The spirit of prophecy and inspiration, he taught, is as immediately with man now as in any period of the past. The tenor of his teaching in this particular is strikingly like that of the modern transcendentalist. With Emerson, he would have asked, “Why may not we, too, seek an original relation with the Universe?” In the spirit of transcendentalism, too, he opposed all sectarianism. He would not be the founder of a sect. He left no organized body of disciples.[71] The sectarian contests of the day, even the disputes between Protestants and Catholics, he deemed of small account because they were so largely about rites and ceremonies, matters which he deemed non-essential. “These things men contend aboute and make great stirre in the world, whilst the life and spirit of the gospel lies buried under humane ordinances and carnall traditions.” True worship, he declares, is as well exemplified in the offering of lambs and bullocks “according to the letter of scripture formerly manifested, * * as in bread, wine, wafers, &c., or in Bishop, paster, teacher, elder, deacon, &c., for these things in the outward forme simply considered are carnall and momentary, but the words of Christ, they are spirit and they are life.” While he agreed with the Friends as to outward ordinances, Samuell Gorton strongly contested some of their other teachings, especially the doctrine of the “inner light,” which he saw might be interpreted as a particular revelation of infallible truth to the individual.[72] Such an assumption, he claimed, is mischievous and erroneous. All revelations must appeal for examination, recognition and interpretation to the natural human reason, which is a common possession of all men. Mr. Gorton combined with a remarkably equable balance, the methods of the mystic and the rationalist. His mysticism rejected all claims of infallibility, which logically tend to the persecution of dissidents. Yet, while he carried this idea so far that he would dispense with all paid ministries, he recognized more fully than most Protestants of his day the necessity of sound learning and thorough acquaintance with the Scriptures in their original tongues, to assure their correct and valid interpretation.[73]