PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY REVIVED 55 



it a leg to stand on. But the Christianity of Christ owes 

 to the historical spirit of the age, a very deep debt of 

 gratitude, for it has almost succeeded in extricating the 

 child from its clothes. Indeed, it is scarcely too much 

 to say that the historical spirit of the age has found once 

 again and restored to the world the historical Jesus 

 Christ of Na2;areth, 



But that which the historical spirit of the age is 

 now succeeding in doing by a process of slow and 

 painful investigation, was done two hundred and fifty 

 years ago by George Fox, under the inspiration of the 

 Spirit of God, He recognised the fact that Christianity 

 could well afford to dispense with everything save 

 Christ, and that it would be infinitely the richer for its 

 loss. His avowed object was to get back to the 

 Christianity of Jesus, and the Early Friends loved to 

 call Quakerism *' Primitive Christianity Revived.^' 

 They abolished all creeds and dogmas and all sacerdotal 

 rites, and the only priesthood they would acknowledge 

 was the Universal Priesthood of all believers. 



If they did not recognise that the organisation and 

 sacerdotalism of the official churches were Roman, they 

 at least recognised that they were not Christian, and 

 they opposed them with all their spiritual force. 



If they did not recognise in the theological creeds of 

 the churches the influence of Greek thought, they at 

 least recognised the absence of the authority of Christ, 

 and therefore they would have none of them. 



Not that I would suggest that George Fox and his 

 companions had no theology. Of course they had a 

 theology. No one can help having a theology ; and their 

 theology was, to some extent, the current theology of 

 their day. But whilst the Christianity of Christ must 

 for ever remain unchanging and unchangeable, theology 

 must ever be a changing science. And therefore, to 

 man, a creed can at best only represent a stage in the 



