 |
||
| Title |
Joyful News From Heaven
|
|
| Author | John Reeve & Lodowick Muggleton | |
| Year of Publication |
1658, 1706, 1751-3? and 1854 |
|
| Links | This work may be found here | |
In the forward to the 1854 edition Joseph Frost sets out the Muggletonians support for both the Book of Enoch and The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs as being canonical.
This work specifically seeks to explain "How the soul dieth in the body" and then goes on to set out at some length the nature of worship and to launch an extended attack on the Baptists.
Most of the arguments contained in this book are repeated from the previous works however for the first time Reeve sets forth a powerful motive for disputing the souls immortality, a position later championed by Muggleton, at Chapter 3 verse 11:
"Hence it is, that many of these men are wholly given up to live beneath the very brute beasts, oftentimes destroying their own bodies by unnatural actions; and not only so, but from hence also, they act all manner of cruelty one towards another; for what do these men commonly say of the body of man ? Oh! say they, it is but a natural form, or case of clay, that returns to its earthly center for ever, from whence it came; but, say they, there is a pure spirit in it, which is the life of God, that cannot die, but returns into the spiritual center of eternity from whence it came."
The attack on the Baptists is really an extension of A General Epistle to Ministers in claiming that a specific commission is required in order to preach.