LUX EXORTA EST: OR THE LIGHT SPRUNG UP IN THE DESPISED QUAKER, WITH EVIDENT TESTIMONY AGAINST THE DARKNESS AND PREJUDICE OF THE OLD ANABAPTIST. IN ANSWER To Henry Grigg's book, styled, "Light from the Sun of Righteousness," (but proved an effect of smoke and darkness, proceeding from the pit of enmity and confusion;) Unnaturally published against his own natural sister in Barbadoes, chiefly, because of her owning the people of God called Quakers, and their Principle, WHICH IS HEREIN FURTHER VINDICATED; AND HIS Erroneous doctrines, self-contradictions, and impertinent exceptions, are examined, compared, and overturned. BY GEORGE WHITEHEAD. -Neither do the aged understand judgment. Night is come upon you, and the day is become dark over you. London-Printed in the Year 1673: PHILADELPHIA-REPRINTED BY JOSEPH RAKESTRAW, TO THE READER. SERIOUS READER, the implacable enmity of divers Baptist teachers against us, our present liberty and prosperity, is very obvious, by their several perverse confused pamphlets; although the sad experience and fruitlessness of coercion has not been shown by their valour. They have cause rather to be abased and humbled for their timorously obscuring themselves, (many of them,) in the late stormy times, than now either to boast, or thus come croaking out in warm weather, with blasphemy and revilings against the light of truth, or us its children. As also for their many divisions among themselves, contrary to this man's pretended order and communion of him and his brethren of their baptized churches, (as in page 53,) being divided about principles and doctrines. Some of their leaders and chieftains preaching up a personal election; others general redemption; some for Christ's dying for all; others for his dying but for a few; some for the Jews seventh-day sabbath; others opposing it; some holding the soul's mortality with the body, others its immortality. They should have been reconciled among themselves, before they had thus appeared in print against us called Quakers; for as yet we have no consistent matter from them to deal with. LUX EXORTA EST: OR THE LIGHT SPRUNG UP IN THE DESPISED QUAKER. I. CONCERNING THE LIGHT WITHIN. The light or life of the eternal Word, which is the light of men, (John i. 4.) is spiritual and divine, as is that Word; and therefore able to direct man's way out of sin, and to give him power against it. What cruelty and partiality does he therefore, (like the partial-minded electioners,) reflect upon God, in saying, that "this light or illumination of the eternal Word, leaves man like the priest and levite in his blood and wounds!" and yet how manifestly is this contradicted in his granting "that by this light mankind may come to understand there is a God, and also their duty as he is their Creator?" Now this their duty is both truly to love, obey, and fear him. The man also grants the light to convince them of sins, and teach them to do unto all men, as themselves would be done unto; and that if the heathens did follow the light, (they are enlightened withal by the glorious Creator,) they would shine forth in the principles of morality and just living." p. 9. It appears that this light in all men, can both teach them their duty to God and to one another; so it would teach them both to be godly and just. Then the question is, whether all that are so taught, and are such, be they called heathens, or others, be not in reality christians? Can a man be godly and not a christian? Surely if the heathens do mind and follow so much light as God has given them, they shall be saved. For is there more required than what is given? Or doth God condemn men for not improving more than he gives them? How can they then be inexcusable, or left without excuse before him? This opposer is not only cruel, in leaving men in their blood and wounds, though they follow so much light as is given them, but he is greatly confounded about the light in all men ; one while calling it "The substance of the law of the first covenant," (p. 11.) another while he saith, "that law was a more glorious ministration, and did convince of sin more clearly than this light." p. 10. Whereas the inward convincement or conviction, does not arise from the law, merely as written without, but from the law or light as received from God in the heart. Another while he calls it "the spirit that God has formed in man. Zach. xii. 1. The candle of the Lord." p. 9. Let the ingenuous reader judge how this man is shattered in these his contradictions, inconsistencies, and variations, and how plainly he has broke the neck of his own cause in confessing that the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Word, enlighteneth all men. For Jesus Christ and his light as the eternal Word, is the Divine and highest light. II. CONCERNING REDEMPTION, JUSTIFICATION, &c. He is very inconsistent in saying that "redemption and justification have been fully completed and finished by our Lord Jesus, for us, once for all; and that the debt is paid, and satisfaction made," (p. 14.) while yet he grants that ignorance and unbelief as chains and fetters bind many in satan's kingdom." (p. 14.) For did you ever know of any so fully in a redeemed and justified state, while so actually under satan's chains and fetters in his kingdom? Or that any should be thus detained in prison, so long after the debt is paid and satisfaction made, as he imagines? But in this notion of satisfaction, he appears very short and shallow; though it be not a scripture phrase, as T. Danson grants, (Synops. p. 19.) and though it depend but upon "some notions of law," as Dr. Owen saith. Declar. p. 150. That all men's debts should be so strictly paid, or such a severe satisfaction made, to vindicate justice, by Christ in their stead, which God never imposed upon the Son of his love, and that for sins past, present, and to come, (as some say,) is inconsistent. Besides the gross liberty this gives to sin, how agrees it with his teaching them to pray, "Forgive us our debts ?" Math. vi. 12. For what needed that, if they be all so strictly paid in their stead? Howbeit, that Christ in another or more acceptable sense, was a most satisfactory offering and sacrifice for mankind, for a sweet smelling savour to God, (Eph. v. 2.) we confess and own. And that he tasted death not only for some, but for every man, and is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. And that men are not justified, nor all their debt paid in their stead, while they are actually in chains in satan's kingdom, see this man's concession to his own confutation, touching the power of true conversion that is taught by Christ and his ministers, viz. "That a man must repent, that true repentance |