and have passed from death unto life;" a doctrine which he must have heard amongst the Dissenters very frequently. And still less does it appear to require an especial lesson from Heaven, that "being bred at Oxford or Cambridge is not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ;" but this "the Lord opened to him on a first-day morning, as he was walking in the fields ;" and he adds, " I saw it clearly as the Lord opened it to me, and was satisfied; and I admired the goodness of the Lord, which had opened this thing unto me this morning."

Very many persons, however, have come to a similar conclusion, without that assistance to which the founder of Quakerism attributes his knowledge of this very palpable truth.

But George Fox was not in a mood to make discoveries in an ordinary way, and he advanced steadily from one "opening " to another, till he came to that mystery of mysteries which will ever give celebrity to his name-THE INWARD light. It is worth while to notice some of these messages or revelations, as indications of the state of his mind when he was approaching the great secret of Quakerism. He generally records his actions in language which admits of no other interpretation than that he was a prophet under Divine direction :

At Mansfield there was a company of priests that were looked upon to be tender ; I was moved to go after them."... ..." "I heard of a great meeting at Leicester, for a dispute wherein Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Common Prayer men were to be concerned. The meeting was in a steeple-house, and thither I was moved by the Lord to go and be among them. ... ... ... " I was wrapped up in a rapture in the Lord's power, and I stepped up, and asked the priest, Dost thou call this steeple-house a church?' &c." ... ... ...' "I was moved to go to several courts and steeple-houses at Mansfield and other places, to warn them to leave off oppression and oaths," &c.

But, as he came nearer to his crowning discovery, his language assumes the most exalted tone of self-deception:

'Now I was come up in spirit, through the flaming sword, into the Paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus ; so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before the fall. Creation was opened to me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord: but I was immediately taken up in spirit to see another or more steadfast state than Adam's innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus that should never fall. And the Lord showed me, that such as were faithful to him in the power and light of Christ should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell, in which the

admirable works of the creation and the virtues thereof may be known, through the openings of that Divine word of wisdom and power by which they were made. Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be declared: but as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up into the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being."

There is nothing in the Bhagvat Geeta, that famous volume of Hindu mysticism, beyond this; nor has Krishna, in unfolding the depths of Yogee theology, surpassed this strain of nascent Quakerism. To say that it is incompatible with a belief in the Gospel, would be but a feeble criticism on such a passage, which launches into all the depths of pantheism, and claims a transcendental intercourse with the Spirit of the universe.

*

Little did George Fox suppose that his unquiet spirit, in travelling round the sphere of religion, had found the common home of the Brahmins, the Druses, the Sufis, and the Platonists; little did he suspect that he was using their language, and uttering their sentiments; and that, in exalting himself far above all the Christian sectarians with whose opinions he was conversant, he was only escaping into another ground, which heathen religionists had possessed from a remote antiquity; and that he was, in fact, unconsciously treading in their footsteps, echoing their words, and repeating their lessons. Neither did Jacob Behmen, the more modern mystic of Germany, suspect that he too was but copying the Vedanti philosophy of India; and at the same time using almost the very words of the founder of Quakerism, when he says,

"In the twenty-fifth year of my age I was surrounded by the Divine light, and replenished with the heavenly knowledge; inasmuch as going abroad into the fields, to a green before Neysgate, at Gorlitz, I there sat down, and viewing the herbs and grass of the field, in my inward light, I saw into their essences, uses, properties, which were discovered to me by their lineaments, figures, and signatures. In like manner I beheld the whole creation," &c.

And again,

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By a new motion from on high, in one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together in the University; for I saw and knew the Being of all beings, the byss and the abyss, and the eternal generation of the Holy Trinity, the descent and original of the world and of all

[* The language of Plato is almost identical with that of Fox. For instance, he says, “The purification of the soul is only its separation from the body—its accustoming itself to retire and lock itself up: then we may know within ourselves the pure essence of things which perhaps is nothing else but THE TRUTH." (See "Notes on Mysticism," by J. E. Howard, p. 87.)-EDs.]

creatures, through the Divine wisdom. I knew and saw, in myself, all the three worlds, namely, the divine, then the dark world, then the eternal invisible world; and I saw and knew," &c. &c.

George Fox having now reached the apex of all possible knowledge, and having entered into the Paradise of God,* and having put on the image of God in righteousness and holiness, was in a condition to discover and divulge the inward light, which not only was the cause of his own deification, but was destined to be the soul and life of that extraordinary system which, by its rise and progress, disturbed not a little" three generations of articulate-speaking men."

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"Now the Lord God," says he, "opened to me by his invisible power, that every man is enlightened by the Divine light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; and they that believed in it came out of condemnation to the light of life, and became the children of it; but they that hated it, and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure opening of light, without the help of any man; neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it."........." I was sent to turn people from darkness to the light, that they might receive Jesus Christ."...... ...' I was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which they might be led into all truth, and so up to Christ and God, as they had been who gave them forth. I was to turn them to the grace of God, and the truth in the heart."... ... ... "I saw that Christ died for all men, and was a propitiation for all, and enlightened all men and women with his Divine and saving light; but that none could be a true believer but who believed in it."

This is the origin of the doctrine of the Inward Light, as recorded by him who invented it: and having thus traced its origin, I shall now proceed to examine its acknowledged consequences, and the influence which it exercises on the whole body of Quaker theology.

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The doctrine of the Inward Light was a splendid conception of provident fanaticism, having in it a germ of power calculated to rule over the minds of men, and to fulfil, or rather to exceed, all the wishes of him who invented it, and of those who subsequently moulded it to their purposes. Well did William Penn describe it as the root of the goodly tree of doctrines that grew and branched from it;" for this has been the mustard-seed of Quakerism, which, taking root, has sprung up into a tree of gigantic dimensions, outstripping all its associates in the paradise of mysticism.

It was in the power of this theory that George Fox and his

Moreover, when I was brought up into the image of the Lord God in righteousness and holiness, and into the Paradise of God, the Lord let me see," &c.

coadjutors were enabled to go forth into the world, and, for fifty years at least, to throw down and build up according to their wishes. With this doctrine they persuaded those who were disposed to hearken to them, that they had within them that which could place them at once on the very apex of superiority, and exalt them far above all religionists then existing on the face of the earth. They had no need of teachers, of religious guides, or scriptural instruction. Even the Scriptures themselves, though containing the truth, need not be studied by one who could turn to that inward light which is in all men; for that being itself the original fountain of truth, and the instructor of the truth also, would far more certainly teach its disciples the mysteries of the faith than any knowledge of the Scriptures, however accurate. Indeed, the principal use of Scripture was not, independently, and per se, to teach, but rather to be a faithful amen and witness to the doctrines of Quakerism, as evolved in the visions of light, which could and did teach all the truths of Scripture, quite independent of the written word: thus a Quaker might be his own Bible, having the word within him, and reading it, not through printed sentences, but in the internal illuminations of original truth: and how should it be otherwise? for the light within is God himself. God is in every man, and Christ is in every man, and the Holy Spirit is in every man born in the world: the whole Deity is there, and they that have the Deity within must surely be far more profoundly and accurately instructed than if they were indoctrinated by any written word, or any other (miscalled) spiritual guide.

Let, then, all men turn inwards: they would find Christ within, who would reveal unto them all the deep things of God by an immediate communication of doctrine from himself, in a manner as far superior to the teaching of books as the Divine nature is superior to paper and printer's ink.

And here then, too, was a glorious emancipation from all the doubts, perplexities, controversies, and uncertainties in which other people (falsely called Christians) were continually exercised. Here they would find themselves immediately in a region of light and knowledge, above the darkling divisions of Christendom; for their guide was to be truth itself, pure, divine, and uncontaminated by admixture with any terrene thoughts or dogmas of mortals, the uncreated ray of the Word, the glory and effulgence of the God of truth himself. Let them, then, cease from all teachings of man, and, within the inclosure of Quakerism, hearken to the immediate inward prophecies and direct revelations of God and Christ, which would bring the

disciples of the light into certainty, and invest them with the privileges of infallibility, which no power of man should be able to gainsay. This was "the everlasting Gospel,"--this was the mystery whereby those who received it were at once placed on an equality with the apostles and the prophets, and made to see and know all things by the very same inspiration which dictated the written Scriptures. Here, too, was the door of perfection; for they that followed the monitions of the inward light would be led on into entire sinless purity, and, independent of any imputed righteousness, ascend, through increasing degrees of sanctification, till the whole man would become entirely divine, and be as holy as the seed, that is, as God himself is holy. This was the cleansing power of the truth which it was the glory of the Quakers to unfold.

And as Quakers would be perfect, and possess the holy and Divine nature, so might they be vessels of ministerial grace, chosen to teach the truth to others by immediate revelation: all Quakers, men and women, might teach and preach; and why not? The inward light is a general, a public possession; it is in all born into the world,-male and female are one in it: they have only to give in their adhesion to the truth, (i. e. Quakerism,) and to settle down into the tranquillity of abstraction, waiting, in a state of mental emptiness and intellectual inanition, for the visitings and dictations of the internal monitor. Their thoughts must be gathered in from all temporal, yea, and from all spiritual things also: they must not be musing on doctrine, but offer their minds a tabula rasa--a pure blank, to the Great Teacher, who, from his invisible throne within their hearts, would give forth the oracles of eternal truth, and, through their mouths, deliver the doctrines, the messages, the commands which must claim the assent, and secure the unhesitating obedience of all the children of light.

Great indeed would be the opposition of the various sects, (all of them tied up in chains of darkness,) and much would the written Scripture be quoted against the Quakers; but the disciples of the light would be taught, by the infallible oracle, to confute all opposition; knowing, of a certain truth, that every thing which they did not find testified within themselves must be false, as nothing could be true which the inward light did not seal with its unerring approbation.

Such is the outline of this famous theory; and, if bidding high for superior privileges and lofty prerogatives would secure the applause of the inconsiderate, the vain, and the ignorant, we need not wonder that it soon attracted a swarm of votaries to embrace its marvellous