2

6

4

3

ness in them; but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; and yet for all this they call themselves the church of God, saying, Thy church;' Thy household, the church; Thy holy church; 3 Hast united us into thy holy church, the mystical body of Christ, we as living members thereof. Thy servants. Thy humble servants; Thy people;" Thy faithful people.' But how these things are consistent with their repeated confessions of being miserable sinners, tied and bound with the chain of their sins, and have rendered both the mercies and judgments of God ineffectual to a thorough amendment of their lives, being shamefully ungrateful and disobedient, living in an open contempt of all his holy laws; I leave to my adversaries, who, perhaps, some of them, may have front enough to undertake the reconciling such manifest contradictions.

"But, notwithstanding these apparent inconsistencies, yet thus much is fairly deducible from their own confessions; that a minister or member of their church, may be both a good and a bad man at once; a pious, sober Christian, and yet tied and bound with the chain of their sins; be a living member of the mystical body of Christ, and yet live in an open contempt of all God's holy laws; that is, be regenerate, and unregenerate; be a saint, and a reprobate; a child of God, and a child of

Coll. Sund. 15, 16, 27 after Trinity.

2 Coll. Sund. 22 after Trinity.

3 St. Mark's Day.

4 Form of Prayer for the Fast, 19th of December, 1701.

5 Coll. 2, at Evening Prayer, Trinity Sunday.

6 Coll. 2, for Peace, Morning Prayer, Coll. for 3 Sunday in

Lent.

7 Coll. for 1 Sunday after Epiphany, 2 Sunday, ibid.

8 Coll. for 21 and 25 Sunday after Trinity.

the devil; an heir of life, and a son of perdition, at one and the same time.

6

"Either the priests of the Church of England' are as bad as they acknowledge themselves to be in their confessions to God, or they are not; if they are not; why then do they, nay, how dare they make such confessions? But if they are, and their words are the true interpreters of the thoughts of their hearts, then they are as black within as they are without.

"Reader, thou hast their confessions under their own hands in print, for they have subscribed to the Book of Common-prayer, where they stand upon record, and which is an undeniable evidence against them. And there is no avoiding of it, but by such a mighty deliverance as the Lord hath graciously afforded me, and in my adversaries' blindness and ignorance, is miscalled, apostasy.

"The cry of my seducing the people, is a gross mistake; for I do not seduce or deceive them, but my labour and travail is, that they might come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. The character of seducing is theirs, for,

"1. They run before they are sent of God, and say they are ministers of Christ, when they receive their ministry from man, and offer no other proof of it than an episcopal ordination, and that the same with the Church of Rome; for when a Popish priest comes over to them, he receives no new ordination, but his old one is accounted valid.

2. "They preach not by the immediate teaching of the Spirit of God, as the ministers of Christ's sending do, but at second hand according to their best skill, as the Bishop of London acknowledges. (See his Seventh Letter of the Conference

with his Clergy, p. 14. Edit. 1690.) Or, as Hooker ingenuously confesses, Touching our sermons,' saith he, that which giveth them their very being, is the wit of man, and therefore they oftentimes accordingly taste too much of that over-corrupt fountain from which they come.' Eccl. Polity. 1. 5. Sec. 22. p. 163. Edit. 1666.

"3. They preach for hire, and divine for money and filthy lucre, as the false prophets did of old: whereas the ministers of Christ having freely received, freely gave, and for his name's-sake went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles, 3 John, ver. 7. The apostle Paul, in his speech to the elders of Ephesus, propounds himself as a pattern, in this case, worthy of imitation. I have coveted,' saith he, 6 no man's silver, or gold, or apparel; yea, you yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me: I have showed you all things, how that so labouring, ye ought to support the weak; and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is better to give than to receive,' Acts, xx. 33, 34, 35.

"The apostle Paul, though a minister of Christ, and had the care of all the churches upon him, did not forbear working with his hands in an honest calling, as the clergy of our day do; but he earned his living with his fingers; and as he was laborious at his trade himself, so he exhorted and commanded others to imitate him. He, and Sylvanus, and Timotheus, did not eat any man's bread for nought, but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that they might not be chargeable to any; and to make themselves an example unto others to follow them, See 1 Thess.

iv. 11, and 2 Thess. iii. 7, 8, 9. Having received freely, they freely gave, demanding no tithes, or offerings, or money for their ministry, but they preached the gospel of Christ freely; whereas, in contradiction to the practice of the apostles and primitive church, many of the clergy now demand tithes, and compel those by severe punishments, who conscientiously refuse to pay them.

"Would it not be better for these greedy and covetous persons, to be followers of the apostles, and to quit their pretensions to tithes, working with their hands to get their own living, than to live upon the people's labours, and make both themselves and their ministry so burdensome, as they are to their neighbours throughout this nation, through their covetousness.

"We read of Spiridion, Bishop of Trimithous, a city of Cyprus, that he kept a flock of sheep for his livelihood, and of Zeno, Bishop of Majuma or Constantia, who lived until he was past one hundred years old, that though he was the most eminent bishop of that country, yet he followed the trade of a linen weaver, and by that occupation got his meat and drink, and something to relieve the poor withal: and this trade he continued to his death. But now the case is altered: the apostolical primitive practice is laid aside by the clergy; who love to live at ease, and eat the bread of other men's labours." Socrates Scholast. Eccles. Hist. lib. i. cap. 12, in the Greek; also, Niceph. Eccl. Hist. lib. xii. cap. 47.

CHAPTER X.

THIS year Richard Claridge wrote the following letter to Joseph Taylor, formerly a Baptist preacher, and then newly convinced of the truth, as held by the people called Quakers, of which he was after a professor and preacher to the end of his days.

"Friend,

"6th Month, 24th, 1708.

"The truth, as it is in Jesus, or Christ, who is the truth itself, is only savingly and effectually known by his internal illumination, and those blessed operations and effects which he produces in the soul. All other knowledge of him is but notional, this alone is real because experimental.

"Before, my, convincement of the truth, and experience in my measure of the work of it in my heart, I was a great stranger to Christ in his inward and spiritual appearance. I knew him before as to his outward appearance, for I believed the whole history of his birth, life, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming to judge the quick and the dead; as I do now; but I did not know him then as to his inward appearance, as it hath been since manifested to me.

"For, until I knew him come like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap, and sit as a refiner and purifier of silver in my soul, and to purify and purge me as gold and silver; the dross and tin which were in me, obstructed that saving and spiritual knowledge of him, which through the riches of his grace, I have in measure attained to. For they veiled and darkened my understanding, and till they were removed, they intercepted the spiritual sight o of him

"Now, to remove this darkness, there was first light, (not natural, but divine;) and that showed me my sin, the guilt, filth, and penalty due to it, eternal death; and directed me to Christ, the alone Saviour, for salvation from sin, and for deliverance from the penalty due thereunto, eternal death. And as I was enabled by the grace of God, (for without that I could do nothing of myself,) to believe in Christ and repent of my sin, which in low and silent waiting, not for it, was mercifully bestowed upon me, so I came by the powerfu! and effectual workng of the same grace, to pass through the ministration of con