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
In favour of this proposition, they usually quote those remarkable words
of the Apostle Paul;[11] "for what man knoweth the things of a man, save
the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth
no man, but the spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of
the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things
that are freely given to us of God." And again--"but the natural man
receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned."
[Footnote 11: 1 Cor. 2.11, &c.]
By these expressions the Quakers conceive that the history of man, as
explained in the last chapter, is confirmed; or that the Almighty not
only gave to man reason, which was to assist him in his temporal, but
also superadded a portion of his own spirit, which was to assist him in
his spiritual concerns. They conceive it also to be still farther
confirmed by other expressions of the same Apostle. In his first letter
to the Corinthians, he says,[12] "Know ye not that your body is the
_temple of the Holy Ghost_, which _is in you_, which ye have of God;"
and in his letter to Timothy he desires him[13] "to hold fast that good
thing which was committed to him by means of the _holy_ Ghost, which
_dwelled in him_" Now these expressions can only be accurate on a
supposition of the truth of the history of man, as explained in the
former chapter. If this history be true, then they are considered as
words of course: for if there be a communication between the supreme
Being and his creature man, or if the Almighty has afforded to man an
emanation of his own spirit, which is to act for a time in his mortal
body, and then to return to him that gave it, we may say, with great
consistency, that the divinity resides in him, or that his body is the
temple of the holy spirit.
[Footnote 12: 1 Cor. 6. 19.]
[Footnote 13: 2 Tim. 1. 14.]
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