Spirit which also may be confirmed by the Testimony of the Scriture of Truth As to those which thou sets down as our Tenents I shall answer on the Lords behalf for Truthes sake and for the rest thou may take them home to thy self First concerning the Trinity thou saith they confesse the Father Son and Holy Ghost and yet they deny the Trinity and those to bet hree distinct Persons for confutation of this thou brings Heb. First and third He is the expresse Image of his Fathers Person Thy Trinity is an old Popish term and we love to keep to sound words but by Trinity I suppose thou means three and thy own words shall confute thee thou confesseth we say there is Father Son and Holy Ghost and yet but one God or one Eternal being or substance in which they all subsist but thy word distinct is thy own and not the Spirits yet to distinguish betwixt Father Son and Spirit we deny not and as for the first of Heb it is in another Translation rendred the expresse Image of his substance for Person is too grosse a word as to expresse an Eternal and Divine being in and if thou do hold three distinct substances thou errs in thy Judgement for that were to make three Gods Secondly They deny Christ to be God and man in one Person and Christ to be a distinct Person from the Father and they acknowledge such a Christ as unchrists Christ and when they say Christ manifest in the flesh they mean not as the Scripture but falaciously Answ. We say according to the Scripture of Truth and not according to thy falacy that in the man Christ did the fulness of the Godhead dwell and God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself and he saith I and my Father are one and the Father the Son and the Spirit subsist in one Eternal Power Life and Glory which thou with all thy stupid generation are Ignorant of and Christ that we acknowledge is such a Christ as is able to save to the utmost them that come unto him and receive him and believe in him and is such a Christ is as able to raise them that have been dead and such a Christ giveth Eternal life to them that believe And so that Christ that we own doth not un-christ Christ but by your Doctrine who pleads imperfection and the continuation thereof and a continuation in sin for term of life as one of thy own said sin will dwell in the house till the house be pulled down speaking of the natural body which some other of thy own Generation have called the body of sin and so it is you that hold such a Christ as unchrists the true Christ in thy own words and when didst thou enter into our thoughts and into our heart or with what dost thou search that thou sits as Judge over the heart who knowes not judgement in thy self nor of what spirit thou art of and so thy lies and deceit is turned upon thee when we say Christ manifest in the flesh we say that holy thing which was brought forth and born of a Virgin and conceived of the Holy Ghost in whom the fulness of the God-head dwells in whom the Eternal Power of the Father was manifested that he was the Christ which was manifested in the flesh and Justified in the Spirit Preached among the Gentiles seen of Angels and received up into Glory and this is according to Scripture of Truth and thy judgement must be judged Thirdly Concerning the Scripture considered as the rule of Life They deny the Scripture or written word to be the rule of life and they make the Spirit without the Scripture to be their guide they account Chyrch instituted worship and waiting upon God for the Efficacious presâ—nce and operation of the Spirit of Grace in the Ministry of the Word and Sacrament for conversion and edification to be Iâ—â—latry and the Political order of Church Officers and members they affirm to be an Image Answ. Concerning the Scripture we say they are Scriptures of Truth and words of Truth spoken from the Spirit or Truth that which gave them a being is greater then they as he that Creates is greater then they that arâ— Created which is preferred above and before and yet no Deminishing or Detracting from the Creature so the Spirit is greater above and before the words and yet this doth not Deminish neither Derogate from the Scripture these and the like sound words we have spoken to thy deaf Generation yet a spirit of slumber being upon them all they could not hear that which giveth Life and bringeth to Life and preserves in the Life is a rule and a guide to them that are enlivened the Sons of God who were quickned by the Eternal Spirit of their Father of Christ and raised from death to Life this was their rule as it is written as many as are the Sons of God are led by the Spirit of God and we say it is a sufficient rule of it self and thou may as well count the rule of the Sons of God Hetrodox and Heretical and the Apostles position who said as many as are the Sons of God are led by it and Christ promised unto believers the Spirit of Truth to lead them into all Truth and to bring things to their remembrance and to guide them in the path of Righteousness what has Envy and madness eaten all the good out of your hearts Yet the Scripture is not so excluded by us as thou Judgest though we say the Spirit may lead and direct with it or without it yet not contrary to it for the Spirit doth will and may take up what thing it pleaseth to manifest it self and its mind unto the Creature and who art thou and what art thou any thing but an Egyptian who would limit it and tie it to Paper and Ink to words and Syllables sounded and written in diverse Tongues Languages and Caracters they that appointed thee for a Minister never knew Gods Work and we know that there are several Ministrations and several operations yet the same God and the same Spirit who manifested it self and formeth and Ordaineth things according to its Heavenly will to represent its Heavenly mind to the Creature and that which Christ hath Ordained and Instituted to be worshipped in waited in and his presence seen in and the operation of the Spirit of Grace in the work of the Ministry which is for Conversion and Edification is dearly owned by us as that whereby we have found the Lord and his pure presence through this or that thing and without and beyond all Creatures or visible appearances and this is not accounted Idolatry by us as thou falsly saith which God will Judge thee for in the day when he appears to take vengeance upon his Enemies in flames of fire and thou that talkes of trying the Spirit by the Letter knowes no more of God then a Horse but what thou knowes naturally the
Wisdom stands and life Eternal And what is this Hetrodox to profess perfection of degrees in this life is not this Orthodox used not you and do not you generally hold perfection in part or parts and is not that which is perfect in parts perfect in degrees He that feels victory over one sin by Christ the Power of God hath not he some part in that which is perfect and of that which is perfect And if he witness victory over more is he not come to a greater degree or degrees of the life which is perfect And he that knows the blood that cleanseth from all sin is not he perfect and compleat in him who hath made him so But art thou so offended at perfection that thou dost not admit of any part or parts degree or degrees thereof that thou sets this down as a Blasphemy And its time indeed to reprove you sharply who are puffed up in pride and knows nothing who teaches contrary to the perfect life of Christ or any degree or degrees thereof to be attained unto thou art perfect in wickednesse and a perfect Minister of Antichrist and a perfect Heathen and its time to bear Testimony against you and lay you open and your deceit in the sight of the Sun that them that have but the least glimring of the Light may behold you a pitiful Church is that like to be which thou art Pastor of by appointment of the General Court who cryes out against any degree of the perfect life of Christ in this life to be obtained or enjoyed a Minister of sin a Minister of Sathan and unrighteousness that is thy name own it In the ninth page thou art going about to prove thy Trinity as thou calls it and thou saist The Father is a distinct subsistance and the Son a distinct subsistance and the Holy Ghost is a distinct subsistance and thou brings John 5. there is another bears witness likewise speaking of the Holy Ghost he calls him another and this another thou sayes Is Intel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Essence and then saith What is more manifest then another subsistance and another subsistance speaks distinct subsistances and thou saith The Spirit is called the hand of Trinity Answ. Another is not understood of another being of another life or another substance but is understood of another Manifestation or Operation of the same God who subsists in the same Power in which the Father the Son and the Spirit subsisteth as I said unto thee before another as to distinguish of the Operation and Work of the Spirit and of the Son we do not refuse but to make three distinct essences and beings is ignorance and errour as thou saith Another is intelâ—gible of the Essence and so thou hast made three Essences three Subsistances three Persons and three Gods but we say there is but one God and there is three that bears record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Spirit and these three are one Now as for Subsistance and Essence they are unsound words coyned of your selves from your dark imaginations in which there is no truth at all but to cast a mist Now where the Holy Ghost is called a Person in the Scripture I have never read and where it is called the hand of Trinity I have never heard of before thee and so thy blind ignorant conclusions and Sophistical arguing will have little place with them that are come to know the Teachings with the Spirit and also keep to a form of sound words which thou cannot And thou saith He that sendeth and he that is sent are distinct and so the Father sending the Son and the Son sent of the Father and the Father and the Son sending the Spirit and the Spirit sent by the Father and the Son are distinct subsistances and not the same He that sends and he that is sent may be distinguished but he that sendeth and him that is sent is not so distinct afar off one another but that him that sendeth is with him that is sent and so God was in Christ reconciling the world and then how were they distinct one from the other and by him was all things made and Christ was not so distinct or afar off at a distance when the Heavens and the Earth was made so that it is truly said without him nothing was made that was made and the Spirit of God which may be distinguished in regard of its Operation yet it was not absent or distinct from the Father and the Son in the Creation neither is absent from the Son in the Regeneration or work of Redemption And then in thy Answer to an Objection which thou makest thy self How the Doctrine of life was Communicated vocally by the Patriarchs but it is not so now and in thy Answer thou saith The Scripture is not necessary absolutely but it being Gods Will to Communicate life through the Scripture hence the Scripture is necessary and then thou sayes Not the letter without the mind of the Authour nor the Spirit without the Scripture and that the words in the 17th of John 22. That they may be one as we are one these words give an uncertain sound thou saist and further thou saist Surely they are under a Rule of live who hare not the Spirit since the Canon of the Scripture is closed so far is the Spirit from being a Rule of life that to us it is not the Spirit except it move in the written word Answ. Gross darkness is thy dwelling-place and out of thick darkness all this pitiful confusion cometh the Doctrine of life was Communicated according to the will and mind of God sometime by Dream sometime by Vision sometime by Revelation to the Patriarchs and Believers from Abel till Moses and by Faith they were followers of Christ and doubtless they did Communicate in their Generation those things that were manifest unto them by the Spirit which was the then Rule and Guide to the feet of the upright in the way of Peace before any Scripture was written and if the Scripture be not necessary absolutely thou hast said as much as we say therefore we ' speak of a Rule and a Way which is absolute necessary without which no man can know the Father or the Son nor the way of Peace but by the Spirit of truth which gave forth the Words of truth which may manifest and doth manifest it self as it will when it will where it will and how it will for it is unlimitted and it will not be limitted by its own words as to sound but may speak words which it never spoke before as for instance Paul by the Spirit said The second Adam the Lord from Heaven is a quickning Spirit which none of the Scriptures before written speaks in these very words and if the Spirit be not Spirit without the Letter then where the Letter is wanting the Spirit is wanting and consequently them that have the Scripture have the Spirit which were no less then
and that might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet They cat up my People as men eat bread Are these the fruits Symptomes and Characters that your hearts are rent and broken in New England or are they not rather manifest tokens that your hearts are like Adamant or like the nether Mil-stone or like flint which is harder then ordinary stones in which there is no remorse or reluctancy And is not this your state as it was with Israel when their hearts were hard Doth not Christ say By their 〈◊〉 the false prophets are known and the Tree is known by its fruits and have not you brought forth the same fruits Do not your 〈◊〉 and Teachers Rule and Teach for reward Nay are â—hey not worse Have not you taken money from them whom you Judged Malefactours to pay your servants for doing of your work to your Marshals and your bloody Taskmasters and wicked Executioners Oh! shameless man and full of impudency that ever thou durst put Pen to Paper or that the General Court should ever appoint thee to tell the Nations that your heart was rent in New England but the terrour of the Lord and the dread of God you must all know before your hearts be rent which is yet impenitrable and hard or else all these wretched Manifestations and fruits thereof would never have appeared but one of thy own Generation if not thy self saith That a Company of Thieves Fornicators and Fellons may cry out of deserved punishment as Persecution as well as we God hath cleared us and redeemed us from those things but is not putting off the Hat to ones Equal or not joyning or coming to your Congregation that they deserve punishment sutable to Thieves Fornicators and Fellons but Persecutors and blood-thirsty men were ever blind for Christ the Prophets and Apostles and all the Holy men of God who suffered for the Testimony of a good Conscience were ever reputed transgressours and Judged that they suffered deservedly by them who caused them to suffer Christ was crucified betwixt two Thieves and Herod the Governour and his men of War set him to naught and he was numbred amongst Transgressors as it is written of him and so were all his followers by them that were in Cains way and in Baalams way and so hast thou with the rest of Babylons Merchants these divers years numbred us amongst transgressors every Sect and Opinion hitherto hath joyned us to that Opinion or Sect which was contrary to them but thou would marr our Countenance more than any thou hath not found a Generation bad enough to number us with in this age but is gone back a thousand years to fetch up Men and Doctrines and Principles and would fasten them upon us and so to represent us odious to People thou might have spent thy time better then to have raked in those old mouldy Histories in which I see thou art better acquainted then with the mind of Christ but I shall not trouble the Reader with thy stories neither vindicate their Doctrines and Principles which were counted Hereticks these men are dead and gone thou might have let them pass and have medled with things that pertained to thy own Generation but that thy dead mind feeds upon dead things to tell thee and the world plainly that thou which will lye and lay things to their charge which they never knew nor maintained which may be are living and can reprove thee for thy falshood and deceit in this Generation thou may well speak falsly and lay things to their charge which they never maintained which are at such a distance as 1600 or 1000 years ago and if the adversaries of these men did write their Principles and set down their Errours and Blasphemies as I believe many of them did I do less credit their report and I am not altogether unacquainted with Ecclesiastical Histories from whence thou hast had these Stories although now I count the time just lost in which I spent in those things and though thou Judge that we vilifie the Scripture yet I prefer it above and before all the Ecclesiastical Histories that I have read I shall not trouble the Reader with thy old Hetrodoxes as thou calls them of the heads of Religion there is many that knows those things as well as thy self and as for Praxes Sabellers Nestorus Cerinthius Eutichas nor with Quintinius Swinckfield Muncer David George and John of Leyden what are these to us And what are their Principles to us Some thing they spoke which was real Heresie if the Histories be true whereof I much doubt because many such as thy self were the Authors thereof and something it may be was truth which might be vindicated not because they held it but because it is truth in it self And as for thy comparing of them to us and their Principles to ours doth not at all detract or invalidate truth as it is in it self for corrupt minds may speak true words and that which is truth in it self yet not live in the life thereof they are Judged though the truth in it self stands clear and so what as they were in their Principles and Practise in life or in Doctrine must they give account for but thou like the rest of the hireling Priests of England used alwayes to be confuting your adversaries when they were at a great distance when they were dead and could not reply or at such a distance that they could not hear and you are such valiant Champions for the most part as to Disputation except you have Club-men and Prison-doors standing open to fight or to shut them in you will hardly enter into a Dispute publickly or it may be if they be afraid that they shall be worsted and their deceit laid open put a Key in the mouth of one as some did in the mouth of Humph. Norton when he was with one of thy Brethren and then cry The Opposite or Quaker he hath nothing to say for himself such dark muddy stories you used to fill up your hour with as to confute Arius Pelagius men that were hundreds of years dead and no such Principles holden in a Nation and such dead stories you fill Peoples minds with and confute the Pope when your elbows was leaning upon the soft Cushons on the Pulpit and 20 or 30 s. for such a dead Story as you told People but when have you gone amongst them and reasoned of the things of the Kingdom of God into their Dominions and convinced them by sound Doctrine and yet you will say Christ said Go into all Nations and Preach and plead that for your Commission and it may be stay forty years over a hundred Families As for the Hetrodoxes of the Quakers concerning the heads of Religion as thou hast set down this I say to thee and to all the World we do not hold them because any man before did hold them or may hold them after but because God hath revealed them unto us by his
Jewes had it and they tryed and condemned him for a blasphemer and the Apostles for breakers of the Law and makers of it void and so condemned the Lord of Life and the Spirit by which the Prophets and Apostles was led by even as thou doth with us and I never heard of any Political order of Church Ordinance or officers or Ordinances not of the most dark and sottishest Marchants of Babylon that ever spoke or wrote yet there was sundry gifts given and sundry Institutions in the Primitive times which were signal things of things of a more Heavenly and Celestial nature which was to be made manifest he gave some gifts to be Prophets some Evangelists some Apostles some Pastors some Teachers but these were Ministeriall for the work and service which he had appointed but this was all by one and the same spirit but I never heard of any Political order of Officeâ— or Political Ordinances ordained in the Primitive Churches but it seems you have got such in New England in the Church of Rome so called I have heard of the order of Benedict of Francis and Austin and the like and of several Ordinances instituted by their Mother to perform but I never heard of any such as a Political order of Officers and Ordinances before and this may be called an Image indeed and nothing in the world but deceit and is no Hetrodoxy that ever such a blind fellow as thou should put pen to Paper who hath crept so into the mudd and dirt that grosse Ignorance and darkness is in all thy words But the least of the children of light will see thy Ignorance so that I need not say much Concerning the magistrate they own none are lawful Magistrates who are not of their way their non-acknowledgement of the Magistrate as now established in all Christian States is more then nanifest Answ. If thy Aspersion were full proof no more need be said but the Judicious will not easily believe thee that there is a State of Magistracy is granted by us and that a true Magistrate that Rules well and Rules in the Power of God and is a terror to evil doers and a praise to them that do well and are as nursing Fathers who preserves mens Persons and Estates from devourers as a Father preserves a Child from injury these are Ordained of God and such we are subject unto for the Lords sake and for Conscience sake and to every Ordinance of man which is consistant with the honour of God and a pure Conscience but I believe you have few of them in New England who are rather like Beares and Lyons tearing and rending their Estates and rends and tears their flesh and gnawes it like Evening Wolves that the Prophet speaks of and would thou have this counted as Gods Authority and we tell thee and all the World in singleness of heart and unfeignedness that our way is Christ the way to the Father the Truth and the Life the Power of God and the Wisdom of God and all that Rule not in his Power rule in the Devils power in the Dragons power in the Beasts power who made War with the Lamb and killed the Saints and compelled them to worship and herein they that Rule in the Power of God and for God are manifest and them that rule in the Dragon and Beasts power for they that Rule in the Power of God answereth Gods witness in every man and reaches to that by his Act of Justice in the transgressor and he restraineth the evil doer within and limiteth that and preserves the Creature as much as him lies from harm and his Estate from destruction and also saveth the Innocent meek and harmless from the violence and from beating and fighting and from them that would destroy their Persons and Estates and herein the Magistrate that Rules in the Dragons power and in the Beasts power he is also made manifest he reacheth not Gods witness by his Governing he lests the transgressor live and is not a terrour to evil works and workers but a terrour to them that do well and exercise a pure Conscience towards God and man and may be cannot go into the House of Rimmon neither can bow to Baal nor be subject to that which another may set up in his will and in his pride then he afflicts the body the Creature and mars Gods Workmanship and defaces it and doth violence to the Creature and rends away his outward subsistance and sayes for his Authority It was so ordered at our General Court I must tell thee the false Church the Mother of Harlots has ridden long upon the Scarlet-coloured Beast which has been made drunk with the blood of the Saints whose Garments have been red with Scarlet colour and I know no where in any Christian State so called where he reigns in more power then in New England and you ride upon the Beast which hath risen out of the Sea which is amongst you and the beast carries you your Church on his back bears it up for all your Weapons are but carnal and that which wrestles with flesh and blood which the true Church wrestles not with nor with Creatures but with spiritual wickedness and principalities and powers of darkness in the Creature and threw that down and saved the Creature alive and redeemed it who was in Captivity Oh sottish Children when will you learn Wisdom and when will you hearken to reproof of instruction which is the way to life but remember this the beast shall be taken alive with the false Prophet and them that have wrought Miracles before him and then shall be cast into the Lake of fire They pretend to act from an Infallible light within them and professes perfection in degrees in this life and publish smart invectives against Ministers who teach the contrary Answ. We pretend to nothing but to that which God hath given us through his free mercy which we have a true right unto having received him as the Father hath tendered him to be a light to open our eyes and to be a Leader unto us and all his People and to be Gods Salvation even to the ends of the earth to them that receive him and he is that Infallible light which the Father sent into the world that all men through him might believe and he is the true light that lightneth every man though every man hath not received him the fault is not in the Giver nor in the gift but in them that will not receive and he that is the life of all men hath lighted every man that comes into the world and he is in us our Hope and our Glory the riches of the Gentiles and the riches of all them that do believe he is our Way and our Life and Peace I say all Glory unto him for ever though thou debase him set him thus at naught and for his sake we can bear reproaches and become fools in that we have obtained that in which true