Gower. We may hold that without joining the Society of Friends.
Atherton. In like manner he argues that because believers are the temple of the Spirit, and many venerate places superstitiously, or identify church-going with religion, therefore ‘steeple-houses’ are a sinful innovation, diffusing, for the most part, darkness rather than light. Because it appeared to him that in his study of the Scriptures he knew Christ ‘only as the light grew’—by inward revelation—‘as he that hath the key did open,’ therefore the doctrine of the inward Light is proclaimed to all as the central principle of Redemption.
Gower. True. This proneness to extremes has led his followers often to attach undue importance to the mere externals of a protest against externalism. Those peculiarities of dress and speech are petty formalities unworthy of their main principle. In his ‘Epistle to gathered Churches into outward forms upon the Earth,’ Fox can see scarce a vestige of spiritual religion anywhere beyond the pale of the Society of Friends.
Atherton. Yet ascetic and narrow on many points as he unquestionably was, and little disposed to make concession to human weakness, in practical charity he was most abundant. Oppression and imprisonment awakened the benevolent, never the malevolent impulses of his nature,—only adding fervour to his plea for the captive and the oppressed. His tender conscience could know no fellowship with the pleasures of the world; his tender heart could know no weariness in seeking to make less its sum of suffering. He is a Cato-Howard. You see him in his early days, refusing to join in the festivities of the time called Christmas; yet, if a stranger to the mirth, never to the mercy, of that kindly season. From house to house he trudges in the snow, visiting poor widows, and giving them money. Invited to marriage merry-makings, he will not enter the house of feasting; but the next day, or soon after, we find him there, offering, if the young couple are poor, the effectual congratulation of pecuniary help. In the prison-experiences of George Fox are to be found the germs of that modern philanthropy in which his followers have distinguished themselves so nobly. In Derby Jail he is ‘exceedingly exercised’ about the proceedings of the judges and magistrates—concerning their putting men to death for cattle, and money, and small matters,—and is moved to write to them, showing the sin of such severity; and, moreover, ‘what an hurtful thing it was that prisoners should lie so long in jail; how that they learned badness one of another in talking of their bad deeds; and therefore speedy justice should be done.’[[377]]
Willoughby. How the spirit of benevolence pervades all the Journals of the early Friends. Look at John Woolman, who will neither write nor have letters written to him by post, because the horses are overwrought, and the hardships of the postboys so great. When farthest gone in rhapsody, this redeeming characteristic was never wanting to the Quakers. It may be said of some of them, as was said of dying Pope—uttering, between his wanderings, only kindness—‘humanity seems to have outlasted understanding.’
Atherton. As to doctrine, again, consider how much religious extravagance was then afloat, and let us set it down to the credit of Fox that his mystical excesses were no greater. At Coventry he finds men in prison for religion who declared, to his horror, that they were God. While at Derby, a soldier who had been a Baptist, comes to him from Nottingham, and argues that Christ and the prophets suffered no one of them externally, only internally. Another company, he says, came to him there, who professed to be triers of spirits, and when he questioned them, ‘were presently up in the airy mind,’ and said he was mad. The priests and magistrates were not more violent against him than the Ranters, who roved the country in great numbers, professing to work miracles, forbidding other enthusiasts to preach, on pain of damnation; and in comparison with whom, Fox was soberness itself. Rice Jones, the Ranter, from Nottingham, prophesies against him with his company. At Captain Bradford’s house, Ranters come from York to wrangle with him. In the Peak country they oppose him, and ‘fall a-swearing.’ At Swanington, in Leicestershire, they disturb the meeting—hound on the mob against the Friends; they sing, whistle, and dance; but their leaders are confounded everywhere by the power of the Lord, and many of their followers, says the Journal, ’were reached and convinced, and received the Spirit of God; and are come to be a pretty people, living and walking soberly in the truth of Christ.’[[378]] Such facts should be remembered in our estimate. Fox’s inner light does not profess to supersede, nor does it designedly contradict, the external light of Revelation.
But hand me his Journal a moment. Here is a curious passage. It shows what a narrow escape Fox had of being resolved into an English Jacob Behmen.
He says, ‘Now (he was about four-and-twenty at the time) was I come up in spirit, through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness and innocency and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus; so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to me; and it was showed me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord. But I was immediately taken up in spirit to see into another or more stedfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to Him in the power and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell; in which the admirable works of the creation, and the virtues thereof may be known, through the openings of that divine word of wisdom and power by which they were made. Great things did the Lord lead me into, and wonderful depths were opened unto me, beyond what can by words be declared; but as people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being.‘[[379]]
Here he has arrived on life’s road where two ways meet;—had he taken the wrong alternative, and wandered down that shadowy and mysterious theosophic avenue, ignorant that it was no thoroughfare, what a different history! Imagine the intrepid, heart-searching preacher—the redoubted ‘man in leather breeches’—transformed into the physician, haply peruked and habited in black, dispensing inspired prescriptions, and writing forgotten treatises on Qualities and Signatures, Sympathies and Antipathies. What a waste of that indomitable energy!
Willoughby. How destructive to human life might his very benevolence have proved.