Snake in the Grass - Sect. 2.

Of the Quakers making their soul of the same person and substance with God.

Thou sayest, (says G. Fox to his opponent, Great Myst. p. 247.) Christ doth not dwell in them personally. Doth not Christ dwell in his saints as he is in the person of the Father, the substance? Hence he makes the soul without beginning or ending, and infinite in itself. His oppo ment had granted him in these words, p. 90, There is a kind of infiniteness in the soul, but it cannot be infiniteness in itself.

Against this G. Fox disputes, and no kind of infiniteness will serve his turn but infiniteness in himself, which is the infiniteness of God alone; for he only has infinity in himself, as not being given by any other. Is not the soul, says G. F., without beginning? hath this a beginning or ending? and is it not infinite in itself, and more than all the World?

Again, says he, p. 29, Now consider what a condition these called ministers are in; they say that which is a spiritual substance is not infinite in itself, but a creature. Here he will not let the soul be a creature. His proof is in the next words, That which came out from the Creator, and is in the hand of the Creator, which brings it up, and to the Creator again, that is infinite in itself. I do not meddle with his philosophy, (which is wretched,) I only shew you his opinion, that the soul is not a creature, but infinite, and that “in itself; which is making of it God in the strictest terms. Will you have any more of it? he makes the soul to become one soul with God; Christ (says he, p. 91.) brings the soul up into God, from whence it came, whereby they come to be one soul. And, p. 229, Who are come up into the Bishop Christ, they are one soul.

It is horrid blasphemy (said Alexander Ross) to say the soul is a part of God. It is not horrid blasphemy (replied G. Fox, p. 273.) to say the soul is a part of God, for it came out of him, and that which came out of him is of him. Fox does not say that the soul came from God, that is, that God created it; but that it came of God, as a part of God, of his substance, person, and essence. And, p. 100, Is not this of God's being? says he. And he disputes against this position, That there is not an essential indwelling of the divine nature in God's people: and, That God dwells not in the saints by a personal union, or that Christ's person is not in man. Which is as much as to say, (replies G. Fox, p. 248.) as if we were not of his flesh and bones, and had not his substance.

Here the light within is not only an illumination or inspiration from Christ, but the very person Christ, his substance, his flesh and bones. And he says, p. 207, that Christ is not distinct from his saints; that Christ is the elect; p. 88, that the light within is Christ; p. 310, that they who are of the faith are the flesh of Christ, the flesh of him who suffered. But this will come under a following head; therefore for the present we dismiss it. Only I will tell you, before I go, Mr. Penn's excuse for G. Fox in all these particulars. ¹He lays it upon George's extreme ignorance: that when he said the soul was equal with God, by equality he meant only unity; and that when he called the soul infinite, he did not mean infinite, but something that is not finite, or which comes to an end; and that when he said the soul was without beginning, and a part of God, he did not mean the soul, but the breath of God, &c. He says that George observed no nicety of expression, and finds great fault with those who “make ill use of his plain and vulgar phrases.

An indifferent man would rather have said, Nesutor ultra crepidam—that this Fox should rather have kept to his original trade, than to set up for interpreting the scripture before he had learned to speak sense, or write English.

A defect in which is a strange excuse for infallibility.

But it is just with God thus to detect such wicked and blasphemous pretences to all who are not re solved to shut their eyes.

For will any one believe that that spirit which could dictate an infallible knowledge of the scrip tures, and of all persons and things, (as G. F. &c. pretended,) could not have enabled these men to speak common sense, or to understand plain English words!

But there is worse than this. For when those whom G. F. opposed spoke properly, and according to the true sense of words, G. F. mistaking them, (as Mr. Penn would have it,) boldly and impudently accused them of error and blasphemy for speaking the truth.

Now if G. F. neither understood the words he spoke himself, nor what others spoke, what sort of infallibility was here? Will infallibility charge others with error, who speak truth and express it properly, because infallibility wants sense to understand the true sense of words!

But the truth is, all this was a bewildering of G. F.'s poor understanding, and not to be charged only (as Mr. Penn's over-charity does) upon his plain and vulgar phrases. For in both the instances of the soul's infinity and equality with God, the distinctions were plainly given to G. F., what sort of infinity and equality was allowed to the soul, and he expressly disputes against such distinctions, and rejects any limited sense of the soul's infinity and equality with God; but will have it infinite in itself, and no less kind of infiniteness which was allowed him: and as to equality with God, (which comes after to be considered,) you will see plainly that he would not accept of being equal to God in quality, (which was unreasonably granted by his opponent,) but ex cepting against that limitation, he asserts himself to be equal to God, not only in quality, but in equal ity, in “equality itself,” as his disciple Howgil enforces it.

And this must proceed (past help of Mr. Penn, and all the world) either from a most impious blasphemy, or such an immoderate degree of dulness and lack of understanding, as could hardly befall any thing in human shape, much less any one who pretended to divine inspiration, and proudly to decry and damn all the world since the apostles.

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1. The Invalidity of John Faldo's Vindication, &c. 1673. p. 353.  ↩︎