For at a very early age he had
confuted many of the professors of religion in public disputations. He
had converted magistrates, priests, and people. Of the clergymen of
those times some had left valuable livings, and followed him. In his
thirtieth year he had seen no less than sixty persons, spreading, as
ministers, his own doctrines. These, and other circumstances which might
be related, would doubtless operate powerfully upon him to make him
believe, that he was a chosen vessel. Now, if to these considerations it
be added, that George Fox was not engaged in any particular or partial
cause of benevolence, or mercy, or justice, but wholly and exclusively
in a religious and spiritual work, and that it was the first of all his
religious doctrines, that the spirit of God, _where men were obedient to
it, guided them in their spiritual concerns_, he must have believed
himself, on the consideration of his unparalleled success, to have been
_providentially led_, or to have had an internal or spiritual commission
for the cause, which he had undertaken.
But this belief was not confined to himself. His followers believed in
his commission also. They had seen, like himself, the extraordinary
success of his ministry. They acknowledged the same internal
admonitions, or revelations of the same spirit, in spiritual concerns.
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