The eye it cannot choose but see.
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel where'er they be,
Against or with our will.
Nor less I deem that there are powers,
Which of themselves our minds impress,
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.
Think you,'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old gray stone,
And dream my time away?
[Footnote 25: See Lyrical Ballads, Vol. 1. p. 1.]
CHAP. V
This spirit was not only given to man as a teacher, but as a primary and infallible guide—Hence the Scriptures are a subordinate or secondary guide—Quakers, however, do not undervalue them on this account—Their opinion concerning them.
The spirit of God, which we have seen to be thus given to men as a spiritual teacher, and to act in the ways described, the Quakers usually distinguish by the epithets of primary and infallible. But they have made another distinction with respect to the character of this spirit; for they have pronounced it to be the only infallible guide to men in their spiritual concerns. From this latter declaration the reader will naturally conclude, that the scriptures, which are the outward teachers of men, must be viewed by the Quakers in a secondary light. This conclusion has indeed been adopted as a proposition in the Quaker theology; or, in other words, it is a doctrine of the society, that the spirit of God is the primary and only infallible, and the scriptures but a subordinate or secondary guide.
This proposition the Quakers usually make out in the following manner:
It is, in the first place, admitted by all Christians, that the scriptures were given by inspiration, or that those who originally delivered or wrote the several parts of them, gave them forth by means of that spirit, which was given to them by God. Now in the same manner as streams, or rivulets of water, are subordinate to the fountains which produce them; so those streams or rivulets of light must be subordinate to the great light from whence they originally sprung. "We cannot, says Barclay, call the scriptures the principal fountain of all truth and knowledge, nor yet the first adequate rule of faith and manners; because the principal fountain of truth must be the truth itself, that is, whose certainty and authority depend not upon another."