Position 5
That the only way of recovery out of the apostasy is by returning to, and keeping in, that Spirit from which the apostasy was.
THE apostasy came by leaving the Spirit of God, and running after another spirit; and the recovery must be by leaving that other spirit, and returning to the Spirit of God again. How did Christians formerly begin their religion? They began in the Spirit. Gal 3:3. And so they were to go on to perfection, and not to intermix anything of the flesh.
And had 1 John 2:27; the anointing been kept to, antichrist and the mystery of iniquity had been kept out; and where that is returned to, the antichristian spirit is purged out by degrees, and the ways thereof discovered and forsaken. Therefore know the whorish spirit in yourself, which is busy to form likenesses in your mind to seduce you, and to make you fall in love with the likenesses which she has formed in other men's minds; and let her not deceive you with her paint and gaudy appearances; but know likewise the little seal of life, from which truth springs up in you, and in which the Spirit of Truth dwells, and is to be found; and take heed, lest the serpentine wisdom teach you to despise and turn from it.
From this spring it was, that truth sprung up in the witnesses all the time of the apostasy; for they had their testimony from; the Spirit of prophecy. Rev 19:10. So far as they kept to that, they gave a true testimony; so far as their own spirits mixed with it, they corrupted it. But to abide in that was very hard; and there was need of much affliction and persecution to keep the flesh down, and to preserve the life pure. But as the life springs up more strongly, and overcomes that spirit inwardly, (I mean the wise, fleshly spirit), there will be less need of outward afflictions or persecutions; yes, or inward either; but there will be a safe entrance into, and abiding in, the joy, the rest, the peace, where the whore within, (which seduced from the life, where the power is, into some form where the power is not), is burnt. Learn then, and know in yourself that Spirit of prophecy which spoke in all the martyrs. Hear that, come to that, keep to that; feel the union, the fellowship, the spreading of that in you.
When that tells you go, go; when that tells you come, come; when that tells you do this, do it. But the flesh is grown strong, and strongly resists this Spirit, both inwardly and outwardly; and will not allow him to rise up in the heart, or to rise up in the nation; but at anytime when he stirs, and offers to speak, or lead to God, there is a reason that rises up in the fleshly wisdom, that knocks him down, and denies his voice, and listens to another voice instead of his. Thus they first give way to the fleshly wisdom, and suppress the truth in themselves, and then they would go forth and suppress it in others; and they think they are crazy, and their rage rises against them where the truth is allowed to grow, and man's reason or fleshly wisdom denied.
And thus is the 1 Corinthians 2:8; "Lord of glory" evilly entreated, and slain at this day by this generation of Christians, as he was by the Jews slain formerly in the prophets, in that his appearance in a fleshly form, and in his apostles; and his blood will be required; for the earth shall not always drink it up and cover it, nor the adulterous woman be always able to wipe her mouth, and say, she has done no wickedness. You have saved alive the unjust, and killed the just. The murdering nature is alive in you, Oh you Christians!
But the Holy One is slain, and lies buried in your graves; and you have painted your graves, and speak good words of him; but still keep him down, and let another rise up and live in you. You cry up that appearance of Christ in the flesh, and the words he then spoke, and the words of his apostles, and think if you had lived in those days, you would not have killed either him or his apostles; and yet you resist and oppose the same life in yourselves and in others, with such a kind of wisdom in the letter as the Pharisees had. Oh what will you do! the uncircumcised ear has gotten up in you, and you cannot hear; and the uncircumcised heart, and you cannot understand; but when this is told you, you despise and wonder, and go on in the perishing state. My bowels! my bowels! I am pained at my bowels!
Oh England! England! you who killed the martyrs in Queen Mary's days; you who persecuted the nonconformists afterwards; you who would not allow the people of God to meet together, to seek him with an honest heart; but would confine them to your gross, formal ways of worship! though the Lord has appeared, and broken the horns of the oppressors; yet the persecuting spirit is not broken in you; but you still hunt after the precious life of the seed, and would not let it spring up in the nation. The spirit of enmity is still up in you, which knows not the Lord of life; but by a natural instinct opposes him, and would willingly keep up some grave or other, it cares not what, so it might but thereby keep down the life: for you can now bear with any form, and cherish it; and your only enmity is against those who are sent by the Lord to gather out of all forms into the life. How often would the Lord have gathered you! but you would not; and yet seeks to gather you; but still you will not; but, as if the former laws, made in Queen Mary's days, were not sufficient, desire new laws, to ensnare and entangle the innocent.
What will become of you, or what will you say to the Lord, when he arises to plead the cause of the innocent? For that Spirit which he raised up to witness against the whorish spirit, (which lies hidden in your forms of worship and religion, and appears in all your laws, councils, and ways of government, so far as they were formed, and so far as they are guided, by the wisdom of the flesh), is innocent; even as that Spirit which witnessed formerly against popery and episcopacy was innocent before the Lord, though accused by them as guilty of error in itself, and of disturbance to the public peace, as this is