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THE

PREFACE

ΤΟ

ISAAC PENNINGTON, Esq.

IT may be you will blame me for giving you that title, being a Quaker. It is the same you have given yourself formerly when you printed books, and it was always my nature to give every man his birth-right in temporal things, but in spiritual things I am much like unto Jacob, subject to steal away the blessing from my brother Esau: so that I can now truly give honour to whom honour belongs, and tribute to whom tribute doth belong. Or thus, I have learned to give God the things that are God's, and Cæsar the things that are his: so that I know that title is your birth-right; for I knew your father many years ago, when I was a zealous Puritan; in those days your father was Lord Mayor of London: I had no acquaintance with him, but by sight I knew him; but as for yourself I do not remember I ever saw you in my life; I do remember several letters of yours to John Reeve, and of his unto you, some are yet to be seen; and this I say your language was then very high, only it was groundless; and I suppose you had no faith in what you writ yourself, if you had, sure you would not have left that high language, and have fallen to the silly Quaker's principles, where there is neither head nor foot, bottom, nor top. For if you Quakers did lay down what principles, or points of doctrine is of absolute necessity for people to believe, let them be few or many, then people would know what the Quakers faith and doctine is; there are a multitude of people that are Quakers, and

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have respect to them and hears them at their meetings, but know no more why they should believe the Quakers, nor what doctrine they ought to cleave unto, than a child of eight years old.

You did express in a letter to John Reeve, these, or the like words as follows: Who knoweth' say you the vast Spirit of the Lord which taketh all things into itself. Certainly, say you, heaven and hell were at union in the root. Thence,' say you, they come, thither they shall return again. This was an high language, but it was the depth of satan that is the depth of reason, the devil's imagination; it is as much as to say, that God and deril were friends in the root, though there be some difference between them here in their fruit; one brings forth good fruits, and the other bringeth forth evil; but the vast Spirit of the Lord taketh the evil spirit to itself again, as you imagined at that time from whence it came: 'for' say you, thence they came, thither they shall return: so that by consequence, the spirit of reason, the devil, came out of God and shall return into God again: This is the foundation of the Quaker's faith; but it was not set to be made public to all, but I perceive your mind is changed. to bring forth better fruit now than you did then; yet the root of your spirit I perceive is the same, and doth think that your spirit of reason came out of God, and so it shall return to God again. But I say, no; your spirit never came out of God neither shall it return to God again, no, nor see God to eternity; and as for your travels towards the Holy Land in the days when you were a Puritan, which you speak of in the latter end of your book. I do approve of your experience in that condition very well, for it is much like the experience which I had myself when I was a Puritan, so called, my experience was great in that way, it would be too large a volume to tell what I suffered in my mind, whilst I was an hearer of the Puritan Ministers: yet I was always kept from actual sin from my childhood to

this day; for if I had been guilty of actual sin, God would never have chosen me to be his Messenger; but I speak no more of that here. I see that your spirit hath moved you in the behalf of the Quakers, to write against the revelation of the Spirit of God; for you ought and are bound to believe the revelation declared by us the witnesses of the Spirit, as you are the Scriptures; for we have the same authority for our doctrine, as the prophets and apostles had for that they writ; and our commission is from the same God, and there is as true and deep things declared and revealed in that interpretation of the 11th Chap. of the Rev. you so despise, as in the Scripture, and things of a more high nature, and giveth more satis faction to those who understand and believe them, than the Scripture doth. There were several other books written by us the witnesses of the Spirit, which you make no mention of, as if you had never seen them: as first, a Transcendant Spiritual Treatise. Secondly, a Divine Looking Glass. Thirdly, the Mortality of the Soul. Fourthly, the Interpretation of the whole book of the Revelations. Fifthly and lastly, a book called, a Looking Glass for George Fox the Quaker. That would have informed you of many of those things you spake of in your book, and have shown you how God may be said to fill heaven and earth and to be infinite, and what the nature of infiniteness is; but perhaps you have not scen them yet; but you have undertook to pick at a few things in those books you have read over, to write against those things you have writ against, in the Neck of the Quakers broken, which hath been writ against by the Quakers over and over again, by Richard Farnsworth, and George Fox. That Looking Glass to George Fox, is an answer to more places in that book, than you mention. Sure you Quakers do not know one another's mind, nor what one another writes. I did expect to have had a great volume from you Quakers, in answer to that Looking Glass, but the Quakers were so many of them damned, and some of them gone out of the body, that they could

not find out a man that was able, that was not under the sentence but yourself. So that they have laid the burden upon you it seems; but there is nothing in your book which I expected, seeing you were not under the sentence of this commission before. I shall give some answer to it for the satisfying of others more than for myself; if you had read the Looking Glass for George Fox, you might have saved yourself a great deal of labour; for all those things and a great deal more did George Fox write against in the Quaker's Neck Broken, and Thomas Toylor's letter; you did but go over the same things again which your brethren hath gone over already, and though I have answered sufficiently already to those things you write against me, more than any man in the world could do at this day; yet because you are one of the most eminent writers, thought to be of the Quakers now alive, excepting George Fox, your father, who is the head of you all. I will trouble myself so far as to give answer to those things that are needful, to inform the reader more than I have written already, lest it should be said by you Quakers that Isaac Pennington writ such a book against Muggleton that is unanswerable; therefore in as brief a manner as I can, I shall say as follows.

AN

ANSWER

T

ΤΟ

TISAAC PENNINGTON, Esq.

Muggleton's Words. THE law is not written in the seed of faith's nature at all, but in the seed of reason's nature only; and that the spirit of reason in man is the devil.

Pennington's Observation. To this he saith, 'The sum of the law is even to love God above all, and our neighbour as ourself; and this love which is the sum of the law, God writeth in the hearts of his spiritual seed.' Mug. Words. Is this a good answer to the abovesaid? Let any sober man judge.

2. Mug. Words. That saying of the devil was true, when he said to Christ, 'All the kingdoms of the earth are mine.'

Pen. Observ. He saith, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof;' and saith "The devil hath no right in it;' and saith, 'God himself is judge,' and quotes 'Psalms lxxv. 7. Daniel iv. 2, 5.'

Mug. Words. Is this a sufficient answer, that the kingdoms of this world is not in the devil's hands; for God's kingdom is above the stars, and the devil's kingdom is here upon earth; though God created this kingdom of the earth, yet he it gave into the hands of the devil to be the governor of it.

3. Mug. saith, 'There never was no enmity between the person of the serpent, and the person of the woman; but the enmity which lay between them was in the two seeds.

Pen Observ. 'Is not' saith he, 'the enmity as ex

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