This was the end of that controversy, which was observed to have this issue: that what those dialogues were written to prevent was by the dialogues, and their unfair, unmanly, unchristian carriage, in endeavouring to defend them, hastened and brought to pass; for not a few of the Baptists’ members upon this occasion left their meetings and society, and came over to the Quakers’ meetings and were joined in fellowship with them; thanks be to God.
The controversy which had been raised by those cavilling Baptists had not been long ended before another was raised by an Episcopal priest in Lincolnshire, who fearing, as it seemed, to lose some of his hearers to the Quakers, wrote a book which he miscalled, “A Friendly Conference between a Minister and a Parishioner of his inclining to Quakerism,” in which he misstated and greatly perverted the Quakers’ principles, that he might thereby beget in his parishioners an aversion to them; and that he might abuse us the more securely, he concealed himself, sending forth his book without a name.
This book coming to my hand, became my concern (after I had read it, and considered the evil management and worse design thereof) to answer it; which I did in a treatise called “Truth Prevailing, and Detecting Error,” published in the year 1676.
My answer I divided, according to the several subjects handled in the conference, into divers distinct chapters, the last of which treated of Tithes.
This being the priests’ Delilah, and that chapter of mine pinching them, it seems, in a tender part, the belly, they laid their heads together, and with what speed they could sent forth a distinct reply to the last chapter, “Of Tithes,” in mine, under the title of “The Right of Tithes Asserted and Proved.” This also came forth without a name, yet pretended to be written by another hand.
Before I had finished my rejoinder to this came forth another called “A Vindication of the Friendly Conference,” said to be written by the author of the “Feigned Conference,” who was not yet willing to trust the world with his name. So much of it as related to the subject I was then upon (Tithes) I took into my rejoinder to the “Right of Tithes,” which I published in the year 1678, with this title: “The Foundation of Tithes Shaken,” &c.
After this it was a pretty while before I heard from either of them again. But at length came forth a reply to my last, supposed to be written by the same hand who had before written “The Right of Tithes Asserted,” &c., but still without a name. This latter book had more of art than argument in it. It was indeed a hash of ill-cooked cram set off with as much flourish as the author was master of, and swelled into bulk by many quotations; but those so wretchedly misgiven, misapplied, or perverted, that to a judicious and impartial reader I durst oppose my “Foundation of Tithes Shaken” to the utmost force that book has in it. Yet it coming forth at a time when I was pretty well at leisure, I intended a full refutation thereof, and in order thereunto had written between forty and fifty sheets, when other business, more urgent, intervening, took me off, and detained me from it so long that it was then judged out of season, and so it was laid aside.
Hitherto the war I had been engaged in was in a sort foreign, with people of other religious persuasions, such as were open and avowed enemies; but now another sort of war arose, an intestine war, raised by some among ourselves—such as had once been of us, and yet retained the same profession, and would have been thought to be of us still; but having through ill-grounded jealousies let in discontents, and thereupon fallen into jangling, chiefly about church discipline, they at length broke forth into an open schism, headed by two Northern men of name and note, John Wilkinson and John Story; the latter of whom, as being the most active and popular man, having gained a considerable interest in the West, carried the controversy with him thither, and there spreading it, drew many, too many, to abet him therein.
Among those, William Rogers, a merchant of Bristol, was not the least, nor least accounted of by himself and some others. He was a bold and active man, moderately learned, but immoderately conceited of his own parts and abilities, which made him forward to engage, as thinking none would dare to take up the gauntlet he should cast down. This high opinion of himself made him rather a troublesome than formidable enemy.
That I may here step over the various steps by which he advanced to open hostility, as what I was not actually or personally engaged in: He in a while arrived to that height of folly and wickedness that he wrote and published a large book, in five parts, to which he maliciously gave for a title, “The Christian Quaker distinguished from the Apostate and Innovator,” thereby arrogating to himself and those who were of his party the topping style of Christian Quaker, and no less impiously than uncharitably branding and rejecting all others, even the main body of Friends, for apostates and innovators.