“None shall need to turn over books and writings (for indeed all these shall cease too) to get knowledge.  But everyone shall be taken off from seeking knowledge from without, and with an humble quiet heart shall wait upon the Lord, till He manifest Himself:  for He is a great king, and worthy to be waited upon.  His testimony within fills the heart with joy and singing.  He first gives experiences; and then power to set forth these experiences.  Hence you shall speak to the rejoicing one of another, and to the praise of Him who declares His power in you.  But he that speaks his thoughts, studies, and imagination, and stands up to be a teacher of others, shall be judged for his unrighteousness, because he seeks to honor flesh, and does not honor the Lord.”

He then somewhat mystically continues: 

“Behold the Annointing, that is to reach all things, is coming to create a new Heaven and a new Earth wherein Righteousness shall dwell, and there shall not be a vessel of humane earth but it shall be filled with Christ.  If it were possible to have so many buckets as to contain the whole ocean, every one could be filled with the ocean, and being put all together it would make up the perfect ocean which filled them all.  Even so Christ, which is the spreading power, is now beginning to fill every man and woman with Himself.  He will dwell and rule in everyone; and the Law of Reason and Equity shall be Christ in them.  Every single body is a star shining forth of Him, or rather a body in and out of whom He shines; and He is the ocean of power that fills all.  And so the words are true, the Creation, mankind, shall be the fulness of Him that fills all in all.  This is the Church, the great Congregation, that, when the mystery is completed, shall be the mystical body of Christ, all set at liberty from inward and outward straits and bondage.  And this is called the holy breathing that made all new by Himself and for Himself.”

* * * * *

We think we have now dealt sufficiently with Winstanley’s exposition of the theistical doctrines subsequently adopted, and almost in their entirety, by the Society of Friends.  In a later chapter (Chap.  XVI.) we shall show how far he himself modified his earlier views.  And in the succeeding chapter we shall briefly lay before our readers the practical and fundamental social changes Winstanley deemed demanded by the dictates of Reason, as forming the necessary first steps towards laying the foundations of “a new Earth and a new Heaven wherein Righteousness, or Justice, shall dwell.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[53:1] Clarke Papers, vol. i. p. 379.

[54:1] British Museum, Press Mark, 4377, a. 2.

[54:2] In 1655, Giles Calvert published “A Declaration from the Children of Light (who are by the world scornfully called Quakers).”  British Museum, Press Mark, E. 838.