No one has given us a clearer statement of George Fox's mission and of the creation of the new "Society" than has the writer of the "Epistle to the Reader" in Fox's strange book The Great Mystery of the Great Whore (1659). This "Epistle to the Reader" was {338} written by Edward Burrough and was printed, also under the same title, in Burrough's Works in 1672.[1] In this striking document the writer gives his account of the existing Church, and over against this dark background he sets God's new Reformation that is just beginning, of which he feels himself to be the divinely sent herald and prophet. "As our minds became turned, and our hearts inclined to the Light which shined in every one of us," he writes, "we came to know the perfect estate of the Church; her estate before the apostles' days, and in the apostles' days and since the days of the apostles. And her present estate we found to be as a woman who had once been clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, who brought forth Him that was to rule the nations; but she [the Church] was fled into the wilderness, and there sitting desolate, in her place that was prepared of God for such a season, in the very end of which season, when the time of her sojourning was towards a full end, then we [Friends] were brought forth."[2]
In the Light which broke in upon them, he says, they saw that "the world was in darkness" and that "anti-Christ was set up in the temple of God, ruling over all, having brought nations under his power, and having set up his government over all for many ages; even since the days of the apostles and true churches hath he reigned.~.~.~. As for the ministry, first, looking upon it with a single eye in the Light of the Spirit of God which had anointed us, we beheld it clearly not to be of Christ, nor sent of Him, nor having the commission, power, and authority of Christ, as His ministry had in the days of true churches; but in all things, as in call, practice, maintenance, {339} and in everything else, in fruits and effects we found it to disagree, and to be wholly contrary to the true ministry of Christ in the days of the apostles."[3] His charge against the ministers of his day is one now very familiar to us: "You preach to people what you have studied out of books and old authors, and what you have noted down you preach by an hour-glass and not as the Spirit of God gives you utterance. You preach other men's words which you have collected."[4] The "call" to ministry, he urges, is based upon learning acquired in schools, colleges, and universities, and is not of the Spirit, and ministers' lives are obvious signs that they are not in the true "apostolic succession."[5] "As for all churches (so called)," he continues, "we beheld you all in the apostasy and degeneration from the true Church, not being gathered by the Spirit of the Lord, nor anointed thereby as the true members of Christ ever were, but to be in forms of righteousness without power, and imitations without life. All the practices of religion we beheld to be without power and life.~.~.~. We beheld all professions [of religion] to be but as coverings of fig-leaves, while the [inner] nature stood uncondemned and not crucified."[6]
He insists that no true and radical reformation of the Church has taken place, that the churches of his day still bear the marks of apostasy as did the churches before the Reformation occurred: "Do not professors and sects of people have the form without the power of godliness? Are not all people still covetous and earthly-minded, and given to the world, and proud and vain, even such as profess religion? Are not professors as covetous and proud as such as do not profess? Are they not given to the world, and doth it not show that they are not changed nor translated? And is it not manifest that they have taken up the form of the apostles' and Christ's words and practices, and are without the {340} life, and not guided by the Spirit of Christ and the apostles in their praying and preaching?"[7]
Here, with an air of prophet-like boldness and infallibility, we have once again an announcement of the inadequacy of the Reformation, the formal and external character of prevailing types of religion, and the unapostolic nature of the existing churches. The language describing the visible church is throughout the language of a "Seeker." "We ceased," he says in words that exactly describe the "Seeker," "from the teachings of all men, and their words and their worships, and their temples, and all their baptisms and churches, and we ceased from our own words and professions and practices in religion.~.~.~. We met together often, and waited upon the Lord in pure silence from our own words, and harkened to the voice of the Lord and felt His Word in our hearts."[8]
The striking difference between him and the contemporary "Seeker" lies in the fact that he profoundly believed, that the time of "apostasy" was now at an end, that a new "commission" had come, that a real Reformation was being set into operation, and that the apostolic Church—the Church of Christ, the Church of the Spirit—had appeared as though let down from heaven. He relates how the "Lord raised us [Friends] up and opened our mouths in this His Spirit," and how "the Light of Christ revealed and made known to us all things that pertain to salvation, redemption, and eternal life, needful for man to know," and how through the outpouring and anointing of the Spirit "the true Church," "the true worship," "the true ministry" have come again to the world. He makes such exalted claims as these: we received the pouring out of the spirit upon us; the gift of God's eternal Spirit was bestowed upon us as in the days of old; the deep things of God were revealed to us; the Lord Almighty brought us out of captivity and bondage and put an end to sin and death; {341} the babe of glory was born in us; we entered into ever-lasting union, fellowship, and covenant with the Lord, and we were raised from death to Life. And, finally, he announces the new "commission" in positive words of glowing faith: "Then having armed us with power, strength, and wisdom and dominion, according to His mind, and having taught us in all things, and having chosen us unto His work, God put His sword into our and and gave us a perfect commission to go forth in His name and authority, giving us the Word from His mouth what to cut down and what to preserve, and giving us the everlasting gospel to preach."[9]
In the absolute certainty of his divine "commission," he challenges the Churches which are defending their authority "with jails and prisons and whips and stocks and inquisitions—all Cain's weapons"—to a "trial" of faith and spirit and power, like that on Mount Carmel in the days of Elijah, "whether it be they or we that are of the true faith and true worship of God that the apostles were in."[10]
There can be no doubt, I think, that the writer of this "Epistle to the Reader" in The Great Mystery, has come out of the "Seeker" movement, or that he has "come out" of it only because he believes that he with others have found what they sought, and are the seed and nucleus of the true, restored, apostolic Church of God. They refuse absolutely to be called a sect; and they assume in all their early writings that they are the restored Church of Christ, though they seldom use that word "Church" because in their thought it was a name associated with the "apostasy," and they preferred to call themselves "the Seed," or "the Children of the Light." These were, as I have sufficiently shown, names already in use.
It is an interesting fact that this "Epistle" dates the beginning of the new era as 1652—"it is now {342} about seven years since the Lord raised us up in the North of England and opened our mouths in this His Spirit"[11]—and that it locates the springing forth of "the Seed" in the North of England. It was, we are now well aware, out of the Seeker-groups of the northern counties of England that the new "Society" was actually born, and it grew, like a rolling snowball, as it gathered in the prepared groups of "Seekers," both north and south in England, and a little later in America.[12]
The creation of the Quaker "Society" was not the work of any man; the groups were there before the formative leader appeared on the scene. In fact the very term "Quaker," which was soon fixed upon the new movement as the popular name for it, had already been in use—at least as far back as 1646—for the members of some of these highly emotional communities. As soon as these groups—intense in their expectations—found a leader who was already raised to an impelling conviction of immediate contact with God and of definite illumination by the living Christ, and possessed of an overmastering sense of mission, the effect was extraordinary. The account of what happened is, we may be sure, none too strong: "The gift of God's eternal Spirit was poured upon us as in days of old, our hearts were made glad, our tongues were loosed, and we spake with new tongues as the Lord gave us utterance and as His Spirit led us."[13] Profound psychological experiences occurred; they felt themselves baptized together, fused and formed into one group-spirit, swept into trembling as by a mighty rushing wind, and carried beyond their common ordinary range of thought and power and utterance. Their group-experiences of a common divine Spirit coming upon their lives from beyond themselves, their discovery that God was in their midst, that gifts were conferred upon them, and, above all, Fox's compelling sense of apostolic mission—a conviction which was, as it always is, contagious—were {343} grounds enough to change these Seeker-groups into the seed and nucleus of a Body possessed of the faith that the long-expected Church of the Spirit had at last come. They rose to the group-consciousness that they were the beginners, in modern times, of a Church of the spiritual order, and a community-loyalty was born which gave the movement great conquering power and an amazing capacity for endurance and suffering.
In Fox we have a person of extraordinary psychical experiences and of dynamic leadership, and in him the "prophetical" and "enthusiast" traits of the movement are strikingly in evidence. He reveals in a variety of ways his connections with the great body of spiritual ideas that had been accumulating for more than a century before his time, but for the most part these influences worked upon him in sub-conscious ways as an atmosphere and climate of his spirit, rather than as a clearly conceived body of truth which he got by reading authors and which he apprehended through clear intellectual processes. He can be rightly appreciated only as he is seen to be a potent member of an organic group-life which formed him as much as he formed it.