"As to my asserting that I believe the Scriptures were held in too high estimation by the professors of Christianity in general, I readily admit, as I have asserted it in my public communications for more than forty years, but, generally, in opposition to those that held them to be the only rule of faith and practice; and my views have always been in accordance with our primitive Friends on this point. And at divers times, when in conversation with hireling teachers, (and at other times) I have given it as my opinion, that so long as they held the Scriptures to be the only rule of faith and practice, and by which they justify wars, hireling ministry, predestination, and what they call the ordinances, viz: water baptism and the passover supper, mere relics of the Jewish law, so long the Scriptures did such, more harm than good; but that the fault was not in the Scriptures, but in their literal and carnal interpretation of them--and that would always be the case until they came to the Spirit that gave them forth, as no other power could break the seal, and open them rightly to us. Hence I have observed, in my public communications, and in conversation with the members of different denominations, and others, who held that the Scriptures are the primary and only rule of faith and practice--that, according to the true analogy of reasoning, 'that for which a thing is such--the thing itself is more such'--as the Spirit was before the Scriptures, and above them, and without the Spirit they could not have been written or known. And with this simple but conclusive argument, I have convinced divers of the soundness of our doctrine in this respect--that not the Scriptures but the Spirit of Truth, which Jesus commanded his disciples to wait for, as their only rule, they would teach them all things, and guide them into all truth, is the primary and only rule of faith and practice, and is the only means by which our salvation is effected.