feeling about the want of spiritual power. This may be easily seen in Dent’s[errata 1] works. But no one who has read the remarkable history of George Fox, Naylor, and many of Penn’s writings, or known much of the doctrines of Friends, can doubt the inroad of the enemy. I have added a few words on this because it was a more mixed and ambiguous case. I would not pass it over because :lt is one instructive to the Church.
But there is another form of Satan’s working.
In this orthodox truth is in general maintained. Any pretension to the possession of spiritual power is based on Church position, not on any particular manifestation of power, and thus seems to honour the institution of the Church, and Christ in it. God is alleged to have set there, in that institution, the seat of blessing, and this also is an acknowledged truth, and the unity of the body of Christ is, thereon, connected with the institution. But the sovereign operation of the Spirit of God is set aside, and that which acts outside the actually formed institution is condemned as denying the authority of God’s institution, and schismatical sin. Thus the actual possessors of the power of the institution, in its then state, really take the place of God. His power is vested in them as far as it acts on earth. Divine condemnation attaches to all who act independently of them. Direct dependance upon God is unallowable. And thus whatever puts individual faith to the test (for going with the crowd under authority does not) is condemned as self-will and presumption. The system which so judges is alleged to maintain the unity of the Church. This may exist in different degrees, and in different circumstances. But it always attaches divine authority more or less to official position, and thus puts man in the place of God by attaching His name to man. It is not spiritual energy in man putting souls through Christ in direct relation with God, with the Father. There spiritual affections are happy and blessed. It is man eclipsing God, getting between Him and the soul. Not man revealing God, but the authority of God attached to man. Hence full love and grace will never be known. The spirit of adoption
