It is possible that in the minds of the ultra Orthodox, to deny the saving value of a belief in the miraculous conception, although admitting it as a fact, or recasting it as a theory, was a more reprehensible act of heresy than denying the dogma entirely. Manifestly Elias Hicks was altogether too original in his thinking to secure his own peace and comfort in the world of nineteenth-century theology.
When we consider the theory of the divinity of Christ, and the theory of the incarnation, we find Elias Hicks taking the affirmative side, but even here it is questionable if he was affirming the popular conception. Touching these matters he put himself definitely on record in 1827 in a letter written to an unnamed Friend. In this letter he says:
"As to the divinity of Christ, the son of the virgin—when he had arrived to a full state of sonship in the spiritual generation, he was wholly swallowed up into the divinity of his heavenly Father, and was one with his Father, with only this difference: his Father's divinity was underived, being self-existent, but the son's divinity was altogether derived from the Father; for otherwise he could not be the son of God, as in the moral relation, to be a son of man, the son must be begotten by one father, and he must be in the same nature, spirit and likeness of his father, so as to say, I and my father are one in all those respects. But this was not the case with Jesus in the spiritual relation, until he had gone through the last institute of the law dispensation, viz., John's watery baptism, and had received additional power from on high, by the descending of the holy ghost upon him, as he came up out of the water. He then witnessed the fulness of the second birth, being now born into the nature, spirit and likeness of the heavenly Father, and God gave witness of it to John, saying, 'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.' And this agrees with Paul's testimony, where he assures us that as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God."[100]
[100] "The Quaker," Vol. IV, p. 284.
Just as he repudiated material localized places of reward and punishment, Elias Hicks disputed the presence in the world of a personal evil spirit, roaming around seeking whom he might ensnare and devour. In fact, in his theology there was no tinge of the Persian dualism. Satan, from his standpoint, had no existence outside man. He was simply a figure to illustrate the evil propensity in men. In the estimation of the ultra Orthodox to claim that there was no personal devil, who tempted our first parents in Eden, was second only in point of heresy to denying the existence of God himself—the two persons both being essential parts in the theological system to which they tenaciously held.
Touching this matter he thus expressed himself: "And as to what is called a devil or satan, it is something within us, that tempts us to go counter to the commands of God, and our duty to him and our fellow creatures; and the Scriptures tell us there are many of them, and that Jesus cast seven out of one woman."[101]
[101] From letter to Charles Stokes, Fourth month 3, 1829. "Letters of Elias Hicks," p. 217.
He was charged with being a Deist, and an infidel of the Thomas Paine stripe, yet from his own standpoint there was no shadow of truth in any of these charges. His references to Atheism and Deism already cited in these pages afford evidence on this point. In 1798 he was at Gap in Pennsylvania, and in referring to his experience there he said:
"Whilst in this neighborhood my mind was brought into a state of deep exercise and travail, from a sense of the great turning away of many of us, from the law and the testimony, and the prevailing of a spirit of great infidelity and deism among the people, and darkness spreading over the minds of many as a thick veil. It was a time in which Thomas Paine's Age of Reason (falsely so called) was much attended to in those parts; and some, who were members in our Society, as I was informed, were captivated by his dark insinuating address, and were ready almost to make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. Under a sense thereof my spirit was deeply humbled before the majesty of heaven, and in the anguish of my soul I said, 'spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thy heritage to reproach,' and suffer not thy truth to fall in the streets."[102]