us through the senses, the idea of a communion between the Divine Word and the heart and conscience and reason of men has been of course rejected. The subject will often recur in the course of our inquiries.

II. I need say very little about the two other main articles of the Quaker faith; first, because the principle of them is contained in that which we have been examining, and secondly, because they are admitted to a certain extent, and under some conditions, by nearly all Christians. The proposition, for instance, that Christ came to establish a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom not of this world, different from the Jewish, in being less carnal and more spiritual, is constantly proclaimed by those English dissenters who are most inclined to denounce Fox's primary tenet as unscriptural and false. Only they think that he pushed this truth to an extreme. They think the kingdom is spiritual but not quite so spiritual as he fancied. So also with reference to the gift of the Spirit and the subordination of man's powers and utterances to His government-they believe that what Fox said was true up to a certain point, but that there is great danger of going beyond that point. I shall have opportunities of examining the plea for these restrictions hereafter. At present, I will only say that, far from thinking that the Quakers have carried their principles to an excess, I believe all their errors have arisen from the narrow imperfect and earthly notions which they entertain respecting the nature of a spiritual kingdom, and from the low estimate which they have formed of that transcendent gift which God bestowed upon His creatures when His Holy Spirit came down to dwell among them. My meaning will appear more clearly

when I have spoken of the negative articles of Quaker Theology.

SECTION III. THE QUAKER SYSTEM.

1. It is not difficult to imagine in what way the principle of an inward light must have affected the mind of a man educated as Fox was, provided he were perfectly earnest and sincere. I have spoken of his doctrine-unquestionably it was his doctrine, for it was that which he taught wherever he went; if I had called it a dogma I should perhaps have described very exactly that which it has become to modern Quakers; but assuredly neither word would have seemed to him the correct one. He had actually discovered a law to which he himself was subject to which every other man was subject; would anyone tell him that this was a mere notion like those about justification, sanctification, final perseverance, and so forth, which he had heard proclaimed from the pulpits of the day? The language of the preachers and of the books might be about something which concerned him and all men; but he had discovered the very thing itself; he had a fact to proclaim, not a theory or a system. From the very first therefore he began to denounce dogmas and formulas as corrupting and misleading. The young mechanic told the preachers, who had been trained in all the distinctions and divisions, which the Westminster Assembly with such infinite labour and discussion had wrought out, that they knew nothing about the matter they were talking of. Those who had silenced their brethren for their want of spiritual knowledge

were rebuked, and sometimes silenced (by the voice of a man, not the vote of a trying Committee), for the self-same sin. But if formulas were evil things, could forms be better? Here were men professing outward acts and ceremonies, and between these and the Christian life they said or signified that there was an intimate connexion. Strange, almost incredible blindness! Did not the Christian life consist in following an inward Guide, an invisible Teacher, in eschewing that which was visible and sensible? What could these outward things have to do with that? The argument was irresistible. It was a main part of Fox's vocation to bear witness against such idolatries.

2. Possibly the thought may sometimes have occurred to one who studied the Old Testament diligently, that forms had been in the olden time the very testimonies for this light, the very means by which the Jews were warned against sensual worship; that they were converted by those Jews into excuses for the indulgence of a natural idolatry; but yet that being God's appointed protests against it, and the means which He had devised for delivering men from it, they were actually appealed to, from age to age, by the prophets who were raised up to tell the people of their sins; these prophets being in fact far more diligent observers of the forms than the sensualists and the hypocrites whom they denounced for neglecting their meaning. I say, such a thought as this may have glanced into the mind of Fox, and with it the reflection, that possibly a method which was good once might be good still. But he was able to silence such suggestions, or to dismiss them as

proceeding from an evil source, by the second doctrine

of which I spoke. Till the appearance of Christ this might be true; but He came to establish a Spiritual and Universal Dispensation. A spiritual dispensation; therefore outward institutions, like that of circumcision, like that of a passover, like that of a priesthood, like that of an outward sacrificial worship, like that of particularly sacred seasons, are abolished. But are not Baptism, the Eucharist, a Ministry appointed by imposition of hands, and divided into three permanent orders, Liturgies, the observance of Fasts and Festivals, equally visible and outward? On what plea then have you substituted one set of ceremonies for another, when you profess to be members of a spiritual kingdom?

Moreover, the dispensation is to be universal as well as spiritual. National distinctions, therefore, are no more; they belong to the economy of the world. War has been the fruit of these; under a spiritual and universal dispensation, war is a sin. Nations have always, the Jewish nation as much as the rest, invoked God as the witness of their ordinary transactions; Oaths are forbidden under the new dispensation. Nations have generally made a provision for the ministers of religion, and regarded them as parts of the commonwealth. Such arrangements are altogether inconsistent with a spiritual and universal dispensation.

3. As the Quakers turned away with disgust from all confessions whatsoever, it was not likely they would distinguish between the dogmatic articles which were drawn up in later ages of the Church, and the creeds which had been adopted in its infancy. At all events, even the simplest of these creeds was objectionable to them, because it directs our thoughts to the outward

acts and events of our Lord's life upon earth, rather than to His presence in the heart. It was a more difficult question how they should regard the Scriptures. These recorded actual events, and appeared to have an outward character. Yet the Bible was the only book of which Fox and several of his brethren knew anything. In it he had found the strongest confirmation of all that he believed. The language, therefore, of the Quakers became more tinctured with the phraseology of Scripture than that of any sect; while, nevertheless, they described it in language which the members of no other sect would have ventured to use. The reading of it was said to be rather a luxury than necessity to the believer, and nothing was more important than that he should derive his knowledge from the inward teacher, not from the outward book. No doubt warnings about the danger of trusting in the letter, and still more about the impossibility of finding a meaning in it without help of another kind, had been common in the writings of learned doctors before, and even since, the Reformation. But it was evident that they acquired a new and much stronger meaning among the Quakers. That meaning was deduced from the doctrine concerning Spiritual Influences. He only was a true teacher who had been called by the inward voice; he was only teaching rightly at any moment when he was obeying that voice. How then, they argued, can he be at the same time subject to the dominion of a book? He may read it, and passages in it might be brought to his mind; but he will only apply them properly when he feels in the position of those who wrote the book; speaking by the same inspiration which actuated them. The

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