people to your way of worship, who have a firm persuasion and belief that it is not the right, you make men hypocrites and time-servers. 5. By obtruding and enforcing your religion upon others, you greatly disparage and undervalue it, and give men the more ground to suspect and dislike it.-6. You break that great command, which Christ says is the law and the prophets, viz. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, Mat. vii. 12.'

All these reasons are illustrated and backed with scripture and reason; concluding with a very close and seasonable application to our persecutors. A solid, serious discourse it is, if any arguments had been sufficient to dissuade men from persecution, (of which there was very great about this time; particularly in London, Bristol, and divers other places) the whole being well worth perusal; and I should have inclined to insert it at large, but that it hath pleased God to incline the hearts of our superiors to ease us in that respect, by granting a toleration to Protestant dissenters; for which we are thankful. These three, viz. the Caution to Constables, Discourse of Riots, and Dissuasive from Persecution, were all written, or at least printed this year, 1683.

1684. And he acquitted himself so well on these subjects, that one William Tournay, to him unknown, sent him a letter from London, taking notice of the aforesaid tracts, which he was so well pleased with, that he desired his

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judgment on the twenty-third, twenty-ninth, and thirty-fifth of queen Elizabeth, in relation to the proceedings then upon them; to which our Friend Thomas Ellwood returned him an answer in a large letter, which is in his decades of letters, among many others, to divers persons, and on various subjects, well worthy the perusal, from the year 1670, down to his latter times; and if they were published, would help to supply the deficiency of his own account of the latter part of his life.

About this time he wrote a pcem, or hymn of praise to the Lord, which I think well deserves to be inserted in this work.*

1685. William Rogers, whom our author answered in the year 1682, (as aforesaid) though he did not reply to it, or ever attempted it, that I have heard of, putting forth a rhy ming scourge for George Whitehead, against whom he had bent his most inveterate spleen, and who had also answered his great book, falsely called the Christian Quaker, in a book entitled, the Accuser of the Brethren cast down, &c. Thomas Ellwood wrote an answer to his scourge, in verse, entitled, Rogero Mastix, a Rod for William Rogers, in return for his Rhiming Scourge: for which he gives the following reason.

To such as ask why I in verse have writ,

This answer I return, I held it fit,

Verse should in verse be answer'd, prose in prose.
My adversary his own weapon chose."

* See No. 13 of the Appendix.

He chose before in prose to write, and then

I answer'd him in prose. So now again,

Since he his style from prose to verse hath chang'd,
And in the muses walks hath boldly rang'd,

In his own method him I chose to treat,

Lest he should wise be in his own conceit.

1686. In the second month this year, he had a concern upon his spirit, in a deep sense of the enemy's working to sow divisions, and endeavouring to lay waste the testimony of truth, to write an epistle to Friends; which he did very solidly and weightily; to stir up Friends to faithfulness, and to beware of the enemy's wiles, and avoid that rending, dividing spirit, which was then at work to cause division and strife among Friends; which being so seasonable and excellent, both for matter and style, the whole is thought meet to be here inserted at large; and is as follows.

AN EPISTLE TO FRIENDS.

Dear Friends, unto whom the gathering arm of the Lord hath reached, and who have known in your several measures, a being gathered thereby into the heavenly life, and are wit. nesses of the preserving power, by which ye have been kept faithful to the Lord, and regardful of his honour. Unto you, in an especial manner, is the salutation of my true and tender love in the Lord; and for you as for

myself, are the breathings and fervent desires of my soul offered up in the one spirit, unto him who is your God and mine; that both you and I may be for ever kept in the fresh sense of his tender mercies, and great loving kindness unto us; that therein our souls may cleave firmly unto him, and never depart from him. For, Friends, it is a trying day, a day of great difficulty and danger; wherein the enemy is at work, and very busy, setting his snares on every side, and spreading his temptations on every hand. And some, alas! have entered thereinto, and are caught and held therein; for whom my soul in secret mourns.

And truly, Friends, a great weight hath been upon my spirit for many days, and my mind hath been deeply exercised, in the sense I have of the enemy's prevailing, by one bait or other, to unsettle the minds of some, whom the arm of the Lord had reached unto, and in some measure gathered to a resting place. But not abiding in that pure light by which they were at first visited, and to which they were at first turned, the understanding hath been vailed again, the eye which was once in some measure opened, hath the god of the world insensibly blinded again, and darkness is again come over to that degree, that they can now contentedly take up again, what in the day of their convincement, and in the time of their true tenderness, they cast off as a burthen too heavy to be borne. O my Friends! this hath been the enemy's work;

therefore, it greatly behoves all to watch against him; for it hath been for want of watchfulness, that he hath got entrance into any. For when the mind hath been from off the true watch, in a secure and careless state, then hath he secretly wrought and presented his fair baits, his allurements or enticements by pleasure or profit, to catch the unwary mind. And hence it hath come to pass, that some who have come out fairly, and begun well, and have seemed in good earnest to have set their hands to God's plough, have looked back, and been weary of the yoke of Christ, and have either lusted after the flesh-pots of Egypt again, or turned aside into some by-path or crooked way in the wilderness, and thereby have fallen short of the promised good land.

But you, my dear Friends, in whom the word of life abides, and who abide in the virtue and savour thereof, ye know the wiles of the enemy, and the power which subdues him, and the rock in which the preservation and safety is. So that I write not these things unto you, because ye know them not; but the end of my thus writing, is to stir up the pure mind in all, upon whom the name of the Lord is called, that we all may be provoked to watchfulness against the workings of the wicked one. Therefore, dear Friends, bear, I beseech you, the word of exhortation; though from one that is little and low, (and through mercy sensible of it) and who hath not been

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