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QUAKERISM
Pages
5-10
Little remains of
Quaker tradition in the Heacock family. The spiritual force which caused our
ancestors to leave their homes in the British Isles and seek liberty in the
wilderness, has been lost, and its importance to them and indirectly to us, has
been forgotten.
In the present day,
when the thoughts of men do not center about religion, it is difficult for us
to understand how the ideas of the Quakers were taken with such earnestness.
But at the time of George Fox (1624-1691), God was the central concern of every
man's life. Only a few generations before, Henry VIII had separated the English
Church from the Papacy, thus destroying the traditions of a thousand years, and
opening up the status of the Church, the Scriptures, God and Christ to public
questioning. The King James version of the bible had been placed in the hands
of the masses about the time of Fox' birth, and the Holy Word, retained under
Catholicism for the learned few, was available to everyone, and everyone could
voice a religious opinion and base it on a more or less profound knowledge of
the Bible. Sects multiplied; there were the Puritans, Baptists, Calvinists,
Catholics, and many others including the Seekers and the Ranters. There was
also John Robbins, who outdid all the rest by declaring himself to be God
Almighty in person. Lodowick Muggleton, a tailor, who became a hell-fire
fearing Puritan, and his cousin, John Reeve, were impressed by Robins and
declared themselves to be the witnesses of Revelation XI sent to seal the elect
and the reprobate with the eternal seals of life and death.(*) They
quickly pronounced eternal damnation on any who opposed them, much to the
discomfort of the "damned", who shared the caution of the Greeks who
according to Paul set up an altar to the Unknown God, in order not to risk
inadvertent offence to any deity.
The contradictions
and excesses and the then prevalent devotion to insincere forms and flattering
manners affected the youth, George Fox, deeply. At the early age of 22, he
found his answer, and his experience is described in his Journal, 1.8 as
follows:
"When all my
hopes in them and in all men was gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help
me, nor could tell what to do, then, O then I heard a voice which said 'There
is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition,' and when I heard
it, my heart did leap for joy. . . . My desires after the Lord grew stronger,
and zeal in the pure knowledge of God and of Christ alone, without the help of
any man, book, or writing. For though I had read the scriptures that spake of
Christ and of God, yet I knew him not, but by revelation, as He who hath the
key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to His Son by His Spirit. And
then the Lord did gently lead me along. . ."
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(*)"Beginnings of Quakerism" 1912, by William C. Braithwaite,
p. 20. |
This experience constitutes the Inward Light of the Quakers, and it is all
there is of essence to the Quaker doctrine. In contrast to the Ranters, the
Quakers accepted the guidance of the Scriptures, and did not permit direct
contact with God to lead to the emotional excesses which we still may see in
the meetings of the "Holy Rollers." But the Scriptures, while the
revelation of the Divine and the Word of God, were not the only Revelation, and
were not necessarily superior to the experience of the Inward Light, which
constituted direct contact with God. In this respect, the Quakers differed from
the sects which advocated return to original Christian principles, or to the
literal word of the Bible, as do some fundamentalists even today.
Whether George Fox
and his followers actually were in contact with God is a question which we need
not answer. The sincerity of their conviction, and their ability to help others
attain similar experience cannot be denied. Men do not stay in prison for ten
years rather than renounce a conviction, unless they are sincere.
The peculiarities
of Quaker customs were derived from the bidding of the lnward Light, although
justifcation was also frequently taken from the word of the Bible. Fox writes:
"When the Lord sent me forth in the world, He forbade me to put off my hat
to any, high or low, and I was required to Thee and Thou all men and women,
without any respect to rich or poor, great or small." As these ceremonies
were much more important to the recipients of the honoring gesture than they
would be today, the hardships of the Quakers sprung as much from these
rejections of ordinary forms of conduct than from any radical content of their
religious thoughts as such. Fox also "bore testimony" against
"the world's ways of worship," including "prayings and
singings," and "men's inventions and windy doctrines, by which they
blowed the people about . . . from sect to sect." The Friends rejected the
taking of oaths, because the scriptures forbade it, they refused military
service because they could not reconcile war with the Christian life. They
opposed the levity of feasts, drink, music, and drama, and called men to the
solemnity of a truly religious life. Churches they called "steeple
houses" and they themselves had only "meeting houses." Fox
suggested that an inscription be set up on each "steeple house" as
follows: "God is not worshiped here: this is a temple made with hands;
neither is this a Church, for the Church is in God. This building is not in
God, neither are you in Him who meets here." In his Journal 1.7, he says
". . . though men called the churches holy ground and the temples of God,
He dwelt not in temples made with hands but in men's hearts--His people were His
temple and He dwelt in them."
By the beginning of
the 19th century many of the original principles of the Friends had become
meaningless forms, similar to the thing which Fox had opposed. The original
simplicity of dress had become a rigid and antiquated costume. The use of
"thee" and "thou" had lost its significance as the plural
"you" was no longer an indication of honor or respect. The conflict
in doctrine inherent in the teachings of Fox was also accentuated and eventually
lead to a schism: the followers of Elias Hicks elevated the conception of the
Inward Light to absolute supremacy, while the main body of the Society of
Friends minimized the importance of this fundamental principal of Quakerism and
accepted the doctrines of Original Sin, Inherent Depravity of Man, and
Infallibility of the Word of the Scriptures. Somewhat later, about the time of
the Civil War, the Society of Friends officially discarded the antiquated garb,
and relaxed other outmoded customs.
A few quotations
from recent writings will illustrate the present status of the Quaker ideas:
"This is their fundamental idea, that every man has --and in fact must
have--direct contact with God. Every act of righteousness, every advance in the
truth, every hunger of the heart, every pursuit of an ideal proves it, but no
less does every consciousness of sin, every sense of shortcoming, every act of
self condemnation prove it. The ability to appreciate the right and to know the
wrong, the power to discriminate light from darkness--in short, the possibility
of being anything more than a creature of sense, living in and for the moment,
is due to the face that man is more than an isolated individual.
Dissatisfaction with self no less than consumate joy in the Divine presence
testifies to the truth that the tides of the Infinite Life beat up into the
inlets of finite consciousness..."(*)
This quotation puts
Quakerism into the terminology of modern philosophy and psychology, and while
it would not be understood by a contemporary of George Fox, it places his ideas
in a modern setting, where their continuing validity is evident.
"Quakerism is
the gospel of brotherly love and is based on the teachings of Jesus. According
to it, every child is created in the image of God with a spark of divinity in
its soul and is innocent and guiltless until it reaches the age of
accountability. It then has freedom of will to follow or reject this 'Inward
Light'."**
Compare the above
with the poem written by Charles Clement Heacock at the birth of his daughter
Phyllis Truth in 1899:
"A spark came down from God above
Descending on its wings of love:
An ember mite of mother earth
Was brought in glowing to our hearth.
Earth gives the home--God comes to dwell; Which shall be ruler? Time will tell."
For a staunch Quaker there has never been a question as to who is his ruler.
Neither the flattery of the Lord Protector of England before whom kings
trembled, nor the entreaties of Admiral Penn, nor the threats of torture, death
or banishment caused an early Quaker to deviate in the slightest from his
obedience to the commands of the Inward Light. There have been those for whom
the Quaker life was too difficult, and some of them have remained members of
the meetings, others at various periods in the history of the Society have been
disowned. We may tend to scorn those who refused to cooperate in the American
Revolution, or who today refuse to fight this country's enemies. But in the
light of the Quaker doctrine, we might rather admire their courage, and realize
the value in time of war, of the testimony of peace. With regard to their
closing their eyes to realities or practical affairs: "No one can honestly
maintain that the technique of political action that produced the destruction
of the war of 1914-18 and the equal destruction of the victory-peace of 1918
and all that has followed is really practical. . ." These words of a
certain Quaker, Carl Heath, quoted in "Beyond Dilemmas" have more
meaning now than they did when written, before the second world war and the
"peace" which has followed.
PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS
The first ten or
fifteen years of Quakerism coincide with the Commonwealth period in England
(1649-1660). Under Cromwell persecution was sporadic, and was due to local
actions and prejudices, rather than to any concerted policy of the government.
With the restoration of the Stuarts under King Charles Il in 1660, the
situation changed. The established church asserted itself, and Parliament with
the background of the Puritan revolution, was suspicious of new ideas. The
Quaker Act of 1662, provided penalties for refusal to take an oath of
allegiance, and for Quakers who left their homes to assemble in groups of five
or more for unauthorized worship. The Conventicle Acts of 1662 and 1670 were
still more harsh. Persecutions increased, and the records of the times are full
of the names of our ancestors who suffered. Detailed records of these
persecutions are found in a large two volume book by Joseph Besse, "A
Collection of the Sufferings of the People Called Quakers," published in
London in 1753.
While many of the
persecutions took the form of seizure of goods, the Quakers refused to pay
fines, considering payment an admission of wrongdoing, and preferred to lie in
jails for years rather than pay them. What jail meant in those days is
illustrated from contemporary records:
Letter of Edward
Burrough written in 1662. (Besse 1.389) "Here is now near 250 of us
prisoners in Newgate, Bridewell, Southwark, and New Prison. In Newgate we are
extremely thronged, that if the mercy of the Lord had not preserved us we could
not have endured: there is near a hundred in one room on the common side
amongst felons, and their sufferings are great, but the Lord supports."
George Fox, 1664
(Cambridge Journal 11.83)
"So I was put
up in a smoky tower, where the smoke of the other rooms came up and stood as a
dew upon the walls, where it rained upon my bed: . . . and so starved with cold
and rain that my body was almost numbed, and my body swelled with the cold. And
many times, when I went to stop out the rain off me in the cold winter season,
my shift would be as wet as muck with rain that came in upon me: and as fast as
I stopped it the wind being high and fierce would blow it out again: and in
this manner did I lie all that long cold winter till the next Assizes."
Besse (11.56)
quotes an account of prison conditions in Evesham, Worcestershire, in 1655
which contains these passages:
"And as for
the Prison, or Hole where we are kept, it is not twelve Foot square, and one
Goal-hole belonging to it four Inches wide, wherein we take in our Food and
Straw to lie upon, and we are forced to burn Candle every Day when we have it,
by reason the Prison is so dark and so close, and so many in so little Room,
and so little Air,...And some others have not been well by reason of the
exceeding Closeness of the Prison, whereby sometimes the Stink of the Prison
hath been so strong in the Streets, that the People could not endure to stand
by it. Sometimes when the Days were hot, the Breath of some Prisoners was
almost stopped, and they lay for several Days like Men asleep and when the Days
are the coldest, we have not Room nor Place either to make Fire, or to walk to
keep our Bodies warm:..."
Besse
"Sufferings" and other early publications contain accounts of the
deportation of Quaker prisoners to Barbados and elsewhere during this period.
In 1665 thirty-seven men and eighteen women were thrown into the hold of the
"Black Eagle," where they remained for seven weeks before the ship
left London. In the meantime the plague reached the city and half of them died
and were buried in the Gravesend marshes.
The attitude of the
early Quakers on trial is illustrated by the following account from the trial
of Edward Bourne in Worcestershire in 1662 (Besse II. 66).
E. Bourne: I desire
to ask one Question in the Fear of the Lord.
Judge: That you may
in the Fear of the Lord.
E. Bourne: Suppose
that Christ and his Apostles were here at this Time, and they should meet
together, and would not this law lay hold on them?
Judge: Yes, that it
would: But then recollecting himself, he said, I will not answer your Question:
you are no Apostle.
Judge: This is the
Sentence and Judgment of the Court concerning you. You are fined 5 l. a-piece,
and if you do not pay the Fines, or if there be no Distress to be made in a
Week's Time you are to be committed to the House of Correction, and to be put
to hard Labour for three Months.
E. Bourne: The Lord
judge between you and us.
The trial of
William Penn in 1670 was an important event in English history. Confronted by a
hostile judge, the jury found Penn "guilty of speaking in Gracious
Street," a fasicious verdict to which no penalty could be attached. The
judge imprisoned the jury and demanded a guilty verdict under the indictment,
whereupon the jury returned with a finding of "Not Guilty." After
three months imprisonment the jury was released, and a year later it was ruled
that no jury could be punished for its verdict, a fundamental principle of a
free judicial system. Penn, however, was fined and imprisoned for wearing his
hat in court.
Richard Baxter, a
non-Quaker, records the effect of the persecution (Reliquiae Baxterianae, pt.
ii. 435-437):
. . . here the
fanatics called Quakers did greatly relieve the sober people for a time: for
they were so resolute, and gloried in their constancy and sufferings, that they
assembled openly, at the Bull and Mouth near Aldersgate, and were dragged away
daily to the Common Goal, and yet desisted not, but the rest came the next day
nevertheless, so that the Goal at Newgate was filled with them. Abundance of
them died in prison, and yet they continued their assemblies still! And the
poor deluded souls would sometimes meet only to sit in silence, when, as they
said, the Spirit did not speak, and it was a great question whether this
silence was a religious exercise not allowed by the Liturgy . . . Yea, many
turned Quakers, because the Quakers kept their meetings openly and went to
prison for it cheerfully."
Whether or not the
Quakers were poor deluded souls, there is no doubt that their steadfastness and
their scorn of dissimulation accomplished a great service for the cause of
liberty. The slightest compromise with their conscience, which was the voice of
God, was intolerable. Before God and before the Quaker conscience all men were
free and equal, and it has been said that this principle later embodied in the
Declaration of Independence is a heritage which the English speaking world has
received from George Fox.(*)
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(*)Quaker scruples objected to the use of the names of days and months,
which derive |