Creation:  where can you find God but in that line or station wherein you stand?  God manifests Himself in actual Knowledge, not in Imagination.  He is still in motion, either in bodies upon earth or in the bodies in the heavens, or in both; in the night and in the day, in Winter, in Summer, in cold, in heat, in growth or not in growth.’”

THE CAUSE OF IGNORANCE, EVIL AND SORROWS.

“But when a studying imagination comes into man, which is the devil, for it is the cause of all evil and sorrows in the world; that is he who puts out the eyes of man’s knowledge, and tells him he must believe what others have writ or spoke, and must not trust to his own experience.  And when this bewitching fancy sits in the Chair of Government, there is nothing but saying and unsaying, frowardness, covetousness, fears, confused thoughts, and unsatisfied doubtings, all the days of that man’s reign in the heart.”

EXAMINE THE WAYS OF MEN, NOT ONLY THEIR PRECEPTS.

“Or, secondly, examine yourself and look likewise into the ways of all Professors, and you shall find that the enjoyment of the earth below, which you call a low and a carnal knowledge, is that which you and all Professors (as well as the men of the world, as you call them) strive and seek after.  Wherefore are you so covetous after the world, in buying and selling, counting yourself a happy man if you be rich, and a miserable man if you be poor?  And though you say, Heaven after death is a place of glory where you shall enjoy God face to face, yet you are loth to leave the earth and go thither.

“Do not your Ministers preach for to enjoy the earth?  Do not professing Lawyers, as well as others, buy and sell the Conquerer’s justice that they may enjoy the earth?  Do not professing Soldiers fight for the earth, and seat themselves in that Land which is the birth-right of others, as well as theirs, shutting others out?  Do not all Professors strive to get earth, that they may live in plenty by other men’s labors?  Do you not make the earth your very rest?  Doth not the enjoying of the earth please the spirit in you? and then you say God is pleased with your ways and blesseth you.  If you want earth, and become poor, do you not say, God is angry with you?  Why do you heap up riches? why do you eat and drink, and wear clothes?  Are not all these carnal and low things of the earth? and do you not live in them and covet them as much as any, nay more than many which you call men of the world?

“It being thus with you, what other spiritual and heavenly things do you seek after more than others?  What is in you more than in others?  If you say there is, then surely you should leave these earthly things alone to the men of the world, as you call them, whose portions these are, and keep you within the compass of your own sphere, that others seeing you live a life above the world in peace and freedom, neither working yourselves, nor deceiving, nor compelling others to work for you, they may be drawn to embrace the same spiritual life by your single hearted conversation.  Well I have done here.”

     “LET US NOW EXAMINE YOUR DIVINITY.”