CHAPTER IX. THE FRIENDS. QUAKERISM A RETURN TO PRIMITIVE ITY. LIKE a sweet calm after storm was the advent of the Quakers in the seventeenth century. When wars were waged on slight provocation or no provocation came their word, "It is not according to Christ to fight with arms." At a time of fierce animosity between clashing Churches and sects they said, "Let us love one another and be at peace." In the midst of persecution carried on by both Roman Catholics and Protestants they affirmed, "It is not Christian to harm your brother for his religious opinions." When men were swearing to covenants and counter-covenants, to acts of parliament, and in courts of law to every testimony, trivial or otherwise, the Friends repeated the command of Christ, "Swear not at all." When Calvinistic particularism was the reigning creed they said, "God wills that all men should be saved," and when men were received into State Churches without conversion they declared, "No man belongs to Christ except by living faith." The rise of the Friends was God's rebuke to the selfishness and worldliness of that passionate and warring time when the Spirit of Jesus seemed to have well-nigh departed and his beautiful ethics to have been trampled under foot. Like Methodism, Quakerism was a revival of primitive Christianity. Did the Friends arise as a new force in history, with a fresh and hitherto unknown testimony? Or were there antecedentswere there those who anticipated their teachings and laid a foundation for their work? Here again Holland must come in as the mother of beneficent movements. The Mennonite Baptists of Holland were the precursors of the Quakers, and the General Baptists were so near of kin that they might almost be called a sister denomination. The Mennonites held: (1) That only regenerate persons constitute a true Church. (2) No persecution for conscience' sake is right. (3) Swearing is forbidden. (4) War is unchristian. (5) Since the office of a magistrate compelled men to use the sword and take an oath, no Christian man can rightly fulfill that office, though magistrates ought to be obeyed in all things not contrary to God's word. (6) There is to be no hierarchy-office does not confer headship. 47 MENNONITES 2 "We are brethren in the Church, not masters and servants.” (7) Ministers must not receive any stipulated pay. (8) All unnecessary ornaments of dress must be avoided. A period of silent prayer was at first a part of the service of the Mennonites, and they paused before meals for silent thanksgiving. The Collegianten (so called from their meetings or collegia) were a sect of the Mennonites who added to the foregoing principles one other, that there was no distinct office of teacher or minister, but all Christians were prophets, and all were at liberty to pass judgment upon others or dissent from them in their preaching-there being no conformity in religious opinion, but all welcome to fellowship who confess Jesus Christ. It will be seen, therefore, that the Quakers were by no means original in their views. The Mennonites were strong believers in the universal atonement, God's desire to save all men, and that God's light comes to all if they will receive it.' The views of the General Baptists concerning universal atonement; the need of a regenerated church membership, who had a KINDRED personal witness to salvation; that Christians are supported directly by the immediate testimony of the Spirit and only indirectly by outward help like the Scriptures; that Christ's work was never to reconcile God to us, since he never hated us, but only to reconcile us to God and slay the enmity in our hearts; that magistrates must not meddle with religion or force the conscience; that outward baptism is of value only as it is a witness to the inner or spiritual; that the Supper does not confer grace, but only stirs up repentance and faith until Christ comes; that members of Christ are not to go to law before magistrates, and all differences are to be settled by yea and nay without an oath; Christians are brethren, and the poor are not to be allowed to suffer; Christians are not to lift up a sword, nor consent to battle, because the redeemed of the Lord have changed their fleshly weapons-yea, they are called of Christ "to the following of his unarmed and unweaponed life and of his cross-bearing footsteps;" and "it is not permitted that the faithful of the New Testament should swear at all"-such were some of the principles of John Smyth, the founder of the General Baptists.* Perfect freedom of prophesying was also insisted on. 1 Barclay, in his Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, who writes from the standpoint of a Friend, does full justice to the precursors of Quakerism, pp. 78 ff. 2 See copious quotations from his Confession in Barclay, pp. 109-114 and app. to ch. vi. LAYMEN AS Lay preaching was by no means a new thing when started by Wesley. The Quakers had it, and before them the Independents and Baptists. It was a common practice in England in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was doubtless the chief means by which the more earnest type of Christianity for which the Separatists stood got a foothold among the people.' The Presbyterians were bitterly opposed to this, and in the days of their ascendency among their oppressive measures was one forbidding lay preaching, 1645. But little attention was paid to this. Of Cromwell's army it is said that they "sent out everywhere captains and soldiers" to preach, and "gave tickets of the time and place." According to Baxter the cry of the Separatists was, "Let God be glorified, let the Gospel be propagated," and that "there were few of the Anabaptists who had not been the opposers and troublers of the faithful ministers of the land." Nor were the Quakers first to use the talents of women. In the revival of which the Congregationalists and Baptists were the expression the daughters prophesied as well as the sons (Acts ii, 17). Women could talk to edification on any text, and search the deep things of God. A lampoon of BY WOMEN. 1641 speaks of a congregation meeting in the malt house of one Job, a brewer, and says, "When women preach, and cobblers pray, PREACHING The Baptists are spoken of as having "many pretty knacks to delude withal, and especially to please the female sex. They told of rare revelations of the things to come from the Spirit, as they say." 996 "The exile churches bequeathed this legacy of lay preaching to the first Congregational and Baptist Churches in England. It had been proved and rooted in their system during the days of the exile."-John Telford, Hist. of Lay Preaching in the Chr. Church, Lond., 1897, p. 81. 2 Wm. Prynne, Fresh Discovery of some New Wandering Blazing Stars and Firebrands styling themselves New Lights. Lond., 1645, pref. 3 Baxter, Life (Autobiography), p. 102. 4"And in this our thanksgiving let us remember all the blessed pastors and professors, whether at Amsterdam or elsewhere; as also all our she-fellowlaborers, our holy and good blessed women who are not only able to talk on any text, but search into the deep sense of Scripture, and preach both in their families and elsewhere."-The Brownists' Conventicle, 1641, p. 13. Lucifer's Lackey, or the Devil's New Creation, Lond., 1641. "Johnson, History of New England, 1654, pp. 67-99. We are indebted to Barclay, Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, p. 155, for these quotations. The Baptists appear to have had more women preachers than the Congregationalists. Baillie says that the continental Baptists allowed women's preaching, as also every one of their members, and the power of questioning the preacher on doctrine "before the church," and that in England it was the same, but that "many more of their women do venture to preach among the Baptists than among the Brownists, in England."' GEORGE FOX. George Fox, the founder of the Friends, was born of upright, pious Presbyterian parents at Drayton-in-the-Clay (now Fenny Drayton), Leicestershire, July, 1624. He was a youth of pensive religious nature, and his gifted and devout mother encouraged this tendency. Like Chrysostom, Jonathan Edwards, Robert Emory, and other rare characters, there never seemed to be a time when he did not love and fear God. There was a morbid and sad strain in Fox's early piety which was doubtless constitutional, and was aggravated by the religious intensity of the time. To find light and peace Fox began to itinerate through the country, seeking counsel of ministers. But these gave him no help. The Lord, however, brought him on step by step until he was led to trust in him entirely, and to find him in the revelation of his truth, and grace, and love in the soul. FOX'S ACCOUNT OF "Then the Lord led me gently along, and let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by hisHIS RELIGIOUS tory or books. . . . When I was in the deep, under EXPERIENCE. all shut up, I could not believe I should ever overcome; my troubles and my temptations were so great that I often thought that I should have despaired. But when Christ opened to me how he was tempted by the same devil, and had overcome 1 Baillie, Anabaptism the True Foundation of Independency, Brownism, Familism, Antinomy, and the like, Lond., 1646, p. 30. Mrs. Attaway is called the "mistress of all the she-preachers in Coleman Street." For further information as to the Separatist—and particularly the Baptist-anticipation of Quakerism, see Barclay, l. c., chs. iv-x; Tallack, George Fox, the Friends and the early Baptists, Lond., 1868. "None of these [Quaker] peculiarities were absolutely novel, nor were any of the religious doctrines of the Quakers."-Bickley, George Fox and the Early Quakers, Lond., 1884, p. 8. * Macaulay, whose treatment of Fox is a caricature, makes Fox a semilunatic, "with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for Bedlam."-Hist. of England, iv, 132 (ch. xvii). Macaulay was ably answered by J. S. Rowntree, Macaulay's Portraiture of George Fox, Lond., 1861. him and bruised his head, and that through him and his power, light, grace, and spirit I should overcome also, I had confidence in him. . . . Thus in the deepest miseries, in the greatest sorrows and temptations that beset me, the Lord in his mercy did keep me. I found two thirsts in me: the one after the creatures to have got help and strength there; and the other after the Lord, the creator, and his Son Jesus Christ, and I saw all the world could do me no good. . . . One day when I was walking solitarily abroad and was come home, I was taken in the love of God so that I could not but admire the greatness of his love; and while I was in that condition it was opened upon me by the eternal light and power, and therein I clearly saw that all was done and to be done in and by Christ; and how he conquers and destroys this tempter the devil and all his works, and is atop of him, and that all these troubles were good for me, and temptations for the trial of my faith. My living faith was raised that I saw all was done by Christ the life, and my belief was in him."1 THE INNER In 1649 there came to him the revelation which is the foundation of Quakerism-the mystical light which reveals God and truth without ceremonies and outward helps. "The Lord God opened to me by his invisible powers how every man was enlightened by the divine light of Christ. I saw through all, and that they who believed in it came out of condemnation to the light of life, and became children of it; but they that hated it and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the light, without the help of any man; neither did I know where to find it in the Scriptures; though afterwards searching the Scriptures I found it. For I saw in that Light and Spirit which was before the Scriptures were given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit if they would know God, or Christ, or the Scriptures aright; which they that gave them forth were led by." 2 This famous doctrine of the Friends-the Inner Light-has been understood as the denial of the Scriptures as the rule of faith, and as the substitution of one's own impressions for the Bible. This is a mistake. Fox had been a most diligent student of the 1George Fox, Journal, Leeds ed., 1836, i, 92, 93. 9 Journal, i, 111. There are no chronological divisions or marks in Fox's Journal. In the Leeds edition the editors have inserted at the top of p. 111 the date 1648. |