The 24th of the Eleventh month, 1659.
This parliament did so lord it, that about fifteen hundred military
officers were cashiered, and others put into their places.
About this time George Fox the younger wrote also a letter to the
parliament and the army, which was as followeth:
‘Your day into darkness is turned; the sun is gone down over you.
You have had a large day, and power given unto you, to have done
the will of God, but you have abused the power, and slighted your
day; and you have refused to do the Lord’s work, and have sought
to serve yourselves, and not the Lord; therefore in justice and
righteousness, is the day wherein you might have wrought for God,
taken from you; and the thick dark night of confusion is come
upon you, wherein you are groping and stumbling, and cannot work;
the decree is gone out, and sealed against you, and it cannot be
recalled; you are not the men, (as ye stand,) in whom God will
appear to work deliverance for his people, and creatures; and yet
deliverance shall come, but not according to man’s expectations.
But as for you, ye have rejected the counsel of the Lord, and
grieved his Spirit, and he hath long borne you; yea, you are
departed from the Lord, and his presence is departed from you;
indeed he hath hewed with you, and if you had been faithful to
the end, he would have honoured and prospered you, and would
have been your sufficient reward: ye were his axe, but you have
boasted yourselves against him; therefore as you have beaten,
and hewed, and broken others, even so must you be beaten, hewed,
and broken; for you have grievously provoked the Lord; and if he
should now suffer that tree, which ye have cut, to fall upon you,
and to break part of you, it were just.
‘O ye treacherous, wilful, proud, self-seeking people, who have
despised the counsel of the Lord, and would not take warning,
though he hath sent his prophets and servants early and late
among you, some of whom you have imprisoned and despitefully
used; what will ye do now? Whom will ye now flee unto for help;
seeing ye are departed from the Lord, and are now rending and
tearing, biting and devouring one another, for proud, ambitious,
self ends? (Mark.) If you would now build again the thing that
you once destroyed, that shall not be able to hide or shelter
you from the wrath of the Lamb; that way whereby you think to
strengthen yourselves, thereby shall you make yourselves much
weaker, and help forward your own destruction; you are now but
a rod, remember your end, which hastens greatly. Now breach
upon breach, insurrection upon insurrection, overturning upon
overturning, heaps upon heaps, division upon division shall there
be, until he come to reign, whose right it is; and all nations
must bow before him, else he will break them with his iron rod.
‘They that trust in, or lean upon you for help, it is as if they
leaned upon a broken reed, which is not able to help itself,
nor others; indeed you have been made to do many good things,
but you would not go through with the work which God will have
accomplished, and therefore are these things come upon you;
therefore tremble and dread before the Lord, ye who have been as
strong oaks, and tall cedars, for now shall your strength fail
you, and you shall be weak, even as the weakest of men; but if
you would yet believe in the light, and truly submit to God’s
righteous judgments, many of you might come to witness your souls
saved, in the day of the Lord; though many of your bodies are
to be thrown by, because of your grievous backslidings, as not
counted worthy to be the Lord’s workmen.
‘There is a small remnant yet among you, for whom my soul
breathes, who may be winnowed out; and if they will own the
judgments of the Lord, and truly and thoroughly deny themselves,
and follow his leadings, he will heal their backslidings, and
purge them, that so they may be instruments in his hand: but they
that will continue with you in your sins, shall partake with you
of your judgments.
‘The rod of the wicked shall not always rest upon the back of
the righteous; yet even as gold is tried, so shall they be, that
they may be white, and without spot before the Lamb; but God will
avenge their cause, and wo then will be to their oppressors; and
then shall the majesty and the glory of the Lord fill his people,
who have long been trodden under, and they shall be the dread of
all nations; the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall perform this.
GEORGE FOX, _the younger_.’