[45:2] Truth lifting up its Head above Scandals.
[46:1] Truth lifting up its Head above Scandals.
[46:2] The Saint’s Paradise.
[47:1] The Saint’s Paradise.
[47:2] “That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main fundamental in religion, is this, that God, through Christ, hath placed a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it; and that those who live up to this principle, are the people of God; and that those who live in disobedience to it, are not God’s people, whatever name they bear, or profession they may make of religion.... By this principle they understand something that is Divine, and though in man, not of man, but of God; it came from Him and leads to Him all those who will be led by it ... it is the spirit given to every man to profit withal.”—William Penn, Primitive Christianity Revived (1696). Quoted from J. S. Rowntree’s The Society of Friends; its Faith and Practice.
[48:1] Speaking of the early Quakers, Cotton Mather, after attributing the origin of this sect “to some fanatics here in our town of Salem,” describes the principles of “the old Foxian Quakerism” as follows: “There is in every man a certain excusing and condemning principle, which indeed is nothing but some remainder of the Divine Image left by the compassion of God upon the conscience of man after his fall.... They scoffed at our imagined God beyond the stars.” He also contends that “the new turn such ingenuous men as Mr. Penn” had given to Quakerism, had made of it “quite a new thing.” See his History of New England, book vii. chap. iv.
[49:1] The Rev. Thos. Bennet, on p. 4 of An Answer to the Dissenters’ Pleas for Separation, published in 1711, referring to the origin of the various sorts of dissenters, speaks of the time “when Winstanley published the principles of Quakerism, and enthusiasm broke out.” In a footnote he mentions The Saint’s Paradise.
[49:2] Gerard Croese in The General History of the Quakers, published 1696, says, “The Quakers themselves date their first rise from the forty-ninth year of the present century.”
[49:3] See An account of what passed between the King and Richard Hubberthorne, after the delivery of George Fox his letter to the King, which is to be found amongst Thomasson’s Pamphlets, British Museum.
[50:1] As our readers will notice, all Winstanley’s theological writings were written and published in 1648-1649. The Preface to Truth Lifting up its Head above Scandals is dated October 16th, 1648; The Saint’s Paradise bears no date, but was certainly written before The New Law of Righteousness, the Preface to which is dated January 26th, 1648 (1649). (At that time the New Year commenced on March 26th.)