For in the word was life, and that
life is the light of men: life in the word, light in men; and life in men
too, as the light is obeyed: the children of the light living by the life
of the word, by which the word begets them again to God, which is the
regeneration and new birth, without which there is no coming into the
kingdom of God: and to which whoever comes, is greater than John; that
is, than John's dispensation, which was not that of the kingdom, but the
consummation of the legal, and fore-running of the gospel-times, the time
of the kingdom. Accordingly several meetings were gathered in those
parts; and thus his time was employed for some years.
In 1652, he being in his usual retirement, his mind exercised towards the
Lord, upon a very high mountain in some of the higher parts of Yorkshire,
as I take it, he had a vision of the great work of God in the earth, and
of the way that he was to go forth in a public ministry, to begin it. He
saw people as thick as motes in the sun, that should in time be brought
home to the Lord, that there might be but one shepherd and one sheepfold
in all the earth. There his eye was directed northward, beholding a
great people that should receive him and his message in those parts.
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