The religiosity of the Quakers, with their doctrines of the " inner light " and the influence of, the Spirit, has decided affinities with mysticism; and the autobiography of George Fox (1624-1691), the founder of the sect, proceeds throughout on the assumption of supernatural guidance.
Stripped of its definitely miraculous character, the doctrine of the inner light may be regarded as the familiar mystical protest against formalism, literalism, and scripture-worship. Swedenborg, though selected by Emerson in his Representative Men as the typical mystic, belongs rather to the history of spiritualism than to that of mysticism as understood in this article.
Miinzer dreamed of an approaching millennium on earth to be heralded by violence and suffering, but Hubmaier and Denk were peaceful evangelists who believed that man's will was free and that each had within him an inner light which would, if he but followed it, guide him to God.
Why should he consult a casuist rather than his Inner Light?
Successive generations obeyed the monitions of the Inner Light.
