A survey of the spiritual antichrist opening the secrets of familism and antinomianism in…A survey of the spirituall antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in…

But what ever here I speak of the Spirits actings, not separated from the word, let me not be mistaken as if I did think that every acting of the Holy Ghost should go along in an exact Mathematical length and breadth, with the letter and sound of the word, as if the word were the bellows, the Spirit the hand, that stirreth the bellows; for though all utterings and stirrings of the soul that flow from the Spirit be warranted by the word, yet I am assured some are, and have been, even in our time, so changed from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord, that their faces have shined like the face of an Angel they have been at singing and a desire to shout for joy, yea to leap and dance, and have been so filled with the fullness o• God, that they could not speak, and have been like vessels filled with new wine that wanted vent, that one said Lord, hold thy hand, thy servant is an old vessel and can hold no more of thy new wine; and another cried, Full, full, pained with a fullness of God with marrow and fatness, Heb. 3. which I am sure is the joy unspeakable and glorious, spoken of 1 Pet. 1.8. and the begun fullness of God, Eph. 3.19. and a bodily soul-sickness for Christ, a fit of the swoon that John fell into, Rev. 1.17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. It is true that was a Prophetical ecstasy in John like that of Daniel, c. 10.7, 8, 9.15. in which the operations of the bodily senses, or organical actions were suspended; so as the Prophets in these cases could not eat nor drink; so by proportion here I know some stricken with paleness, trembling, and deprived of the use of the body for a time which I judge to be a trembling at the word: one a dying said, I feel a strong rank smell of perfume, and the sweetness I feel, but cannot ⟨p. 304⟩speak. Another said, I enjoy, I enjoy. Another, I see heaven open and the high throne prepared. Another, could do nothing but smile and look like heaven: All these to me are the over-bank and high tides of the Spirit by way of redundancy acting on the body, because of its near union with the soul, and I know warranted by the word, produce no new doctrine; but how the word and Spirit in these actings are united and move together, I confess I am ignorant.