Truth. Mine ears have long been filled with a threefold doleful outcry—
Christ’s worship is his bed, Cant. i. 16. False worship, therefore, is a false bed.
First. Of one hundred forty-four thousand virgins, Rev. xiv., forced and ravished by emperors, kings, governors, to their beds of worship and religion; set up, like Absalom’s, on high, in their several states and countries.
The cry of the souls under the altar.
Secondly. The cry of those precious souls under the altar, Rev. vi. [9,] the souls of such as have been persecuted and slain for the testimony and witness of Jesus, whose blood hath been spilt like water upon the earth; and that because they have held fast the truth and witness of Jesus, against the worship of the states and times, compelling to an uniformity of state religion.
These cries of murdered virgins, who can sit still and hear? Who can but run, with zeal inflamed, to prevent the deflowering of chaste souls, and spilling of the blood of the innocent? Humanity stirs up and prompts the sons of men to draw material swords for a virgin’s chastity and life, against a ravishing murderer; and piety and Christianity must needs awaken the sons of God to draw the spiritual sword, the word of God, to preserve the chastity and life of spiritual virgins, who abhor the spiritual defilements of false worship, Rev. xiv.
A cry of the whole earth.
Thirdly. The cry of the whole earth, made drunk with the blood of its inhabitants slaughtering each other in their blinded zeal for conscience, for religion, against the catholics, against the Lutherans, &c.
What fearful cries, within these twenty years, of hundred thousands, men, women, children, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brethren, sisters, old and young, high and low, plundered, ravished, slaughtered, murdered, famished! And hence these cries, that men fling away the spiritual sword and spiritual artillery, in spiritual and religious causes, and rather trust, for the suppressing of each other’s gods, conscience, and religion, as they suppose, to an arm of flesh and sword of steel.
Truth. Sweet Peace, what hast thou there?