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The following extracts from the Sermons, are taken from the first volume of a Publication called the QUAKER, which was put out by the followers of Elias Hicks.

It would exceed the limits of the present work, to comment upon every perversion of Christian doctrine, which these extracts from the Sermons contain. The main design has therefore been, to expose the errors from which the most danger was to be apprehended to our Society. The reader will please to bear this in mind as he goes along.

It seems also necessary to remark, that ITALICS are used in the quotations from Scripture, to mark Emphasis, and not for the purpose for which they are used in the Bible, namely, to distinguish words supplied by the translators.

EXTRACTS

FROM SERMONS OF ELIAS HICKS.

SERMON I.

EXTRACT I.

Attempt to supersede the Gospel.

"WHEN We speak to the natives [Indians] of our country, we have reason to suppose that they have a higher sense of this divine light of God in the soul, than the professors of Christianity generally have. They appeal to it in all cases respecting the soul. They appeal to it abundantly, as I have witnessed among those with whom I have had converse; especially those who have never had intercourse with any, except their own nation.-The religion of Christ and the Gospel is one in all the nations of the earth. And I have no doubt, that there are those in every nation of the earth, who have the religion of Jesus,-the religion of truth and righteousness,—and that they are saved by it, and by nothing else." p. 6.

By this insidious doctrine, both the preaching of the Gospel, according to the command of our Lord to his Apostles, "Go ye into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature," &c., and also the teaching of the Holy Spirit by the Scriptures, are rendered useless.

The foundation of the Christian's hope consists in believing, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, who offered up himself a ransom for us, whereby we have an unfailing assurance of the love of God. And truly believing this, our hearts, by the power of the Spirit, are melted with love to him, and in that love really desire to do his will. But this truth, that God so loved the world, is no where declared to us, but by the revelation of the Spirit in the Holy Scriptures. And so vast is the difference between Christianity, and any knowledge of God as possessed by the Heathen, that the attempt to prove the similarity ought to be accounted a delusion.

EXTRACT II.

Atonement and Reconciliation.

"SOME will set up a particular system, and tell much about old things, the prophets under the law, and about Jesus Christ in that outward body, asserting that his death made atonement for our sins.-What astonishing ignorance it must be, to suppose that material blood, made of the dust of the earth, can be considered a satisfactory offering for a spiritual being, that is all spirit, and no flesh! astonishing ignorance!" p. 15, 17.

I say what

ATONEMENT for sin, and reconciliation to God, through the death of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ, is the cardinal doctrine of Christianity; it runs through the whole of the sacred volume. It was intimated immediately after the fall of our first parents: it was prefigured by types under the Patriarchial, and more

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