The friends of Elias Hicks did not adopt his views or the views of any other man as a standard of opinion.  On the subject of the Trinity, for instance, there were various shadings of opinion among them.  The probability seems to be that the influence of Unitarian sects, and of Orthodox sects had, in the course of years, gradually glided in among the Quakers, and more or less fashioned their theological opinions, though themselves were unconscious of it; as we all are of the surrounding air we are constantly inhaling.

But it was not the Unitarianism of Elias Hicks that his adherents fought for, or considered it necessary to adopt.  They simply contended for his right to express his own convictions, and denied the authority of any man, or body of men, to judge his preaching by the assumed standard of any creed.  Therefore, the real ground of the struggle seems to have been resistance to ecclesiastical power; though theological opinions unavoidably became intertwisted with it.  It was a new form of the old battle, perpetually renewed ever since the world began, between authority and individual freedom.

The agitation, which had for some time been heaving under the surface, is said to have been brought into open manifestation by a sermon which Elias Hicks preached against the use of slave produce, in 1819.  A bitter warfare followed.  Those who refused to denounce his opinions were accused of being infidels and separatists; and they called their accusers bigoted and intolerant.  With regard to disputed doctrines, both claimed to find sufficient authority in the writings of early Friends; and each side charged the other with mutilating and misrepresenting those writings.  As usual in theological controversies, the skein became more and more entangled, till there was no way left but to cut it in two.  In 1827 and 1828, a separation took place in the Yearly Meetings of Philadelphia, New-York, and several other places.  Thenceforth, the members were divided into two distinct sects.  In some places the friends of Elias Hicks were far the more numerous.  In others, his opponents had a majority.  Each party claimed to be the genuine Society of Friends, and denied the other’s right to retain the title.  The opponents of Elias Hicks called themselves “Orthodox Friends,” and named his adherents “Hicksites.”  The latter repudiated the title, because they did not acknowledge him as their standard of belief, though they loved and reverenced his character, and stood by him as the representative of liberty of conscience.  They called themselves “Friends,” and the others “the Orthodox.”