CHAPTER XIV.
A CONSIDERATION OF THE "GIFT OF TONGUES," AND OTHER MIRACULOUS GIFTS ASCRIBED O THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS; AND WHETHER RECORDED MIRACLES ARE INFALLIBLE PROOFS OF THE DIVINE AUTHORITY OF DOCTRINES SAID TO HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED BY THEM.
Paul, in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, speaks to them as possessing several spiritual gifts, conferred on them by his ministration; such as the gift of prophecy, discerning of spirits, and speaking in unknown tongues.

He gives them directions about the proper use of their gifts, and speaks to them as absolutely possessing those gifts, with the utmost confidence.

Dr.Paley, in his Defence of Christianity, lays great stress upon the manner in which Paul addresses the Corinthians upon these miraculous powers; and he considers it as an absolute proof of the truth of Christianity-- because, he says, it is not conceivable that Paul could have had the boldness and presumption to speak to these men concerning the use and abuse of these gifts, if they really had them not.
I am ready to confess, that this argument of Dr.Paley puzzled me; for though I was satisfied that Paul had imposed upon their credulity many irrelevant passages from the Scriptures as proofs of Christianity, yet I could not imagine that he could presume so much upon their stupidity, as to give them directions about the management of their miraculous powers, which being matters of fact known to themselves, therefore, if false, I conceived must place Paul in their minds in the light of a banterer, when he told them of gifts, which their own consciousness, I thought, must make them sensible they had not.

I say I was puzzled with this argument, until I happened to meet with some extracts from Brown's "History of the Shakers," which convinced me at once, from the obvious likeness between these Shakers and the primitive Christians, that Paul might have written to the Corinthians " concerning their spiritual gifts," with perfect impunity.
This Brown had been a Shaker himself, and while with them, he was as great a believer in his own and their gifts, as the Corinthians could be; and since it must be obvious, that the gifts of these Shakers are mere self-delusions, there is, then, in our own times an example of the gifts of the primitive Christians, which enables us to comprehend their nature and character perfectly well.
"Many of them," (the Shakers) says Mr.Brown, "professed to have visions, and to see numbers of spirits, as plain as they saw their brethren and sisters, and to look into the invisible world, and to converse with many of the departed spirits, who had lived in the different ages of the world, and to learn and to see their different states in the world of spirits.

Some they saw, they said, were happy, and others miserable.