With respect to Quaker sermons being sometimes less connected or more confused than those of others, they would admit that this might apparently happen; and they would explain it in the following manner. Their ministers, they would say, when they sit among the congregation, are often given to feel and discern the spiritual states of individuals then present, and sometimes to believe it necessary to describe such states, and to add such advice as these may seem to require. Now these states being frequently different from each other, the description of them, in consequence of an abrupt transition from one to the other, may sometimes occasion an apparent inconsistency in their discourses on such occasions. The Quakers, however, consider all such discourses, or those in which states are described, as among the most efficacious and useful of those delivered.
But whatever may be the merits of the Quaker sermons, there are circumstances worthy of notice with respect to the Quaker preachers. In the first place, they always deliver their discourses with great seriousness. They are also singularly bold and honest, when they feel it to be their duty, in the censure of the vices of individuals, whatever may be the riches they enjoy. They are reported also from unquestionable authority, to have extraordinary skill in discerning the internal condition of those who attend their ministry, so that many, feeling the advice to be addressed to themselves, have resolved upon their amendment in the several cases to which their preaching seemed to have been applied.
As I am speaking of the subject of ministers, I will answer one or two questions, which I have often heard asked concerning it.
The first of these is, do the Quakers believe that their ministers are uniformly moved, when they preach, by the spirit of God?
I answer—the Quakers believe they may be so moved, and that they ought to be so moved. They believe also that they are often so moved. But they believe again, that except their ministers are peculiarly cautious, and keep particularly on their watch, they may mistake their own imaginations for the agency of this spirit. And upon this latter belief it is, in part, that the office of elders is founded, as before described.
The second is, as there are no defined boundaries between the reason of man and the revelation of God, how do the Quakers know that they are favoured at any particular time, either when they preach or when they do not preach, with the visitation of this spirit, or that it is, at any particular time, resident within them?
Richard Claridge, a learned and pious clergyman of the Church of England in the last century, but who gave up his benefices and joined the society of the Quakers, has said a few words in his Tractatus Hierographicus, upon this subject, a part of which I shall transcribe as an answer to this latter question.
"Men, says he, may certainly know, that they do believe on the Son of God, with that faith that is unfeigned, and by which the heart is purified: for this faith is evidential and assuring, and consequently the knowledge of it is certain. Now they, who certainly know that they have this knowledge, may be certain also of the spirit of Christ dwelling in them; for [133] 'he that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself;' and this witness is the spirit; for it is [134] 'the spirit that beareth witness,' of whose testimony they may be as certain, as of that faith the spirit beareth witness to."
[Footnote 133: 1 John 5.10.]
[Footnote 134:1 John 5. 6.]