or manifestation of the Spirit in each mind, in
interpretation of the Bible or over and above the Bible, is the sole
true teaching of the Gospel, and if the manifestation cometh as the
Spirit listeth, and cannot be commanded, a regular Ministry of the
Word by a so-called Clergy is an absurdity, and a hired Ministry an
abomination! So said the Quakers. In reaching this conclusion,
however, they had only added themselves to masses of people, known as
Brownists, Seekers, and Anabaptists, who had already, by the same
route or by others, advanced to the standing-ground of absolute
Voluntaryism. What did distinguish the early Quakers seems to have
been, in the first place, the thorough form of their apprehension of
that doctrine of the Inner Light, or Immediate Revelation of the
Spirit, which they held in common with other sects, and, in the
second place, their courage and tenacity in carrying out the
practical inferences from that doctrine in every sentence of their
own speech and every hour of their own conduct. As to the form in
which they held the doctrine itself Barclay will be again our best
authority. "The testimony of the Spirit," he says, "is that alone by
which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can only be,
revealed; who, as by the moving of his own Spirit he converted the
Chaos of this world into that wonderful Order wherein it was in the
beginning, and created Man a living Soul to rule and govern it, so by
the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of
men, both Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles: which revelations of
God by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams,
or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the
formal object of their faith and remain yet so to be,--since the
object of the Saints' faith is the same in all ages, though set forth
under divers administrations." This Inner Light of the Spirit,
seizing men and women at all times and places, and illuminating them
in the knowledge of God, was, Barclay elsewhere explains, something
altogether supernatural, something totally distinct from natural
Reason. "That Man, as he is a rational creature, hath Reason as a
natural faculty of his soul, we deny not; for this is a property
natural and essential to him, by which he can know and learn many
arts and sciences, beyond what any other animal can do by the mere
animal principle. Neither do we deny that by this rational principle
Man may app