But whatever were the doctrines, whether civil, or moral, or religious,
which George Fox promulgated, he believed that he had a divine
commission for teaching them, and that he was to be the RESTORER of
Christianity; that is, that he was to bring people from Jewish
ceremonies and Pagan-fables, with which it had been intermixed, and also
from worldly customs, to a religion which was to consist of spiritual
feeling. I know not how the world will receive the idea, that he
conceived himself to have had a revelation for these purposes. But
nothing is more usual than for pious people, who have succeeded in any
ordinary work of goodness, to say, that they were providentially led to
it, and this expression is usually considered among Christians to be
accurate. But I cannot always find the difference between a man being
providentially led into a course of virtues and successful action, and
his having an internal revelation for it. For if we admit that men may
be providentially led upon such occasions, they must be led by the
impressions upon their minds. But what are these internal impressions,
but the dictates of an internal voice to those who follow them? But if
pious men would believe themselves to have been thus providentially led,
or acted upon, in any ordinary case of virtue, if it had been crowned
with success, George Fox would have had equal reason to believe, from
the success that attended his own particular undertaking, that he had
been called upon to engage in it.
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