you represent and influence, ought to do it. Suppose they are, by possibility, genuine christians at heart; I still think that they are so exceedingly defective that God has a terrible controversy with them, in which we are in danger of taking side against him, by a course of fraternizing and congratulation, while they remain as they are. He neither requires us to search the heart, nor to admit a silly charity against evidence or without it. The defect to which I allude is pervading and universal. It is the stain, and, in my christian judgment, the damning fault of all their publications-the very best of them. I call them " orthodox" only by usage, and for distinction, and always with reluctance, while I witness that accursed leaven in all their published symbols. It is a qualifier downward of all their good promisings; it is the obscuration, if not the extinguisher, of all their heavenly light; it is the goal, and the limit, and the barrier, of their christian advancement; and it is an error which no one of you would allow, among any other people, to the man whom you would feel warranted to fellowship as a christain brother. It is this: PERTINACIOUSLY Refusing to ACKNOWLEDGE THE PARAMOUNT AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, AS OUR RULE OF FAITH AND PRACTICE; AND REFUSING, WITH MELANCHOLY AND EQUAL CONSISTENCY TO FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST IN CALLING THEM "THE WORD OF GOD."

Where got they all their honorable orthodoxy, but from that BOOK OF BOOKS which they dare to call "a secondary rule?" How know they one grand

truth, how can they prove it in controversy, but by resort to the scripture, that "cannot be broken?" They quote Barclay, in what he says with cardinal heresy, that the scriptures "are not to be esteemed the adequate, primary rule of faith and manners. Yet, because they give a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty; for, as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify that the Spirit is that guide by which the saints are led into all truth; therefore, according to the scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader. Seeing, then, that we do therefore receive and believe the scriptures, because they proceeded from the Spirit, for the very same reason is the Spirit more originally and principally the rule, according to the received maxim in the schools: Propter quod unum quodque est tale, illud ipsum est magis tale;' that for which a thing is such, that thing itself is more such." Of this caballistical aphorism more hereafter.

I have taken the above from a late publication of theirs, entitled, " AN EXPOSITION OF THE FAITH of the religIOUS SOCIETY Of Friends, coMMONLY CALLED QUAKERS, IN THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, PRINCIPALLY SELECTED FROM THEIR EARLY WRITINGS. BY THOMAS EVANS." With the family of the compiler, or author, I have some quondam acquaintance; and may add, that I sincerely respect them for their singular intelligence, and comparative deference for the scriptures; in

which they seem to me to go farther than others, and perhaps as far as they can, with the perilous enchantment of Fox and Barclay, and all the retinue of inspired errorists of the sort, obstructing them. For others of the party I entertain a similar deference—as real and as deep as they possess who flatter them more, or who dislike their errors less. The EXPOSITION contains 232 citations from early Friends, to prove" that they sincerely believed, and openly avowed, the great fundamental truths of the christian religion." It is published under the sanction of the society, by their assembled " representatives." The work is neat, showing great accuracy and great pains-taking in the selection. It is constituted throughout of precious excerpts from the writings of the society; and appears to meand it would be affectation to imply that I did not think myself a judge in such things-to be the very best manifesto of their views, in seeming approximation to catholic orthodoxy, that I have ever seen, or which I believe it possible to compile or select from the writings of their authors. It proves, however, that in their belief they have been CARDINAL HERETICS from the beginning-the whole of them; and that the present" orthodox" intend to remain what their fathers were. Allow me, too, to express my wonder and regret at the facility with which some truly orthodox divines, under the influence of the imposing name of orthodox, have gloried in them, and recognised them as christian brethren, vastly increasing the satisfactions of the inward light! It is

really injuring them, and compromising the truth of God, which we are set to defend.

Let me state a case that is quite parallel in my own estimate. Some Unitarians, as they call themselves, in order to slander us of tritheism, are as low as Socinus himself, uncle or nephew; as low as mere humanitarianism can make them. Others of hoc genus omne, are hyperarians; they believe not only that Jesus Christ is the chief of all creatures, but so ancient and exalted and incomparable, that he is their constituted Head, and even very God-in a subordinate sense! i. e. that he is God, truly and properly, saving only that he is not the eternal Jehovah, and was indeed created to be, what he is, the glorious Chieftain of creation. Thus I have given the scale of finite, on which different degrees, between the two extremes specified, are selected, by different "deniers of the Lord that bought them,” as their resting-place-for the present. How HIGH, very estimable sirs, on that scale might I ascend, speaking divers good and true things by the way, in favor of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and at the same time denying his supreme divinity, before you, who understand this subject so wisely and well, would own me as a brother in the Lord! You would tell me, that though he was "of the seed of David according to the flesh," i. e. in his proper human nature, he was also, in his superior nature, GOD OVER ALL, AND BLESSED FOR EVER;" and that until I threw away my scale of finite, and forbore to attempt to measure infinite, and recognise Jesus Christ as the Jehovah of the Bible,

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whom Isaiah saw in vision on his throne, ch. 6, (John, 12,) such a recognition could never be extended; it was morally impossible, and wholly out of the question; and you would, I think, answer as you ought, in consistency not more than duty. It is not by lowering, or altering the standard of God, that men are reduced to conformity and similitude.

And when a whole sect come, in effect, to you, and detrude" the oracles of God" from their justly supreme pre-eminence, call them "a secondary rule," and license them to be "esteemed as such;" and MAKE GOD HIMSELF A RULE OF ACTION; (the only way in which they can show a superior rule;) and profess to walk by the greater, and not by the less; and maintain the plenary inspiration of George Fox and all his satellites; and tell you that the scriptures can be known in their divinity, not by faith cordially honoring the rational evidence that demonstrates it abundantly, but only by having the same spirit that they had who gave them forth; thus " MAKING THE WORD OF GOD OF NONE EFFECT, THROUGH THEIR TRADITION WHICH THEY HAVE DE

LIVERED," as well as received; " and many such like things they do;" and when they say divers other things, and some that are true and important, which they affect to know irrespectively of "the secondary rule," or in a way of paramount authority-though you all well know, that there is not a particle of "light in them" which they have not borrowed, or rather "stolen," (a felony which the Bible itself indignantly resents,) from that dishonored rule," that they might keep their own tradition :"