all confidence in it, and, through divine mercy, clothed upon with the righteousness of Christ, that any can have a firm ground whereon to rest their hope of salvation, we sincerely deplore the delusion of those, who thus wantonly deprive themselves of that hope, which maketh not ashamed, and entereth within the veil.
Besides the palpable errors we have enumerated, Elias Hicks and his adherents deny that mankind sustain any loss through the fall of Adam, asserting that children come into the world precisely in the condition he did.—"Belief," with them, "is no virtue, and unbelief no crime:" and however at times they may make high pretensions to the divine light, it is evident that the guide which they follow is their own benighted reason.
We believe it right to bear our decided testimony against such principles, as tending to destroy all faith in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion, and to break asunder the bands of civil and religious society. And we further declare, that as such who entertain and propagate them, have departed from the teachings of the Holy Spirit, which would have preserved them in the doctrines of Christ Jesus and his apostles, we cannot unite with them in church fellowship, nor own them to be of our communion.
In this abridgment of the "Declaration" of the Yearly Meeting of Philadelphia, we have not inserted the whole of the extracts which are given by them, from the Sermons of Elias Hicks, &c.; many are omitted as not essential to this work; the object of which is, rather to mark the steps which led to so deplorable a result, than to expose Hickism in its most aggravated form.
