y, it was also a principle
and basis for continuous revelation, and for definite openings of light
and guidance on all matters that concern present-day life and practice.
"The inward command," Barclay says, "is never wanting in the due season
to any duty."[25]

Like their predecessors, they did not slight the importance of the
outward word, the Scriptures. They had an immense reverence for them and
were diligent in the study and skilful in the use of them, though of
course they used them in a thoroughly uncritical and unhistorical way, as
did also their opponents. But they would never allow the Scriptures to
be called the Word of God or to be treated as God's only revelation of
Himself to man without a challenge. "The Word of God," Barclay says,
"is, like unto Himself, spiritual, yea, Spirit and Life, and therefore
cannot be heard and read with the natural external senses as the
Scriptures can." Our Master, he adds, is always with us. "His letter is
writ in our hearts and there we find it."[26] "There is," William Penn
declares, "something _nearer to us_ than Scriptures, to wit, the Word in
the heart from which all Scriptures came," though he is very emphatic in
his claim that Friends never slight the Scriptures and believe in their
divine authority.[27]

It is not necessary to prolong the exposition of early Quakerism farther.
The similarity of its fundamental position with that of the preceding
spiritual reformers is perfectly clear. Quakerism is, thus, no isolated
or sporadic religious phenomenon. It is deeply rooted and embedded in a
far wider movement that had been {349} accumulating volume and power for
more than a century before George Fox became a "prophet" of it to the
English people. And both in its new English, and in its earlier
continental form, it was a serious attempt to achieve a more complete
Reformation, to restore primitive Christianity, and to change the basis
of authority from external things, of any sort whatever, to the interior
life and spirit of man.

That the _formulation_ of this vast spiritual Reformation, as presented
by the men who are studied in this volume, was adequate, I do not for a
moment assert. The views here expounded in their historical setting are
plainly hampered by inadequate philosophical and psychological
presuppositions. They need reconstructive interpretation and a fresh
re-reading, in terms of our richer experience, our larger historical
perspective, and our