on its title-page, "The inward testimony is the Soul's strength,"
indicate the characteristic teachings of this remarkable book, which are
also admirably suggested by the two biblical quotations that also appear
thereon. "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and
every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know
me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord"
(Jer. xxxi. 34). "But the annointing which ye have received of him
abideth in you; and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
annointing teacheth you all things, and is truth" (1 John ii. 27).

As was his usual custom, Winstanley opens with a Dedicatory letter,
addressed this time "To my Beloved Friends whose Souls hunger after
sincere milk," in which he relates his experience of the insufficiency
of mere traditional, or book, or imparted knowledge, in the following
words:

"I myself have known nothing but what I received in tradition from
the mouths and pen of others. I worshipped a God, but I neither
knew who he was nor where he was, so that I lived in the dark,
being blinded by the imagination of my flesh.... I spoke of the
name of God, and Lord, and Christ, but I knew not this Lord, God,
and Christ. I prayed to a God, but I knew not where he was nor what
he was, and so walking by imagination I worshipped the devil, and
called him God. By reason whereof my comforts were often shaken to
pieces, and at last it was shown to me, that while I builded upon
any words or writings of other men, or while I looked after a God
without me, I did but build upon the sand, and as yet I knew not
the Rock."

He then admonishes his friends that, though they may not as yet be aware