garments; and they knew
the power and work of God upon them. And this was seen by the great
alteration it made, and their stricter course of life, and more godly
conversation that immediately followed upon it.

II. They went not forth, or preached, in their own time or will, but in
the will of God; and spoke not their own studied matters, but as they
were opened and moved of his Spirit, with which they were well acquainted
in their own conversion: which cannot be expressed to carnal men, so as
to give them any intelligible account; for to such it is, as Christ said,
like the blowing of the wind, which no man knows whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth. Yet this proof and seal went along with their
ministry, that many were turned from their lifeless professions, and the
evil of their ways, to an inward and experimental knowledge of God, and a
holy life, as thousands can witness. And as they freely received what
they had to say from the Lord, so they freely administered it to others.

III. The bent and stress of their ministry was conversion to God;
regeneration and holiness. Not schemes of doctrines and verbal creeds,
or new forms of worship: but a leaving off in religion the superfluous,
and reducing the ceremonious and formal part, and pressing earnestly the
substantial, the necessary and profitable part to the soul; as all, upon
a serious reflection, must and do acknowledge.

IV. They directed people to a principle in themselves, though not of
themselves, by which all that they asserted, preached, and exhorted
others to, might be wrought in them, and known to them, through
experience, to be true; which is a high and distinguishing mark of the
truth of their ministry, both that they knew what they said, and were not
afraid of coming to the test. For as they were bold from certainty, so
they required conformity upon no human authority, but upon conviction,
and the conviction of this principle, which they asserted was in them
that they preached unto: and unto that they directed them, that they
might examine and prove the reality of those things which they had
affirmed of it, as to its manifestation and work in man. And this is
more than the many ministers in the world pretended to. They declare of
religion, say many things true, in words, of God, Christ, and the Spirit;
of holiness and heaven; that all men should repent and amend their lives,
or they will go to hell, &c. But which of them all pretend to spea