“You, that banish the truth out of your cities or countries, or its people for its sake, banish the truth and Christ out of your hearts from ruling there; so you yourselves are not the temples of God. When you have banished Christ and his truth out of your own hearts, you banish such in whom he rules out of your estates and country, then see what judgments the Lord doth bring upon you, when you are left to yourselves; yea, fears and troubles, one judgment after another, come upon you; you are even filled with them. But the banished, the sufferers for truth and Christ’s sake, have a peaceable habitation in the truth, which the devil is out of, and cannot get into; which habitation will outlast all the habitations of the wicked and persecutors, though they be ever so full of words without life and truth. The life and the truth will outlast all airy notions, and Christ, the Lamb and patient Seed, will overcome the devourer and the unpatient seed; and they that have the garment, the righteousness of Christ, which is the fine linen, will find it to outlast all the rags and inventions of men. For Christ saith to his learners, ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,’ the persecuting world. He said also to his disciples, ‘If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.’ Therefore let all that profess themselves Christians lay aside persecution about religion, churches, or worship, fasting or praying days; for you have no command from Christ and his apostles to persecute any. Christ, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords, when they called him a deceiver, and blasphemed him, and said, ‘He had a devil,’ did not persecute any of them for it, nor force or compel any to hear and believe him, nor the apostles after him; but he bade them, that would have been plucking up the tares, ‘Let the tares and wheat grow together until the harvest.’ So you have no command from Christ or his apostles to persecute, imprison, banish, or spoil the goods of any, for matter of pure conscience and religion, worship, faith, and church, in the gospel-times.” G.F. Harlingen in Friesland, the 11th of the 6th Month, 1677.