Baptists are not to be confounded. Such are those Puritans in Eng. land named, who with respect to infant baptism hold opinions similar to those of the Mennonites, without, however, being on other points distinguishable from the English Calvinists of that party. From the year 1633 they have formed a separate community.

CHAPTER IL

THE QUAKERS.

EXIV. Some historical preliminary remarks.

WHOEVER Would undertake the task of tracing historically the grad ual development of Protestant Sectarianism, should after the Anabap tists treat of the Schwenkfeldians, who though they appeared only a few years later than the former, yet, as exaggerated spiritualists, stand considerably higher. He would next have to describe some individual enthusiasts, as well as larger communities of this description, that made their appearance in the latter half of the sixteenth, and the former half of the seventeenth century; and then only could he turn to the Quakers, who went to the farthest verge of the boldest spiritualism, and were to be outdone only by contradictions. Among the first Anabaptists, the effort of a false spiritualism took quite an eccentric course, and the pure spiritual life, which they would fain have introduced, rested on the expectation of an extraordinary, marvellous introduction of a higher order of things into this lower world. All the ordinary relations of earthly life were menaced with destruction, and that delicate subtle kingdom of the spirit, which they aimed at, was in manifold ways troubled by a very gross political spirit; for earthly bonds cannot be, without violence, suddenly dissevered, nor, at once, replaced by supermundanities. This spiritual kingdom was founded in a very carnal man. ner, and the means proved destructive to the end. The supersensual principle, also, even where it had attained, in this sect, to any consolidation, was not presented in its purity and integrity; since the sacra. ment was retained, not as the channel and conductor, but merely as the emblem of divine graces. Moreover, among the doctrines of this sect, there were some which mere accident had annexed to its stem, or which at least had not naturally grown out of its root.

Far more developed appears the spiritualism of Schwenkfeld, whose peculiarities, however, we shall not be able to point out; as no remains of his sect have survived down to our days. But in its most complete form doth this false spiritualism manifest itself, as we before said, among the Quakers, who honour as their founder George Fox, a shoemaker and shepherd, born at Drayton, in Leicestershire, in the year 1621, and

EXPOSITION OF DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES, &c. 453

who departed this life in the year 1690. Among the Quakers we discover an interior piety, which, when we can succeed in forgetting, now and then, the utter perverseness of the whole system, marvellously cheers and refreshes, and even, at times, deeply moves the mind, though not, by any means, in the same degree as our own better mysticism. Moreover, we find among them a conscious and firm prosecution of the point of view they have once adopted-a consistency extremely pleasing and cheering, which flinches from no consequences, and has given to Quakerism such an advantage over the orthodox Protestantism, where the most crying dissonances are to be found. All parts stand in the most harmonious proportion with each other, forming a fine connected whole, whose architectural perfection leaves little to be desired; and to the Catholic, especially, who is forced by his own religious system to look every where for internal keeping and consistency, appears entitled to respect. Consistency is not, indeed, truth itself, and doth not even supply its place; but a system of doctrine is ever false, which includes parts inconsistent with the whole. In George Fox, the founder of the sect, we doubtless do not find this internal harmony of system, nor the transparent clearness of doctrine determined thereby; but that the system was capable of attaining to this harmony, lay in the very nature of the fundamental idea, out of which it sprang. A very remarkable and amiable trait of Quakerism is that avoidance of every kind of asperity, which so frequently shocks us in the orthodox Protestantism. The manner, too, wherein the Quakers treat all the better phenomena of religion and morality in the times anterior to Christianity, evinces great tenderness of feeling; nor is this less manifest in their rejection of the Calvinistic doctrine of absolute predestination. Here, also, the Quaker strives to emulate the Catholic; but the capital error of Quakerism is, that though in itself a fair, deeply conceived and harmonious system, it stands in the most direct opposition to historical Christianity, and as far as in it lies, annihilates the same; for this the following exposition of its principles will clearly show. This task we will now undertake, taking for our guide the Apology by Barclay-the most celebrated writer among the Quakers, and whose book enjoys an almost symbolical authority; for, they have not put forth a regular confession

of faith.*

* Roberti Barclai Theologiæ vere Christianæ Apologia, edit. sec., Lond. 1729. With Barclay, however, we shall always compare the following work, entitled: A portraiture of Quakerism, taken from a view of the moral education, discipline, peculiar customs, religious principles of the society of friends." By Thomas Clarkson, Esq., in three vols., 3d edit., Lond., 1807. The author was, for a long time, in

Before, however, we make our readers acquainted with the system of this remarkable religious community, we must lay before them the motives, which induced its first propagators to establish a peculiar sect. Like many other religious parties, in the deeply convulsed age of Cromwell, they particularly missed in the High Church of England, the free expansion of the spirit of piety-religious life, and interior warmth, and unction. Every thing in this Church appeared to them torpid and petrified. The Divine Spirit, which heretofore had filled the Church, was denied, and out of the living congregation had been banished, and confined to the dead word of Scripture; and the boast of the Reformers, that this dead word would infallibly shed a heavenly light over its readers, and enkindle them with a holy fire, was refuted by every day's experience. The established worship appeared void and meaningless in the eyes of the Quakers, and seemed to consist of nothing more than a dry, cheerless repetition of forms and hymns, composed though they were in the vernacular tongue. And in fact, when the real presence of the Saviour had been rejected, and the sacrifice been abolished, nothing more remained, which directly and by itself could fill the susceptible soul with devotion and sacred awe, or exalt, solace and bless it. The act was bereaved of its very soul; it became an earthly thing, and though rational, yet unspiritual and uninspiring. All now depended on the fact, whether the preacher were able to draw words of life from the inmost core of a soul, filled with the Divine Spirit, and were enabled to edify by a heavenly power the assembled believers, and by the combined animation, clearness, and depth of his discourses to initiate them more and more in the mysteries of Christ's kingdom. But it was here precisely the longings of the Quakers were most cruelly deceived; so that not unfrequently they would interrupt the sermons of the Anglican ministers, and in their revolted feelings would bid "the man of wood” descend from the pulpit. Even the most spiritual-minded preacher is not master of celestial unction and illumination ;-days and weeks of internal dryness and desolation will occur;—and no human art can supply the gift from above. The majority of preachers, alas! abound neither in divine nor human energy;-others possess not even the will; and thus it cannot fail to happen, that the greater part of sermons attain not by one-half their end, and very many fall even far short of it. This the Quakers deeply felt; and in default of an act in the public worship, which by its intrinsic worth could seize possession of the soul, they rejected the whole established service, as an institution

habits of intercourse with the Quakers; and finding them vigorous opponents to the slave-trade, to the suppression whereof Clarkson devoted all his energies, he came to entertain a great affection for them. This book must be used with caution.

incapable of satisfying the higher wants of the religious man. To this we must add the numberless disputes, which then convulsed the Anglican Church. Opinions crowded upon opinions, each seeking its foundation in Holy Writ; yet not one being able to prove by that standard its own truth, or the untenableness of the opposite systems; and no living human authority, invested with a divine sanction, was anywhere recognised. It appeared to the Quakers, that the truths of Christianity were in imminent danger; and that, if they had no other support than Holy Writ, they must perish in the struggle of parties. Thus they receded from every external institution-not only from the Church and public worship, but, in a great degree, from Scripture itself; and, for what they held to be vital truths of salvation, they sought an indestructible basis in the immediate inspiration of a creative, inward light, which, without any other medium, was to be, if not the exclusive, yet the principal source of nurture to the spirit.

§ LXV.-Religious system of the Quakers. The Inward Light.

While avoiding all explanation as to the nature of the Paradisaic man,* the Quakers hold, that from the fallen Adam, a germ of death, a seed of sin, has been scattered over all his posterity; for the word “original sin” they will not employ, nor indeed any other technical expression unsanctioned by the usage of Scripture. Hereby all men were entirely bereaved of the Divine image, which, however, the Quakers do not particularize; and this bereavement, according to them, must be understood by the menaced death, which they thus conceive to have been only spiritual. So long, however, as the universal seed of death, through a conscious and active culture of the same, beareth no fruits; it constitutes, they continue, no guilt, and therefore by no

* Barclaii Apolog. theolog. Christ. p. 70. "Curiosas illas notiones, quas plerique docent, de statû Adæ ante lapsum, prætereo," etc. + L. C. "Hæc mors non fuit externa, seu dissolutio exterioris hominis; nam quoad hanc non mortuus est, nisi multos post annos. Ita oportet esse mortem quoad spiritualem vitam et communionem cum Deo." A valid conclusion, forsooth! What a betrayal, too, of ignorance in philology! On all this Clarkson furnishes us with more details. Of the consequences which Adam's sin produced first in him, and then in all his posterity, Clarkson says as follows: "In the same manner as distemper occasions animal life to droop, and to lose its powers, and finally to cease; so unrighteousness, or his rebellion against this Divine light of the Spirit, that was within him, occasioned a dissolution of his Spiritual feelings and perceptions; for he became dead, as it were, in consequence, as to any knowledge of God, or enjoyment of His presence." See the above cited work, p. 115.