A few words in tenderness to the well-meaning professors, suiting the present season [by] Thomas Zachary. Zachary, Thomas, d. 1686. 1674 Approx. 14 KB of XML-encoded text transcribed from 1 1-bit group-IV TIFF page image. Text Creation Partnership, Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) : 2008-09 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1). A97307 Wing Z2 ESTC R43844 42475310 ocm 42475310 151484 This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal . The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Early English books online. (EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A97307) Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 151484) Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 2260:21) A few words in tenderness to the well-meaning professors, suiting the present season [by] Thomas Zachary. Zachary, Thomas, d. 1686. 1 sheet ([1] p.). s.n.], [S.l. : The 5th of the 9th Month, 1674. Reproduction of original in: Friends' Library (London, England) Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford. Re-processed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. Gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. 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Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements). Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site . eng Society of Friends -- Apologetic works -- Early works to 1800. Holy Spirit -- Quaker authors -- Early works to 1800. 2007-06 TCP Assigned for keying and markup 2007-06 Apex CoVantage Keyed and coded from ProQuest page images 2007-08 John Latta Sampled and proofread 2007-08 John Latta Text and markup reviewed and edited 2008-02 pfs Batch review (QC) and XML conversion A Few Words in Tenderness TO THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSORS , suiting the Present Season . UPon the serious Consideration of the various and long continued Contests and Oppositions of all Sorts of People against us , the contemptible People of the Lord , called Quakers ; it hath seemed most strange and grievous , that any of the Professors of Christianity , who have had any Simplicity of Heart to God , and known any inward Work of the Spirit of Truth , should joyn with the Gentiles , who know not God , to make void that Blessed Work , which the God of Heaven by his pure eternal Spirit hath begun to work in our Dayes in these despised People , who have given up their Souls to serve him , and for whom their very Lives would not be dear unto them to give up for his Name sake . O unto you , who have had any experimental Knowledge of God and of Christ , through the Operation of the Spirit in you ; unto you is my very Soul drawn out in tender Love and Compassion , desiring that the God of Heaven would open your Eyes , and give you a clear , spiritual and certain Knowledge of the inward State of your Souls before him , and bring you to the Obedience of his Heavenly Will , for , for this very Cause , for not being Obedient & answering the Lord in his Requirings Hardness of Heart is come over you , and Darkness hath covered you ; so that that Simplicity and Tenderness that was once in you in the Time of God's Visitation , is much defaced , and an Enmity sprung up in you against the Appearance of God amongst us . I beseech you bear with me ; for the Zeal of God is upon me , and dear and tender Love to your immortal Souls : Know you this all you who have any Simplicity and Tenderness left in you , that I now directly stand for God , and in his Name I plead with you and for you , that you may be reconciled to him , and that the Enmity that is yet in any of you against God's Heavenly Appearance and Revelation of his Son in us might be taken away ; for God is exalting his Son over all , even this is the Work of God ●n this his Day , to exalt his Name above every Name , and we , the despised Remnant , are made Witnesses of the Heavenly Appearance of the Son of God , and cannot but testifie of him : I say , we are made Witnesses by God , through the Revelation of Christ in us , a Holy Constraint is upon us , and not of or from our selves or any Act of our own , but through the Begetting of Life we are made willing to exalt his Name in the Earth : And herein our Hearts are single before him , having no other Thing in our Eye , but the lifting up and spreading that blessed Name ; and herein I can appeal to the Lord God of Heaven and Earth of the Integrity of my Heart to him , having this Faith begotten in me of the Lord , that while I stand in Simplicity and Singleness of Heart to him , he will be my Strength , and keep me in the Hour of Temptation , that I fall not , or ever turn my Back upon him ; for truly I must confess that this Way of Truth which the Lord hath brought me to , is a very narrow and streight Way , so streight , that if I could have found Peace and Satisfaction out of it , I had not now been a Travailer in it : for being once tempted by the God of this World to withdraw my self from the Lord's People , and to retire and get from under his Yoak , the Lord pursued me with his Judgments , and Rest and Peace was taken from me , that I cryed out , That it was a great Strength to be willing to live in the Earth : But the Lord fetched me in from my Wandering , and I was made to return to the God of my Life , and in my very Soul bowed to him , who is become my Defence and Holder up of my Head in the midst of many Enemies raised up by the Power of Darkness against us , to lay us wast , and to make void our Testimony for the God of Heaven in this Generation : But God will exalt his Name , and in vain do Men strive against him ; for their very Strivings shall turn to the Advantage of his Name and People , and the Shame of his Adversaries . Oh my Soul hath travailed for our Adversaries ; for having in Years past been one with them in Profession , I cannot but have Love to them , and have cryed to the Lord for them ; Oh that they had an Ear to hear , they would then certainly bow to that blessed Truth ministred in God's Authority by his chosen Ones : And a strong Belief is in me , that the Lord will bore the Ears of many simple Hearts amongst them , and cause the Sound of his Everlasting Gospel to enter ; and it shall be a Day of glad Tidings to as many as shall receive it . The God of Heaven open the Eyes of all the Professing People in this Nation , that all may dread and fear before him , and consider what they are doing in setting themselves against that living Word of God revealed in us . O Friends , it will be too strong for you ; for it is not any fine coyned Notions that we publish to please the Ears of the Curious , Wise and Lofty ; No , no ; but it is the living Word , the mighty Word , the very Word of the Lord God of Heaven and Earth that we exalt among Men , that Word that redeems from the Power of Satan all such as in Love receive it : It is that Word that comes not to us by the Will , Power or Wisdom of Man , but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ ; nor no Man on Earth can attain to the Understanding of it , but by the Spirit of Jesus ; a Man must be born of the Spirit before he can know the Things of the Spirit . And here lyes the chief Ground of all that Warring and Contendings against us , a different Birth , Children of an other Birth , though high and lofty in their Notions of God , and Christ , and the Scriptures , that if they were indeed what they speak , they were honourable ; but the Root of the first Birth , and all Words from it are of another Nature , and want a living Spring : It is the first Man in his best Robe , that runs before he is sent , and in his own Wisdom would mannage the Things of God and his Kingdom , before he knows the Power from on high , to break and confound all his curious Wisdom of Words , and to make him as a little Child ; first , to desire the sincere Milk of the Word , that he might grow thereby , and then in the Strength of the Word of Life , to minister according to the Gift received . And in this first Birth are all the Children of the Flesh and Shadow exalting themselves , and opposing the Heavenly Appearances of Life in all their several Forms of Religion ; and herein lyes their greatest Unity one with another , in setting themselves against the enlightned People of the Lord , who own their Enlightnings and Teachings from himself alone , and cannot satisfie themselves in their own Willings and Strivings in their own Wisdoms and Understandings , but wait for the Ministration of the Spirit of Life and Power . Now wherefore is it that you all joyn together against us , and have Enmity to us ? Have you Peace in so doing ? Are you justified before God herein ? And have you Hope hereby to lay us wast ? O know assuredly , such Hope is vain , and shall certainly perish ; for our Foundation standeth sure . O the Sen●e I have had of the Power of Darkness , strong Workings at this Day against us , to render us infamous in the Eyes of all People , not only as No Christians , but as Deceivers , Juglers , Equivocators and Impostors , and as having a Diabolical Spirit . O thick Darkness , that we should be so judged by a Professing People ; but we know we have a Testimony in the Hearts of many , which the Enmity of our Adversaries cannot destroy . Lord , what have we done ? Whose Cause have we espoused ? What Kingdom and Interest seek we to exalt , but the God of Heavens ? We can in the Integrity of our Souls appeal unto him , and stand over the Heads of our Adversaries , and in true Patience bear with all the Revilings and Reproaches of Men of all Sorts , counting it not a new Thing for the true Servants of the Lord to be so dealt with , when Christ himself found the hardest Measure from the strictest Professing Jews , who doing such wonderful Things , even to Astonishment , and which they were Witnesses of , and could not deny ; yet their Darkness and Enmity was such , as to strike at his very Root and Spirit by which he did those wonderful Things , saying , He had a Devil , a Diabolical Spirit , and that by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils he did those mighty Things ; and never rested till they murthered him . Oh that the same Spirit were not to be found among some of you . But I dare not charge all among you , believing that some have true Desires after God and his Truth , and truly desire more of the Knowledge of him , for whose sakes I had some Constraint upon me to publish these Things , to provoak you to a Retirement of Spirit , and to an inward Feeling of your States before the Lord , what you are in his pure spiritual Light ; and if in the true Measure of the Light of the Lord in you , you feel not a closing with our Testimony , and have some Savour of our Life , then wait in that true spiritual Light , that the Lord may reveal it to you ; and judge not those Things you know not , nor turn in Enmity to us , lest Hardness come over you , and Darkness cover you . But if in the Singleness of Heart before the Lord you can receive our Testimony , then be not hasty , but wait in the Light of the Lord for Strength , that you may come to the Obedience of his Heavenly Will ; For it is the Obedient that inherit the Good of the Land , and whose Souls delight in Fatness . And until I was brought to Obdience and Subjection , I could never witness Satisfaction ; for great and long hath the Travail of my Soul been after the Lord , even from a Child the Fear of God was upon me , and some Desires stirring in me after him under several Forms of Religion , and still I followed that Ministry and People where I found most of the Life of Jesus , and when I saw too much exalting of Form and idolizing of them , and an inward Decline of that first Simplicity and Zeal that was once among many , and that Religion was grown a Worldly Interest and a Foot-stool to Promotion , my Soul loathed it . And upon the very hearing of a poor despicable People in the North of England called Quakers , of their Behaviours , Words and Conversations , my Soul closed with them , with Sense and Feeling of them , that they were the Chosen of the Lord , and then saw and declared of the Seas●nableness of their coming forth , That when the pure Simplicity and living Testimony was just expiring among the Professors of the Nation ; the Lord , who would not leave himself without Witness in every Age & Generation , in due Season raised up his Witness afresh in a poor inconsiderable People to bear up his Name in the Earth , whose Testimony was in Spirit , and in Life , and Power : Upon which most of the Priests and formal Professors in the Nation was stirred , and provoaked , and joyned together to oppose them ; and though they themselves in their Zeal had cryed to God , to send f●rth his Light and his Truth , and that the Kingdom of Christ might be exalted , and that he would pour out of his Spirit upon his Sons and Daughters : yet when the Lord had chosen and raised a People thus to bear his Name , and to exalt his Truth on Earth , and to proclaim the Great Day of the Lord to level the Mountains , and to lay low the Lofty of the Earth , and to bring Proud Flesh into Contempt , and to raise the Poor to inherit the Kingdom : Instead of meeting with the Lord , who was about to perform those great Things themselves desired in the Day of their Tenderness , they evilly entreated those blessed Messengers , and overlookt them for their Meaness , and spake all Manner of Evil of them , Imprisoning , Whipping , Stocking and reproachfully reviling them , many of whom dyed in their Imprisonment : And I do believe had not the Lord in his Righteous Judgment taken Power from them , they would have been farther deeply guilty of the Blood of the Innocent . But my hearty Desire for all that are tender-hearted among you , who have the Fear of the Lord upon you , that you take heed that you be not leavened with that Persecuting and Anti-christian Spirit ; for the very same that now reproach us , and would unchristian us , would destroy us if it had Power . But the Hand of the Lord is to be seen in suffering all these Storms of Oppositions against us , to provoak us to the more Watchfulness and Diligence , and to brighten our Testimony for the Righteous God , whom in Spirit and Truth we serve . Therefore unto him do I commit our Cause , who sets Bounds to the Seas , and stills its Raging , who can appease the Wrath of Man , and scatter the thick Clouds of Dark●ess . with which he is compast , by the bright Shining of his Day , in which ●ll Works , Doctrines , Principles and Spirits shall be made manifest ; and in the Breaking out of this blessed Day doth my Soul rejoyce before the God of Heaven . So Friends , in Faithfulness to the Lord , and in true and dear Love to all simple-hearted People , who have the least of Vprightness of Heart to God , and sincerely desire to follow the Lord wherever he shall lead them : I shall conclude , leaving this my Testimony to the Witness of God in all your Consciences , who am Your Real Friend in the Service of Truth and Love , Thomas Zachary . The 5th of the 9th Month , 1674.