3. Wesleyan Methodists.
4. General Baptists, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Plymouth Brethren.
1. Presbyterians, Independents.
2. Particular Baptists, Sub and Supralapsarians, Sandemanians.
3. Calvinistic Methodists. Evangelical or Low Church.
LETTER II.
QUAKERS.
The sect which I have placed first upon my list, arose about the middle of the seventeenth century, when a number of individuals withdrew from the communion of every visible church “to seek,” [14] as they expressed it, “the Lord, in retirement:” and George Fox, their leader, or as they termed him, their “honourable elder,” went about preaching their opinions in fairs and markets, in courts of justice, and steeple houses, i.e. churches. He denounced the state worship as “superstitious,” and warned all to obey the Holy Spirit, speaking by him. He was in consequence brought before two justices of the peace in Derbyshire in 1650, one of whom, Mr. Bennet, called Fox, and his hearers “Quakers,” in derision of their frequent admonitions to “tremble at the Word of God;” and this appellation soon became general, though they themselves took then, and still preserve, the title of “the Society of Friends.”
The rigid peculiarities of phrase, &c. which Fox added to his religious sentiments; the regular discipline which he enforced; and the zeal with which he maintained and propagated his tenets gave consistency to this sect, although he was not, as has been supposed, the originator of their doctrines. He conceived himself forbidden by divine command to pull off his hat to any one, or to address any one excepting in the singular number, or to “call any man master;” and for these peculiarities as well as for the refusal to give or accept titles of honour, or to take an oath, the “Friends” suffered the most cruel persecutions; for we are told that “they tortured with cruel whippings the bodies of both men and women of good estate and reputation;” [15a] and were further punished by impounding of their horses; by distress of goods; by fines, imprisonments, whipping, and setting in the stocks: [15b] yet, notwithstanding these severities, the sect increased and spread far and wide, and great numbers of people were drawn together, many out of animosity, to hear them.