GEORGE FOX.
[This follows Holmes’s engraving of the portrait of Fox, by Honthorst, in 1654, when Fox was in his thirtieth year. This Dutch painter, if Gerard Honthorst, was born in Utrecht in 1592, was at one time in England, and died in 1660; if his brother William, he died in 1683, aged 73. The original canvas was recently offered for sale in England. A view of Swarthmore Hall, where Fox lived, is in Gay’s Popular History of the United States, ii. 173.—Ed.]
The first whom he consulted repeated to his servants what George had said, until the young man was distressed to find that his troubles were the subjects of jests with the milk-maids. Another told him to sing psalms and smoke a pipe. A third flew into a violent passion because, as the talk turned upon the birth of Christ, Fox inadvertently placed his foot upon the flower-bed. A fourth bled and physicked him. Such consolations, presented while he was earnestly seeking to comprehend the greatest question of life, disgusted him. He then turned for comfort to the Dissenters; but they, as he tells us, were unable to fathom his condition. From this time he avoided professors and teachers of all kinds. He read the Scriptures diligently, and strove, by the use of the faculties which God had given him, to understand their true meaning. He was not a man of learning, and was obliged to settle all questions as they arose by such reasonings as he could bring to bear upon them. The anguish which he experienced was terrible, and at times he was tempted to despair; but his strong mind held him to the truth, and his wonderfully clear perception of right and wrong led him step by step towards the goal of his desires. By degrees the ideas which had been taught him in childhood were put aside. It became evident to him that it was not necessary for a man to be bred at Oxford or Cambridge to become a minister of Christ; and he felt as never before the meaning of the words, “God dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” To one of his understanding such convictions seemed as revelations from Heaven. That all men are capable of receiving the same Light to guide them, and that all who would follow this Light would be guided to the same end, became his belief; and to preach this faith constituted his mission. He also felt that they who were guided by this Inner Light should be known by the simplicity of their speech and manners; that as the temples of the Lord were the hearts of his people, the ceremonies of the prevailing modes of worship were empty forms; that tithes for the support of a ministry, and taxes for the promotion of war and like measures, should not be paid by persons who could not approve of the purposes for which they were collected; and that the taking of an oath, even to add weight to testimony, was contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures.
These, in brief, were the views of the people called Quakers. That a movement so purely spiritual in its aims should have exercised a political influence seems remarkable. But the principles upon which the movement was founded claimed for the mind a perfect freedom; they counted as nought the privileges of rank, and demanded an entire separation of Church and State.
The first followers of George Fox were from the neighborhood of his own home; but his views soon spread among the yeomanry of the adjoining counties. His theology may have been crude, his grammar faulty, and his appearance ludicrous; yet there was a personal magnetism about the man which drew to him disciples from all classes.
Nothing could check the energy with which he labored, or silence the voice which is yet spoken of as that of a prophet. In his enthusiasm the people seemed to him like “fallow ground,” and the priests but “lumps of clay,” unable to furnish the seed for a harvest. Jeered at and beaten by cruel mobs, reviled as a fanatic and denounced as an impostor, he travelled from place to place, sometimes to be driven forth to sleep under haystacks, and at other times to be imprisoned as a disturber of the peace. But through all trials his faith remained unshaken, and he denounced what he believed to be the falsehoods of the times, until, as he says, the priests fled when they heard that “the man in leathern breeches is come.”
In 1654, but ten years after George Fox had begun to preach, his followers were to be found in most parts of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Notwithstanding the persecutions with which an avowal of Quakerism was met, they adhered to their convictions with a steadfastness equal to that of their leader. Imprisonment, starvation, and the lash, as the penalties of their religion, had no fears for them. Their estates were wasted for tithes and taxes which they felt it wrong to pay. Their meetings were dispersed by armed men, and all laws that could be so construed were interpreted against them. All such persecution, however, was of no avail. “They were a people who could not be won with either gifts, honors, offices, or place.” Nor is it surprising that their desire to share equally such sufferings in the cause of truth should have touched the heart of one educated in the severe school of the Commonwealth. When Fox lay in Lanceston jail, one of his people called upon Cromwell and asked to be imprisoned in his stead. “Which of you,” said Cromwell, turning to his Council, “would do so much for me if I were in the same condition?”
Satisfied in their hearts with the strength which their faith gave them, the Quakers could not rest until they had carried the glad tidings to others. In 1655, Fox tells us, “many went beyond the sea, where truth also sprung up, and in 1656 it broke forth in America and many other places.”
It has ever been one of the cardinal principles of the followers of Fox to obey the laws under which they live, when doing so does not interfere with their consciences. When this last is the case, their convictions impel them to treat the oppressive measures as nullities, not even so far recognizing the existence of such statutes as to cover their violation of them with a shadow of secrecy. It was against what Fox considered ecclesiastical tyranny that the weight of his ministry was directed. Those who lived under church government he believed to be in as utter spiritual darkness as it is the custom of Christendom to regard the other three-fourths of mankind; and it was with a feeling akin to that which will to-day prompt a missionary to carry the Bible to the wildest tribes of Africa, that the Quakers of 1656 came to the Puritan commonwealths of America.
The record of the first landing of the Quakers in this country belongs to another chapter,[775] and the historians of New England must tell the sad story, which began in 1656, of the intrusive daring for conviction’s sake which characterized the conduct of these humble preachers. In June, 1657, six of a party of eight Quakers who had been sent back to England the year previous, re-embarked for America. They were accompanied by five others, and on October 1 five of them landed at New Amsterdam. The rest remained on the vessel, and on the 3d instant arrived at Rhode Island. It was chiefly through the labors of this little band that the doctrines of the Quakers were spread through the British colonies of North America.