Gradual Abolition Act to the 1817 Gradual Manumission in New York State Act which led to the final emancipation of all remaining slaves within the state on July 4, 1827. Doctrinal views Hicks considered obedience to the Inner Light, to be the sole rule of faith and the foundational principle of Christianity. Although many accused him of denying the divinity of Christ, the skepticism came because of the unorthodox views he held. He believed that Jesus fulfilled all the law under the Mosaic dispensation and after the last ritual (John's Baptism in water), He became clothed with power from on high to carry out his gospel ministry. He believed the outward manifestation of Jesus was unique to the Jews and that Jesus taught the imminent end of the age of Moses along with all physical outward ordinances, types and shadows. He believed Jesus to be the Christ or Son of God through perfect obedience to the Inner Light, and most commonly referred to him as our "great pattern", encouraging others that they needed to grow in love and righteousness as he did to experience the gospel state. In the year 1829, "Six Queries" were proposed by Thomas Leggett, Jr., of New York, and answered by Elias Hicks. The last was as follows: Hicks also implicitly refuted the concepts of penal substitution, original sin, the Trinity, predestination, the impossibility of falling from grace, and an external Devil. He never spoke of eternal Hell but he expressed the importance of the soul's union "now" in preparation for the "realms of eternity" and how the soul's condemnation is elected through our free agency, not by God's foreordination. Hicks was concerned that the present state of the society of friends was settling down in tradition apart from "that ancient power", and that most other Christian professors, had "gone back into the law state and instituted mental shadows and forms", instead of worshiping in spirit and truth through stillness and obedience to the law in the heart. On ministers worshiping in their own will, preparing sermons, he boldly asserted that, "if you took away their notes they would be dumb." He was concerned that most religious profession wasn't founded in experience with the life but was mainly a submission to tradition, superstition, and the mere "letter that kills". Concerning the scriptures (which many accused him of denying) at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1826, Hicks