A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3: 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 3: 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
It is the doctrine of Quakerism on the subject of the Spirit, that it is
an infallible guide to men in their spiritual concerns. But I do not see
where it is asserted by any of the Quaker writers, that it is to be a
guide to man in all the temporal concerns of his life, or that he is to
depreciate the value of human reason. George Fox was very apprehensive
that even in matters of religion, which constitute the immediate
province of the divine Spirit, men might mistake their own enthusiastic
feelings for revelation; and he censured some, to use his own
expression, "for having gone out into imaginations." The society also
have been apprehensive of the same consequences. Hence one among other
reasons for the institution of the office of elders. It is the duty of
these to watch over the doctrine of the ministers to see that they
preach soundly, and that they do not mistake their own imaginations for
the Spirit of God, and mix his wisdom with the waywardness of their own
wills. They therefore, who believe in the doctrine of the agency of the
Spirit, and at the same time in the necessity of great caution and
watchfulness that they may not confound its operations with that of
their own fancies, will never incur the charge, which has been brought
against the body at large. But if there are others, on the other hand,
who give themselves up to this agency without the necessary caution,
they will gradually mix their impressions, and will, in time, refer most
of them to the same source. They will bring the Divine Being by degrees
out of his spiritual province, and introduce him into all the trivial
and worthless concerns of their lives. Hence a belief will arise, which
cannot fail of binding their minds in the chains of delusion and
superstition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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