The Quakers adduce many authorities in behalf of this proposition, but the following may suffice.

“It is the inward master, says St. Augustine, that teacheth.  Where this inspiration is wanting, it is in vain that words from without are beaten in.”

Luther says, “no man can rightly know God, unless he immediately receives it from his holy spirit, except he finds it by experience in himself; and in this experience the holy spirit teacheth as in his proper school, out of which school nothing is taught but mere talk.”

Calvin, on Luke 10. 21. says, “Here the natural wisdom of man is so puzzled, and is at such a loss, that the first step of profiting in the school of Christ is to give it up or renounce it.  For by this natural wisdom, as by a veil before our eyes, we are hindered from attaining the mysteries of God, which are not revealed but unto babes and little ones.  For neither do flesh and blood reveal, nor doth the natural man perceive, the things that are of the spirit.  But the doctrine of God is rather foolishness to him, because it can only be spiritually judged.  The assistance therefore of the holy spirit is in this case necessary, or rather, his power alone is efficacious.”

Dr. Smith observes, in his select discourses, “besides the outward Revelation of God’s will to men, there is also an inward impression of it in their minds and spirits, which is in a more especial manner attributed to God.  We cannot see divine things but in a divine light.  God only, who is the true light, and in whom there is no darkness at all, can so shine out of himself upon our glossy understandings, as to beget in them a picture of himself, his own will and pleasure, and turn the soul (as the phrase is in Job) like wax or clay to the seal of his own light and love.  He that made our souls in his own image and likeness, can easily find a way into them.  The word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints itself there, as with the point of a diamond, and becomes (to borrow Plato’s expression) ’a word written in the Soul of the learner.’  Men may teach the grammar and rhetoric; but God teaches the divinity.  Thus it is God alone that acquaints the soul with the truths of revelation.”

The learned Jeremy Taylor, bishop of Down and Connor, speaks in a similar manner in his sermon de Via Intelligentiae.  “Now in this inquiry, says he, I must take one thing for granted, which is, that every good man is taught of God.  And indeed, unless he teach us, we shall make but ill scholars ourselves, and worse guides to others.  No man can know God, says Irenaeus, except he be taught of God.  If God teaches us, then all is well; but if we do not learn wisdom at his feet, from whence should we have it?  It can come from no other spring.”