death when we part with the flesh we part with all the remnants of sinne And for the Doctrine of personal sinlesse perfection here I beleeve the devil the greatest sinner bred it the Pharisee received the foretastes and preparatives to it the Hereticks and Papists first entertained and cherished it Christ detesteth it and never man that knew himself or had one spark of true grace and Christian experience did to this day heartily believe it of himself And I think that it is a part of the Papists dung which they have taught you to feed upon Christs Kingdom is an Hospitall he hath no Subjects in it but diseased ones The Fathers Kingdom before had perfect Subjects and so shall it have again when Christ hath perfected us For when he hath perfected us by healing all our diseases and subduing all our enemies even the last Enemy Death at the Resurrection then will he give up the Kingdom to the Father But now In many things we offend all Jam. 3. 2. and there is no man on earth that doth good and sinneth not And if we say we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us therefore the truth is not in you Quakers I conclude my Answer with this Question to you If you think you are perfect without sin whether do you also think that you are already in Heaven or perfect glory For what can keep the soul from the perfect enjoyment of God but sinne And to enjoy God perfectly is to be glorified perfectly But I forgot that your Brethren think Heaven and hell is only within men Perhaps you look for no more Heaven then you have And I wonder not at it For if you did in the way you are in you are no more likely ever to finde it then Darknesse is to have communion with light or Belial with Christ The Lord give Repentance unto life to those of you that have not sinned unto death and shew you another Heaven before you are out of reach of it and a further Hell before you are