would abolish all distinction between clergy and laity, and could not be coaxed or bullied into paying tithes.  They also refused to render military service, or to take the oath of allegiance.  In these ways they came at once into antagonism both with church and with state.  In doctrine their chief peculiarity was the assertion of an “Inward Light” by which every individual is to be guided in his conduct of life.  They did not believe that men ceased to be divinely inspired when the apostolic ages came to an end, but held that at all times and places the human soul may be enlightened by direct communion with its Heavenly Father.  Such views involved the most absolute assertion of the right of private judgment; and when it is added that in the exercise of this right many Quakers were found to reject the dogmas of original sin and the resurrection of the body, to doubt the efficacy of baptism, and to call in question the propriety of Christians turning the Lord’s Day into a Jewish Sabbath, we see that they had in some respects gone far on the road toward modern rationalism.  It was not to be expected that such opinions should be treated by the Puritans in any other spirit than one of extreme abhorrence and dread.  The doctrine of the “Inward Light,” or of private inspiration, was something especially hateful to the Puritan.  To the modern rationalist, looking at things in the dry light of history, it may seem that this doctrine was only the Puritan’s own appeal to individual judgment, stated in different form; but the Puritan could not so regard it.  To such a fanatic as Norton this inward light was but a reflection from the glare of the bottomless pit, this private inspiration was the beguiling voice of the Devil.  As it led the Quakers to strange and novel conclusions, this inward light seemed to array itself in hostility to that final court of appeal for all good Protestants, the sacred text of the Bible.  The Quakers were accordingly regarded as infidels who sought to deprive Protestantism of its only firm support.  They were wrongly accused of blasphemy in their treatment of the Scriptures.  Cotton Mather says that the Quakers were in the habit of alluding to the Bible as the Word of the Devil.  Such charges, from passionate and uncritical enemies, are worthless except as they serve to explain the bitter prejudice with which the Quakers were regarded.  They remind one of the silly accusation brought against Wyclif two centuries earlier, that he taught his disciples that God ought to obey the Devil; [24] and they are not altogether unlike the assumptions of some modern theologians who take it for granted that any writer who accepts the Darwinian theory must be a materialist. [Sidenote:  Endicott and Norton take the lead] [Sidenote:  The Quakers and their views]