Page:A Beacon to the Society of Friends.djvu/19

Rh of our blessed Saviour, as being merely an example or pattern to us, and denied that his death was an offering for the sins of mankind, except for the legal sins of the Jews.p. 6.

We shall proceed with the extracts, commencing with their opinions respecting the Holy Scriptures.

Elias Hicks says, "If the Scriptures were absolutely necessary, he had power to communicate them to all the nations of the earth, for he has his way as a path in the clouds: he knows how to deal out to all his rational children. But they were not necessary, and perhaps not suited to any other people, than they to whom they were written."Philadelphia Sermons, p. 119.

"One would suppose that to a rational mind, the hearing and reading of the instructive parables of Jesus, would have a tendency to reform and turn men about to truth and lead them on in it. But they have no such effect."Ibid. p. 129.

"They have been so bound up in the letter, that they think they must attend to it, to the exclusion of every thing else. Here is an abominable idol worship, of a thing without any life at all, a dead monument."Ibid. p. 139.

"The great and only thing needful then is, to turn inward and turn our back upon the letter, for it is all shadow."Ibid. p. 225.

"Now the book we read in says, 'Search the scriptures,' but this is incorrect, we must all see it is incorrect; because we have all reason to believe they read the scriptures, and hence they accused Jesus of being an impostor."Ibid p. 314.