Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A97307
|
A few words in tenderness to the well-meaning professors, suiting the present season [by] Thomas Zachary.
|
Zachary, Thomas, d. 1686.
|
1674
(1674)
|
Wing Z2; ESTC R43844
|
4,928
|
1
|
A Few Words in Tenderness TO THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSORS suiting the Present Season UPon the serious Consideration of the various and long continued Contests and Oppositions of all Sorts of People against us the contemptible People of the Lord called Quakers it hath seemed most strange and grievous that any of the Professors of Christianity who have had any Simplicity of Heart to God and known any inward Work of the Spirit of Truth should joyn with the Gentiles who know not God to make void that Blessed Work which the God of Heaven by his pure eternal Spirit hath begun to work in our Dayes in these despised People who have given up their Souls to serve him and for whom their very Lives would not be dear unto them to give up for his Name sake O unto you who have had any experimental Knowledge of God and of Christ through the Operation of the Spirit in you unto you is my very Soul drawn out in tender Love and Compassion desiring that the God of Heaven would open your Eyes and give you a clear spiritual and certain Knowledge of the inward State of your Souls before him and bring you to the Obedience of his Heavenly Will for for this very Cause for not being Obedient answering the Lord in his Requirings Hardness of Heart is come over you and Darkness hath covered you so that that Simplicity and Tenderness that was once in you in the Time of God's Visitation is much defaced and an Enmity sprung up in you against the Appearance of God amongst us I beseech you bear with me for the Zeal of God is upon me and dear and tender Love to your immortal Souls Know you this all you who have any Simplicity and Tenderness left in you that I now directly stand for God and in his Name I plead with you and for you that you may be reconciled to him and that the Enmity that is yet in any of you against God's Heavenly Appearance and Revelation of his Son in us might be taken away for God is exalting his Son over all even this is the Work of God â—n this his Day to exalt his Name above every Name and we the despised Remnant are made Witnesses of the Heavenly Appearance of the Son of God and cannot but testifie of him I say we are made Witnesses by God through the Revelation of Christ in us a Holy Constraint is upon us and not of or from our selves or any Act of our own but through the Begetting of Life we are made willing to exalt his Name in the Earth And herein our Hearts are single before him having no other Thing in our Eye but the lifting up and spreading that blessed Name and herein I can appeal to the Lord God of Heaven and Earth of the Integrity of my Heart to him having this Faith begotten in me of the Lord that while I stand in Simplicity and Singleness of Heart to him he will be my Strength and keep me in the Hour of Temptation that I fall not or ever turn my Back upon him for truly I must confess that this Way of Truth which the Lord hath brought me to is a very narrow and streight Way so streight that if I could have found Peace and Satisfaction out of it I had not now been a Travailer in it for being once tempted by the God of this World to withdraw my self from the Lord's People and to retire and get from under his Yoak the Lord pursued me with his Judgments and Rest and Peace was taken from me that I cryed out That it was a great Strength to be willing to live in the Earth But the Lord fetched me in from my Wandering and I was made to return to the God of my Life and in my very Soul bowed to him who is become my Defence and Holder up of my Head in the midst of many Enemies raised up by the Power of Darkness against us to lay us wast and to make void our Testimony for the God of Heaven in this Generation But God will exalt his Name and in vain do Men strive against him for their very Strivings shall turn to the Advantage of his Name and People and the Shame of his Adversaries Oh my Soul hath travailed for our Adversaries for having in Years past been one with them in Profession I cannot but have Love to them and have cryed to the Lord for them Oh that they had an Ear to hear they would then certainly bow to that blessed Truth ministred in God's Authority by his chosen Ones And a strong Belief is in me that the Lord will bore the Ears of many simple Hearts amongst them and cause the Sound of his Everlasting Gospel to enter and it shall be a Day of glad Tidings to as many as shall receive it The God of Heaven open the Eyes of all the Professing People in this Nation that all may dread and fear before him and consider what they are doing in setting themselves against that living Word of God revealed in us O Friends it will be too strong for you for it is not any fine coyned Notions that we publish to please the Ears of the Curious Wise and Lofty No no but it is the living Word the mighty Word the very Word of the Lord God of Heaven and Earth that we exalt among Men that Word that redeems from the Power of Satan all such as in Love receive it It is that Word that comes not to us by the Will Power or Wisdom of Man but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ nor no Man on Earth can attain to the Understanding of it but by the Spirit of Jesus a Man must be born of the Spirit before he can know the Things of the Spirit And here lyes the chief Ground of all that Warring and Contendings against us a different Birth Children of an other Birth though high and lofty in their Notions of God and Christ and the Scriptures that if they were indeed what they speak they were honourable but the Root of the first Birth and all Words from it are of another Nature and want a living Spring It is the first Man in his best Robe that runs before he is sent and in his own Wisdom would mannage the Things of God and his Kingdom before he knows the Power from on high to break and confound all his curious Wisdom of Words and to make him as a little Child first to desire the sincere Milk of the Word that he might grow thereby and then in the Strength of the Word of Life to minister according to the Gift received And in this first Birth are all the Children of the Flesh and Shadow exalting themselves and opposing the Heavenly Appearances of Life in all their several Forms of Religion and herein lyes their greatest Unity one with another in setting themselves against the enlightned People of the Lord who own their Enlightnings and Teachings from himself alone and cannot satisfie themselves