  Fell’s anti-clericalism (her opposition to the professional clergy) is typical of Quaker texts of the period. In her view, the light is the only teacher or spiritual guide that anyone requires for salvation. The divine law is not written in paper and ink but rather with the spirit of the living God. Fell says that “Though ye may get all the words of the whole Scripture in your brains and comprehension, so long as ye deny the light, and turn your minds from the light, and seek to know these things without you, ye shall never know them” (Fell 1656b, 3). The light of Christ makes everyone capable of interpreting scripture for themselves, without the need for an education in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. This claim is made most forcefully in A Touch-Stone: or, A Perfect Tryal by the Scriptures, in which Fell says that preachers of the light need not be “Learned Men, such as have been at Oxford or Cambridge” (Fell 1667b, 18). The apostles, after all, did not have degrees from prestigious universities, yet no one doubts that they taught the word of God.