'Thou, like the inn of old, hast been full of guests; thy affections have entertained other lovers; there has been no room for thy Saviour in thy soul ... but his love is after thee still, & his holy invitation continues to save thee.'
'Receive his leaven, & it will change thee; his medicine and it will cure thee; he is as infallible as free; without money and with certainty.... Yield up the body, soul & spirit to Him that maketh all things new: new heavens & new earth, new love, new joy, new peace, new works, a new life & conversation....'
'The inward, steady righteousness of Jesus is another thing than all the contrived devotion of poor superstitious man.... True worship is an inward work; the soul must be touched and raised in its heavenly desires by the heavenly Spirit.... So that souls of true worshippers see God: and this they wait, they pant, they thirst for.'
'Worship is the supreme act of man's life.'
XXXI. HOW A FRENCH NOBLE BECAME A FRIEND
Now we come to a Saint who had a life so full of adventures that a book twice as big as this one would be needed to contain the stories that might be told about him alone.
Unlike any of the other 'Quaker Saints' in this book, he was by birth a Frenchman and came of noble family. His name was Etienne de Grellet. He was born nearly a century after the death of George Fox; but he probably did not know that such a person had ever existed, never even heard Fox's name, until long after he was grown up. If Etienne de Grellet, the gay young nobleman of the French court, had been told that his story would ever be written in a book of 'Quaker Saints' he would, most likely, have raised his dark eyebrows and have looked extremely surprised.
'Quakère? Qu'est-ce que c'est alors, Quakère? Quel drôle de mot! Je ne suis pas Quakère, moi!' he might have answered, with a disdainful shrug of his high, narrow, aristocratic French shoulders. Yet here he is after all!