In the article in which he condemned Masonry, Elias Hicks spoke vigorously in criticism of the camp meetings held by some of the churches. He called them "night revels," and considered them "a very great nuisance to civil society." He thought they were promoters of "licentiousness, immorality and drunkenness," and were more or less reproachful to the Christian name, "giving much occasion for infidels to scoff."
While at Elizabeth, in New Jersey, Elias wrote a letter[78] to a young man named Samuel Cox. It seems that this person contemplated studying for the ministry; that his grandmother was a Friend, and Elias labored with the grandson on her account. He said that "human study or human science" could not qualify a minister. In fact to suppose such a thing was to cast "the greatest possible indignity on the Divine Being, and on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." Of course it was asserted that ministry came only by the power of the Spirit, and much Scripture was quoted to prove it. There is little in the writings of Elias Hicks to show that he considered that equipping the natural powers was helpful in making the spiritual inspiration effective.
[78] Letter was dated, Fifth month 12, 1813.
Facsimile from page of a letter written by Elias Hicks to his wife, from Newtown, Pa., Tenth month 15, 1822. Near the middle of the sixth line the difference in writing evidently shows where the writer stopped and "sharpened" his quill pen. The name "Worton" in the last line should probably be Wharton.
It is evident, however, that Elias was not indifferent to his own intellectual equipment. He was fond of quoting from books the things which fortified his own position. The following shows how he stored his mind with facts, from which he drew certain conclusions:
"Indisposition of body prevented my attending meeting. I therefore spent the day quietly at home, and in reading a portion of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History of the Fifth Century, and which is indeed enough to astonish any sensible, considerate man, to think how the professors of that day could be hardy enough to call themselves Christians, while using every artifice that their human wisdom could invent to raise themselves to power and opulence, and endeavoring to crush down their opposers by almost every cruelty that power, envy and malice could inflict, to the entire scandal of the Christian name; and changing the pure, meek, merciful and undefiled religion of Jesus into an impure, unmerciful, cruel, bloody and persecuting religion. For each of those varied sects of professed Christians, in their turn, as they got the power of the civil magistrate on their side, would endeavor, by the sword, and severe edicts, followed by banishment, to reduce and destroy all those who dissented from them, although their opinions were not a whit more friendly to real, genuine Christianity than the tenets of their opposers; for all were, in great measure, if not entirely, adulterated and apostatized from the true spirit of Christianity, which breathes peace on earth, and good will to men."[79]
[79] Journal, p. 224.
Elias Hicks believed that there was a sure way of determining conduct, whether it was from "one's own will," or whether it proceeded from the divine leading. In regard to this matter, he said: