This proposition may be farther elucidated by making a comparison between the powers of men, and those of the brute-creation. An animal is compounded of body and instinct. If we were to endeavour to cultivate this instinct, we might make the animal tame and obedient. We might impress his sensitive powers, so that he might stop or go forward at our voice. We might bring him in some instances, to an imitation of outward gestures and sounds. Bat all the years of his life, and centuries of life in his progeny would pass away, and we should never be able so to improve his instinct into intellect, as to make him comprehend the affairs of a man. He would never understand the meaning of his goings in, or of his goings out, or of his pursuits in life, or of his progress in science. So neither could any education so improve the reason of man into the divine principle of light within him, as that he should understand spiritual things; for the things of God are only discernible by the spirit of God. This doctrine, that there is no understanding of divine things except through the medium of the divine principle, which dwells in the temple of man, was no particular notion of George Fox, or of the succeeding Quakers, though undoubtedly they have founded more upon it than other Christians. Those, who had the earliest access to the writings of the evangelists and apostles, believed the proposition. All the ancient fathers of the church considered it as the corner stone of the Christian fabric. The most celebrated of the reformers held it in the same light. The divines, who followed these, adopted it as their creed also; and by these it has been handed down to other Christian communities, and is retained as an essential doctrine by the church of England, at the present day. The Quakers adduce many authorities in behalf of this proposition, but the following may suffice. "It is the inward master, says St. Augustine, that teacheth. Where this inspiration is wanting, it is in vain that words from without are beaten in." Luther says, "no man can rightly know God, unless he immediately receives it from his holy spirit, except he finds it by experience in himself; and in this experience the holy spirit teacheth as in his proper school, out of which school nothing is taught but mere talk." Calvin, on Luke 10. 21. says, "Here the natural wisdom of man is so puzzled, and is at such a loss, that the first step of profiting in the school of Christ is to give it up or renounce it. For by this natural wisdom, as by a veil before our eyes, we are hindered from attaining the mysteries of God, which are not revealed but unto babes and little ones. For neither do flesh and blood reveal, nor doth the natural man perceive, the things that are of the spirit. But the doctrine of God is rather foolishness to him, because it can only be spiritually judged. The assistance therefore of the holy spirit is in this case necessary, or rather, his power alone is efficacious."