EXTRACT FROM SEWALL'S ANCIENT HISTORY,
WRITTEN BY ARCHBISHOP
USHER, PRIMATE OF IRELAND.
"All you have yet seen hath been but the beginning of sorrows to what is yet to come upon the churches of Christ, who will ere long fall under a sharper persecution than ever yet has been upon them. And, therefore, look that you be not found in the outward court, but a worshiper in the temple before the altar; for Christ will measure all those that profess his name and call themselves his people; and the outward worshipers he will leave out, to be trodden down by the Gentiles. The outward court is the formal Christians, whose religion lies in performing the outward duties of Christianity, without having an inward life and power of faith and love, uniting them to Christ. And these God will leave to be trodden down and swept away by the Gentiles. But the worshipers in the temple and before the altar are those who indeed worship God in spirit and in truth, whose souls are made his temples, and he is honored and adored in the inmost thoughts of their hearts, and they sacrifice their own wills, also, to him; and these God will hide in the hollow of his hand, and under the shadow of his wings. And this shall be the great difference between this last and all the preceding persecutions; for, in the former, the most eminent and spiritual ministers and Christians did generally suffer the most, and were most violently fallen upon; but in this last persecution, these shall be preserved by God as a seed, to partake of that glory which shall come upon the Church, as soon as ever this storm shall be over. For as it shall be the sharpest, so it shall be the shortest persecution of them all, and shall only take away the gross hypocrites and formal professors, but the true spiritual believers shall be preserved till the calamity be 'overpast.' See Isa. 26:20,21: 'Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain."
[Thus one long ago saw dimly the trouble now at hand, and the class of true ministers (servants) of God who would escape all these things and stand.]
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