Caleb Pusey's Account of Pennsylvania: (Concluded)

Abstract

CALEB PUSEY'S ACCOUNT OF PENNSYLVANIA (Concluded) But now among the many exercises the Lord was pleased to try us with here the following we cannot well omit. It was occasioned by one G. K. of Scotland who was convinced in pretty early times and had been of note among us. He was a public preacher and writer in defense of Truth as professed by us. He was a learned man, ready in expression, and whilst he kept low and humble in his own esteem he was serviceable in his gift and was not without due honor among the brethren, and living some time at Philadelphia Friends allowed him £100 a year to teach their children. But having some time before he left England imbibed some conceited notions, though kept pretty private here, yet by the sequel it appeared that by it he came to disown what before he had largely defended, for whereas he had in his former books laid down for doctrine that men that lived faithful to what by the light grace and Spirit of God was made known to them though they had not the matters of Christ's outward birth, death, resurrection and ascension revealed or made known unto them, yet living faithful to what God by his light or Holy Spirit had made known to them they should be saved, though they died in that state and that the contrary doctrine was uncharitable and had thus argued upon it (viz) why may not the benefit of Christ's taking on him the form of a man redound unto many who do not expressly know it even as a diseased person may receive benefit of a cure applied to him though he has not an express knowledge of all the means and ways how from first to last it hath been prepared (with more to the same purpose) but he having for some time been pouring upon the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration or the 12 revolutions of humane souls into other bodies, which it's thought he imbibed from Francis Mercurius van Helmont, and so aspiring beyond the simplicity of the Gospel as declared of in Holy Writ he seemed strongly to have entertained a notion that men should have 12 of these revolutions or intervals of time in this world and so either first or last all mankind should have an opportunity to hear the gospel outwardly preached and when so heard and embraced they should be saved, so that now in flat contradiction to his former doctrine he (to the admiration of those that knew what he had before published to the contrary) began vehemently in his preaching and private discourses to tell that none could be saved without the knowledge and faith of Christ's outward birth, death, etc. so that honest Gentiles that found (?) their lives never so exactly according to the law of God written in their hearts no, nor infants dying in dieir infancy could one of them be saved without that knowledge and yet could not perish tho they died in that state, the notion being that if they had it not at one time when they lived in the world they should have it when diey came again into the world, tho the scripture saith, as the tree falls so it shall lie, now he not finding the desired acceptance of these and other notions he grew very hot and angry, and though he look some occasion against Friends about the resurrection and about the sufficiency of the light without 116 PUSEY'S ACCOUNT OF PENNSYLVANIA117 something else (as his terms then were) of which more in the sequel, yet as he published twice in print that the other was the main matter of controversy with Friends here and was so warm in his spirit about it that at an appointed meeting of some Friends with him where was our Friend Thomas Lloyd before mentioned when he was raging against Friends about that doctrine concernedly not very friendly said to him to this purpose why dost thou thus reflect upon us? We faithfully believe all things that is written concerning our Savior's birth death and...