1. George Fox (cpv. ∖ the son of a weaver of Drayton in Leicestershire, was the founder of the Quakers. He began to preach in 1648, and in a few years gathered around him a great body of followers and a considerable number of itinerant preachers like himself, who zealously promulgated his doctrines. Amongst these Edward Burrough was one of the most remarkable. In 1655 these preachers numbered seventy-three. Fox and his fellow-preachers spoke whenever opportunity offered — sometimes in churches, sometimes in barns, sometimes at market-crosses. There is some evidence to show that the arrangement of this mission, as it would now be called, rested mainly with Fox, and that the expenses of it and of the foreign missions were borne out of a common fund. Margaret Fell, the wife and afterwards the widow of Judge Fell—who subsequently married George Fox—opened her house at Swarthmore Hall, near Ulverston, to these preachers, and probably contributed largely to the common fund from which the expenses were paid. Fox’s teaching was primarily a preaching of repentance; and he and his friends addressed vast congregations much as Wesley and λVhitefield did at a later date. But his teaching had certain marked peculiarities—especially his insistence on the universality and sufficiency of the light of God’s Spirit. He regarded the work in which he was engaged as in no wise the founding of a new sect or society, but, to use his own words, as “the appearance of the Lord’s everlasting truth, and breaking forth again in His eternal power in this our day and age in England.” Such teaching and such views necessarily brought Fox and his friends into direct conflict with all the religious bodies of England, and they were continually engaged in strife with the Presbyterian ministers who then filled the pulpits of English churches, with the Independents, with the Baptists, with the Episcopal Church, and with the wilder sectaries, like the Fifth Monarchy men, the Ranters, the Seekers, and the Muggletonians. This strife was conducted on both sides with a zeal and an acerbity of language not consonant with our present notions of decorum. The movement was accompanied, too, by most of those physical symptoms which usually go with vehement appeals to the conscience and the emotions of a rude multitude. The trembling amongst the listening crowd caused or confirmed the name of Quakers given to the body: men and women sometimes fell down and lay grovelling on the earth and struggling as if for life. But the Quaker preachers seem not to have encouraged these manifestations, but rather to have sought to assuage them by such reasonable means as carrying the affected to bed or administering a cordial or medicine.

Some of the early Quakers indulged in eccentricities and extravagances of no measured kind. Some travelled and preached naked or barefoot or dressed in sackcloth; others imitated the Hebrew prophets in the performance of symbolical acts of denunciation or warning; even the women in some cases distinguished themselves by the impropriety and folly of their conduct. In some cases religious excitement seems to have produced or been attended by insanity, and the aberrations of Naylor and Ibbit can only be attributed to that cause. For, though not altogether free from acts of fanaticism, the Quaker leaders discouraged and disowned the grosser acts of enthusiasm.

The activity and zeal of the early Quakers were not confined to England; they passed into Scotland and Ireland. Fox and others travelled to America and the West Indian Islands; another reached Jerusalem, and testified against the superstition of the monks; Mary Fisher, “a religious maiden,” visited Smyrna, the Morea, and the court of Mohammed IV. at Adrianople; others made their way to Rome; two women suffered imprisonment from the Inquisition in Malta; two men passed into Austria and Hungary; and William Penn, George Fox, and others preached Quakerism in Holland and Germany.

As early as 1652 meetings of the followers of Fox, calling themselves at first the Children of Light, gathered together in various places in England, and were soon established in considerable numbers. The meetings at Bristol were often attended by from three to four thousand people.

2. The second period in the history of Quakerism is marked by the introduction into the body, hitherto unorganized, of an organization and a discipline principally due to the mind and energy of Fox, by a more scholarly and learned air given to the Quaker productions by the writings of William Penn and Robert Barclay, and by the part which the Quakers played in the colonization of New Jersey and of Pennsylvania. It is not wonderful that the introduction of an organization and a discipline met with great opposition amongst a people taught to believe that the inward light of each individual man was the only true guide for his conduct. The project met with some opposition at the time, and at a later period (1683), from persons of considerable reputation in the body. Wilkinson, Rogers, Story, and others raised a party against Fox as regards the management of the affairs of the society, and asserted that the meetings for discipline which had been established were useless, and that every man ought to be guided by the Spirit of God in his own mind, and not to be governed by rules of man. They drew a considerable following away with them, but the greater number adhered to their original leader.

Robert Barclay (q.v.), a Scotsman of family, who had received a polite education, principally in France, joined the Quakers about 1666, and William Penn (q.v.) joined the body about two years later. The Quakers had always been active controversialists, and a great body of tracts and papers was issued by them; but hitherto they had not been of much account in a literary point of view. Now the writings of Barclay, especially his celebrated Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1675), published by him in Latin and English, and the works of William Penn (amongst which his No Cross no Crown was one of the best known) gave to the Quaker literature a more logical and a more scholarly aspect.

One peculiarity of the conduct of the Friends down to the Revolution of 1688, and more or less down to the present time, must not be overlooked. They were essentially non-political. They opposed the most dogged personal and individual resistance to what they thought wrong; but they never attempted by combination or otherwise to exert political influence. “Keep out of the powers of the earth” was Fox’s exhortation5 and, when in 1688 a discussion was introduced into the yearly gathering of the body on the choice of parliament men, Fox strenuously opposed the introduction of politics into the meetings of his followers.

During the whole time between the rise of the Quakers and the passing of the Toleration Act they were the objects of an almost continuous persecution, which they endured with extraordinary constancy and patience. In 1656 Fox computed that there were seldom less than a thousand in prison, and it has been asserted that between 1661 and 1697 13,562 Quakers were imprisoned, 152 were transported, and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. Having come into being after the death of Charles I., the Quakers first endured persecution under the Parliament and then under Cromwell. In 1645 an ordinance of the Parliament had made the directory of the λVestminster divines obligatory; and ordinances of the years 1646 and 1648 were passed for the preventing of blasphemies and heresies, which comprehended under these hard names some doctrines afterwards promulgated by the Quakers, as that the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper are not commanded by the word of God, and that the use of arms for defence, be the cause ever so just, is unlawful. Furthermore these or other ordinances of the Parliament placed the decision of questions as to tithes in the hands of the justices of the peace. The instrument of government under which Cromwell assumed power as the Lord Protector had held out a promise of protection in the exercise of their religion to “such as professed faith in God by Jesus Christ” (art. 37); and the Protector himself, in a speech addressed to Parliament on the 12th September 1654, had declared liberty of conscience to be a natural right; nevertheless the Quakers found that they were still the subjects of bitter persecution. They were sometimes dealt with under the ordinances already referred to, sometimes as Sabbath-breakers because they

travelled to their meetings for worship, sometimes as disturbers of the clergy in their office because they spoke in churches, sometimes as guilty of breaches of the peace because they preached in streets or markets, sometimes for refusing to pay tithes, sometimes for refusing to take off their hats, sometimes for refusing to swear. So matters remained till the Restoration of Charles 11., when the publication from Breda of his declaration for liberty of conscience again raised hopes of ease in the hearts of the Friends. But these hopes were again destined to disappointment. The laws under which the Quakers were persecuted during the revived Stuart period were (1) the common law, (2) the old legislation in ecclesiastical matters which was revived on Charles’s accession, (3) the special legislation of the period, and (4) the ecclesiastical laws as administered by the ecclesiastical courts. In the first class was the general law as to breakers of the peace; in the second class may be mentioned the statute of 6 Hen. VIII. by which imprisonment was appointed as a punishment for non-payment of tithes, the statute of Elizabeth imposing the oath of supremacy, the Act of Uniformity passed in the first year of Elizabeth, the Acts of the 23rd and 29th years of the same queen which imposed fines and penalties for non-attendance of church and the statute of the 35th year of Elizabeth by which an obstinate offender in that matter was made a felon without benefit of clergy, and, lastly, the statute of 3 James I. imposing the oath of allegiance. (3) The special legislation during this period under which the Quakers suffered included (a) a statute 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 1, especially directed against them and punishing their refusal to take an oath, or the taking part in assemblies for worship, with fine, and a second conviction with an obligation to abjure the realm, or transportation to any of the king’s plantations; (δ) the Act of Uniformity (13 & 14 Car. II. c. 4), more stringent than that of Elizabeth; (c) the Five-Mile Act passed in 1665 (17 Car. II. c. 4); and, lastly, the Conventicle Act of 1670 (22 Car. II. c. 1). (4) The ecclesiastical courts, on the return of the Stuarts, were restored to their former vigour, and Quakers were continually proceeded against in them for non-payment of tithes, oblations, and other church claims, and also for non-attendance at the parish churches, and for contempt of the discipline and censures of the church. Many of their body were accordingly excommunicated, and under the writ de excommunicato capiendo confined to prison.

The passing of the Conventicle Act gave fresh vigour to the persecution of Dissenters. But, on 15th March 1671-72, King Charles II. issued his declaration for suspending the penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, and shortly afterwards by pardon under the great seal released above four hundred Quakers from prison, remitted their fines, and released such of their estates as were forfeited by praemunire. The dissatisfaction which this exercise of the royal prerogative created induced the king in the following year to recall his proclamation, and the sufferings of the Quakers revived ∙, and, notwithstanding representations and appeals to King Charles II., the persecution continued throughout his reign. On the accession of James II., the Quakers addressed him with some hope from his known friendship for William Penn, and presented to him a list of the numbers of their members undergoing imprisonment in each county, amounting in all to fourteen hundred and sixty. King James not long afterwards directed a stay of proceedings in all matters pending in the Exchequer against Quakers on the ground of non-attendance on national worship. In 1687 came the king’s celebrated declaration for liberty of conscience, and in the following year the Revolution, which put an end to all persecution of the Quakers, though they remained for many years liable to imprisonment for non-payment of tithes, and though they long laboured together with other Dissenters under various disabilities—the gradual removal of which is part of the general history of England.

The Toleration Act was by no means the only legislation of the reign of William and Mary which brought ease to the Quakers. The legislature early had regard to their refusal to take oaths; and from 1689 to a very recent date numerous enactments have respected the peculiar scruples of the Friends. This special legislation may be conveniently studied in Davis’s Digest of Legislative Enactments relating to Friends (Bristol, 1820).

3. With the cessation of persecution in 1689 the zeal of the Quaker body abated. Foreign missions had no existence except in the occasional travels of some wandering minister. The notion that the whole Christian church would be absorbed in Quakerism, and that the Quakers were in fact the church, passed away; and in its place grew up the conception that they were “a peculiar people” to whom had been given a clearer insight into the truths of God than to the professing Christian world around them, and that this sacred deposit was to be guarded with jealous care. Hence the Quakerism of this period was mainly of a traditional kind: it dwelt with increasing emphasis on the peculiarities of dress and language which tended to shut Quakers off socially from their fellow-men; it rested much upon discipline, which developed and hardened into rigorous forms; and the correction or exclusion of its members was a larger part of the business of the body than the winning of converts either to Christianity or to Quakerism.

Excluded from political life by the constitution of the country, excluding themselves not only from the frivolous pursuits of pleasure but from music and art in general, with no high average of literary education (though they produced some men of eminence in medicine and science, as Dr Fothergill and Dr Dalton), the Quakers occupied themselves largely with trade, the business of their society, and the calls of philanthropy. In the middle and latter part of last century they founded several institutions for the more thorough education of their children, and entered upon many philanthropic labours.

During this period Quakerism was sketched from the outside by two very different men. Voltaire (Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.vv. “Quaker,” “Toleration”) has described the body, which attracted his curiosity, his sympathy, and his sneers, with all his brilliance. Clarkson (Portraiture of Quakerism) has given an elaborate and sympathetic account of the Quakers as he knew them when he travelled amongst them from house to house on his crusade against the slave trade.

4. It cannot be denied that the theology of Quakerism had become somewhat mystic and quietist during the long period we have just considered. About the year 1826 an American Quaker named Hicks (q.v.) openly denied the divinity of Christ, depreciated the value of the Scriptures, and recognized no other Saviour than the inward light. A large body of the American Quakers followed him, and still maintain a separate existence. It was this movement which led to a counter movement in England, known in the Quaker body as the Beacon controversy, from the name of a book published in 1835, advocating views more nearly akin to those known as evangelical than were held by many Quakers. A considerable discussion ensued, and a certain number of the Friends holding these more evangelical doctrines departed from the parent stock, leaving, however, behind them many influential members of the society who strove to give a more evangelical tone to the Quaker theology. Joseph John Gurney, by his various writings (some published before 1835), was the most prominent actor in this movement. This period has also been marked, especially within the last few years, by some revival of aggressive action, and Quakers have taken far more part in the teaching in Sunday schools, in the preaching of the gospel to the poor, and in the establishment of foreign missions than in the period immediately preceding. .In 1847 an association was established to promote Sunday schools in the body; in 1859 a Friends’ foreign mission was established; and the Quakers have now a few regular labourers in Madagascar, India, Syria, and Constantinople.

Other causes have been at work modifying the Quaker body. The repeal of the Test Act, the admission of Quakers to parliament, the establishment of the university of London, and more recently still the opening to Dissenters of Oxford and Cambridge, have all operated on the body. It has almost entirely abandoned its peculiarities of dress and language; the cultivation of music and the other arts is no longer discouraged except by a very few; and literary and scientific tastes have been cultivated all the more because their attention was not preoccupied with the love of field sports or of dancing. In fact a number of men either Quakers or of Quaker origin and proclivities, large in proportion to the small body with which they are connected, occupy positions of influence in English society, and carry with them, not the full body of Quaker doctrine, but some leaven of Quaker habits and thoughts and feelings.

Doctrine.— It is not easy to state with certainty the doctrines of a body which has never adopted any creed, and whose views have undoubtedly undergone from time to time changes more or less definite. But the accepted writings of its members and the statements as to doctrine contained in the Book of Christiani Discipline of the society furnish materials.

The most characteristic doctrine of Quakerism is undoubtedly this—that there is an immediate revelation of the Spirit of God to each individual soul, that this light is universal and comes both to the heathen and the Christian, and thereby the love and grace of God towards mankind are universal. It is almost needless to call attention to the direct antithesis between this doctrine of the Quakers and the various doctrines of election held by the Puritans, so that, if Quakerism be called the climax of Puritanism, it is so only as the rebound is the climax of the wave. From the doctrine of the sufficiency of the inward light proceed several other of the peculiar views of Quakers. They have denied the necessity and abstained from the practice of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper. The one baptism, says Barclay (12th proposition), “is a pure and spiritual thing, to wit, the baptism of the spirit and fire of which the baptism of

John was a figure which was commanded for a time, and not to continue for ever.” “The communion of the body and blood of Christ,” says the same author (13th proposition), “is inward and spiritual, which is the participation of his flesh and blood by which the inward man is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ dwells, of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with his disciples was a figure.”

But not merely do the Quakers dispense with the sacraments; they exist without any priesthood or regular or ordained ministry; they allow the liberty of unlicensed preaching and prayer to every member of their society in their assemblies, and those in whom the body...