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
conceiving knowing were not Gods nor to be concerned in his worship Certainly if nothing of man soul or body be active therein man doth not worship God nor pray at all and so God worships himself which is the true result of the Quakers Tenets But let us consider a Text or two out of the Word of God I would order my cause before him and fill my mouth with arguments The word order in the Heb. signifies a marshalling his words Prayer is not only a petition but a humble pleading wrestling with God and sure there was somewhat of Job in ordering his cause and he used his spiritual skill in it 'T is render'd by Arias Montanus disponerem I would dispose my cause Give ear to my words O Lord. What is it then I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also c. Here is Paul's will in prayer I will and here is Paul's understanding also exercised in prayer vers 15. But my understanding is unfruitfull which he blames as a companion of prayer that being supposed Thus I have proved the Quakers denying Gospel-prayer in this respect above-mentioned and reproved their anti-Gospel notions by the Scriptures Lastly They own no prayer but what is by the light and in the light within And the prayers of such only are accepted and not the prayers of those who think to be heard for their much babling who have many words but not in the life So that their prayers only are acceptable who pray in the life that is with the Quakers by the motions of their light within and although we are far from thinking to be heard for the sake of much better things than much babling yet all the words of prayer that are not qualified by their principle the light within is in their account but babling For it's truth in the inward parts he seeks for wherein none of you can worship who know not the living Word in your hearts to keep them up to God in your worship and that worship which is not in the will of God is the worshipping of Devils If you ask any of them What is the truth in the inward parts They will not answer it is sincerity meanings suitable to our expressions and appearances but it is Christ the light within who is the truth And for knowing the living Word it is of the same sense it is all but the light within every man the Quakers Christ And for the will of God that is nothing but the immediate life and motions of the light within I have said enough out of their Writings to prove these things neither will they deny them but Naylor telleth you and it is not for any Quaker to resist the Spirit by which he spake that worship not thus qualified is the worshiping of Devils It may be some of the Quakers though they know in their consciences that I speak but the very truth of their Tenets and Notions will say I put my meanings to their words but if they will but bate me speaking from their light within which they hold necessary to qualifie a man to speak truly I dare undertake to expound according to their meaning their ill meant phrases as well as the most of them and their mystery is none to me at all And although they talk of praying in the name of Christ yet as Naylor phrases it That is done in the name of Christ which is done in his light and power But when all is done this Christ and name and light and power is but the light within and its teachings and motions It is to me reported on all hands That they never pray in the name of Christ as their Mediator much less then do they pray to God in or in the name of Jesus of Nazareth the Son of Mary or of that one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus even that Jesus who was crucified at Jerusalem between two thieves above 1600 years since I have put this to many of them and they denied not this Charge neither can I see how they can pray to the Father in the name of Christ seeing God the Father and Christ with them admit of no distinction and for the man Christ that was born of Mary they have nothing to do with him The Apostle saith A Mediator is not of one but God is one And whoever they are that deny and disown prayer in the name of Christ are far from owning the Gospel-Ordinance of prayer SECT IV. Reading the Scriptures and Meditation which are Gospel-Ordinances they also deny I need not tell you of the contempt they put upon the Scripture as a dead letter the carnal letter and on those who attend to it as dry Letter-mongers Take only one instance of William Pens But all must be as unlearned from their first birth education and traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned that is again become a little child before the secrets of Gods work come to be made known And Fisher calls studying the Scripture scraping in the Scripture I wonder wherefore God ordered and commanded them to be written if they are not to be read and studied The Spirit of Christ within is the end of the Tables Law Works and Books and the Law is now in the heart Whatever thou be whether a teacher of others or a professor of what thou comprehends to be truth from the letter of the Scripture under what form name or title soever thou be thou art a dead man and a dead woman and the wrath of God abides on thee though thou see it not Rom. 7. 9. Miserable man that talks at this rate and will father it on the Scripture too and such a one as is directly against him But we have had enough of this smoak SECT V. I shall say somewhat of their abundant scorn of the Lords Supper and Baptism wherein they express a superfluity of naughtiness not only in their Tenets but down-right railing The Ordinances I have hitherto considered in particular are called moral from their natural obligation although that substantial and essential part and qualification of them their respect to a Mediator will require a denomination more evangelical and without which we cannot call them Gospel or Christian-Ordinances Those two Gospel-Ordinances I come now to consider are purely and perfectly positive and depend meerly upon divinely-revealed institution without which they had never come within our notice nor had they been any way obliging to us Yet such is the sanction that the Lord hath put upon institutions of this nature that not only since his revealed Law hath abounded to his Church but also when the revelations of his mind immediately to his servants was very rare he did not omit injunctions of this kind The sacrifices we read of as early as Cain and Abel Yea Adam in his state of innocency who then needed not any indication of moral duties beyond what was within the
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
the single word Jew is expressed all the Jewes from first to last in every generation and under the word Gentile all the world of mankind besides Take one Text more to conclude with Isa 8. 20. To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this VVord it is because there is no light in them not so much as the dawning of the day Both Law and Testimony are here rendred by VVord in the singular number in this one Text there is enough not only to silence this petty cavil but to pluck up both root and branch all the principles of Quakerism if they who profess them had any regard to the Authority and verity of the eternal and Almighty God and a few grains of understanding at liberty to consult it SECT III. 2. Object Many Passages in the Seriptures contain the sayings of wicked meâ— Yea some have been so irreverent and irrational as to say some part of it is the words of the devil this expression hath been frequent with them and uttered in contempt of the Scripture I answer although the Scripture make frequent mention of such Passages it is to a good and holy end and hereby Satans malice is discovered whereby in a good measure we are not ignorant of his devices and hereby we understand his snares in which our first Parents were taken and others both good and bad in after-Ages and Satan is also rendred the most wicked and hateful of all that God created But to speak close to the Objection Those speeches of wicked persons such as Jobs wife the Pharisees Jewes and Rabshakeh and the speeches of the Devil are not the Word of God or any part of holy Writ as they were uttered by them but far from it We are to consider the Scripture as partly Historical and all those passages being reported historically there is not the least stain upon the Scriptures thereby What if I make a true report of the Powder-Plot the Massacres in France Ireland c. And that to good ends and purposes â— yea if I report the blasphemous speeches by them uttered against God his Saints and the holy Scriptures am I therefore blameable as if I my self had been their Author I know what hath been said is convincing Now by the Inspiration and Guidance of the Holy Spirit these things were written and there is not only a truth but also a divine truth of History in them Object 3. That this title the Word of God is peculiar to the Son of God the Lord Jesus Christ whom they call the light within the Scriptures within and here it is indeed that the shooe pinches and they would fain put off the honour and put out the light of the Scriptures because they stand in the light of their fancy Pardon me the expression for it is a truth I shall prove by the Lords assistance ere I have done But what have they to say that the Scriptures should not be the Word of God notwithstanding the Son of God is so called I will give you the best that ever I met with The first is the Authority of their Leaders who say It is so and it must be so James Parnel Christ exalted p. 4. He Christ is the VVord the Scripture is not VVhy should it be doubted after such an evidence it is unreasonable and superfluous to expect that infallible persons for so the Quakers believe all their Ministry to be should give a reason for what they affirm especially considering they are constrained to be infallible for want of reason And now seeing be can carry it so easily he goes on like an empty Cloud carried with the winde He Christ is the light the Scripture is not he is the Râ—lâ—r Guide Teacher and Judge and the Scripture is not VVhat may not a man prove in one infallible breath did he not prudently to make haste before that gale was spent VVell but who can stand before a whirl-wind one blast hath torn from the Scripture no less then six of those glorious Garments wherewith God hath cloathed it Let us hear G. F. if he do not amend the matter by a thing like an Argument He did not say John 1. 1. the Declaration was the VVord but said in his Declaration the VVord was God and he who saith the Latter is the VVord is a Deceiver and erres for the Scripture saith That in the beginning was the VVord Difference of Ministers p. 1. If you could have found where John said in his Declaration as you call it that the Scriptures are not the VVord of God a thousand to one but some or other of the Lords people would have found it out long before Quakerism was in being and have ceased to take that name in vain For the second Argument he said the VVord was God what then VVhy then the Scriptures cannot be the VVord unless they be God also I am sure I have hit on your Conclusion and the best you can make of it but let me tell you that the Scripture may be the VVord and Christ the VVord also and yet though Christ be the VVord of God the Scriptures the VVord may be quite another thing Let me give you just such another place of Scripture 1 Cor. 10. 4. They drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ VVill you conclude from hence that there is no other Rock but every Rock in the VVorld must needs be Christ or that it is sinful yea Blasphemy to call any thing a Rock but Christ but it may be you will say 't is a spiritual Rock in that place And I say it was spiritual only as it was mystical or typical of Christ but in other respects it was a Rock as others are hard and stony So I say of the Word that was God it was the Word that was in the beginning that created all things shew me any such Word and I will call it God too yea I will say it is blasphemy to deny it to be so but the Scriptures which we call the Word of God were not in the beginning nor did they create any thing much less all things Pray let me ask you that are so stiffe in this point do you not take the light in John 1. 9. to be Christ and God say nay if you dare Yea and will you not say that John saith so in his Declaration I know you will and I will say so too what then Is there nothing called light or that is truly so but Christ or God the Sun Moon Day are called Light also Gen 1. 5 16. yea the disciples are called by Christ himself The Light of the World Mat. 5. 14. And must they be God too or Christ be too blame for calling them the light of the VVorld a phrase so very near that in Joh. 1. 9. Christ is called the VVay the Truth and the Life but if you should make every such expression
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
to save me from my sin Answ All Power in Heaven and Earth is in it To shut up this particular hear one of their prime Ministers who speaks plainly his minde and not in Parables I will make you know that I the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the VVorld that all through me should believe am the true eternal God which created all things that by me the light all things are uphâ—ld and that there is not another besides me can save And I will purge out all your iniquities and forgive all your trespasses and I will change your Natures and I will make you new Creatures if you will hearken to me and obey me the light in you VVhat I have here written is the words which the Father who is one with Christ the Son gave me to write in which words the true Christ is renewed and a Testimony given of him and no other But enough and too much of this Blasphemy I need not take pains to ravel into it for it s so plain that none but those who shut their eyes and are wilfully blind but may see it in an unexpressible deformity SECT III. I now proceed to the fourth proof of their equalling their sayings writings and light within and preferring them before the Scriptures I place them in this Order that you may behold them at one view in their not only disproportion but opposition The CHARACTERS of the Scriptures given by the Quakers CHARACTERS of their own Teachers Writings and Sayings given by them Feeding Death with Death The Letter which killeth Declaration from the Ministers of the VVord p. 7. The Voice of the Son of God was uttered forth by him by which the dead was raised F. H. Life of E B. p. 20. Paper Ink and VVriting Declar from the Ministers of the VVord p. 2. A Shield of the Truth Title of James Parnels Book A dead letter The old letter Seeking the living among the dead Parnel Shield to the truth Naylor love to the lost His words ministred grace to the Hearers Fox jun. life of E B  Forcible and very pleasant as apples of gold in pictures of silver This in the freshness and quick sense of life Penington quest c. 41. Leave men in the dark and confusion Frequent Passage A clear Discovery Title of Smiths Prim.  O how certain a sound did his Trumpet give Life of E. B p. 2. Part of it the words of the Devil and wicked men Wisdom of words Nayl Love to the lost c. 21. VVritten from the Spirit of the Lord. title page Parnel shield of truth  The Voice of the Son of God Life of E. B. 20. My upright desire to the Lord for you is that he would strip you if all your knowledge of the Scriptures according to the flesh Pennington quest p 12. And now Childe hear Instruction and be wise Treasure it up in thy heart that thou mayest lay up for thy self a good foundation Smith Prim. p 56. Shews you in a Glass your own faâ—es which the Scriptures cannot do Scorned Quakers Account p. 20. A spiritual Glass opened Title of Smiths Cat. and part of the Title of his Morn-watch Precept and Traditions of men Morning-Watch p. 18. Truths Principles Title of Crooks Book That light is in the â—criptures prove that or tell me what one Scripture hath light in it Lip of truth c. p 7. Light risen out of darkness Title of Farnworths Book Natural Lawson Carnal Letter Shield of the truth 10. God is at liberty to speak by them the Scriptures if he please and where they are given by Inspiration he dâ—th so and so he is at liberty to speak by any other created thing as to Balaam by his Ass James Naylor light of Christ c. p 19. Earthly Root Morn Watch. 22  Worship and obedience as to its direction The Harlots Child Morn watch p. 23  Hagar and Ismael Mother and Child after the Letter Penington Mysteries of the Kingdom Preface He proclaimed liberty to the Captives in the Power and Authority of God F. H. of E. B. p. 15. Letter without Swine feeding on the husk The shadow Parnel shield of Truth p 10. Let this be sent to be read in the fear of the Lord in the Holy Assemblies of the Church of the first-born where she is scattered to the ends of the Earth W. D. Doting on the Scriptures Parnel Christ exalted p 4.  Betrayed into the words Smith prim p. 30.  Dangerous to feed on them Sm Cat. 36.  SECT IV. I having sufficiently proved that they equal their writings and sayings with and prefer them before the Scriptures it is not fit I should let them pass without contradiction I shall therefore review their Grounds for so doing and discover them to be but swelling words of vanity And I shall begin with their Infallibility I am confident that G. Fox the Ring-leader of the Sect understands not what he saith nor whereof he affirms It is one thing not to fail another to be infallible for that is to be without all possibility of failing or erring Again it is one thing to be infallible with a restriction to something another to be universally infallible and without limitation If G. Fox understands so much he is a non-such for confidence and being void of reason that affirmeth as he doth let us examine but that one passage before-cited How can ye be Ministers of the Spirit and not of the Letter if ye be not infallible Here he puts Ministry of the Spirit and of the letter in opposition which Christ and his Apostles joyned hand in hand as loving companions and meet helps each to other And there was delivered unto him the Book of the Prophet Isaiah and when he had opened the Book he found the place where it was written the Spirit of the Lord is upon me c. verse 21. And he began to say unto them this day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears and all bare him witness and wondred at the gracious words c. was not Christ then a Minister of the Spirit it is by him said this day this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears viz. the Spirit of the Lord is upon me And was he not also a Minister of the Letter why he opened the Book and found where it was written and no doubt read it out of the Book to his Auditors or else it would have been very impertinent to tell them This Scripture is fulfilled for they must have divined or not known what Scripture he intended And I suppose none will doubt whether that which is written in a Book be written in Letters Well then either George Fox is fallible yea and hath grossely failed or Jesus Christ was not a Minister of the Spirit and which of these you who call your selves infallible Ministers of the Spirit will admit of I know not but I am sure every true Christian will abhor a
Competition between Jesus Christ and G. Fox and what the Lord and Master did in this case so did his servants the Apostles as I might instance abundantly I will direct you only to Peters Sermons Acts 2. I need not instance in any more He that hath read the Scriptures may easily furnish himself And who can doubt but they who made use of the Letter of the Scriptures for evidence of what in their Ministry they preached or writ were Ministers of the Letter as well as of the Spirit And moreover if we consider the letter of the Scripture to be the letter of the Spirit written by its direction and to express in its kind the minde of the Spirit This Querie of George Fox may be turned upon himself thus and how can ye be Ministers of the Spirit if ye be not Ministers of the Letter also The latter part of his Sentence is a higher Demonstration of the fallibility of his Chair And how can they but delude people who are not infallible True indeed if they did perswade people that they could not in any thing be mistaken or be ignorant but seeing only the Quakers pretended Ministry and the Pope of Rome do assume this to themselves they only are in a necessity of deluding the people for our parts who live in all manner of pride as the Quakers by their spirit of Infallibility do charge us we are not yet come up to their Perfection for we freely acknowledge that we may erre in doctrine and do erre in practice which we bewail before God and men and also that the people may not be deluded by us we desire them and charge them not to pin their faith on our sleeves but repair to the Law and to the Testimony and search the Scriptures try whether the things we affirm be so or no And if we speak contrary to the Minde of God there expressed to reject our doctrine and also that they follow our Example no further then we follow Christ even that Man Christ Jesus who was for a time on Earth but is now in Heaven But what do you think of the Holy Apostles were they universally infallible could not they erre if you say so Paul will convict you of errour in his charging Peter none of the least of the Apostles with erring and in something deluding the people Gal. 2. 12 13 14. Peter dissembled the truth in practising the Mosaical distinction of Jewes and Gentiles and separating from the believing Gentiles as unclean And the other Jewes yea and Barnabas also was carried away with his dissimulation But then you will say how can we be sure that what they wrote and taught was truth I answer that although they might in some thingâ— be carried away by temptation as Peter was in thaâ— case yet their doctrine which they professed to bâ— from the Lord and by the Inspiration of God could not admit of erring or fallibility and that not because they had an habitual infallibility in all things buâ— because of the love of God to his people the regard of his honour and the firmness of his Promises which he made to them those especially John 14. 26. But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you John 16. 13. Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come he will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come Now these Promises being made to the Apostles for furnishing them with ability for their work as Apostles they may be concluded to be infallibly guided by the Spirit but in other things though by their eminent habitual grace they were not likely â—o fall as others who were not cloathed with such a measure and degree as they yet it was more then possible that they should fail but according to G. Fox's infallibility and without limitation the Apostles themselves could not but delude the people But to conclude this particular of Infallibility take beside what hath been said one considerable proof of their non-attainment of Infallibility and that is the most grossely absurd Exposition they give of the Scriptures See what follows with the eyes of Christian-men We are accused that we judge people It is written the Saints shall judge the world an infallible proof as if it were a Command or Prophecy of the Saints i. e. the Quakers calling men all â—o nought how serious soever who are not professedly conducted and saved by the light within but he goes on more and more infallibly And for Judgement am I come into the World saith Christ As if Christs coming into the World sixteen hundred years ago were to the end that they might pass their rash Censures freely But he grows still And where Christ ruleth in his Saints he judgeth the World as Paul witnessed It is no more I but Christ in me Where Paul witnessed this such a Spirit of discerning as they tell us of must finde out for the Scripture hath nothing like it only in two places Rom. 7. 17. It is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me But I am sure Sin and Christ are two things Gal. 2. 20. Yet not I but Christ liveth in me But that was not to censure others but to comfort Paul under the hard censures and usages of others But the passage of coming into the World for Judgement brings into my minde one remarkable Expositor It is a right and sound doctrine to preach him as he is the light of the World and lighteth every man that cometh into the world But what world is this This is the great Prophet who is come into the World which is set in the heart Eccles 3. 11. which is in the midst out of which Moses saith the Lord world raise up a Prophet Lev. 8. 15. which Prophet being come he saith I am come a Light into the World John 1. 12. and 12. 35 36 46 The World being set in the heart there is the light of him who saith I am the light So that with him the World is the heart Christs coming into the World is his comeing into the heart and as he came into the world the heart so he is also raised up out of the world the heart but how like such a Prophet is to Moses I should too much suspect your understandings if I should trouble you with my sense he that is declined as far as dotage may perceive it without a Guide as also the gross darkness of this Expositor in the rest Let us see what sound Exposition the great Lanthorn of the Quakers gives for I must not call him their Great Light for that is in the Lanthorn 1 Cor. 14 34 35. Let your women keep silence in the Churches for it is not
man be a hearer of the word and not a doer he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a Glass for he beholdeth himself c. I know you who are called Quakers will say I pervert this Text which is to be understood of the light within not of the Scriptures without and that it maketh directly against me I hint this to let people know what need we have to preserve that appellation of the Scriptures the Word of God which will preserve the due reputation and use of those holy and blessed Writings But I would ask any Quaker if it be not absurd and woful lame language to exhort a man to be a doer of Christ I must not dispute the same thing over and over but affirm this Text from what hath preceded and the particular Argument given just now to be a full and plain asserting the Doctrinal word to be a means by which we may know our selves SECT III. I shall express in the close of this Chapter those absurdities falsities and impieties that are the Bastards this Errour is travelling withall The Scriptures have less in them of demonstration with respect to God than the dumb Creation or the most despicable particle of it a Worm a Stone are some means to know God by A second consequence is that no Writing whatsoever can be any such means for the holy Scriptures deserve a preference in religious cases and that which will lye very heavy upon you who are called Quakers all your scribling neither hath been neither can be to any such good purpose as the knowledge of God Christ c. Experience and sense it self and that not of one but many millions are not all together worth a straw in point of evidence for so many have experienced as plainly as sense it self can demonstrate that by the means of the Scriptures they have come by the knowledge of God Christ and themselves The incomparably greater number of those whom you confess were Saints and had peace with God knocked and entered at the wrong door and so by your own Exposition of Scripture are Thieves and Robbers Then God Christ Prophets Apostles are all to be charged with folly who taught the knowledge of God Christ and man by the matter expressed by the Scriptures which was not to them immediately expressed by God but by Prophets and humane Teachers You cast those Worthies who both disputed and died to maintain not only some Truths concerning God Christ and man the knowledge of which they came to by the Scriptures but also for continuing in the possession and to the use of souls for such ends the Books of the written Word Yea you condemn them as a company of Fools who cast away and sold themselves to all the miseries they suffered for a thing of nought Then neither is Reading Preaching nor Instruction of any such use This I fear hath gotten too much credit with you who suffer your Families and Children to take their own courses except in the concerns of this world wherein few out-do you and I should blame you the less if you would so far keep to this principle as to keep your light within and your thundring too into which though a self contradiction it breaks forth with a noise without sense or truth to the amusing of the ignorant who take them who shew the greatest zeal or heat to be the most sincere and intelligent CHAP. IX The Quakers affirm the Scriptures to be no means whereby to resist temptation and that they are dangerous to be read SECT I. I Join these into one Argument the latter being a high instance for the proof of the former and both together engage against the life of the Scriptures with a strong hand What shall we say of those mens owning the Scripture who turn this standing Table of the Lord into a snare and render them not only no Weapons to resist Satan and Lust our grand Enemies but to be as Gunpowder to blow up our selves yea as if God himself who is the Father of mercies and who in his abundant goodness hath afforded us this Armour of light did thereby rather set a trap for our souls than a means to deliver us from the snare of the Devil who leads the blind and unarmed captive at his will I shall not go about to give demonstrations that so to affirm is to deny the Scriptures when I have proved that they are criminal according to this Charge I know not what impartial person will judge them guiltless of denying the Scriptures And therefore I shall attend to it as carrying the question 'T is not your flying to the Scripture that can save you from the fire of his wrath nor overcome the least corruption for you no verily nothing then but a Christ within you c. and the next sentence is come thou then O come with boldness to Gods faithful Witness within you If he had said the Scriptures without the knowledge of them or the notion of them without the power or without the Spirits concurrence he had spoken truth But to beat these Weapons out of their hands to cry out with a vehemency to throw down those Arms as useless and run away to that second Antichrist the light within this is horrid The true Christ is not so far from the Scriptures nor so disagreeing with them but he can dwell in one heart with them and arms all his Souldiers with the Weapons of the truths therein contained but Christ Jesus the Christ of God and Redeemer of his people and the Quakers Christ are nothing of kin But one would think this should be but a slip of his Pen let us see if he speak not more favourably of the holy Scriptures in his following discourse but alas the darkness within hath so bewitched him that nothing but the Quakers Idol is good for any thing The Scriptures nor any other outward things are able to graple with him the Devil you must put on the armour of light light within and with that resist him or be taken captive by him What a rapture of zeal is here for the thing within though the Scriptures alone can do little yet sure if God Almighty undertake the combat either with or without the Scriptures he will be too hard for all the Devils or he had not kept his Throne from being usurped by him and if God be not without the Quakers or any other person as well as within them he is not infinite as we have taken him to be by the light of Reason and more by the light of Scripture But what blasphemy will not men run into who have changed their God for that which is no God and have turned their backs on the Lord Jesus and taken so gross a delusion in the room of him Again he goes on to the same purpose lest you should not understand him If you use any other Weapons than the
light within in this spiritual war you cannot prosper nor prevail against him I have lighted on a proof of the latter part of my Charge before I was aware viz. for then it is dangerous to read the Scriptures lest you should be tempted to try some of those inviting Arms which that Magazine is stored with and so spoil all your prosperity and prevalence in your spiritual Warfare SECT II. However this shall not prevent the producing my intended proofs of the danger as the Quakers say that attend reading the Scriptures But seeing as the Quakers say we must try the Spirits by the Spirit let us try William Smith's spirit by Isaac Pennington's who speaking of knowledge gained by the Letter of the Scriptures speaks thus Making him wise and able there in his head to oppose truth and so bringing him into a state of condemnation wrath and misery beyond the Heathen and making him harder to be wrought upon by the light and power of truth than the very Heathen By opposing truth we must needs understand it of the Quakers truth and if reading the Scriptures and getting knowledge from or by them puts us into a bad condition both as rendring conversion difficult and our misery and condemnation great beyond the Heathen I scarce know what is more dangerous than reading the Scriptures But the comfort is it doth but render us harder to be wrought on to entertain the pernicious Guide and Saviour the Quakers light within and therefore is exceeding safe and necessary It follows in the same Author My upright desire to the Lord for you is that he would strip you of all your knowledge or wisdom of the Scriptures after the flesh Their meaning of after the flesh is that which comes not by immediate inspiration For those only are the Children of God who are led by the Spirit of God to whom they who were led by the Letter were ever enemies So Naylor doth as certainly say 't is dangerous to read the Scriptures to be led by them as it is truly dangerous and evil to be Enemies to the Children of God SECT III. That this abominable Tenet is the Quakers I know it sufficiently and that they look upon our adhering to Scripture light as the greatest adversary in the world to their adored light within But I love not the Quakers way of demonstration viz. we witness this and that but if you would know how they witness it it is only their own experience which is a dumb kind of witness while they can make no proof or testimony of it to another nor will ordinarily attempt it and so their witness is to themselves alone But my witnessing of what I here charge them with shall have more light in it that all that read it may be convinced of its truth Therefore take one instance more out of their famous Author W. P. or William Pen. But I will assure them they shall yet grope in the dark till they come into the daily obedience of the light and there rest contented to know only as they experience and not from a ravening comprehending brain that would in its unregenerated state grasp at the clear mysteries of the Kingdom into which fleshly comprehensions and notions can never enter but all must be as unlearned from their first birth education and traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned that is again become a little Child before the secrets of Gods Work come to be made known That W. P. of all others should talk at this rate is most ridiculous What! know only as they experience know what God is no farther than they experience Can we experience his Omnipotency his infiniteness which is not within the experience of all finite beings put together What! know the death by Spear and Nails of Iron or Steel and Cross of Wood of the man Christ Jesus which he suffered above 1600 years since only by experience What! know the life to come the judging of all men that are ever were or shall be by the Lord Jesus only by experience where is faith all the while what credit hath God with W. P that he will know him nor any thing he saith no further than he sees feels in his experience If none but Believers be Saints such as W. P. are professedly none if he know not that objects of faith and experience are contradistinct things he is very unfit to assure who they are that grope in the dark and is very unlikely to mend his confused scribling I shall not comment on his ravening comprehending brain a most affected phrase amongst the Quakers nor his clear mysteries as clear a contradiction as it is nor fleshly comprehensions as much untruth and nonsense as according to their meaning of it it comprehends for I have not room to spread all his rubbish What is to my present purpose is in the last part of his saying all must be as unlearned from their traditional read knowledge as he is unmanned c. Sure the Scripture knowledge being read knowledge or knowledge that comes by reading as one means is a most hateful thing to God that he will impart none of his secrets to those that will understand any thing by his written Word How came God to fall out at such an irreconcileable rate with his own off-spring his expressions of his mind contained in the holy Scriptures how can you have the face to call them holy Scriptures and yet make knowledge attained by reading them so nauseous to God that they shall be none of his Children that learn any knowledge by that Book or forgo it not all Did God write and cause it to be written and yet never intend we should read it or that reading it we should not believe a word on 't nor understand nor be the wiser for it Shall they be judged by the Law who lived under it and yet the knowledge of God thereby be a sin and hindrance to their salvation To what a height of wickedness and folly do they quickly grow who are poisoned with that abomination of holding the light in every mans conscience to be God Father Son Spirit Christ Scripture all But Mr. Pen what means your Latine and Greek your foreign Authors your attempted though mishapen Logick your quotations of so many Scriptures though some of them in a pitiful manner all to a bad end Did you learn all those things by immediate inspiration Had you them not by reading and tradition Could you tell that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies light rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies thick darkness but by tradition and reading But I smell your design you would have us throw away all the knowledge we have by reading or tradition 'till we come to be regenerate that is Quakers and then you are out of its danger But in the mean time you would have us without the Armour of light for whatsoever makes manifest is light that we may not be
c. by the Scriptures and they that cleave to the Scripture teaching by the Spirit have forsaken the Spirit of God and his teachings we would owne our such profession to be a denying the Scriptures yea should take our selves bound in so many words to deny it and send it as far out of the way as may be as dangerous to the just prerogative of the Spirit of God And if those who profess what I shall instance and produce for proof to be truth had any honesty in them they would tell the world they utterly deny the Scriptures to be what the Christian world hath accounted them and in plain and open words and testimonies as far as they can produce exhort and move them to lay them aside and have no more to do with them nor give them one good word lest the adversary to the Spirit should in the hearts and lives of men be exalted against him For the proving of the Charge at the head of this Chapter take the words of James Naylor the Quakers proto-Confessor For all the Saints have their commands in Spirit but yours is in the Letter and so of another ministration for the literal ministration is done away in the spiritual Here you have the commands in Spirit or by the Spirit put in opposition to the Letter which is the written Word or the Scripture and so far in opposition that as heat being opposite to coldness and light to darkness the one so far as it prevails expelleth the other by its contrariety and opposite qualities so the spiritual ministration or ministration of the Spirit banishes and expelleth that of the Letter as its enemy and contrary But if you will have a prodigious instance a nonsuch for Blaspheming the Spirit of God in the Scriptures read what follows out of a great Writer of theirs William Smith And reading in the Scriptures that there were some who met together and exhorted one another and were edified and comforted one in another they observe and do as near as they can what they read of the Saints practice and so conceives a birth in the same Womb the Scriptures and brings it forth in the same strength as others do and they make haste thither and open their eyes to look at the things which are seen the Scriptures and this is pleasing to the carnal mind c. They Worship Order Ordinances Faith Practice understood by the written Word must all come under the severity of his judgment because they are Bastards and not Sons for these adulterous births have provoked the Lord and grieved his Spirit It would amaze a Christian and sound mind to read what is contained in the two pages in the Margin quoted of vilifying and reproach to the Scriptures and the Doctrines from thence received Traditions of men earthly root darkness and confusion Nebuchadnezzars Image putrefaction and corruption rotten and deceitful all out of the life and power of God Apostacy the Whores Cup the mark of the Beast Babylon the Mother of Harlots Bastards brought forth of flesh and blood the birth that persecutes the Son and Heir viz. the Spirit of God or light within Babylons Brats and Children Graven Images contrary to him the everlasting powerful God c. If this be not opposing the Spirit of God to the Scripture and rendring them adverse to each other the Devil himself must despair of inventing words to express it by I conclude the proof of this Charge with the words of Naylor And of this sort are they who have their preaching to study and to seek at other mens mouths or from the Letter and have it not from the mouth of the Lord. Then with him and the Quakers who are of his mind what we have from the Scriptures we have not from the mouth of the Lord. I would know of the Quakers what they will make of the mouth of the Lord Do they take it to be some part of his body which is like our mouths the Organs of speech We have thought hitherto that God being a Spirit hath no mouth at all only to express things to our understandings he speaks by similitudes taken from such things we are acquainted withall and so whatsoever God reveals his mind by may be called his mouth And it will follow that the Scriptures are his mouth as eminently as any thing yea all things in the world and more For God speaks by them to us more than by all other things he saith to Jeremy Jer. 15. 19. Thou shalt be as my mouth As thou spakest by the hand of Moses The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and his word was in my tongue Hear the rod c. Is it not a frequent phrase in the Scripture As saith the Scripture They believed the Scripture And what is that but God speaking by the Scripture and believing what God spake by the Scripture But now is made manifest and by the Scriptures of the Prophets according to the command of the everlasting God made known unto all Nations for the obedience of faith What more plain that the Scriptures are the mouth of the Lord or those means by which the Lord doth manifest his mind to men But the Quakers will not have it so and therefore it must not be so But they who enquire of or at the Scriptures for the mind of the Spirit run another way than that the Spirit walks and is to be found in and sin against the Spirit of God And that you may see how they set the Spirit and Scripture together by the ears Naylor saith further For those only are the Children of God who are led by the Spirit of God so far is true as truth it self but as the old Serpent he never heads a saying with the Scripture but he brings in a lye at the end and tail of it to whom they who are led by the Letter were ever enemies Here you have two great Commanders or Leaders brought into the field as the most hostile implacable Enemies whose followers from the time there were any were foes each to other And what can render the Spirit and the Scripture more opposite than that whosoever follows the Letter is a foe to him that follows or is led by the Spirit And the Leaders are the formal causes of it too and therefore it was ever so and is as inseparable as natural cause and effect If this be all true well might W. P. say We livingly witness against all the dry cavelling Letter-mongers in the world SECT II. Having frequently met with that Scripture 1 Cor. 3 6. by them produced to prove the Scriptures to have a contrary tendency to the Spirit I shall here open it and shew their mistake The words are Who also hath made us able Ministers of the new Testament not of the Letter but of the Spirit for the Letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life Whereas they would have us by the Letter to
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
thee and give thee for a Covenant to the people for a light to the Gentiles This speaks still of Christ to come as such a light Let us consider that passage in the Song of Simeon For mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people a light to lighten the Gentiles c. So that the appearance of Christ in the flesh in that body which Simeon took up in his arms was his being prepared to be a light to lighten the Gentiles Now this light was present And in the Text agitated John 1. 9. This light was past that is that appearance and work of Christ which made way for the salvation of God to be divulged and its ordinary means to be enjoyed by all indifferently This was the true light God was manifest in the flesh preached unto the Gentiles SECT V. The second Text they usurp is in Romans 10. 8. But what saith it The Word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart that is the Word of faith which we preach This Text joyned with John 1. 1. In the begining was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God they build their Tenet upon that Christ the Word is within every man as upon the Text before agitated they affirm that he is within them as a saving light Let us first consider whether the Word in this Text be of the same sense and import with that in John 1. which speaks of Christ the personal Word That it is not so but the Doctrinal Word is plain from these Considerations First The Apostle doth in these words allude to the words of Moses Deut. 30. 14. But the Word is very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart that thou maist do it This Word in Deuteronomy is said in Verse 10. to be the commandments and statutes which were written in the Book of the Law which Book they had among them and by that means had the contents of it in their heart either in the love of it or by rote as we use to say a writing is gotten by heart when it is treasured in the memory and it was in their mouth by profession or discourse Secondly The Apostle gives the same Answer to a supposed Objection How shall we know what is our duty How we should please God and be blessed therein saith Moses 'T is no such difficult thing for you to know this for what you have gotten into your heart out of this Book of the Law and what you have in your mouth by discourse and profession that is it you should observe and do So the Apostle if you suppose while we preach salvation by Christ whom you must receive that we preach impossibilities for that the person of Christ if in Heaven or in the grave he is out of your reach this will cure your mistake to consider that as the Word of the Law which Moses taught and wrote was in the heart and mouth to do it so the Word of faith or to be believed is in your heart and mouth to believe and confess it And this will as effectually save you as if Christ in his person were in your arms yea and more too And that this is his sense is plain in Verse 9. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved The third Consideration is That the word that is said to be in the heart is said also to be in the mouth and we all know what manner of word uses to be in the mouth that it is a word saying or speaking while it is there such as that spoken of in Samuel tidings in his mouth or that in Esther As the word went out of the Kings mouth therefore it cannot be meant of Christ but that speech those sayings which are or may be spoken as in the Gospel when preaching or when written Fourthly Both that in Deuteronomy and this word in the Romans are said to be in the heart and mouth of those who were the Church of God as Israel was to whom Moses spake and the Romans to whom Paul wrote and so were taught by the one the truths of the Law by the other of the Gospel It sorrily follows from hence that it is in the hearts of all men Lastly The Apostle agitating this Argument farther Verse 14. How shall they call on him of whom they have not heard He doth not tell them Christ Jesus the Word will preach himself and he is in the heart where if you will but stand still and wait and listen you shall hear him teach you all things as is the Quakers Doctrine No but he tells them in Verse 17. So then faith cometh by hearing so say the Quakers too but of whom Verse 15. Of them that are sent them whose feet are beautifull for the sake of the glad tidings of the Gospel of peace which they bring And these are more than that one personal or as the Quakers phrase it eternal Word Christ for they are expressed by they them which are Plurals but Christ is but one Yet from this Text do they most confidently avouch Christ the Word who was in the beginning and who is God to be in the heart and not only in the hearts of the Saints and Believers but in theirs also who are the most wicked and ignorant among the sons of men And I have by a grand Quaker been given the lye in the Pulpit for expounding the Word in Jâ—r 23. 20. of the Word of the Lord Doctrinally considered and this Text in the Romans produced with no more but confidence and of that enough to prove me so There is a passage of William Pen's either in his Book called Sandy foundation c. or else The Spirit of Truth c. which is this at least the matter of it That Christ is most eminently the Word all will agree or none will deny I have not time to look it But I shall say thus much to antidote that fancy That that is most eminently the Word of that species about which we contend which is most properly so though other considerations may render it more eminent in another kind and not that which is sometimes but improperly so called Christ is called a Lion a Door 'T is true Christ as God is more eminent than all things beside in Heaven and Earth and we use to say and do not yet repent it that all uncompounded good things are eminently in God So as there is strength and courage in a Lion with respect to strength and courage Christ may be said to be eminently most eminently strong and couragious but to be the most eminently a Lion would be a strange and untrue expression of Christ For Formadat esse and he that is without the form that gives the being cannot
without the God-head nor the God-head without the manhood I shall resume my Argument That this Christ of God the Quakers disown and deny and set up in his room and stead another viz. the light within every man and therefore disown and deny the true Christ and set up another in his room which is not the true Christ the Christ of God The light within every man was not born of the Virgin Mary It was not the light within every man of which Mary and Joseph were said to be the Parents It was not the light within every man that was arraigned before and condemned by Pilate It was not the light within every man that was crucified being hanged on and nailed to the Cross of Wood without the gates of Jerusalem It was not the light within every man that was laid in the Sepulchre of stone belonging to Joseph of Arimathea that rose out of that Sepulchre that eat and drank after his Resurrection with the Disciples that shewed to Thomas the prints of the nails that nailed his hands and feet to the Cross that ascended up into Heaven in the sight of the bodily eyes of the Disciples but the Christ of God was he and is he that did and suffered all these things Therefore it is a most stupendious contradiction to pretend to believe the Scriptures and that they own the Christ to whom the Scriptures bear witness and yet say The light in every man is the Christ and only Saviour And that the God-head of Christ should be within every man or any man breathing I have sufficiently refuted already yet I shall offer a few of many Arguments farther to convince That the Quakers Christ is not the true Christ and Saviour They call their light within the seed That he regards not the seed of God which is fallen under all this death and darkness so long as the creature will but hearken to him the Serpent and his lying promises he will lead him from one thing to another in things without c. 'T is a strange Christ who is in the power of every man to be brought under death and darkness as long as the world endures yet this is the Quakers Christ. Whereas Gods Christ was dead but died but once and was offered up but once for all and that one offering hath that in it which perfects for ever them that are sanctified But how the seed spoken of Christ in the Scripture should be in every man and yet the Son of Mary not be there yea not be any where is a most ridiculous Riddle for God or the God-head of Christ was not the seed of the woman or Abraham or David the seed was the man Christ according to the flesh So to the light of Christ that which changeth not in every one I appear to be judged for therein alone both these things and all other that proceed from that root makes for gathering creatures together unto that one name and seed wherein all the nations of the earth are blessed The Scripture he expresses the sense of is Gen. 22. 18. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed But Christ as God was not the seed of Abraham Who that understands any thing can be thus deluded to take the light within every man to be the seed of Abraham the man Christ Jesus The Quakers light within cannot be the Saviour for their light within is as they say God Father Son and Spirit without distinction and that they are but one whereas the Christ of God is the Mediator and therefore must be distinct from God the Father and sinfull man who are the parties to be reconciled There is one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus Compare this with Gal. 3. 20. NoÌ„w a Mediator is not a Mediator of one but God is one Well then the light within which the Quakers say is God without any distinction and not the man Christ who was in the womb of Mary cannot be a Mediator for a Mediator is not of one but between two distinct persons Now this being a truth where is their Mediator God eternal is not a Mediator to himself nor man a Mediator to himself so shut out the Christ without you a middle person between God and sinfull men and you are in a wofull condition Christ as God seperate from that man who was born of Mary is not nor ever was compleat Christ. So that if it should be granted that the light within you were the true God God essential which is a blasphemy no tender and understanding soul dare come near the brink of yet I say your light within were not Christ God had no capacity to suffer to die to do the Offices necessary for a Saviour and Redeemer according to the conditions of the Covenant of grace and although many were saved before Christ was born and died for sinners yet they were saved by faith in the promised Redeemer who was to come And these all having obtained a good report through faith received not the promise And therefore untill his Incarnation he is spoken of as Gods Christ in election but not actually and compleatly Christ Behold my servant whom I uphold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth I have put my Spirit upon him he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles Read Isa 49. where you may with open face behold this truth in that discursive converse and expostulation between God the Father and God the Son Wherefore when he cometh into the world he saith sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not but a body hast thou prepared me Then I said Lo I come in the volume of 〈…〉 Book it is written of me to do thy will O Gâ—… What was this will but his fulfilling the Lâ—… both actively and passively as Redeemer whicâ— he could not do as God therefore God prepared him a body that body which was born of thâ— Virgin to which he being united and thereiâ— dwelling and performing our Redemption 〈…〉 became actually and compleatly a Saviour anâ— not before Therefore if you believed arigâ—… concerning the God-head of Christ yet denyinâ— his man hood which was made a created Being a Being in time you disown and deny the trâ—… Christ And that is a notorious unmanning of Christ and denying him which one of your greaâ— Writers saith And the Scriptures throughout testifie of him and declare his unchangeableness who through all ages abides the same what he was in the beginning Whereas if the man Christ were so the same he never had a beginning And the Scripture or you are much out for they tell us When he was twelve years old he went up to Jerusalem and there disputed with the Doctors which would have been no matter of wonder if he had been as man from the beginning But if you will read such a mystery of iniquity ignorance and bold perverting of Scripture as the
great power his understanding is infinite To say That which is infinite is not beyond measure is a contradiction in its self The second Proposition I prove by their own concession and grant There is scarcely any one thing more frequent in their Writings than to talk of the measure of God the measure of Christ the measure of the light in men But turn your ear inward to that measure of light in you I could fill a volume with Instances of this nature how they measure out the light within and Christ and God and the Spirit but none of them will deny this It is a horrible abomination for men through their gross and dark conceits thus to dishonour God to share him into more and less degrees and measures who is entire infinite indivisible who is not with respect to his Being less in one place than in another This measuring would agree well to his manifestations and discoveries of himself to his creatures and by his works it would agree well to those graces wrought by his Spirit in the hearts of his people which in some is more some less and capable of growing in all but God cannot be more or less than he is and ever was That which may be darkness in a sinfull and evil sense and that in the abstract cannot be God But the light within some men may be darkness in a sinfull and evil sense in the abstract Therefore The light within every man is not God I suppose and hope they are not yet arrived to that height of wickedness as to charge God with ignorance or sin in the least degree or that he is capable of so degenerating therefore I will take the first Proposition for granted For the second I shall prove from Scripture Eph. 5â—8 For ye were sometimes darkness but now are ye light in the Lord. What can be more exclusive of all spiritual light or light in spiritual things than to be darkness in the very abstract But if you who adore the light within shall say this is meant of man but the light within is God and Christ and that is not man of whom the Apostle speaks I answer That sometimes you plead hard that the lighteth in Joh. 1. 9. should be rendred enlightneth and W. P. tugs hard for it in his Pamphlet called The Spirit of Truth c. but it will be granted with less ado Well then if the light within every man be the enlightning of every man at least virtually so that if he be willing to be guided by its conduct it will lead him as you dream then it must be within him as a qualification of his conscience though it be not produced into exercise And you tell men they have that within them that will be a sufficient guide if they will but listen to it therefore this Text reaches the light within you which saith there was a time when they were darkness It would be a strange affirmation to say the world or Creation were darkness while the body of the Sun were in it shining although not one man should move by its light And it is worth the noting that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Text rendred darkness signifies such a darkness as is the total absence of light A second Scripture that proves this is Mat. 6.23 But if the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness It is the same word in the Greek as in the fore-cited Scripture And lest you should cavil and say Christ doth but suppose it he doth not affirm that the light in any one is darkness the fore-going Verse tells you That if thine eye â—e evil that is not single and sincere in its aims thy whole body shall be full of darkness And sure you will not say but there are many in the world whose eyes are evil who account all such that are not Quakers And it may be considered that where the whole body is full of darkness there cannot possibly be in it any light And that this which men conceit to be light and are conducted and led by it as if it were such is sinfull ignorance and darkness I shall not think it calls for proof Well then 't is as clear as day that the best light some men have within them is but perfect night therefore it cannot be God Thus I have proved by three Arguments That the light within every man is not God I will but name a few more and leave them to the judgement of the Reader without further proof That which may be kept under and in captivity by the lusts of men is not God But the light in some men not only may be but is kept under and in captivity by the lusts of men and that by the Quakers own confession Therefore The light in every man is not God That which may be crucified and put to pain in a proper sense is not God But the light within every man which the Quakers call God may by their own confession be put to pain and crucified and that in a proper sense or they talk but madly of being saved by its being crucified within them Therefore It is not God I proceed to the proof of the Minor or second Proposition Viz. That the Quakers do own and profess the light within every man to be God This I must prove from their own Writings which will easily be done it being the grand foundation of the whole Fabrick of Quakerism so that I may say its first stone is laid in gross Idolatry It would be needless to bring Instances of their asserting the light in every man to be that Word which John speaks of Joh. 1. 1. Which was in the beginning which was with God which was God It is the first thing they teach and that not suddenly and amphibiously as they do many other points but in so many words But I shall furnish you with proofs enough over and above that I will make you know that I the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world that all through me should believe am the true eternal God which created all things that by me the light all things are upheld and that there is not another besides me can save Although in this passage he doth not call it the light in every man yet it being a personating the light within in a large and continued discourse he doth often express it the light within as in pag. 50. You scorn me the light in you Pag. 54. Which will not own me the light in them All power in Heaven and Earth is in it the light in the conscience They that cannot read out of these passages and that without spelling that the Quakers own and profess the light in every man to be God are not like to be much the wiser for whatever they read That it is in every one hear one speak his mind who would be believed Light is the same in
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
have so much good nature left as is able to work with it SECT IX And now Mr. Pen to shut up this Discourse I shall shew you your face in the glass of sense if you think your eyes worth the using to that end If you had dress'd your self by the glass of the Scripture at this coming abroad you had certainly been free of these spots Foul Epethites as knave puppy fool rascal logger-head Cheat. This you say was the language of your adversaries small Cryer but as you call it of a loathsome scent so you blow it on the Author of the book within five lines tryers of other mens spirits who have so little proof of the knowledge of their own as to be wanting in the alphabet or first principles of common civility This is not fair to charge him with anothers faults But compare this Civility of yours with your own thus far this impertinent man To all this I say he obtrudes an arrant lie upon our very senses Wretched scribler how idle how frivolous and how very troublesome is he with his ridiculous remarks If you are not guilty of the obtrusion you impute to your adversary and that frequently and apparently I cannot read and transcribe english But this I take the trouble of to let the world know that W. Pen will daub his Adversary and that Per fas per nefas and like one greedy of victory Aut inveniam aut faciam You will find him in faults or make gross ones and charge upon him G. Fox he thinks has miscited a Scripture ergo he is an Impostor and the Quakers a pack of Hereticks It is after this lofty manner of disputing c. I never read a more confident untruth The Authors Argument is too large to transcribe here Your adversary saith some of you excell in many things which are in themselves good and laudable You say If we excel in all things as he confesseth which is to say that there are but few things wherein we don't transcend all others and you direct us to page the first where we may prove your falsifying Your adversary saith it is rare with him Fox to use any text and not abuse it You say A few Scriptures he mostly confesseth that but one of us hath miscited either in reference to a disorderly quotation of the words or unsuitable application of them you know he pretends to deal but with G. Fox's abuses Your Adversary saith And indeed I have found it very fruitless to deal with you by way of reason and Scripture and Page 3. I will not now deal with you so much by Arguments drawn from reason or Scripture and depending purely on the understanding and mind c. You say He promiseth for the future to avoid the use of both Scripture and reason and direct to Page 2. I could produce in your Spirit of Truth many more such falsities in point of fact and you saying page 1. you carefully perused the Book you prove your self to be more than a meer careless even a wilful transgressor But if this be your way of answering your adversaries and throwing contempt and reproach upon them 't is not possible for any to escape your hardest censures And I am perswaded you are secure of your Friends considering what is objected against your principles and practices of a Religious concern by any of your adversaries writings or you would not thus adventure your reputation with them I would desire you if you will hereafter pretend to be an answerer you would be more solid and rational then when you find your adversarie appealing to the light within you to judg whether G. Fox have rightly transcribed the texts of Scripture he pretends to use which may be done with a little measure of natural light and common sense to conclude with a high rant and charging your adversary with infatuation that he hath given himself the lie and you the cause as if thereby he acknowledg'd the light within you to be so alsufficient as you pretend and that if a man can judg infallibly when he reads and compares a few written or printed lines whether they agree in the same words The Quakers light must needs be infallible and indefinitely and without any bounds at least in Religious and Divine Concerns But above all let me intreat you that if your Adversary give you your due saying moreover The light in every man is not to be extended to all cases whatever as if every man that attends to the light in him did certainly know what is good what is evil right or wrong in every case That then you will not gratifie him with such Reason and Rhetorick as in the following words of yours I heartily pity the man and am really afraid he has overcharged the strength of his brain for with me such manifest contradiction is but a smaller degree of distraction I would fain have a rational answer from him if he be yet capable of one How can the Light be a judge of good and evil and not be so And all within the space of ten lines If the light as by him acknowledged be a judge of good from evil and the contrary then in all cases wherein good and evil right and wrong make up the Question the light cannot be secluded as wanting in true judgment because good and evil are part of the Question in the granted Proposition deny that the light is sufficient in any case of right and wrong and deny all Verily Mr. Pen you seem to lay a Plot here to blow at least all the Judges off from the Bench to make room for any Quaker though the most witless of them all For if he can but discern right and wrong in any case Suppose whether in changing a shilling he hath wrong done him if he receive but two groats for 〈…〉 and right if he receive three he can then discern right and wrong in all cases whatsoever and he that shall say the contrary you will chastise him with Sarcasms as keen as a Badgeâ—s Teeth Though I am a little pleasant for I cannot sudare circa nuces pray bear with me I assure you I have had some heart-akes for you when I have deeply considered that a man of your hopes should be thus left of God I fear for pride and giddiness as to be made a Pillar of Salt to caution others to take heed lest they fall into the same snare which whatever conceit you may have of your self is too apparent Do not affect to be a Chief of a party learn that Lesson by Scripture-light It is better to hear the rebukes of the wise I mean not my self than for a man to hear the Song of fools It is great pity that what parts God hath given you should be fettered and â—meared with the polluted Chains of the grossest delusions expect no other but that God will wither you in your Rationals
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
which hath a respect to the things done within their knowledge as men the Writers of that or those parts of the Scripture were either under the Testimonies of Miracles or were by some express Testimony of God rendred holy men and being so qualified they would not write more than they knew and could not easily be mistaken in matter of fact and being Scripture is said by Paul to be of Divine inspiration Fourthly All those Books of the Old Testament out of which somewhat is not quoted in the New as Scripture were received as Scripture by the Jews and then Church of God and that in the time of many Prophets to whom Divine Testimony hath been given and it cannot with any shew of Reason be supposed that those Writings should be faâ—â—â—y fathered on God or taken for authentique Scripture and the Prophets not discover and reprove it whereas far less haâ—nous evils than that would have been were often the subject-matter of their sharp reprehensions Let any Quaker of other give me or themselves the like satisfaction of their being immediately inspired and they shall have my leave to hold such an Opinion of it But for those inspirations which they say many had before the Scriptures were written the mention of their time will give full satisfaction it will be a poor Argument to prove men are now inspired as they considering they had not the revealed written Word at all and we have it so full that all things necessary for any to know are therein included and thereby expressed The second thing I must reply to is what the Quakers frequently Object viz. That we make the Scripture the judge of the Spirit whereas the Spirit gave forth the Scriptures I answer this is for want of judgment in the Objectors Far be it from us to bring the to-be-adored Spirit of God to any mans bar for judgment to be passed on it or any thing that is his immediate Work or Word all we profess in this matter to make the Scripture a judge or determiner of is whether this or that be the mind of the Spirit or no but if once it appear to be the Voice and Mind of the Spirit we profess it our duty to reverence and submit to it And we being certain that the Holy Scriptures were given forth from God and that God is not opposite to himself we conclude that what is contrary to the Scripture cannot be the Word of the Spirit because then the Spirit should bear witness against it self and the word of the Spirit would be contrary to the word of the Spirit And moreover if any shall pretend to abolish by the Authority or inspiration of the Spirit those Ordinances and Institutions which were setled by Christ or Christ in his Apostles it would be unreasonable to credit them without the same Testimonials such Miracles as they wrought by which they were erected But the Quakers are far enough from shewing such a zeal for their pretended Ministry and Order And further we are obliged not to receive another Gospel and that by the Holy Spirit though an Angel from Heaven should preach it and we are warned not to believe any other as Truth Divine against it though many Wonders should be wrought for confirmation The third thing I must reply to is that our knowledge of the mind of God by the Scripture is uncertain I answer If you mean a knowledge of all Gods mind you are not to expect it it you mean all that is there contained it is not necessary and you may go to Heaven and do your duty without such a vast knowledge and if you endeavour it in your places and as God hath given you the means it will not be your sin much less your condemnation that you do not know it all Sure there are many Babes in Christ's Family yet they are Children and all are first Babes and that would be a Monster never yet seen in the Church of Christ a new-born Babe knowing the mind of God contained in the Scripture as fully as the most serious Christians of the longest standing Jesus Christ himself grew in wisdom and in stature and I intreat you be content to leave a little of the mind of God to be found out in the Scripture by the generations to come If you mean our knowledge of the mind of the Spirit is uncertain so far as it is necessary for our living in an acceptable manner to God soberly righteously and godly in this present world and to attain Heaven at last it is a great mistake for if pride lust and idleness stand not in our way there is no person that hath a few grains of Reason but may understand so much of the mind of God by the Scripture as is necessary for him to know to his eternal salvation But if you talk of the Scriptures being a dead Letter and not moving and teaching with a voice or impulse without our reading praying and applying it in the Lords strength you talk at a strange random as if God had given us our eyes and brains only to look after the world and the things thereof but in the knowledge of God we must be meerly passive A KEY TO THE Quakers Usurped and to most UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASES THere is not any thing in the Quakers Method of deluding which doth more tend to the insnaring of unwary Souls than their asserting their false Antichristian and Anti-Scriptural Tenets under Scripture-Words and Phrases and in those very Terms wherein are expressed the Truths of God while in the mean time they mean nothing less than their true import and what People who are not well acquainted with their Tenets suppose them to mean By this Artifice they beget a good Opinion of themselves and Errours with too many and by degrees so vitiate their Principles that in a short time they are prepared to embrance the grossest errors bare-faced I shall therefore as a work of no small use to such who are attempted by them or who have a Call or opportunity to deal with them for their convincing or confuting or the securing others who are in danger by them give you a true and candid account of their sense and meaning of a multitude of Scripture and Religious Phrases which they utter and apply to their falshoods and also of their new-coin'd Words and Phrases which are more peculiar to their Sect and Notions I dispose them Alphabetically for their more easie finding on any occasion A. Above NOt in locality but excelcie so Christ and Heaven they say are above i. e. excellent and may therefore be nothing but what is within them The Anointing The Light within Christ the Spirit essentially Assembling Meeting in Spirit Assurance What they feel in themselves not what they believe from the Scripture the inward witness viz. experience teachings of the light within B. Babylon All the Ordinances Worship Faith Obedience that have any thing of a form or visible in
saith was the Lamb of God whom John bid the Jews behold and the force of the light and life within which with them is the blood i. e. the life of the Lamb. P. Put Christ to pain Resisting the motions of the light within The painted Whore Not only the Papals with their irreligious Pomp but all the good words thoughts and actions of any sort of men who derive them not from the immediate teachings and motions of the light within yea all forms of Worship according with the precepts and examples of the Scripture and they are with them the most painted who come nearest to the Scripture as a Rule The People of God They and none but they who profess the light within every man to be Christ the only Saviour and Teacher and give up themselves to its conduct as such Perfect Perfection Not that which is sincere or a Perfection of Parts or sanctification throughout in part but a being without sin in the least remains or stains of it Persecution Not only a penalty or hurt inflicted on their Bodies or Estates but also a speaking or writing against their Principles in the most purely rational and Scriptural Authority The sâ—ed in Prison and Captivity and Bondage Pictures and Images The light within not obeyed as Christ and God  Not only those Images and Pictures that to the bodily-Eye represent Christ or God or the Saints and are adored with religious worship but all Worship Opinions Actions Words that are in imitation of the Examples and in obedience to the Precepts contained in the Scripture Mâ—n-pleasers They who comply with men though in things not only lawful but also to edifification Pollutions of the world Not only things in themselves sinful as drunkenness swearing lying c. but also what ever customs they dislike and decline As Cuffs Ribands putting off the Hat signes of respect c. which they say are from the Devil all recreations as bowling ringing though used seasonably and moderately The Power of God The Light within the Christ within Praying in Spirit Secretly or inwardly not with the voice by the immediate impulses of the light and power within without the exercise of so much as the conceptions of man Prayer Christ the light within is sometimes by them so called The presence of the Lord. The powerful influences and impressions of the light within either to terrour or peace and joy The pride of Man A not submitting to their light and especially receiving tokens of respect and wearing Ribands Cuffs and Lace The Priests A word of scorn put on all indifferently who are separated to the work of the Gospel-Ministry by men or that receive maintenance for their work The Worlds Professors All that are not Quakers Formal hypocritical Professors All that walk in the Ordinances of Christ commanded or prescribed in the Scripture or in the order of the Gospel Spirit of Prophecy Immediate impulses and inspirations False Prophets All that act not by immediate revelation Prophecying falsly How true soever in it self if not from their spirit Publicans and Sinners All that are not Quakers Walking in the pare Walking after the dictates of the light within Purifying the heart by the Bloud of Christ Acting and being disposed according to inward motions by the light and life of the Christ within them Q. Quenching the Spirit Resisting the motions of the Light within Quickned in the Life Stirred up by the power within R. Raised to life Conversion to Quakerisme Ravening brain Studying and following after divine knowledge or the knowledge of divine things Inwardly ravening from the Spirit A recourse to the Scripture or any thing else except their spirit for light and understanding in the things of God Carnal reasonings Reasonings of the Flesh All use of the understanding and judgment of man for searching and finding out truths about divine and spiritual things Received from the Lord. By immediate Revelation Reconciliation Giving up themselves to the light within The Word of Reconciliation Christ the light within The Lords Redeemed Those who are conformed to the light within Redemption A being reduced into the state of Adam in innocency not what was wrought by Christ in the Flesh 1600 years since The Redeemer Not that Jesus Christ who is ascended above and beyond the Stars but the light and power within every man as such Refreshings in Spirit Something they are pleased with they know not why and come by they know not how As the Quakers who were refreshed at the Dutch-womans declaring while they understood not a word she spake The New Man CHRIST The rest of the people of God A quiet and peace within though from a blind deluded conscience The Resurrection of Life Obedience to the light in this world Resurrection of the Body Resurrection of the light within to a dominion in the man for with them the body is Christ and Christ is the light within Also the Body which was a servant to sin being acted by the light and power within Revelations Not Scripture-Revelations but what come by immediate inspiration to them Righteous ones Such as are without sin Righteousness of Christ That which is wrought by the power and conduct of their Christ the light within The Root of Jesse The Light within The Royal seed Christ and every Quaker They who run and not sent All that teach the Gospel from the Scripture and not by immediate inspiration Reprobation Sin S. The Sabbath Every day the present Rest and Heaven of the Quakers The Sacrifice of Christ The light within obeying or they obeying in the light within Having Salt in themselves Having Christ in themselves The Salt of the Earth Christ the light within Salvation Conversion to the obedience of the light within Sanctification All one with Justification all one with Christ obedience to the light Building on the Sand. Making the Scripture a rule of faith and life The Saviour The light within every man According to the Scriptures By immediate inspiration as the Prophets and Apostles received the minde of God The Seed The light within or the Christ essentially within the Eternal Word that which was in the beginning with God The Seed of Abraham according to the Flesh The Eternal Word Christ as God  All that is not from the immediate motions within Self-righteousness Shadows All Forms and external worship  The Scriptures which Pen saith are as the shadow of the true rule viz. living touches Idol-Shepherds The Ministers who have a mediate call or teach out of the Scripture Shut out of the Scriptures Cannot understand them have nothing to do with them Signes and Miracles in Spirit No body can tell what All flesh must be silent Nothing must be said but what comes by immediate revelation from the Spirit for all else is the voice of man and of the flesh In the simplicity Without the use of humane understanding or if you will out of your wits To live in Sin Sinners Such as have any remains of
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
§. 2. §. 3. §. 4 §. 4. §. 5. â— 6. §. 8. §. 9. §. 1. §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. Morning Watch â—â— 41. Heb. 1. 1. §. 4. Morning Watch. p. 5 §. 1. §. 2. Sword of the Lord drawn p. 5 Fox the younger Gen. epist p 4 Fox §. 3. The great Mystery of the great Whore p. 3 §. 1. § 2. §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. Mystery of the great Whore epist 1659. §. 6 Jo. White head small Treat p 4. §. 5. ibid. §. 8. §. 9. Isaac Penington concerning Unity p 1 §. 10. §. 11. §. 1. 'T is Satans Master-Piece 10 bettray with a â—â—iss §. 2. § 3. To all that would know p 4. Naylor â—nswer to the â—…s p. 25 Cuffs Roâ—uds Lace and such other like things invenâ—ed by the devil F. Howgill one â—f Anchrists c. p. 2. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. Fr. Howgâ—l one of Antichrist Voluntiers defeated p. 26. Naylor Love to the lost p. 17. §. 5. It is too frequent with them to call thâ— holy Scriptures a dead Letter and a letter is somewhat Iâ—s then a word §. 6. No Morring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non ei aurora Morâ—â—nus §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. § 6. §. 7 §. 9. §. 1. § 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. §. 8. §. 7. §. 10. Exod. 9. 19 20 §. 11. §. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Beza renders it Gladium spiritualem the spiritual sword §. 13. Ja Naylor Sauls Errnd 10 Damascus p. 33. Thou hast printed mâ— words â—â—â—â—r §. 1. Morning-Watch 52. §. 2. §. 3. A true Testimony of what the Saints were made witnesses of Smith Prim. p. 10. §. 5. Morning-Watch Fanwoâ—th Light out darkness §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 1. Naylor Love to the lost Pref W. D. printed in the year 16â—3 Penington â—u p 12. Parnel Câ—â—ist exalted p. 3. § 2. G. Fox great myst c p. 12. §. 2. F H one of Antichrists Voluntiers â—â—feated p. 18. Jo. Story more Dâ—…y in Answ to Christian Queries §. 3. Life of Ed. Burrough G B. 〈◊〉 faith of the Gospel of Peace p â— Sâ—ith â—…m â— 14. §. 4. G Fox jun P 53 P. 54 P. 55. §. 1. §. 1. §. 2. Luk. 4. 17 §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 8. Pâ—nel shield of the truth p. 33. Hâ—mphrey Smith thâ—… true and everlasting olâ— â—c P. 29 p. 2 §. 9. Mystery of 〈…〉 Great Whore p. 3â—6 §. 10 Fisheâ— velata quaedam revelata §. 1. §. 2. §. 3 Penington concerning unity p. ◠§. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 1. §. 2. Pighius Controversia tertia §. 3. Penington concerning unity P. 13. In disputation Râ—t sâ—… §. 4. Fox great myâ—… c. 34 p 5. §. 1. p. 210. Luc Wadding p 211 212 218 Bellar dâ— Purg. p 219 Riel in Canon Bell de Poe § 2. 227. Bellar. de Poâ—â— Rom. â— 3. c. 18. p 23â— â—â—â—…n rita Fran. â— 2. §. 3. 224 §. 4. a. â—◠〈…〉 â—â—â—anct Sâ—…ia §. 5. 8 â—anct 〈…〉 â—â—9 Tâ—… Approbations 1 §. 7. Tâ—â—â— â— sâ—ct â—â— c. 1. 27â— 215 Parnel's Shield of the truth p. 10. Smiths prim p. 10. Naylors light of Christ c. 1. 19. §. 3. Argumentum Jaoobi Gerrani item Gretferi Jesuitae in Colloquio Ratisbon §. 4. §. 4. §. 5. Joh. 20. 9. §. 6. Deut. 5. 32. â—os 12. 8. §. 7. §. 8. 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. §. 9. Acts 24. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isa 8 20. Psal 147. 19 20. §. 2. Deut. 4. 6 7 8. Eph. 2. 12. §. 3. Job 26. 13 14. Psal 76. 1. §. 4. §. 5. Psal 94. 19. §. 6. Isa 59. 10. Deut. 28. 29. §. 7. §. 2. §. 3. Morning watch Epist §. 4. Parnel's Shield of the truth p. 10. Luke 24. 5. §. 5. John Storys short discovery c. p. 2. §. 2. §. 3. Velataquaedam revelata p. 4. §. 2. Parnel's Shield of the truth p. 11. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. §. 8. §. 9. Lip of truth opened p. 7. Gal. 2. 6. Psal 43. 3. Prov. 6. 23. §. 2. Prov. 30. 9. §. 3. Smith prim p. 10. §. 6. Naylors love to the lost p. 16. §. 7. Burroughs answer to choice experiences p. 6 7. John Story Short discovery p. 1. §. 8. James Naylor p. 16. §. 9. Pag. 31. Pag. 40. §. 2. §. 2. Morning Watch. §. 4. §. 5. §. 3. 3 Ep. of Jo. 11. 1 Pet. 2. 21. Heb. 13. 7. 2 Thes 3. 7. and 9. 1 Pet. 3 5. 3 Phil. â—â— 1 Sam. 8. 3. §. 6. Sol. Song 1. 8. §. 7. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 2. §. 3. Smith prim p. 24. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. Smith's Catech. p. 2. Morning watch p 6. § 8. Paper sent out into the world p 2. §. 9. John Higgins warning c. P. 7. §. 10. Scorned Quakers account P. 20. Josh 4. 24. §. 2. Deut 17. 18 19. §. 3. §. 4. 1 John 5. 13. Rom. 7. 1 Jam. 23. 24. §. 1. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. §. 2. Martin Mason loving invitation p. 4. §. 3. Pag. 11. Pag. 11. §. 2. Pennington's quest c. p. 12. §. 3. Naylors love to the lost p. 53. §. 2. W. Pen Spirit of truth c. p. 23. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. Rom. 13. 12. Heb. 4 12. Eph 6. 16 17. Mat 4. §. 2. Smiths prim p. 29. 30. Fisher Velata quaedam revelata p. 7. §. 3. John 5. 39 40. §. 4. §. 2. §. 3. Naylor's love to lost p. 8. Morning Watch. p. 22 23. Ib. 22 23. §. 4. Naylors love to the lost p. 30. 1 Kings 8. 53. 2 Sam. 23. 2. Rom. 16. 26. Love to lost c. p. 52. §. 5. W. P. 1 Cor. 3. 6. opened §. 2. Ver. 7. Ver. 9. §. 3. Heb. 12. 21. Exod. 20. 19. §. 4. Rom 4. 15. Rom. 7. 11 12. §. 5. §. 6. 2 Kings 18. 4. §. 2. W. D. discovery of mans return p. 21. §. 3. Jer. 7. 31. §. 4. §. 5. Morning Watch. â— â—◠§. 6. §. 7. Morning watch p. 45. Exod. 20. 4. §. 2. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. Isa 64. 5. Deus non superstitione coli vult sed pietate God will not take superstition but piety for his worship Cicero § 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the way which pleaseth his own mind Socrat. in Plato Viz. God will be worshiped Quicunque Deum aut Numen non agno scit non tantum ratione caret sed etiam sensu Avicenna §. 3. Who acknowledgeth not God is void not only of reason but sense also §. 4. Gal 4 9. Heb. 9. 10. §. 2. George Fox great mystery c. p. 16. 2 Col 14 opened § 3. §. 4. James Naylor Love to lost p. 52. §. 5. §. 6. Isaac Pennington concerning Unity p 1. §. 7. P. 28. I deny that God did ever or will ever reveal himself by any of those things thou
callest the means of grace â— Atkinson Parâ—el Shield c. p. 16 §. 2. Fox mystery c. p. 45. §. 3. Farnworth against Stalham p. 22. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. Tit. 1. 5. Acts 14. 23. Fox mystery c. p. 44. W. D. p. 30. Parnel's Shield of the Truth p. 17. §. 2. §. 3. Fox Mystery c. p. 72. §. 4. Fruits of a Fast. p. 21. §. 5. 10 Luke 7. 2 Cor. 11. 8. 1 Cor. 9. 14. §. 6. § 7. 2 Tim. 2. 15. Fox great mystery p. 5 P. 62. Velata quaedam revelata p. 7. Jer. 5. 2. §. 2. Gal. 3. 1. Gal. 3. 1. Isa 44. 20. Naylor love to the lost p. 17. Acts 14. 23. 1 Cor. 4. 17. 1 Cor. 12 28. 1 Pet. 5. 2. §. 2. Fox great mystery p. 32. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. Parnel Shield of the truth p. 34. §. 8. Isaac Penningtons Questions P. 49. §. 9. Morning Watch. Eph. 2. 21. Col. 2. 5 19. §. 10. Rom. 10. 15 18. §. 2. §. 3. Smith Prim. p. â— Smith Cat. p. 2 §. 4. Parnel's Shield of the Truth p. 42. Parnel's Shield of the Truth Epistle p 42. Fox great mystery c. p. 15. 1 Pet. 3. 19. opened Fox great mystery p. 64. Pennington quest p. 26. Parnel Shield of the truth p. 3. §. 2. Mat. 6. 9. Luke 11. 2. §. 3. John 6. 11. Mark 6. 41. Acts 27. 35. §. 4. 1 Tim. 4. 4 5. Naylor Love to the lost p. 57. §. 5. Smith Cat. p. â—â—7 Isa 56. 4. Naylor Love to the lost p. 13. Smith Cat. p. 100. Job 23. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal 5. 1 Cor. 1. 15. Smith Cat. p. â—12 Naylor love to the lost p. 16. §. 5. W. P. Spirit of Truth Great mystery p. 32. §. 2. William Dâ—usbury Return p. 7. §. 2. §. 3. 2 Gen. 17. §. 4. 1 Cor. 1â— 30. §. 5. Parnel Shield of the truth p. 11. p. 12. Farnsworth against Stalham §. 2. Smith prim P. 39. §. 3. It was that which by the Pope and Popish affected Prieste was ordained and by such it is upheld to this day Higgins Warning p 5. §. 4. Parnel Shield of the truth p. 11. §. 5. Naylor Love to the lost p. 1 Cor. â— 17. §. 6. §. 7. Love to lost p. 41 Warning c. p. 5. â—reat mystery of gâ—eat Whore p. 65. §. 8. §. 9. 2 Cor. 4. 18. 1 Cor. 11 23. Parnel's Shield of the Truth p. 13. Smith prim p. 39. §. 2. 1 Cor. 10 16. Naylor love to the lost p. 58. §. 3. p. 57. p. 56. p. 54. §. 4. p. 56. p. 57. Ch. Atkinson Ed. Bur. Trumpet c. p. 17. Farnworth Pennington Questions p. 25. §. 2. Parnel's Shield of the Truth p. 30. §. 3. §. 4. Morning Watch. p. 21. p. 22. §. 2. Rom. 4. 8. 11. opened §. 3. Love to the Lost p. 7. §. 4. Hab. 2. 4 Rom. 4. 5. Jer. 23. 6 Rom. 5. 21. §. 5. Rom 5. 17 18 19 §. 6. 1 Cor. 15 22. §. 7. §. 8. §. 9. §. 10. §. 11. Jam. 2. 14. opened 21. 24. §. 12. Gen. 22. 12 Jam. 2. 18 §. 13. §. 14. 2 Cor. 5. 21. §. 3. 1 Pet. 2. 24. Isa 53. 4 5 6. 2 Cor. 5. 19. Col. 1. 20 Heb. 9. 22. Rom. 5. 9. Psal 85. 9 10 11. opened §. 2. Gen. 2. 17 Rom. 3. 26. §. 3. Smith Cat. p. 74 Pennington mysteries of the Kingdom p. 17. §. 3. §. 4. Naylor Love to the lost p. 64. Eph. 2. 10. § 6. §. 7. Mystery of great Whore p. 49. Pennington questions Smith Cat. p. 98 §. 8. Fox great mystery p. 49. §. 9 §. 10. Rom. 4. 25. Gal 2. 16 Heb. 11. 1 Joh. 1. 12 §. 11. Smith Cat. p. 64 §. 12. Heb. 10. 12 13 14 Penningtons questions p. â—3 §. 2. p. 20. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. Luke 2â— 26. Acts 2. 30 31. Verse 32 Verse 36 Acts 5. 30 31. Act. 1. 11 Acts 17. 3 Acts 4. 10 11 12 Acts 13 28 29 30. Verse 38 1 Tim. 2 5. Rev. 1. 18. §. 7. Isa 3. 9. §. 8. Pennington Quest. p. 25. Fox 1 Tim 3. 16. Fox mystery c. p. 71. §. 9. Heb. 4. 14 15. §. 10. Smith â—rim p. 9. Sword of the Lord c. p. 24 Shield of the Truth p. 30. §. 2. §. 3. Fox great mystery c. p. 286. §. 4. Penningtons questions to the professors of Christianity p. 29. p. 20. §. 2. Fâ—â— great mystery c. p. 8. Smith Cat. c. p. 64. p. 71. §. 3. FOX the younger p 49 50. p. 54. Martin Mason's loving invitation p. 5. Joh. 1. 9. §. 2. 2 Tim. â— 10. 2 Cor. 4. 6. Joh. 1. 4. §. 3. Joh 4. 23. §. 4. Heb. 1. 3. §. 5. Act. 8. 34 §. 7. Spirit of Truth c. p. 53 c. §. 8. 1 Sam. 14. 27 2◠§ 9. Psal 94. 4. §. 10. §. 11. §. 12. Col. 1. 2â— â— Cor. 4. 2. Psal. 145 14. §. 13. §. 15. §. 16. â—sa 49. 6. Isa 42. 6 Luk. 2. 30 31 32 1 Tim. 3. 16. Rom. 10. 8. opened §. 2. Deut. 30. 14 opened §. 3. Rom. 10. 9. §. 4. 2 Sam. 18. 25. §. 5. §. 6. Rom. 10. 17. §. 7. §. 2. §. 3. Gal. 2. 7. §. 4. Col. 1. 27 opened 1 Cor. 1. 23. §. 5. Jer. 23. 24. Eph 3. 17. §. 2. §. 3. Naylor Love to the lost p. 3. Naylor Love c Preface § 4. 1 Tim. 2 5. Gâ—l 3. 20 §. 5. Heb. 11. 39. Isa 42. 1. Heb 10. 5. Verse 7. §. 6. Morning Watch. P. 4. Luke 2. 42. P. 5. §. 8. John 4. 22. opened §. 9. 2 Cor. 5. 16. §. 10. §. 11. §. 12. §. 1. 3. 1. Arg. 2 Arg. §. 6. Parnel's Shield of the Truth p 42. §. 7. Arg. 3. 4. Arg. §. 9. 5. Arg. Morning Watch p. 5 6 7. is wholly taken up with it Fox the younger p. 53. Lip of Truth c. p. 45. Rom. 3. â— 2 Cor. 7. 1. Arg. 2. Arg. 3. F. B. True Faith c. F. H. Testimony c. For great mystery c p. 16. p. 16. Fisher velata quaedam revelata p. 17. Pennington Quest. 27. Declaration against popery query 27. Parnel Shield c. p. 37. Fisher velata quaedam revelata p. 13. Shield of the Truth p. 25. John Bolton senior Pennington questions c. p. 24 Fox great mystery p. 55. Smith Prim. p. 9. 2. Jer. 11 12. § 12. Smith Cat p. 31. p. 29. velata quaedam revelata Naylor Love to the lost p 3. § 4. §. 5. Isaac Penington some principles of the elect called Quakers p. 34. Naylor love to the lost p. 78. §. 2. § 3. § 4. §. 5. §. 6. § 1. § 2. § 3. § 2. § 3. § 4. § 3. § 1. § 2. § 3. 2 Pet. 2. ◠§ 4. § 2. § 1. Job 32. 3. § 2. § 3. § 4. Psal 139. 7. § 2. § 3. § 4. § 1. § 2. § 3. § 5. § 6. 2 Chron. 6. 2. 2 Ki. 19. 15. § 7. § 8. Page 33. § 2. Page 32. § â— Page 31. § 4 § 5. § 6. § 7. § 1. Page 37. § 2 § 3. Page 38. § 4. § 5. 6. Ps 25. 14. Page 84 § 7. §. 8. Pro. 22. 2â— Vitia nostra quae amamus defendimus malumus ea excusare quam excatere Sen. Ep. 117. § 9. Psa 73. 20. § 1. Page 7. Pag. 111. § 2. Page 4 Page 1. Page 10. Page 1 Page 2. Page 13. Audacter calumniare ali quid adhaerebit § 3. § 4. P. 77. 78. Eccles 7. 5. §. 3. §. 2. §. 2. §. 3. §. 2. §. 2. §. 5. §. 7. §. 8. Prov 14 15 §. 9. 1 Tim. 3. 2. 2 Tim. 4. 2. §. 10. §. 3. §. 4. §. 5. §. 6. §. 7. §. 8. §. 9. Smith's Prim. pag. 56.