In comparison with the Light
that they felt shining in their own souls, and the path of obedience which it
required of them, the age-long disputes of Churchmen on points of doctrine
seemed to them of no account. In 1650 Fox was taken before the magistrates at
Derby for preaching in a "steeple house" after the regular preacher
had closed his sermon, and he writes: "I told them all their preaching,
baptism and sacrifices would never sanctify them; and bid them look unto Christ
in them, and not unto men; for it is Christ that sanctifies. Then they ran into
many words ; but I told them they were not to dispute of God and Christ, but
to obey Him."3 This is
characteristic and significant.
Some of them were men and
women of little learning; others, on the contrary, were already preachers, and
versed in the theology of the day. But they all agreed with Fox that
Christianity was not a scheme of doctrine to be believed, but an experience to
be entered into, and a life to be lived; and they tended, therefore, to regard
Theology as a collection of "notions" of no importance, and possibly
even a hindrance, to the religious life. Fox himself appears to have known
nothing of Church history; both he and his friends, to whom the Son of
Righteousness had arisen with healing in his wings, regarded the Christian
centuries since the first as merely a "dark night of apostasy."
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