A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
He created man also by the same power. He made his corporeal and organic
nature. He furnished him also with intellect, or a mental understanding.
By this latter gift he gave to man, what he had not given to other
animated nature, the power of reason, by which he had the superiority
over it, and by means of which he was enabled to guide himself in his
temporal concerns. Thus when he made the natural man, he made him a
rational agent also.
But he gave to man, at the same time, independently of this intellect or
understanding, a spiritual faculty, or a portion of the life of his own
spirit, to reside in him. This gift occasioned man to become more
immediately, as it is expressed, the image of the Almighty. It set him
above the animal and rational part of his nature. It made him know
things not intelligible solely by his reason. It made him spiritually
minded. It enabled him to know his duty to God, and to hold a heavenly
intercourse with his maker.
Adam then, the first man, independently of his rational faculties,
received from the Almighty into his own breast such an emanation from
the life of his own spirit, as was sufficient to have enabled him both
to hold, and to have continued, a spiritual intercourse with his maker,
and to have preserved him in the state of innocence in which he had been
created. As long as he lived in this divine light of the spirit, he
remained in the image of God, and was perfectly happy; but, not
attending faithfully and perseveringly to this his spiritual monitor, he
fell into the snares of Satan, or gave way to the temptations of sin.
From this moment his condition became changed. For 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 the
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[7].
[Footnote 7: It was said that, in the day in which Adam should eat
forbidden fruit, he should die; but he did not lose his animal life, or
his rational nature. His loss therefore is usually considered by the
Quakers to have been a divine spiritual principle, which had been
originally superadded to the animal and rational faculties.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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