Country," in which he carries the war
into his enemy's camp in a forcible and masterly manner. He reminds them
that they are not the only ones who have the right to judge of the
meaning of the Scriptures, "For the people, having the Scriptures, may
judge by them as well as you." He then continues:

"If you say, 'No, the people cannot judge, because they know not
the original:' I answer, Neither do you know the original. Though
by your learning you may be able to translate a writing out of
Hebrew or Greek into our mother-tongue, English, but to say this is
the original Scripture you cannot: for those very copies which the
Prophets and Apostles writ are not to be seen in your
Universities."

He forces home his argument in the following words:

"You say you have the just copies of their writings. You do not
know that but as your Fathers have told you, which may be as well
false as true, if you have no other better ground than tradition.
You say that the interpretation of Scripture into our mother tongue
is according to the mind of the _spirit_. You cannot tell that
neither, unless you are able to say that those who did interpret
those writings have had the same testimony of spirit as the pen-men
of Scripture had. For it is the spirit within that must prove these
copies to be true."

He then turns the tables by accusing them of being "the very men that do
deny God, Scriptures, and the Ordinances of God; and that turn the
truths of the Spirit into a lie, by leaving the letter, and walking in
their own inferences"; and also "by holding forth spiritual things by
the imagination of the flesh, and not by the law and testimony of the
Spirit within." And he contends that, in truth, he and his fellows are
"those men that do advance God, Christ, Scriptures, and Ordinances in
the spirituality of them."

In the opening chapter of the book itself, Winstanley, with more than
his usual directness, plunges into the heart of his subject in the
following suggestive words:

"I have said that whosoever worships God by hearsay, as others tell
him, and knows not what God is from light within himself; or that
thinks God is in the heavens above the skies, and so prays to that
God which he imagines to be there and everywhere, but from any
testimony within, he knows not how nor where: this man worships his
own imagination, which is t