Those who could not harmonize their own vision of reality with the current formulae--Fox, Wesley or Blake, driven into opposition by the sterility of the contemporary Church--were forced to find elsewhere some tradition through which to maintain contact with the past.

Fox found it in the Bible; Wesley in patristic Christianity.

Even Blake's prophetic system, when closely examined, is found to have many historic and Christian connections.

And all these regarded themselves far less as bringers-in of novelty, than as restorers of lost truth.

So we must be prepared to discriminate the element of novelty from the element of stability; the reality of the intuition, the curve of growth, the moral situation, from the traditional and often symbolic language in which it is given to us.