Epistle 178

Friends and brethren, who are made partakers of the power [1 Cor 9:12?] of the world that is without end, and are partakers of the heavenly gift [Heb 6:4], and feel the power, in which are the unity, peace, and kingdom that hath no end [Luke 1:33], in that feel one another, and know one another, and in the life, in which ye will have peace and unity one with another; that the top-stone may be laid over all, and ye all in the wisdom, life, and seed in your measures may be preserved, spreading the truth abroad, confounding the deceit, answering the witness of God in all [Col 4:6/1 Jn 5:9f]. To which they must be brought before their minds can be turned to God, and be acquainted with his covenant of promise, and his life, and to know God, the Father of spirits [Heb 12:9].

For all Christendom, which hath gotten the words of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles, that are not in the spirit and power that they were in that gave them forth, are all on heaps about them, and not in unity, being out of the spirit, in which is the unity and true fellowship.

For there are the heaps, amongst them that are out of the spirit and power of God, having the words in the transgression, in the fall, in the earth, and in the many bodies, names, and heads, churches, religions, and worships, which are in the first birth, born of the flesh, which will persecute him that is born of the spirit [Gal 4:29]; which spirit plungeth down by baptism, and putteth under, and bringeth into the one body, and putteth that under which causeth many heads, and answereth to that which is transgressed against. For all must come to the one baptism with the spirit into the one body [Eph 4:5, 1 Cor 12:13].

And all my dear friends, be faithful, and quench not the spirit [1 Th 5:19], but be obedient to the truth [1 Pet 1:22], and spread it abroad, which must go over all the world, to professors, Jews, christians, and heathen, to the answering the witness of God in them all; that they may come to the truth, which answers the witness in them, to be made free by it [John 8:32]. And, friends, in the wisdom of God dwell, which preserveth in unity in the spirit and power. If any thing be spoken in a meeting which ye cannot bear, speak to them concerned betwixt them and you [Mat 18:15], after the meeting is ended; for if any of the world be there it may give occasion to them to reproach truth.

For wisdom preserveth in the peace, and maketh peace [Sir 1:18?], and preserveth out of the contrary, and overcomes with the wisdom and love, and answereth the witness with the life, and so hath unity, and that hath the kingdom.

G. F.