"
The next fruit of Winstanley's prolific pen is a volume of some 134
closely printed pages, entitled _The Saint's Paradise: Or the Father's
Teaching the only Satisfaction to Waiting Souls_,[56:1] from which in
the previous chapter we have already quoted somewhat freely. The words
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.
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