[Footnote 87:  The reader will easily discern from this new view of the new birth, how men, according to the Quakers, become partakers of the divine nature, and how the Quakers make it out, that Abraham and others saw Christ’s day, as I mentioned in a former chapter.]

CHAP.  VIII.

SECT.  I.

Quakers believe from the foregoing accounts, that redemption is possible to all—­Hence they deny the doctrine of election and reprobation—­do not deny the texts on which it is founded, but the interpretation of them—­as contrary to the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the Apostles—­as making his mission unnecessary—­as rendering many precepts useless—­and as casting a stain on the character and attributes of God.

It will appear from the foregoing observations, that it Is the belief of the Quakers, that every man has the power of inward redemption within himself, who attends to the strivings of the Holy Spirit, and that as outward redemption by the sufferings of Jesus Christ extends to all, where the inward has taken place, so redemption or salvation, in its full extent, is possible to every individual of the human race.

This position, however, is denied by those Christians, who have pronounced in favour of the doctrine of election and reprobation; because, if they believe some predestined from all eternity to eternal happiness, and the rest to eternal misery, they must then believe that salvation is not possible to all, and that it was not intended to be universal.

The Quakers have attempted to answer the objections, which have been thus made to their theory of redemption; and as the reader will probably expect that I should notice what they have said upon this subject, I have reserved the answers they have given for the present place.

The Quakers do not deny the genuineness of any of those texts, which are usually advanced against them.  Of all people, they fly the least to the cover of interpolation or mutilation of scripture to shield themselves from the strokes of their opponents.  They believe, however, that there are passages in the sacred writings, which will admit of an interpretation different from that which has been assigned them by many, and upon this they principally rely in the present case.  If there are passages, to which two meanings may be annexed, and if for one there is equal authority as for the other, yet if one meaning should destroy all the most glorious attributes of the supreme being, and the other should preserve them as recognized in the other parts of the scripture, they think they are bound to receive that which favours the justice, mercy, and wisdom of God, rather than that which makes him appear both unjust and cruel.

The Quakers believe, that some Christians have misunderstood the texts which they quote in favour of the doctrine of election and reprobation, for the following reasons:—­