CHAP. Vances towards the liberty of prophesying, and the XVI. liberty of conscience.

Penn, i.

ed. 1825.

The moment was arrived when the plebeian mind should make its boldest effort to escape from hereditary prejudices; when the freedom of Bacon, the enthusiasm of Wickliffe, and the politics of Wat Tyler, were to gain the highest unity in a sect; when a popular, and, therefore, in that age, a religious party, building upon a divine principle, should demand freedom of mind, purity of morals, and universal enfranchisement.

The sect had its birth in a period of intense public activity-when the heart of England was swelling with passions, and the public mind turbulent with factious leaders; when zeal for reform was invading the church, subverting the throne, and repealing the privileges of feudalism; when Presbyterians in every village were quarrelling with Anabaptists and Independents, and all with the Roman Catholics and the English church.

The sect could arise only among the common people, who had every thing to gain by its success, and the least to hazard by its failure. The privileged classes had no motive to develop a principle before which their privileges would crumble. "Poor mechanics," 346, 33, said William Penn, "are wont to be God's great ambassadors to mankind." "He hath raised up a few despicable and illiterate men," said the accomplished 32 Barclay, "to dispense the more full glad tidings reserved for our age." It was the comfort of the Quakers, that they received the truth from a simple sort of people, unmixed with the learning of schools; and almost for the first time in the history of the world, a plebeian sect proceeded to the complete enfranchisement of mind, teaching the English yeomanry the same method

Barclay,

302.

Penn, ii.

467.

of free inquiry which Socrates had explained to the CHAP. young men of Athens.

XVI.

The simplicity of truth was restored by humble instruments, and its first messenger was of low degree. George Fox, the son of "righteous Christopher," a Leicestershire weaver, by his mother descended from the stock of the martyrs, distinguished even in boyhood by frank inflexibility and deep religious feeling, became in early life an apprentice to a Nottingham shoemaker, who was also a landholder, and, like David, and Tamerlane, and Sixtus V., was set by his employer to watch sheep. The occupation was grateful to his mind, for its freedom, innocency, and solitude; and the years of earliest youth passed away in prayer and reading the Bible, frequent fasts, and the reveries of contemplative 1644. devotion. His boyish spirit yearned after excellence; and he was haunted by a vague desire of an unknown, illimitable good. In the most stormy period of the English democratic revolution, just as the Independents were beginning to make head successfully against the Presbyterians, when the impending ruin of royalty and the hierarchy made republicanism the doctrine of a party, and inspiration the faith of fanatics, the mind of Fox, as it revolved the question of human destiny, was agitated even to despair. The melancholy natural to youth heightened his anguish; abandoning his flocks and his shoemaker's bench, he nourished his inexplicable grief by retired meditations, and often walking solitary in the chase, sought in the gloom of the forest Fox, 55. for a vision of God.

He questioned his life; but his blameless life was ignorant of remorse. He went to many "priests" for comfort, but found no comfort from them. His misery urged him to visit London; and there the religious

XVI.

CHAP. feuds convinced him that the great professors were dark. He returned to the country, where some advised him to marry, others to join Cromwell's army; but his excited mind continued its conflicts; and, as other young men have done from love, his restless spirit drove him into the fields, where he walked many nights long by himself in misery too great to be declared. Yet at times a ray of heavenly joy beamed upon his soul, and he reposed, as it were, serenely on Abraham's bosom.

1646.

One

He had been bred in the church of England. day, the thought rose in his mind, that a man might be Fox, 58. bred at Oxford or Cambridge, and yet be unable to explain the great problem of existence. Again he reflected that God lives not in temples of brick and stone, Ib. 59. but in the hearts of the living; and from the parish priest and the parish church, he turned to the dissenters. But among them he found the most expeIb. 60. rienced unable to reach his condition.

1647.

Neither could the pursuit of wealth detain his mind from its struggle for fixed truth. His desires were those which wealth could not satisfy. A king's diet, palace, and attendance, had been to him as nothing. Rejecting "the changeable ways of religious" sects, the "brittle notions" and airy theories of philosophy, Fox, 61. he longed for "unchangeable truth," a firm foundation of morals in the soul. His inquiring mind was gently led along to principles of endless and eternal love; light dawned within him; and though the world was rocked by tempests of opinion, his secret and as yet Ib. 62. unconscious belief was firmly stayed by the anchor of hope.

The strong mind of George Fox had already risen above the prejudices of sects. The greatest danger

XVI.

remained. Liberty may be pushed to dissoluteness, and CHAP. freedom is the fork in the road where the by-way leads to infidelity. One morning, as Fox sat silently by the 1648. fire, a cloud came over his mind; a baser instinct seemed to say, "All things come by nature;" and the elements and the stars oppressed his imagination with a vision of pantheism. But as he continued musing, a true voice arose within him, and said, "There is a living God." At once the clouds of skepticism rolled away; mind triumphed over matter, and the depths of conscience were cheered and irradiated by light from Fox, 68. heaven. His soul enjoyed the sweetness of repose, and he came up in spirit from the agony of doubt into the paradise of contemplation.

Having listened to the revelation which had been made to his soul, he thirsted for a reform in every branch of learning. The physician should quit the strife of words, and solve the appearances of nature by an intimate study of the higher laws of being. The priests, rejecting authority and giving up the trade in knowledge, should seek oracles of truth in the purity Fox, 69, of conscience. The lawyers, abandoning their chicanery, should tell their clients plainly, that he who wrongs his neighbor does a wrong to himself. The heavenly-minded man was become a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making.

Thus did the mind of George Fox arrive at the conclusion, that truth is to be sought by listening to the voice of God in the soul. Not the learning of the universities, not the Roman see, not the English church, not dissenters, not the whole outward world, can lead to a fixed rule of morality. The law in the heart must be received without prejudice, cherished without mixture, and obeyed without fear.

70.

Ibid.

Preface,

xxix.

CHAP.

1649.

James

i.

Such was the spontaneous wisdom by which he was

XVI. guided. It was the clear light of reason, dawning as 1648, through a cloud. Confident that his name was written in the Lamb's book of life, he was borne, by an irrepressible impulse, to go forth into the briery and brambly world, and publish the glorious principles which had rescued him from despair and infidelity, and given him a clear perception of the immutable distinctions between right and wrong. At the very crisis when the house of commons was abolishing monarchy and the peerage, about two years and a half from the day when Cromwell went on his knees to kiss the Life of hand of the young boy who was duke of York, the II. 1. 29. Lord, who sent George Fox into the world, forbade him to put off his hat to any, high or low; and he was required to thee and thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, to great or small. The sound of the church bell in Nottingham, the home of his boyhood, struck to his heart; like Milton and Roger Williams, his soul abhorred the hireling ministry of diviners for money; and on the morning of a firstday, he was moved to go to the great steeple-house and cry against the idol. "When I came there," says Fox, "the people looked like fallow ground, and the priest, like a great lump of earth, stood in the pulpit above. He took for his text these words of Peter'We have also a more sure word of prophecy;' and told the people, this was the Scriptures. Now, the Lord's power was so mighty upon me, and so strong in me, that I could not hold; but was made to cry out, 'Oh, no! it is not the Scriptures, it is the Spirit.””

Fox, 74.

Fox, 76.

The principle contained a moral revolution. If it flattered self-love and fed enthusiasm, it also established absolute freedom of mind, trod every idolatry