Ranters, from their extravagant discourses and practices.  For they interpreted Christ’s fulfilling of the law for us, to be a discharging of us from any obligation and duty the law required of us, instead of the condemnation of the law for sins past, upon faith and repentance: and that now it was no sin to do that which before it was a sin to commit; the slavish fear of the law being taken off by Christ, and all things good that man did, if he did but do them with the mind and persuasion that it was so.  Insomuch that divers fell into gross and enormous practices; pretending in excuse thereof, that they could, without evil, commit the same act which was sin in another to do: thereby distinguishing between the action and the evil of it, by the direction of the mind, and intention in the doing of it.  Which was to make sin super-abound by the aboundings of grace, and to turn from the grace of God into wantonness; a securer way of sinning than before: as if Christ came not to save us from our sins, but in our sins; not to take away sin, but that we might sin more freely at his cost, and with less danger to ourselves.  I say, this ensnared divers, and brought them to an utter and lamentable loss as to their eternal state; and they grew very troublesome to the better sort of people, and furnished the looser with an occasion to profane.

CHAP. II.

Of the rise of this People, their fundamental principle, and doctrine, and practice, in twelve points resulting from it: their progress and sufferings: an expostulation with England thereupon.

At was about that very time, as you may see in George Fox’s annals, that the eternal, wise, and good God, was pleased, in his infinite love, to honour and visit this benighted and bewildered nation, with his glorious day-spring from on high; yea, with a more sure and certain sound of the word of light and life, through the testimony of a chosen vessel, to an effectual and blessed purpose, can many thousands say, glory be to the name of the Lord for ever!

For as it reached the conscience, and broke the heart, and brought many to a sense and search, so that which people had been vainly seeking without, with much pains and cost, they, by this ministry, found within, where it was they wanted what they sought for, viz. the right way to peace with God.  For they were directed to the light of Jesus Christ within them, as the seed and leaven of the kingdom of God; near all, because in all, and God’s talent to all: a faithful and true witness, and just monitor in every bosom. 

The gift and grace of God to life and salvation, that appears to all, though few regard it.  This the traditional Christian, conceited of himself, and strong in his own will and righteousness, overcome with blind zeal and passion, either despised as a low and common thing, or opposed as a novelty, under many hard names and opprobrious terms; denying, in his ignorant and angry mind, any fresh manifestations of God’s power and spirit in man, in these days, though never more needed to make true Christians.  Not unlike those Jews of old, that rejected the Son of God, at the very same time that they blindly professed to wait for the Messiah to come; because, alas! he appeared not among them according to their carnal mind and expectation.

This brought forth many abusive books, which filled the greater sort with envy, and lesser with rage; and made the way and progress of this blessed testimony strait and narrow, indeed, to those that received it.  However, God owned his own work, and this testimony did effectually reach, gather, comfort, and establish the weary and heavy-laden, the hungry and thirsty, the poor and needy, the mournful and sick of many maladies, that had spent all upon physicians of no value, and waited for relief from heaven, help only from above; seeing, upon a serious trial of all things, nothing else would do but Christ himself; the light of his countenance, a touch of his garment, and help from his hand, who cured the poor woman’s issue, raised the centurion’s servant, the widow’s son, the ruler’s daughter, and Peter’s mother: and like her they no sooner felt his power and efficacy upon their souls, but they gave up to obey him in a testimony to his power: and that with resigned wills and faithful

hearts, through all mockings, contradictions, confiscations, beatings, prisons, and many other jeopardies that attended them for his blessed name’s sake.

And, truly, they were very many, and very great; so that in all human probability they must have been swallowed up quick of the proud and boisterous waves that swelled and beat against them, but that the God of all their tender mercies was with them in his glorious authority; so that the hills often fled, and the mountains melted before the power that filled them; working mightily for them, as well as in them; one ever following the other.  By which they saw plainly, to their exceeding great confirmation and comfort, that all things were possible with him with whom they had to do.  And that the more that which God required seemed to cross man’s wisdom, and expose them to man’s wrath, the more God appeared to help and carry them through all to his glory.

Insomuch, that if ever any people could say in truth, Thou art our sun and our shield, our rock and sanctuary; and by thee we have leaped over a wall, and by thee we have run through a troop, and by thee we have put the armies of the aliens to flight; these people had a right to say it.  And as God had delivered their souls of the wearisome burdens of sin and vanity, and enriched their poverty of spirit, and satisfied their great hunger and thirst after eternal righteousness, and filled them with the good things of his own house, and made them stewards of his manifold gifts; so they went forth to all quarters of these nations, to declare to the inhabitants thereof, what God had done for them; what they had found, and where and how they had found it, viz.—The way to peace with God: inviting all to come and see, and

taste for themselves, the truth of what they declared unto them.

And as their testimony was to the principle of God in man, the precious pearl and leaven of the kingdom, as the only blessed means appointed of God to quicken, convince, and sanctify man; so they opened to them what it was in itself, and what it was given to them for; how they might know it from their own spirit, and that of the subtle appearance of the evil one: and what it would do for all those whose minds should be turned off from the vanity of the world, and its lifeless ways and teachers, and adhere to his blessed light in themselves, which discovers and condemns sin in all its appearances, and shows how to overcome it, if minded and obeyed in its holy manifestations and convictions: giving power to such, to avoid and resist those things that do not please God, and to grow strong in love, faith, and good works.  That so man, whom sin hath made as a wilderness, over-run with briers and thorns, might become as the garden of God, cultivated by his divine power, and replenished with the most virtuous and beautiful plants of God’s own right-hand planting, to his eternal praise.

But these experimental preachers of glad tidings of God’s truth and kingdom could not run when they list, or pray or preach when they pleased, but as Christ their Redeemer prepared and moved them by his own blessed Spirit, for which they waited in their services and meetings, and spoke as that gave them utterance; and which was as those having authority, and not like the dry, and formal Pharisees.  And so it plainly appeared to the