Which Nathanael, a Jew born, made before the congregation in the parish church of Alhaliows, in Lombard Street, at London, whereupon he was, according to his desire, received into the number of the faithful, and so baptized the first of April, 1577.

Written by himself first the Spanish tongue, and after translated into English. MEN and brethren, to whom God hath revealed in these later days the secret of his Son, which was hidden from you many ages; it is not unknown unto you, how that in the days of our forefathers God chose us to be a precious people unto himself, above all the people that are upon the earth.

And he loved us and chose us, not because we were more in number than any people; for we were the fewest of all people: but he chose us only because he loved us, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By virtue of which promise, the same our Lord and God, whose name is Jehovah, brought our fathers by a mighty hand, and delivered them out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, that they might know that the Lord their God is the God indeed, the faithful God which keepeth covenant and mercy unto them that love him and keep his commandments, even to a thousand generations. According to which great and unspeakable loving kindness, he kept and preserved our fathers in the land of Israel, which he had given them under the obedience of his law, in such service of sacrifices and other rites as he had appointed them to be done and practiced all the days of their lives in the city of Jerusalem, where was his temple built upon the mount Sion, so long as they kept themselves in obedience to the same law and ordinances. But when they forsook the Lord their God, and cleaved unto false gods, he rewarded them to their face because they hated him, and brought them to destruction by delivering them into the hands of many enemies; as into the hands of Nabuchadnezer, by whom they were carried into captivity to Babylon, and there remained the days foretold them by our prophet Jeremie; fulfilling thereby the words of our prophet Moseh, foretelling us that it should so be, if we forsook the Lord our God; and leaving us, their posterity, an example thereby, that if we followed like iniquity, like severity of punishment should overtake us. As it came to pass, and is fulfilled in the eyes of all the world by this captivity which we are now in, and have been in, we and our forefathers, ever since the death of that righteous man, Jesus Christ; whom the scribes and pharisees, and elders of our people, delivered into the hands of Pontius Pilate to be put to death, being before betrayed into their hands by one of his own disciples, that son of perdition, Judas Iscarioth. As our forefathers then pronounced against themselves, Let his blood be upon our heads, and upon our children; so it is come to pass by the righteous judgment of that mighty and dreadful God. For even from those days unto this present, the whole house of Israel, that is, we that come of the stock of Abraham after the flesh, is and are strangers out of the land of Israel, our own country, without law or prophets, without all exercise of his statutes and ordinances concerning his worship, prescribed unto us by the hand of his servant Moseh.

This long and wearisome captivity hath consumed a great number of our forefathers, and hath caused some of us from time to time, through the grace and love of God, wherewith he loveth us for the promise sake, to think upon our promised Messhiach; conferring these days of sorrow and calamity with our former captivities of our fathers, which were nothing so many in number of years, nor so grievous for want of our prophets. These fifteen hundred years have we been strangers, and these fifteen hundred years have we lacked our prophets; a thing not seen at any time before when we and our fathers were carried into a strange land. For in Egypt they had Mosheh and Aaron; and in Babylon they had Jeremie and Daniel, besides Ezra, Nechemiah, and many other: only in this captivity is Israel left desolate and our prophets clean gone. Whereof when it pleased God that I should have consideration, I was led to think that our Messhiaeh is come, and that our long looking for another was but in vain.

And the rather for that I see the words of Jacob our father accomplished, where he saith, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come; and the people shall be gathered unto him, For the scepter and government was continued in the house of Judah, as our fathers accord, until the coming of this man Jesus; in whom if it were not continued according to the words of our scriptures, it hath failed and wanted ever since. For since the days of that just man, there hath been no scepter amongst us, neither have we, or do we, run for judgment unto Jerusalem. So that if the words of our father Jacob be true, that the scepter should not depart from the house of Judah until Shiloh carne, and there is no scepter nor lawgiver now in that house; then. must it needs be that this man Jesus, whom you confess and believe, is that Shiloh which was to come; and is that child of whom one of our prophets saith, Unto us a Child is born, and unto us a Son is given, and the government is upon his shoulder; and he shall call his name Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of peace; the increase of his government and peace shall have none end; he shall sit upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to. order it and to establish it with judgment and justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

This man then no doubt is that Messhiach which was looked for according to promise, and whom our fathers and people acknowledge not, fulfilling in themselves the words of their own mouth, “His blood be upon our heads!”

Indeed it seemed strange to me, and doth to the rest of my brethren according to the flesh, even unto this day, in whom this blindness and hardness of heart is in part continued, through occasion given by them that profess the name of this man Jesus. And not only in us which. are of the house of Israel, but in others, as the Turks and. Mahometans which are of the race of Ishmael. For had it not been for the great and manifold idolatry that is committed and used amongst the christians, almost in all places where his name is professed, many of our nation had repented in sackcloth and ashes, and had come to this man Jesus, their brother after the flesh, from whom they are now estranged and go astray. But well is it written in your law, Woe be unto him by whom offense cometh; according as it is written in our law, Cursed be the man that layeth a stumbling-block in the way of his neighbor; and all the people shall say, Amen. But when it pleased God to bring me into this land, which I must for the same cause call a blessed land, and I saw therein no such impediment as holdeth our eyes blinded in other places, it was a means, I must needs confess, that made me more deeply enter into the former consideration of our long captivity, and better to think of the words of our prophets, and the promises set down by them touching our Messhiach.

For the wall that maketh a separation between our nation, the stock of Abraham, and you the Gentiles, is in your respect, and in your behalf broken down; so that I cannot justly say of you, as we and our fathers and elders say of all other, using in all our books and writings to call and account of them by no other name but Baal abodazara, idolatrous masters, and lords of strange worship. A thing so detestable unto us, as nothing can be more so concerning our law, being indeed the first and chief of our commandments given us by the hand of Mosheh, and so often repeated unto us, as no one thing in all our scriptures. Besides the manifest anger of God showed against it, in punishing the trespass therein committed by our forefathers in the absence of Mosheh, when he was gone up into the mount to fetch the law, when our fathers were to enter into the land of promise, the first and principal point required of them was this; When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall root out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and greater than thou, and the Lord thy God shall give them before thee; then shalt thou smite them, thou shalt utterly destroy them, thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor have compassion on them; neither shalt thou make marriages with them, neither give thy daughter unto his son, nor take his daughter unto thy son; for they will cause thy son to turn away from me, and to serve other gods: then will the wrath of the Lord wax hot against you, and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them; you shall overthrow their altars, and break down their pillars, and you shall cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire.

The severity of this law, and the false worship that we and our fathers behold in them that profess the name of this man Jesus, withholdeth us from coming to make any covenant of peace with you, from joining hands with you, and entering into that familiarity with you, which should be between them that worship one God. We are commanded in our law not to plough with an ox and an ass, neither to wear any garment of linsey woolsey; we understand it so, that we may not join God and idols together; we may not serve our Lord otherwise than he hath commanded us, saying, Turn not aside to the right hand nor to the left. For he is a jealous God, and we are chosen to be a holy people unto him; which we are taught we cannot be unless we keep this commandment: Thou shalt have none other gods but one: and this, Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image nor the likeness of any thing. And because they do so, we have been withholden by the commandment of our God from making any covenant with them, or hearkening unto any of their prophets and teachers; for that were but to make Israel to sin, and to provoke the holy One to anger.

When they talk with us, they say they are not such as our prophets speak of, who worshipped beasts and other creatures, as the sun and the moon; but they worship only the creature of man, who was made to the image of God, and by whom God hath wrought great and marvelous works upon the earth. To whom we answer by the words of our law, that all idolatry is forbidden us; the commandment forbiddeth not one thing more than another, neither giveth greater liberty for one thing than for another; but saith in these words, Thou shalt not make the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them nor serve them. Whatsoever it be, it is forbidden by our commandment. And if any creature might be worshipped, reason would the sun and moon should have that honor done them; for they serve us to greatest purposes, and by them we reap daily profit.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Mosheh, Samuel, and Elizahu, with the rest of the prophets, were good men, and by them God wrought wonderful things, and yet we never worshipped any of them, And we cannot think that this wisdom was or should have been hidden from all them, and all our fathers, if it had been so great wisdom in the sight of our God. They say unto us oftentimes, that they do not worship them as gods, but they worship God in them. Neither are the heathen, we say, that are round about us, so blinded with the imagination of their hearts, as that they think the stocks and stones carved, or the pictures which they paint themselves, to be God; but they are persuaded that the living God may be worshipped and served in them. And as for the creature that is worshipped, or in whom the living God is worshipped, whether it be better than another, and more to be accounted of than another, it is not that which maketh it false worship: but the commandment which saith, Thou shalt not make the likeness of any thing. And yet those common christians go very far; for the christians of Spain and Portugal have it written in their books, as in one which. they call Contemplationes del Idiota a la virgen Maria, that the virgin is the Lord’s treasurer, and that she bestoweth gifts and graces upon her servants, to make them worthy dwelling houses for her blessed Son and the Holy Ghost: that her mercy oftentime pardoneth those whom the justice of her Son might condemn; that she doth plentifully enrich them that serve her, with the Holy Ghost, and defendeth them most mightily from the enemy; namely, from the world, the flesh, and the devil: and that our salvation lieth in her hands. But our law teacheth us that our God Jehovah is all-sufficient, and that all treasures are in his hands; he giveth to whom he listeth, and from whom he listeth, he holdeth back. He saith he will not give his glory to another; and what is more glorious to him than to be acknowledged of his creatures to be the only fountain of all goodness; to be our enlightening and salvation, that we may dwell confidently under the shadow of his wings, who will be called upon in the day of our necessity, and he will hear us?

And therefore, as that doctrine is contrary to our prophet, and is cast away of you which in this country believe in the man Jesus; so I have more willingly, and with a more ready mind, hearkened to the words of your teachers, and learned by God’s good working to know more of our promised Messhiaeh, than our fathers believe; but no more than our scriptures most truly contain; being assured. that, seeing you have the words of our prophets, and do not follow strange gods, you are to be hearkened unto. For by our law, no prophet may be rejected but the false prophet, who seeketh to turn us away from the Lord our God to serve other gods. And therefore, as I have learned by the words of your teachers, comparing them with our law and prophets, that our promised king and Messhiaeh is not a prince of this world, as one that hath to establish a temporal kingdom amongst us, but a spiritual; whose power and might consisteth in governing us by his Spirit, and forgiving the sins of Israel, and taking away the iniquities of Jacob, bearing in his own body the chastisement of our peace, that is, the chastisement that worketh and getteth us peace, as our prophets tell us — so I confess and acknowledge that he is already come, and that it is he of whom our prophet spake, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth; in his days Judah shall be saved, and.

Israel shall dwell safely; and this is the name whereby they shall call him, The Lord our righteousness. And therefore, being heartily sorry for my so long going astray from the faith of this man Jesus, after the evil leading of my countrymen and kinsmen after the flesh, for whose speedy turning to the Lord I most earnestly pray; and giving the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob hearty thanks for the working of his grace in me, by bringing me from the darkness wherein my fathers have walked these fifteen hundred years, into his marvelous light to behold the face of his Christ, our true and only Messhiach — I protest unto you, that I utterly forsake my former ways, and the steps that my nation walketh in, leaving with them not only that false looking for another Christ, but my name also which was given me at my circumcision, (being Jehuda,) though in itself it be honorable; desiring that as I have received a new gift from the Lord, so in token thereof I may be called Nathanael; the sum of which gift, so far forth as he hath as yet revealed unto me, I here confess and acknowledge before you, that you may be witnesses with me of my faith in Christ that Messhiach, whom you believe in, and I receive for my Redeemer.

I confess with my mouth, and believe from my heart, that the man Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, according to the foretelling of our prophets, and so, by the flesh he took of her, descending of the seed and stock of David, for the continuance of his kingdom for ever over his people Israel, is the undoubted Messhiach, promised to our fathers, for the redemption and delivery of us his people out of the captivity we are in; which is not the captivity of Egypt or Babylon, or the captivity of the Roman empire, which we have justly deserved by the shedding of his innocent blood, through betraying and delivering him into the hands of the wicked to be crucified; but the captivity of sin, death, and damnation, prefigured unto us by our prophets under the shadow of the foresaid captivities of Egypt and Babylon. Which things because our fathers understood not, through ignorance of our scriptures, they did all those things which they wrought against that Holy One, our only Redeemer and Savior; and have by that means estranged themselves and their posterity from the commonwealth indeed of Israel; that is to say, from the communion of the saints and children of God, which make profession of this man’s name, and believe in truth that he is the very Christ, and only anointed Savior of the worlds who was so fore-promised from the beginning of the world.

And therefore, in full assurance of this full and perfect, and last delivery wrought for all them that are both nigh and far off, that is, for all that believe by that man Jesus, whom our prophets forenamed Immanuel, which is by interpretation, God with us; resting and reposing myself in this Horn of salvation, I look for no other Messhiach and Christ to come hereafter, as the rest of my kindred and people do, blinded through unbelief; being myself throughly persuaded by the prophets, that this is that Shiloh which was to come; that Angel of the Lord whom Elias the Thesbite, as we call him, was to go before, that is to say, John the Baptist, whom some of our prophets call, The voice in the wilderness, sent to prepare the ways of this our King, and Holy One our Redeemer; converting by his preaching the fathers’ hearts unto the children, and the simple and unbelievers to the obedience of the righteous. For which cause also (as our words mean) he was by our fathers called Thesby, which is by interpretation, the servant of God to work repentance by.

And because this man, who was appointed from the beginning to be our Redeemer and deliverer out of the captivity of sin, was to work that great and marvelous redemption by his own death, (as was prefigured unto us by our passover and all our sacrifices, and also declared by our prophets,) which he performed in his time appointed, being delivered into the hands of Pontius Pilate by our scribes and pharisees, to be put to that shameful death of the cross, whereof it is written in our law, Cursed be the man that hangeth on a tree; which is so well known to all the house of Israel, that they call him even to this day in despite, Talui, which is by interpretation, Hanged. Therefore, I also confess and believe that our sacrifices commanded in our law, by the hand of Mosheh, are at an end, and not to be used any more; being indeed but shadows of this body and truth which was performed in and by this our Immanuel, God with us. And therefore, I most willingly and freely renounce that doctrine of our elders, which teacheth us that our delivery forespoken of by our prophets is or shall be a restoring of us into our country and land of Judea, there to keep such ordinances and statutes, touching sacrifices of goats and calves, as were commanded us by the hand of Mosheh; being assured by the scriptures, that the Jerusalem which we shall be restored unto, is the kingdom of heaven, from which we were cast through unbelief, and are again restored unto it, as many of us as believe in this our Immanuel by the same God with us; whose blood hath opened us the way, and not the blood of our goats and calves, which were figures of this true and perfect sacrifice wrought by this man upon the cross, by virtue whereof they were available to so many of our fathers as did believe, for the remission of sins, and delivery out of that thraldom of the soul; and not out of the captivity either of Egypt or Babylon, or this wherein we and our forefathers have justly been, ever since the unrighteous shedding of this righteous man’s blood.

Moreover, I confess with my mouth, and believe in my heart, that this same man Jesus, the son of that virgin, is not only man but God, both God and man; so called by our prophets, Immanuel, God with us: God, not made in time, nor after a season, but God from the beginning and without beginning, who was before the sun, and shall be after the sun, as our prophet David saith. By whom, as all things were made from the beginning, so are they preserved by his mighty power; and of his kingdom there shall be none end. Who, as he is called the Word of God his Father, so were all the prophets given and sent by Him, the only true interpreter and messenger of his Father’s will; which he revealed from time to time to his people by the hands of his prophets, as he thought best; ordering the measure of the revelation of Himself, as might best stand with the time of his coming when he was to be presented unto the world. And therefore he opened Himself unto our fathers in the times and days of our prophets, but darkly under types and figures, laying a veil, as it were, over our eyes, to the end we should be more earnest and painful in seeking after him. But in the fullness of time, when the season appointed by his Father was come, then he revealed himself fully and plainly, preaching both himself the kingdom of heaven, and sending forth his apostles to do the same; upon whom therefore he poured out the Holy Ghost, which is called the Spirit, so performing that which our elders set down as a proper mark of the coming of our Messhiach: namely, that in that day our prophets should cease, and the Holy Ghost should be given to ignorant and unlearned men; which we have seen fulfilled in the eyes of all Israel. And therefore I receive this word of God, which hath been from those days called the New Testament, as the true and undoubted word of God, uttered by the same Spirit which spake in our prophets.

Again, I confess with my mouth, and believe in my heart, that the Holy Ghost and Spirit, who was the Director of all our prophets, and was also promised by this man Jesus, our Immanuel, to be always with his people, to lead them into all truth unto the world’s end, is also very God, one in substance and nature with God the Father and God the Son; but another in person, as the Father and the Sort differ in person. So that there are not three Gods, but one God: neither one only person, but three persons.

Which person of the Holy Ghost, as he hath been from the beginning of the world, by the everlasting counsel and determinate purpose of God, the Director and Governor of his church, that is to say, the assembly and company of his people, agreeing together in unity of faith and doctrine; and did therefore, for the bringing and maintenance of them into the unity of this faith and doctrine, deliver unto them from God divers rites and ceremonies; divers in outward show, but one selfsame in effect and substance, having only for their ground and matter this man and God, Jesus Christ our Immanuel — so doth he continue still to nourish us up in the same, and therefore commendeth to us, to be kept for an everlasting covenant, two sacraments, the one of baptism, the other of the Lord’s supper; which two, the will of our Lord and God was and is, should be in place of the circumcision and passover commanded to our forefathers.

Which I steadfastly believe and religiously confess, and therefore, renouncing the former, (as also all other rites and ceremonies of the law,) being but shadows of the body which is now performed and come, I most humbly desire to be received into the fellowship of these sacraments; that as it hath pleased our Lord God and heavenly Father, to reveal his Son unto me, and to graft me again into the stock of my father Abraham, from whence I was cast out through unbelief with my forefathers, the stillnecked and disobedient, so I may through baptism be received and taken for a member of this our Messhiach; whom I confess and acknowledge to be the only promised Christ, in whom, whosoever will have life must be saved; whereof I look and trust to be a partaker in the resurrection of the righteous, which shall be at the corning again of this our Immanuel, when he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

NOTE REFERRED TO.

The careful researches of chronologists and expositors of scripture since the time of Fox, as well as previously to the period when he wrote, have been directed to the period of seventy weeks mentioned by Daniel. Without involving the reader in a lengthened consideration of their various arguments, his attention may be called to the following extract from Faber’s “Sacred Calendar of Prophecy;” to which some notes explanatory of the chronology are added. “The seventy years of the Babylonian captivity of Judah, itself an eminent chronological and circumstantial type of the church’s captivity among the Gentiles during the term of the seven prophetic times, commenced in the year before Christ 606, F130 and ended B.C. 536. F131 “The seventy prophetic weeks, determined to make an expiation for sin by the death of Christ upon the cross, commenced in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, or in the year before Christ 458, F132 and terminated even to a month with the crucifixion, in the year after Christ 33; the subincluded seven weeks, which reach from the going forth. of the decree to the completion of the figurative holy city, commenced in the year before Christ 458, and terminated in the year before Christ 409; F133 and the subincluded sixty-nine weeks, which reach to the opening of the gospel dispensation by John the baptist, commenced in the year before Christ 458, and terminated in the year after Christ 26. The single week, during which the new covenant is made, and the old one disannulled, commenced in the year after Christ 26, F134 and terminated in the year after Christ 33. The insulated half week, during which the sacrifice and meat offering are abolished by the desolating abomination of the Romans, commenced in the middle of January, in the year after Christ 67, and terminated in the middle of July, in the year after Christ 70.” f135 The Jewish writers have always felt the force of the prophecy of seventy weeks as applied to Jesus Christ, and have endeavored to explain away the obvious application of it to him. One of the most recent, David Levi, in doing this has undesignedly verified the interpretation of it as concerning our blessed Lord. See Hale’s Analysis of Sacred Chronology, volume 2, p. 514.