HOW FAR FOX NEGLECTED IT.

27

it for its sins, offering it peace and life,―had, by a series of outward acts, demonstrated that the struggling spirit was acknowledged by Him,that he was on its side in the dreadful battle that was fighting, that the battle in fact was His own, and that He would, in time, trample all its enemies under its feet,-that it was this belief, and no other, which brought them to comfort, and confidence, and hope.

In what way, then, is this faith inconsistent with the doctrines of G. Fox, and your early Friends? It is inconsistent with them in this way that they consider the acts which the Word did, in the flesh of man, were chiefly valuable as they showed what acts he would be doing in the heart of each man. "The humiliation and sufferings, which were the great characteristic of His work, is that which the Word is seeking to produce in you and in every man. You see here the type of what he would be doing in you, crushing, extinguishing all selfish powers, feelings, exercises, bringing everything into obedience and captivity." Now this is excellent, if only the man first understands himself; if only first he knows what his relation to this divine Word is; if he only knows that that which will be put down within him is not himself but his enemy; if only he were taught beforehand that he himself is united to Christ, and is an object of His complacency. Without this, all these notions of crushing and extinguishing self become mere burdens to the conscience; they convert every

28 HOW FAR HIS DOCTRINE UPHELD IT.

thing that a man does, or thinks, or speaks, into sin, make him regard all the operations of his faculties, and even of his affections, as unholy,make him at the same time feel that he is unholy for not exercising those feelings and faculties,make him despair at last of attaining the final end of complete self-annihilation. This has been the effect upon all honest men and women, whether Romanists or Protestants, of substituting the doctrine of the Word in man, for justification by the death and resurrection of Christ.

But having made this concession to your seceding Friends, I must tell them frankly, that when they set up this doctrine of justification against the doctrine of the Word speaking to man and in man, instead of merely saying that one is not included in the other, they are at once cutting away the foundations of their own truth, and doing what in them lies to hinder themselves from ever attaining the knowledge of any other truth.

I speak earnestly on this subject, because I see with grief, but not surprise, the course which those Friends are taking. They have felt the need of something that your early writers do not supply them with, for the peace and satisfaction of their consciences. So far well; it is their duty to "seek for peace and ensue it ;" and if they find their brethren are neglecting the only means of attaining this peace, they are right to warn them. If they see any sect arising up among you here, or in America, which not only

WARNING TO THE SECEDING FRIENDS. 29

overlooks these doctrines, as George Fox in a great measure did,-but which sets the doctrines of early Quakerism formally against them, which, generally speaking, he did not,—they are right to show the necessity of that which these men reject. But here ends their commission. When they take upon them to say, that certain principles are not true, because they have discovered some to be true, which other people fancy to contradict them; when, in order to accomplish this work, they not only set at naught all their own authorities, but venture into depths wherein, I must plainly tell them, they need more learning, as well as more spiritual insight than they at present possess, to advance a single step; — talking about the doctrines of the fathers of the Christian church, and at one swoop denouncing them all as men ignorant of the Gospel, merely because they maintained a truth which St. Paul preached to the Athenians,—then I do begin to tremble for these Friends, for that they seem to me to confound that which they have felt with that which they have acquired from very untrustworthy sources, and for that their faith seems to me very slightly mixed with humility. Yet I should not have undertaken the office of counselling them, if I did not perceive that they were choosing for their guides persons who, I know, can only mislead them.

There are some supporters of the Establishment, with a little sprinkling of philosophy, belonging to the school of Mr. Scott and Mr. Newton, but without possessing any of the

30

THE EXCLUSIVE SCHOOL.

heartiness and simplicity of those excellent men, who seem to make it their object to prove to the world, that whatever principles are found in other men's writings, if agreeable to what they taught, are useless-if different from them, are mischievous. They begin with affirming, that the doctrines of the Reformers are merely those promulgated by these doctors of the eighteenth century, and then they proceed to contend, that any thing that was held before the age of the Reformation is worse than suspicious.

In this feeling, Mr. Osburn's book against the Fathers seems to have originated, and it pervades our religious newspapers and magazines. Such writers as these offer themselves as very natural allies to the discontented or factious of any party; but woe to those who seek light from them! It is not merely that they will never be able to pass beyond a very narrow circle of views and opinions, —it is, that even these views and opinions will, in an exceedingly short time, be converted into mere words and phrases. The men I speak of are not merely unjust to the Reformers and the Fathers, they are unjust to the teachers whom they idolize. There was a life and sincerity of devotion about those teachers, with which every good man must sympathise. He may not think them great theologians; he may think, that when they tried to systematize that which they had experienced, they fell into considerable perplexities, did injustice to others, and very often misrepresented themselves. But he will not for that cease to honour that

HOW THEY UNDERMINE JUSTIFICATION.

31

light in them, which he sees to have been from above, or doubt that they were raised up to do a good work, which, with more enlarged perceptions, they might not have accomplished so well. It is only when their names are used by men on whom scarcely a skirt or rag of their mantle has fallen, not to uphold precious principles concerning the life of man, but to upset other truths and principles also most precious, interfering it seems with the system in which those principles are embodied, that we feel even tempted for a moment to speak slightingly of them. These observations you, I am sure, will feel to be applicable to the present crisis in your Society. Your seceding Friends are setting up the doctrine of justification by faith, against the belief of the Word dwelling in the heart of men; the two, they say, cannot exist together. But I say, that the fact of justification which St. Paul taught,-the fact of justification which Luther proclaimed to the world,the fact of justification in which Scott and Newton, and all other men, have found peace and satisfaction, is not at variance with this belief, but necessarily linked to it, and is beautifully interterpreted by it. Nay, I will even venture what may seem strong and startling assertions,that the men of whom I speak are undermining the doctrine of justification by faith; that the cause of the discontent with which it is viewed by many holy and good men, who in their hearts recognize the principle of it, is, that it has been severed from the doctrine which George Fox