I had then also a general meeting at Edward Pyot's, near Bristol, at which it was judged were several thousands of people:[118] for besides Friends from many parts thereabouts, some of the Baptists and Independents, with their teachers, came to it, and many of the sober people of Bristol; insomuch that the people who stayed behind said the city looked naked, so many were gone out of it to this meeting. It was very quiet, and many glorious truths were opened to the people.
As we had much work with priests and professors who pleaded for imperfection, I was opened to declare and manifest to them that Adam and Eve were perfect before they fell, and all that God made He saw was good, and He blessed it; but the imperfection came in by the fall, through man's and woman's hearkening to the devil who was out of Truth. And though the law made nothing perfect, yet it made way for the bringing in of the better hope, which hope is Christ, who destroys the devil and his works, which made man and woman imperfect.
Christ saith to His disciples, "Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect": and He, who Himself was perfect, comes to make man and woman perfect again, and brings them again to the state in which God made them. So He is the maker-up of the breach, and the peace betwixt God and man.
That this might the better be understood by the lowest capacities, I used a comparison of two old people who had their house broken down by an enemy, so that they, with all their children, were liable to all storms and tempests. And there came to them some that pretended to be workmen, and offered to build up their house again, if they would give them so much a year; but when they had got the money they left the house as they found it.
After this manner came a second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, each with his several pretence to build up the old house, and each got the people's money, and then cried that they could not rear up the house, the breach could not be made up; for there is no perfection here. They tell the old people that the house can never be perfectly built up again in this life, though they have taken the people's money for doing it.
So all the sect-masters in Christendom (so called) have pretended to build up Adam's and Eve's fallen house; and when they have got the people's money, they tell them the work cannot be perfectly done here; so their house lies as it did. But I told the people Christ was come to do it freely, who by one offering hath perfected for ever all them that are sanctified, and renews them up into the image of God, which man and woman were in before they fell, and makes man's and woman's house as perfect again as God made them at the first; and this Christ, the heavenly Man, doth freely. Therefore all are to look unto Him, and all that have received Him are to walk in Him, the Life, the Substance, the First, and the Last, the Rock of Ages, the Foundation of many Generations.
About this time the soldiers under General Monk's command were rude and troublesome at Friends' meetings in many places, whereof complaint being made to him he gave forth the following order, which somewhat restrained them:
"St. James's, the 9th of March, 1659.
"I do require all officers and soldiers to forbear to disturb the peaceable meetings of the Quakers, they doing nothing prejudicial to the Parliament or Commonwealth of England.
George Monk."
We passed thence to Tewkesbury and so to Worcester, visiting Friends in their meetings as we went. And in all my time I never saw such drunkenness as in the towns, for they had been choosing Parliament men. At Worcester the Lord's Truth was set over all, people were finely settled therein, and Friends praised the Lord; nay, I saw the very earth rejoiced.
Yet great fears and troubles were in many people, and a looking for the King's coming in, and all things being altered. They would ask me what I thought of times and things. I told them the Lord's power was over all, and His light shone over all; that fear would take hold only on the hypocrites, such as had not been faithful to God, and on our persecutors.