2021/10/11

Benedict de Spinoza - Association with Collegiants and Quakers | Britannica

Benedict de Spinoza - Association with Collegiants and Quakers | Britannica

Benedict de Spinoza
ARTICLE

Introduction & Quick Facts
Early life and career
Excommunication
Association with Collegiants and Quakers
Rijnsburg and The Hague
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
The period of the Ethics
Last years and posthumous influence
FAST FACTS

MEDIA

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Association with Collegiants and Quakers

By 1656 Spinoza had already made acquaintances among members of the Collegiants, a religious group in Amsterdam that resisted any formal creed or practice. Some scholars believe that Spinoza actually lived with the Collegiants after he left the Jewish community. Others think it more likely that he stayed with Franciscus van den Enden, a political radical and former Jesuit, and taught classes at the school that van den Enden had established in Amsterdam.

A few months after his excommunication, Spinoza was introduced to the leader of a Quaker proselytizing mission to Amsterdam. The Quakers, though not as radical as the Collegiants, also rejected traditional religious practices and ceremonies. There is some reason to believe that Spinoza became involved for a while in a project to translate one or more Quaker pamphlets into Hebrew. In this he would have been aided by Samuel Fisher, a member of the Quaker mission who had studied Hebrew at the University of Oxford. Fisher, it seems, shared Spinoza’s skepticism of the historical accuracy of the Bible. In 1660 he published a book in English of more than 700 pages, Rusticus ad Academicos; or, The Country Correcting the University and Clergy, in which he raised almost every point of biblical criticism that Spinoza was later to make in the Tractatus.

In 1661 Spinoza was visited by a former Collegiant, Pieter Balling, who belonged to a philosophical group in Amsterdam that was very interested in Spinoza’s ideas. Shortly after his visit, Balling published a pamphlet, Het licht op den kandelar (Dutch: “Light on the Candlestick”), that attempted to justify the tenets of Quakerism. The work, which eventually became a standard piece of Quaker theology, contains a fair amount of terminology that Spinoza later employed, which suggests that Spinoza helped to formulate this basic statement of Quaker doctrine.

1661년에 Spinoza의 아이디어에 매우 관심이 있었던 암스테르담의 철학 그룹에 속한 전 Collegiant공동체 멤버 Pieter Balling이 스피노자를 방문했습니다. 방문 직후 볼링은 퀘이커교의 교리를 정당화하려는 소책자 Het licht op den kandelar(네덜란드어: "촛대 위의 빛")를 출판했습니다. 결국 퀘이커 신학의 표준 조각이 된 이 글에는 스피노자가 나중에 사용한 용어가 상당한 양이 포함되어 있는데, 이는 스피노자가 퀘이커 교리의 이 기본 진술을 공식화하는 데 도움이 되었음을 시사합니다.

The Light upon the Candlestick - Wikipedia

The Light upon the Candlestick

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The Light upon the Candlestick
Author	Adam Boreel (probable); Peter Balling (supposed); William Ames (attributed)
Country	Holland and England
Language	Latin translated to Low-Dutch translated to English
Subject	Finding the Light of God within
Genre	Christian mysticism
Publisher	Robert Wilson, London
Publication date	1662
Published in English	1663
Media type	Religious Tract

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The Light upon the Candlestick is an anonymous mystical tract published in Holland in 1662. Translated into English in 1663, it became a popular text among English Quakers.

The tract promotes the idea that the Light of God can be found within each individual. Personal experience of the Divine is the only authentic path to Truth.

History[edit]

Authorship of the text is unclear. It was possibly originally composed in Latin as Lucerna Super Candelabrum by Adam Boreel, translated into Low-Dutch by Peter Balling in 1662^[1] and into English by B.F. (Benjamin Furly) in 1663. The English title page reads,

“The LIGHT upon the Candlestick. Serving for Observation of the principal things in the Book called; The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God, &c against several Professors, Treated of, and written by Will. Ames…Printed in Low-Dutch for the Author, 1662. and translated into English by B.F.”^[2]

This has led to the supposition that William Ames was the author of The Light upon the Candlestick, but the wording means that The Light upon the Candlestick agrees in principle with the work The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God by William Ames. As the title page says it was printed for the Author, it is likely that the tract was printed for the Author of The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God, William Ames, to support his position “against several Professors” of the Collegiants with whom he was in disagreement.

In the mid-seventeenth century there was a Quaker community in Holland seeking sanctuary from persecution in England. There they came into contact with the radical Protestant sect of the Collegiants. William Ames was a Quaker minister who, after being imprisoned for his beliefs in Ireland, moved to Amsterdam, where he preached with John Stubbs.^[3] William Ames zealously preached to the Collegiants and they were initially in accord although later they fell out.^[4]

Adam Boreel was a Dutch theologian and Hebrew scholar, a leader of the Collegiants and a friend of Baruch Spinoza; Peter Balling was a member of the Collegiants; Benjamin Furly, associated with John Locke, George Fox and William Penn, was an English Quaker merchant then living in Rotterdam.

Contents[edit]

The Light upon the Candlestick proposes that God is the origin of all Knowledge. We can only be aware of God’s working in the world because we have a prior knowledge of God. One can become aware of the Light of God only by seeking inward.

“This Light is the inward ear by which alone, and by no other, the voice of God that is the Truth, can he heard.”^[5]

Following this Inward light will result in Union with God.^[6]

References[edit]

^ William Sewel, The history of the rise, increase, and progress of the Christian people called Quakers, Third Edition, Philadelphia: Samuel Keimer, 1728 p. 16
^ Anonymous, The Light upon the Candlestick, London: Robert Wilson, 1663, Title Page
^ Sewel, p. 108
^ Sewel, Preface
^ Anonymous, The Light upon the Candlestick, London: Robert Wilson, 1663
^ Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Boston: Beacon Press, 1959, pp 128-132 (first published by The Macmillan Company, 1914)

External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: The Light upon the Candlestick

Jim Fussell Quaker Silence from Rufus Jones, Inner Life

Jim Fussell

Silence is, again, a very important condition for the great inner action we call worship.

So long as we are content to speak our own patois, to live in the din of our narrow private affairs, we shall not arrive at the lofty goal of the soul's quest. We shall hear the noises of our outer universe and nothing more.

When we learn how to center down into the stillness and quiet, to listen with our souls for the whisperings of Life and Truth, to bring all our inner powers into parallelism with the set of divine currents, we shall hear tidings from the inner world at the heart and center of which is God.

But by far the most influential condition for effective worship is groupsilence – the waiting, seeking, expectant attitude permeating and penetrating a gathered company of persons. We hardly know in what the group-influence consists, or why the presence of others heightens the sensitive, responsive quality in each soul, but there can be no doubt of the fact.

There is some subtle telepathy that comes into play in the living silence of a congregation which makes every earnest seeker more quick to feel the presence of God, more acute of inner ear, more tender of heart to feel the bubbling of the springs of life than any one of them would be in isolation.

Somehow we are able to “lend our minds out" as Browning puts it, or at least to contribute toward the formation of an atmosphere that favors communion and cooperation with God.

If this is so, if each assists all and all in turn assist each, our responsibilities in meetings for worship are very real and very great and we must try to realize that there is a form of ministry which is dynamic even when the lips are sealed.

Rufus Jones, Inner Life, Chapter 4, 1916, p. 103-104.

QUAKER TESTIMONY: INTEGRITY | Facebook

Quakers | QUAKER TESTIMONY: INTEGRITY | Facebook

Jim Fussell

QUAKER TESTIMONY: INTEGRITY

I believe there is something in the mind, or in the heart, that shows its approbation when we do right. I give myself this advice: Do not fear truth, let it be so contrary to inclination and feeling. Never give up the search after it: and let me take courage, and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates, if it leads me to be a Quaker or not . . . I look not to myself, but to that within me, that has to my admiration proved to be my present help, and enabled me to do what I believe of myself I could not have done.

Elizabeth Fry, 1799 & 1811

If our inward leading is to be "doers of the truth", then integrity needs to be at the center of our being, at the center of our consciousness, and at the center of our outward witness.

Wilmer Cooper, 1991, ‘The Testimony of Integrity’

Hearken to his Voice within you, his Witness and Testimony which he hath given you, which testifies against all Sin, and all Unrighteousness, and all Unbelief, and Hard-heartedness, and Uncleanness; and this testifies against all Oppression and Wrong; there is that in your Hearts which tells you, that you should do unto all Men, as ye would they should do unto you:

This is Just, this is Righteous, this is Equal.

Margaret Fell

Mind the light of God in your consciences,

which will show you all deceit;

dwelling in it, guides out of the many things into one spirit,

which cannot lie, nor deceive.

Those who are guided by it, are one.

George Fox, Epistle 4

You can't decide how you're going to die. Or when. What you can decide is how you're going to live now.

Joan Baez

There is that near you which will guide you. O wait for it and be sure you keep to it.

Isaac Penington, 1678

Now is where we live, now is where the past must be overcome, now is where we meet others, now is where we must find the presence of God.

Carol Murphy, 1993

And the third step in holy obedience, or a counsel, is this: If you slip and stumble and forget God for an hour, and assert your old proud self, and rely upon your own clever wisdom, don’t spend too much time in anguished regrets and self-accusations but begin again, just where you are.

Thomas Kelly, 1941

Art thou in the Darkness?

Mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till Light arises out of Darkness to lead thee.

Art thou wounded in conscience?

Feed not there, but abide in the Light which leads to Grace and Truth, which teaches to deny, and puts off the weight, and removes the cause, and brings saving health to Light.

James Nayler 1618-1660

For what is the substance and intent of an oath? Is not the intent of it to bind to the speaking or performing of truth? And what is it that binds? Is it the shadow or the substance? Is it the words of an oath, or the sense and weight of the thing upon the spirit?

Isaac Penington, 1661

Moral man is he who is opposed to injustice per se, opposed to injustice wherever he finds it; the moral man looks for injustice first of all in himself.

Bayard Rustin, 1948

The want of faith in the word and power of God within, and the neglect of hearing the still, small voice thereof, is the ground and cause of all ignorance, errors, darkness, and confusion among men, of all sects and sorts of religion upon the face of the whole earth.

William Shewen, 1631-1695

Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.

Inazo Nitobe, 1899

But Cain, Nebuchadnezzar, and Haman were full of fury, envy, and wrath, who persecuted the righteous people of God, that kept their integrity and their obedience to God, with whom they were accepted; which condition of each people are recorded for example, and for learning of the good, and shunning the evil, and the way of the wicked gf Truth's Triumph In The Eternal Power

So let your lives preach, let your light shine...

George Fox

Those written Words (for Scripture signifies a Writing) they are Publications in Testimony of that creating Word of Power, by which the Worlds were framed, (Heb. xi. 3.)

yet they do not declare that the World was made by them, but by that Eternal Word which was in the Beginning, as it's recorded, John i. 1.

the same is that which liveth and abideth for ever, 1 Pet. i. 23. which Word is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged Sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of Soul and Spirit, and of the Joints and Marrow, and is a Discerner of the Thoughts and Intents of the Heart;

neither is there any Creature that is not manifest in his Sight, but all Things are naked and open unto the Eyes of him with whom we have to do, even as it is written, (Heb. iv. 12, 13.)

This is that Word to whom the Scriptures directs us, as a Light unto our Feet, and a Lanthorn unto our Paths, to guide our Feet into the Way of Peace; the very Entrance of which giveth Light; yea, it giveth Understanding to the Simple.

Elizabeth Bathurst, 1679

There is the same variety in truths that there is in certain seeds and plants. Some of them are of a hasty growth and soon offer their fruits to the hand that cultivated them, while others, like the trees of the forest, require many years to bring them to maturity... You are perhaps planting seeds for the next generation, but your labor is absolutely necessary to secure a harvest to your posterity.

James Pemberton, 1787

The likeness we bear to Jesus is more essential than our notions of him.

Lucretia Mott, 1793-1880

“You going in your gold and silver, yea in your very shoes laced, and the poor want bread, want stockings and shoes; and you your many dishes, change of dishes, and that you call novelties, and the poor cannot get bread;

spare one of your dishes, and let it be carried to the place for the poor, and do not let them come begging for it neither, but let them have a place where they may be kept, and that will be for your honour and renown;

for consider what abundance of riches is in this city, and what good you might do with it, or how soon you may be taken from it, or it from you, by fire, or sea, and yet for all this ye will not consider

your poor brethren, which are made of the same blood and mould, to dwell upon the face of the earth;

therefore mind truth, that makes free from deceit, and from all cozening and dissembling, and will bring you to a word in all your common occasions, and to so say, and so do, and to worship God in the truth, and to worship God in the spirit...”

George Fox, 1658

I give myself this advice: Do not fear truth, let it be so contrary to inclination and feeling. Never give up the search after it: and let me take courage, and try from the bottom of my heart to do that which I believe truth dictates, if it leads me to be a Quaker or not.

Elizabeth Fry, 1799

Words may help and silence may help, but the one thing needful is that the heart should turn to its Maker as the needle turns to the pole. For this we must be still.

Caroline Stephen, 1834-1909

And now dear Friends, in all your words, in all your business and employments, have a care of breaking your words and promises to any people. Consider beforehand, that you may be able to perform and fulfill both your words and promises to people, that your Yea be Yea and Nay, Nay in all things, which Christ has set up instead of an oath.

Therefore all are to consider afore-hand, before they speak their Yea, Yea, what they are able to perform. It will preserve you out of all rash, hasty words and promises, for such kind of inconsiderate and rash speaking is not in the everlasting covenant of light, life, and grace.

George Fox, Letter 380

I have been learning. . . that when we accept our finiteness realistically and without bitterness, each day is a gift to be cherished and savored. Each day becomes a miracle. I am learning to offer to God my days and my nights, my joy, my work, my pain and my grief. I am striving to keep my house in order, and my relationships intact. I am learning to use the time I have more wisely…. And I am learning to forget at times my puritan conscience which prods me to work without ceasing, and instead, to take time for joy.

Elizabeth Watson, 1979

The love of God again makes us free, for it draws us to set a low value on those things wherein we are subject to others – our wealth, our position, our reputation, and our life – and to set a high value on those things which no man can take from us – our integrity, our righteousness, our love for all men, and our communion with God.

Kenneth Boulding, 1942

I know how frail we all are, may we not be utterly cast off; may we in the end prove our integrity and all be given up to follow the good alone, in the newness of life.

Elizabeth Fry, 1808

I have felt great Distress of Mind, since I

I came on this Island, on Account of the

Members of our Society being mixed with the World in various Sorts of Business and Traffick, carried on in impure Channels... worked in Superfluities, and

bought and sold them;

and thus Dimness of Sight came over many: At length, Friends got into the Use of some Superfluities in Dress, and in the Furniture of their Houses; and this hath spread from less to more, till Superfluity of some Kinds is common amongst us.

In this declining State, many look at the

Example one of another, and two much

neglect the pure Feeling of Truth.

Of late Years, a deep Exercise hath attended my Mind, that Friends may dig deep, may carefully cast forth the loose Matter, and get down to the Rock, the sure Foundation, and there hearken to that divine Voice which gives a clear and certain Sound;

and I have felt in that which doth not deceive, that if Friends, who have known the Truth, keep to that Tenderness of Heart, where all Views of outward Gain are given up, and their Trust is only on the Lord, he will graciously lead some to be Patterns of deep Self-denial in Things relating to Trade and Handicraft-labour; and that some, who have plenty of

the Treasures of this World, will example

in a plain frugal Life, and pay Wages, to

such as they may hire, more liberally than is now customary in some Places.”

John Woolman, 16th of Sixth month 1772

Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks—we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.

Parker J. Palmer, 2015

There has always been in the Society of Friends a group of persons pledged unswervingly to the ideal. To those who form this inner group compromise is under no circumstance allowable. If there comes a collision between allegiance to the ideal and the holding of public office, then the office must be deserted. If obedience to the soul's vision involves eye or hand, houses or lands or life, they must be immediately surrendered.

But there has always been as well another group who have held it to be equally imperative to work out their principles of life in the complex affairs of the community and the state, where to gain an end one must yield something; where to get on one must submit to existing conditions; and where to achieve ultimate triumph one must risk his ideals to the tender mercies of a world not yet ripe for them.

Rufus Jones, 1911

God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.

Bayard Rustin, 1987

Now I find that in a state of pure obedience the mind learns contentment in appearing weak and foolish to that wisdom which is of the world; and in these lowly labors, they who stand in a low place and are rightly exercised under the cross will find nourishment.

John Woolman, 1772

"If our inward leading is to be "doers of the truth", then integrity needs to be at the center of our being, at the center of our consciousness, and at the center of our outward witness."

~ Wilmer Cooper, 1991, ‘The Testimony of Integrity’

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Spinoza, Quakers, and God | wsmonroe - be examples

https://wsmonroe.com/2020/03/30/spinoza-quakers-and-god/

Spinoza, Quakers, and God

2020/03/30 by wsmonroe

I have not generally written here about my personal religious beliefs, but I recently had the occasion to discuss these with fellow Quakers in our meeting, and thought I would post the notes I made about this. As so many of us are currently social-distancing, not working, or working from home (as well as some of us on the front lines, caring for other members of our communities) in this COVID19 pandemic, I think it’s good for us to share our stories.

====

I have been a seeker for most of my life. Although there was a time in my teens I would have called myself an agnostic (never an atheist), I have most always believed that there is much more to this world than we can see or know directly.

Born into a family that was mostly non-denominational Protestant, but rarely set foot in a church, I was given little religious upbringing — merely absorbing a typically American form of simple Christianity. In fact, I remember being baptized, because it happened only when my youngest brother was born, when I was four years old. I think it must have been only then that my parents realized that none of us earlier children had been baptized (my sister would have been almost seven, my younger brother was two). My sister and I were the children of my mother’s first husband, who had abandoned us. The two-year-old and newborn were my half-brothers, the children of the stepfather who raised us all.

I remember the minister coming to our house — from what church, I do not know, but guessing from the fact that the first church I remember visiting was Grace Lutheran Church, it was probably the one. We stood in a line and he had a bowl of water in his hand with which he went down the line baptizing us.

When we were a bit older (perhaps I was about eight), we were riding in the car one day, and complained to our father (i.e., my stepfather) that our mother wanted us to go to church with her, which we did not want to do. “You should go to church with your mother. It would be good for you,” he said. When we argued back that he did not go to church, he responded, “I don’t go because I don’t believe in that shit.” (My stepfather was completely unguarded, and did not generally get irony.)

When I was in high school, I sometimes attended worship services with friends, including Jewish, and Roman Catholic, and I read about other religions. Had there been a Buddhist group in my town, I probably would have gone there. Oddly enough, though I grew up in a Pennsylvania town that was founded by Quakers, and learned about Quakers in school, there was no longer a Quaker Meeting in my town, and it never occurred to me to attend one (I did not know any Quakers). In my young adulthood I was generally open to people who invited me to their places of worship, even if I did not identify with their theology. That applied most often to evangelicals. I could never really accept that a “loving God” would insist on everyone believing in any particular creed or dogma in order to be “saved”.

In college, I majored in history, and also took some courses in the Religion Department. One important history course for me was “Historical Background of the Bible: the Old Testament,” in which I learned a great deal about how the Hebrew Bible was written — including the “Documentary hypothesis,” and also about how the Hebrew Bible is received by modern Jews (at least of the more liberal variety). One thing I took from this, long before I even knew about Benedict Spinoza, is what he established about the Bible way back in 1670: That the Bible records the religious experience of the people who lived in the Levant in about 600 BCE, and as such it has much to offer us, but it is not necessarily God’s word for us today, and it certainly is not God’s law. I have gone on to read scriptural texts of many other religions, and take them the same way. To those fundamentalists who say that one cannot pick and choose which parts of the Bible we believe, I say we must do that. It is a requirement in any reading that we read critically.

Most of all, I gradually came to the realization that it is our own religious experience that is most important — our own relationship with God, however we define that concept — although it is also very good, for the soul, that we share in this relationship, in some way, with others. I don’t know when I was first exposed to the famous quotation from Margaret Fell about hearing George Fox preach in 1652:

And then he went on, and opened the Scriptures, and said, ‘The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord’. And said, ‘Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’

This opened me so that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat me down in my pew again, and cried bitterly. And I cried in my spirit to the Lord, ‘We are all thieves, we are all thieves, we have taken the Scriptures in words and know nothing of them in ourselves’… I saw it was the truth, and I could not deny it; and I did as the apostle saith, I ‘received the truth in the love of it’. (See this text with commentary at: https://postmodernquaker.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/what-canst-thou-say-paraphrase-with-commentary/ )

We mostly don’t understand the true meaning of prophecy, which has been confused with predicting the future. (That is due to the huge influence of Messianic Judaism and Christianity reading the coming of a Messiah into even non-prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.) But a prophet, in the true meaning of the word, is someone who speaks on behalf of someone else — in most common parlance, for God. I’ve come to see that some people have a knack for speaking “Truth” — what I see as “God’s Truth”, and these are not necessarily the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible, and not necessarily even religious teachers at all. I’ve been reading Montaigne’s Essais, and found one (“On Pedantry”) in which he almost quotes George Fox, except that he is writing about sixty years earlier. (His Essays were first published in 1580. Did Fox read Montaigne?):

“We know how to say: ‘Cicero says thus; such are the morals of Plato; these are the very words of Aristotle.’ But what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? What do we do? A parrot could well say as much.” (p. 121) [Nous sçavons dire, Cicero dit ainsi, voilà les meurs de Platon, ce sont les mots mesmes d’Aristote: mais nous que disons nous nous mesmes? Que faison nous? Que jugeons nous? Autant en diroit bien un perroquet,. (p. 142) And: “We take the opinions and the knowledge of others into our keeping, and that is all. We must make them our own.” (p. 122) [Nous prenons en garde les opinions et le sçavoir d’autruy, et puis c’est tout: il les faut faire nostres. (p. 142)]

Jesus was a prophet, as was Fox, as was Benedict Spinoza, as were Dorothy Day and James Baldwin. Read what they had to say, and you cannot help but feel they speak a truth that resonates in its verity. But we can all have that connection, if we cultivate it. Sometimes we hear or read a small bit of that Truth in the most unlikely places. There is prophecy all around us, sometimes coming from small children in our midst.

Before I reached the ripe old age of 30, I had found Quakerism, first attending a Quaker meeting in, of all places, Brussels, Belgium. I have felt right at home in a group that honors ongoing revelation. Having read Henry Cadbury’s lecture, “Quakerism and Early Christianity” while I was in college, I realized that I could be a Quaker without being a Christian. While I have a high regard for Christianity and the teachings of Jesus, I do not buy the essential theology, which is implied by the name. Christ is the Greek translation of the Messiah, “the anointed one”, i.e., God’s anointed. It comes out of Jewish messianism, the expectation of a savior that would come to Israel in the form of a new king, who would drive out the foreign rulers and restore the Kingdom of Israel. The early Christians believed that Jesus was that Messiah, but with a different mission, to save all of humanity. But even that is not a theology that resonates with me. It was still a major part of the theology of the early Quakers, as Cadbury points out, but

just as the later Christians realized that

one does not need to be a Jew to be a Christian,

Quakers have come to know that

one need not be a Christian to be a Quaker.

후기 기독교인들이 기독교인이 되기 위해 유대인이 될 필요가 없다는 것을 깨달은 것처럼,

퀘이커 교도는 퀘이커 교도가 되기 위해 기독교인이 될 필요가 없다는 것을 알게 되었다.

Cadbury was a historian, as am I, and we learn from history. He writes, “Religion looked at historically is an example of change. It is dynamic not static, it grows and moves. … Religion becomes the accumulation of much of its past, and what it is today is often best understood from knowing its past.”

In the future further changes will occur … but not from the same exact causes as in the past. We need not dread them for they are signs of life. We cannot control them, least of all by an attempted superficial imitation of the past. We should realize that variety is part of our inheritance, and a precious part. (p. 39-40)

More recently, I have encountered Spinoza, who lived at the same time as George Fox, and even met with Quakers as part of his discussion circle. I believe that he was influenced by Quakerism as Quakerism was influenced by him.

He believed that God is everything — the universe — and that everything in the universe is just a little part of God. So every person not only has “that of God” within them (as the Quakers put it), but is part of God.

There are many elements of his philosophy that follow from this precept, and I do not buy all of these, but I think he saw very clearly, though he did not trust his own intuition, and felt that he had to prove it all mathematically (which does not work). He was a man of his era, who believed in the power of logic — he was not a mystic. But so much of his philosophy fits very well with Quakerism and leads to the same ethical conclusions.

Spinoza also sought to prove the existence of God, but mostly used the same existential proof of God that was developed in the twelfth century by Anselm of Canterbury. If we define God as the most perfect being that could possibly exist, then God must exist, for a being that existed would be better than a being that does not exist. Specious reasoning, to be sure. The problem here, for Spinoza, is that he believed, like Leibniz, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Since God is the universe, both are perfect. But we now know that the universe is not perfect, for perfect means finished. The universe is ever expanding, ever growing, ever changing. Thus, so is God. God is not perfect. Neither God nor the universe follows human logic. So Cadbury’s idea that religion is always changing, and should change, is even more reasonable, as even God is always changing.

Jesus boiled the old Jewish commandments down to two: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.

George Fox expresses those precepts more in the way that Spinoza might have, as in this quotation, which comes from a letter that Fox wrote to ministers while he was imprisoned in Launceton (Cornwall) in 1656, and has been mentioned several times, recently, in our Meeting:

And this is the word of the Lord God to you all, and a charge to you all in the presence of the living God:

be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come,
that your (carriage and) life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them;
then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.

당신의 (마차와) 삶이 모든 부류의 사람들 사이에서, 그들에게 전파될 수 있도록,

모든 나라, 장소, 섬, 국가, 어디를 가든지 본보기가 되십시오.

그리하면 각 사람 안에서 하나님의 말씀에 응답하면서 세상을 두루 다니게 될 것 입니다.

If we could all follow that commandment, this world would be a better place — and what more could we hope for?

Roger:

The term 'carriage' could be used in England in the past to indicate how you lead your life; how you 'carry yourself' through life.

I guess these days we would talk about how you 'travel through life' or about 'letting your life speak'.

Spinoza and early Friends | The Friend

Spinoza and early Friends

6 Jan 2010 | by Helen Gould

Helen Gould looks at their relationship

Closeup of Spinoza statue. | Photo: LeonK/Wikipedia CC:BY.

Quaker missionaries traveled to Amsterdam in 1656 seeking to establish Quakerism and to convert Jews to Quakerism. Scholars have established that Spinoza sought out and established contact with them, and it is extremely likely that Spinoza became the Hebrew translator for the Quakers, translating into Hebrew Margaret Fell’s first two letters, really bookletts, to the Jews. Spinoza fits all that we know about the translator, and there is no evidence that any other Dutch Jew showed any interest in Quakerism. We know about this partly from letters from William Ames and William Caton to Fell. Isabel Ross in Margaret Fell: Mother of Quakerism, writes of the two books of Fell’s, that ‘she makes an impassioned appeal for men everywhere to turn to the Light of God, as it is in the heart, to turn away from formal outward religion to the inner Spirit. There is ample quotation from the Old Testament.’ And there is no explicit mention of Christ.