[Footnote 84: 2 Tim. 9.17.]
[Footnote 85: Cor. 9.23.]
Having given this new view of the subject, I shall only observe farther upon it, that the substance of this chapter turns out to be the same as that of the preceding, or according to the notions of the Quakers, that inward redemption cannot be effected but through the medium of the spirit of God. For Christ, according to the ideas now held out, must be formed in man, and he must rule them before they can experience full inward redemption; or, in other words, they cannot experience this inward redemption, except they can truly say that he governs them, or except they can truly call him Governor, or Lord. But no person can say that Christ rules in him, except he undergoes the spiritual process of regeneration which has been described, or to use the words of the Apostle, [86] "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.[87]"
[Footnote 86: 1 Cor. 12.6]
[Footnote 87: The reader will easily discern from this new view of the new birth, how men, according to the Quakers, become partakers of the divine nature, and how the Quakers make it out, that Abraham and others saw Christ's day, as I mentioned in a former chapter.]
CHAP. VIII.
SECT. I.
Quakers believe from the foregoing accounts, that redemption is possible to all—Hence they deny the doctrine of election and reprobation—do not deny the texts on which it is founded, but the interpretation of them—as contrary to the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the Apostles—as making his mission unnecessary—as rendering many precepts useless—and as casting a stain on the character and attributes of God.
It will appear from the foregoing observations, that it Is the belief of the Quakers, that every man has the power of inward redemption within himself, who attends to the strivings of the Holy Spirit, and that as outward redemption by the sufferings of Jesus Christ extends to all, where the inward has taken place, so redemption or salvation, in its full extent, is possible to every individual of the human race.
This position, however, is denied by those Christians, who have pronounced in favour of the doctrine of election and reprobation; because, if they believe some predestined from all eternity to eternal happiness, and the rest to eternal misery, they must then believe that salvation is not possible to all, and that it was not intended to be universal.