sential to salvation; they
{122} drew up their infallible creeds; they set up Church officials who
were to rule over other men's faith, and they assumed a certain divine
right to compel the consciences of their members. Most of the Reformers
have even sanctioned the use of bonds and prisons to secure uniformity of
faith! The primitive apostles claimed no such right and made use of no
such unspiritual methods. Order is a good thing and is everywhere to be
sought, but God nowhere has conferred upon the heads of His Church the
authority to compel conscience or to force tender souls to submit to a
system which reveals in itself no inherent evidences of divine origin.

The writers of these Nineteen Articles fail to see anywhere in the world
a divinely established and spiritually endowed Church of Jesus Christ.
They are determined to live in purity and love, to avoid dissension and
strife, to guard their membership in the invisible Church, and to wait in
faith for the outpouring of the Spirit and the bestowal of miraculous
gifts for the restoration of the Church in its pristine apostolic purity
and power. We have thus, here in Holland, an almost exact parallel to
the "Seekers" who were very numerous in England in the middle decades of
the seventeenth century.

We get a very interesting side-light on Galenus Abrahams in the _Journal_
of George Fox. William Penn and George Keith held a "discussion" with
this famous Collegiant leader in 1677, at which time the latter "asserted
that nobody nowadays could be accepted as a messenger of God unless he
confirmed his doctrine by miracle,"[20] and Fox says that Abrahams was
"much confounded and truth gained ground."[21] Fox himself was not
present at the "discussion," but he had a personal interview with
Abrahams at about the same time as the "discussion." The interview was
not very satisfactory. Fox says that he found this "notable teacher"
"very high and shy, so that he would not let me touch him nor look upon
him, but he bid me keep my eyes off him, for {123} he said they pierced
him!"[22] But at a later visit, in 1684, Fox found the Collegiant
doctor, now venerable with years, "very loving and tender." "He
confessed in some measure to truth," Fox says, "and we parted very
lovingly." At a meeting, held in Amsterdam a few weeks later, Abrahams
was among the large group of attenders, and "was very attentive to the
testimony of the truth," and, when the meeting was over, Fox