ously influenced by our desires and fears, endeavour to guard against it by precautions; amongst which, in the study of a particular form of religion, to give a fair hearing to its antagonists is one of the most obvious. In the newsprints of the Commonwealth, such as the Weekly Post, and a low comic periodical called Mercurius Fumigosus, or the Smoking Nocturnall, quakerism is described as a compound of pantheism and licentiousness. Tracts and pamphlets of the period which have escaped the dust-bin they merited, catchpennies printed to suit the taste of a coarse and credulous age, full of absurd fictions, disgusting orgies, and Satanic apparitions, remain to testify to the notoriety of the sect, and the popular demand for information about it. If the sound morality of the Quakers were not fully established by direct evidence, these scurrilous attacks would be worthless as evidence to the contrary. Possibly during the intense excitement attending its first promulgation, when as yet the need for discrimination and discipline among the converts was not fully realised, unworthy characters may have crept into the Quaker Church, whose misconduct gave some occasion to the scandalous reports alluded to in the Fanatick History, a publication of the Restoration, which, like Butler's Hudibras, manifests the re-action against the extremes of Puritanism. However this be, the high morality of the Friends of truth is unimpeachable, and can afford to ignore calumnious tales. Even from some of these publications which relied for their sale upon the popular dislike of the sect, involuntary evidence in the Quakers' favour can be extracted. The Yea and Nay Almanack, a stupid and ribald jest-book, which afforded entertainment L' to pot-house frequenters in Charles the Second's reign, insinuates that many tradesmen joined the Quakers because their practice of sticking to one price in a bargain was found a sure bait to catch fools, and attributes the increase of their numbers to the desire of the poor to share in the benevolence of the wealthier members of the society. With thanks for this unintended testimony to the conspicuous honesty and liberality of the early Friends, we gladly turn away from the inspection of such nauseous literature. Ten years after that outburst in Nottingham church, hardly any one in England can have been altogether ignorant of the existence of George Fox and his followers; and an immense number must have heard their voices in the churches and streets; have seen them hustled by mobs and haled to prison by constables. But, as always happens, contemporaries were unable to estimate aright the comparative importance of the events of the time, and, with the exception of religious controversialists, nobody thought it worth his while to inform himself accurately about this sect everywhere spoken against, and to record his observations for the benefit of posterity. Passing allusions here and there illustrate the merely superficial knowledge of them which was possessed by intelligent men of that time. Dr. Thomas Fuller, having finished that book of his Church history which recounts the persecutions of the reign of bloody Mary, laying aside his pen to bethink himself of some topic to dilate upon in its dedication to Baron Brooke, remembers the ignorant and clownish fanatics who, in his own generation, were notorious for the steadfastness with which they had endured sufferings for conscience sake: but the tales he has heard of William Sympson and others, and of Quakers refusing customary tokens of respect to nobles and magistrates, call forth, instead of pity and admiration, a hope of their speedy suppression. That staunch loyalist and pious churchman, John Evelyn, visiting through curiosity some of these poor wretches confined in Ipswich gaol, can see in them only fanatics of dangerous principles, a melancholy proud sort of people and exceedingly ignorant. His friend Pepys, not a bad sort of man as the world goes, but fond of money, and the reverse of puritanical in his moral code, shows a much kindlier spirit. He jots down in his diary on August 7, 1664, "I saw several poor creatures carried by, by constables, for being at conventicles. They go like lambs without any resistance. I would to God they would either conform, or be more wise, and not be catched!" Two years later his relative, Thomas Pepys, "did come to me to consult about the business of being a justice of the peace, which he is much against, and among other reasons, tells me that he is not free to exercise punishment according to the Act against Quakers and other people for religion." The attempt to coerce consciences then, as always, produced a natural reaction in favour of the persecuted. Bishop Burnet in his History of his own time, describes the extraordinary firmness of the Quakers when the rigorous execution of the Act drove all other dissenters into concealment. "The behaviour of the Quakers was more particular, and had in it something that looked bold. They met at the same place, and the same hour as before. And when they were seized none of them would go out of the way: they went altogether 1 Diary, Vol. I., page 315. to prison: they stayed there till they were dismissed, for they would not pay their fines set on them, nor so much as the jail fees. And as soon as they were let out, they went to their meeting houses again; and when they found these were shut up by order, they held their meetings in the streets before the doors of these houses. They said they would not disown or be ashamed of their meeting together to worship God, but in imitation of Daniel, they would do it the more publicly, because they were forbidden the doing it."1 Burnet perhaps had not heard that in Bristol and Reading, when the fathers and mothers were all in prison, the children, whose youth protected them from arrest, stood in their parents' places, holding their meetings in the streets, despite of jeers and cuffs from mobs and magistrates. Burnet acknowledges that the perverseness, as he calls it, of the Quakers outwearied the government. One misconception about the Quakers was swallowed greedily. Ultra-Protestants as they were, to whom Lutheranism and Calvinism seemed but a half-way stage from Rome, they were pertinaciously described as Papists in disguise. Prynne discovered this in 1654, and rushed to the press with "The Quakers Unmasked, and clearly detected to be but the Spawn of Romish Frogs, Jesuites, and Franciscan Freers; sent from Rome to seduce the intoxicated, Giddy-pated English Nation." On the mere hearsay evidence of a Bristol ironmonger he asserts that two Franciscan friars had been preaching in London under the disguise of Quakers, and that the same or other two shortly after appeared in Bristol. Prynne firmly believed that the chief speakers and rulers among 1 History, Vol. I., page 471. all the dissenting congregations, and particularly among the Quakers, were Romish emissaries, which is enough to convict him of credulity, even had he not solemnly recorded it as a matter of fact that the Quakers used enchanted potions, bracelets, and ribbons to intoxicate novices and draw them into their fellowship. Yet this absurd allegation of a popish origin was widely credited down to the end of the century. In "the Quaker and the Papist parallel'd"1 twenty agreements are produced; the denial of the supremacy of Scripture, and assumption of infallibility occupying the forefront. "Foxes and Firebrands" asserts that the Jesuits acknowledged having spent twenty years in hammering out the sect of the Quakers; the design being to ruin the Protestant religion by the promotion of sectarianism, and so to pave the way for the return of popery. William Penn, on account of his intimacy with James II., was strongly suspected of being himself a Papist,2 and even some of the Quakers appear to have doubted him. Prynne, Fuller, Burnet and the others knew nothing at first hand about quakerism. They merely reflected · the popular prejudice, which they strengthened without trying to understand the people whom they calumniated. But on the whole, whatever cause the Quakers had for just complaint, they could not reasonably complain of inattention. A long succession of pious and learned. men, churchmen and dissenters, encountered them in controversy, and for this purpose took considerable pains to master their doctrine. Their verdict was decidedly unfavourable. The epithets showered upon it 1 Anonymous. London, 1674. (In British Museum.). |