Just what Elias Hicks thought regarding the matter of Society and disciplinary authority in his case, we have documentary evidence. In a private letter he said: "For how can they disown those who never attended their meetings, nor never had seen the inside of their new-built meeting-houses, and who never acknowledged their little separate societies? Would it not be as rational and consistent with right order for a Presbyterian or a Methodist society to treat with and disown us for not attending their meetings, and not acknowledging their creed?"[189]
[189] Letter to Johnson Legg, Twelfth month 15, 1829.
There is one point in the "testimony" which cannot so easily or reasonably be ignored. It says that Elias Hicks "has at length become the leader of a sect, distinguished by his name, yet unjustly assuming the character of Friends." From the assumed standpoint of those who made this statement of fact, it had no warrant. That body of Friends in, at least, the Yearly Meetings of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, which at the time of the "separation" housed two-thirds of all the members, was as much entitled to be called Friends, and assume their "character," as the minority. The distinguishing epithet was not of their selecting or adoption, and those who applied it could scarcely with propriety force it upon those who did not claim it or want it. As for leadership, the outcome in 1827-28 was accomplished without either the presence or assistance of Elias Hicks in a majority of cases. If those who left the parent meetings and set up meetings of their own were the "separatists," then, in a majority of cases, the name belonged to the party that opposed Elias Hicks, and not to that body of Friends who objected to the Society being divided or perpetuated because of the personality or the preaching of any one man.
It has to be said that the disowning at the time of the "separation" was not all on one side. Jericho Monthly Meeting "testified against" at least four of the orthodox party. But in every such case, so far as we are aware, no charges regarding doctrine were made against any. The disownments took place because the persons involved had become connected with other meetings, and did not attend the gatherings of that branch of Friends who issued disownments. Both sides undoubtedly did many things at the time which later would have been impossible.
Elias Hicks evidently approved the general order of the Society in his time touching disownments. In a letter directed to "My Unknown Friend," but having no date, he deals with the disownment question. He goes on to say that it had been the practice of the Society to disown members for more than a century, when such members had deviated "from the established order of Society," and he reaches the conclusion that not to follow this course would lead to "confusion and anarchy." He then says: "These things considered, it appears to me the most rational and prudent, when a particular member of any society dissents in some particular tenet from the rest of that society, if such dissent break communion and render it necessary in the judgment of such society that a separation take place between them, that it be done in the same way, and agreeable to the general practice of such society in like cases."
It is quite certain, however, that Elias Hicks did not think that disputed points of doctrine offered a sufficient ground for disownment in the Society of Friends. In a letter to David Evans, written at Jericho, Twelfth month 25, 1829, he says: "I apprehend that if the Friends who took part in the controversy on the side of the miraculous conception, and those on the opposition, will fully examine both sides of the question, they will find themselves more or less in error, as neither can produce sufficient evidence to enforce a rational conviction on others.... Surely, then, we who believe in the miraculous conception ought not to censure our brethren in profession for having a different opinion from ours, and especially as we have no knowledge of the subject in any wise, but from history and tradition. Surely, then, both parties are very far off the true Christian foundation for keeping up the controversy, inasmuch as it never has had the least tendency to gather on the one hand or the other, but always to scatter and divide, and still has the same baneful tendency."
The reader will not fail to consider that at this late period Elias Hicks reiterates his personal belief in the miraculous conception, although the "testimony" of disownment against him charged that he was "endeavoring to destroy a belief in that doctrine." Whatever may have been his belief regarding the matter, it is clear that he did not consider acceptance or rejection of the doctrine a determining quality in maintaining a really Christian fellowship.