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HISTORY OP ENGLAND,

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crup. and found them also blind guides.* After some time he came

nranicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He arguedthat, as the division of languages began at Babel, and as thepersecutors of Christ put on the cross an inscription in Latin,Greek and Hebrew, the knowledge of languages, and moreespecially of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, must be useless to aChristian minister.** Indeed, he was so far from knowing manylanguages, that he knew none; nor can the most corruptpassage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned thanhis English often is to the most acute and attentive reader.***

* Journal, page 7.

** “What they know, they know naturally, who turn from the com-mand and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers , who saith that Hebrew,Greek, and Latino is the original: before Babell was, the earth was of onelanguage; and Nimrod the cunning hunter, before the Lord, which cameout of cursed Ham's stock, the original and builder of Babell, whom Godconfounded with many languages, and this they say is the original whoerred from the spirit and command; and Pilate had his original Hebrew,Greek, and Latine, which crucified Christ and set over him.’ 1 — A messagefrom the Lord to the Parliament of England, by G. Fox, 1C54. The sameargument will be found in the Journals, but has been put by the editor intoa little better English. “Dost thou think to make ministers of Christ bythese natural confused languages which sprung from Babell, are admired inBabylon, and set atop of Christ, the Life, by a persecutor ? ’* — Page 04.

*** His Journal, before it was published, was revised by men of moresense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absur.d as it is, gives usno notion of his genuine style. The following is a fair specimen. It is theexordium of one of his manifestoes. “Them which the world who arewithout the fear of God calls Quakers in scorn do deny all opinions, andthey do deny all conceivings, and they do deny all sects, and they do denyall imaginations, and notions, and judgments which riseth out of the willand the thoughts, and do deny witchcraft and all oaths, and the world andthe works of it, and their worships and their customs with the light, and dodeny false ways and false worships, seducers and deceivers which are nowseen to be in the world with the light, and with it they arc condemned,which light leadeth to peace and life from death, which now thousands dowitness the new teacher Christ, him by whom the world was made, whoraigns among the children of light, and with the spirit and power of the

- to the conclusion that no human being was competent to in-struct him in divine things, and that the truth had been com-