HISTORICAL SKETCH.
The Religious Society of Friends, as they call themselves--or Quakers, as they are usually called [1648] --originated in the Puritan commotion which roused all the religious energies of England.
It was founded by George Fox (1624-1690), one of the oddest saints in Christendom, a self-taught and half-inspired man of genius, who was called by a higher power from the shepherd's staff to the evangelism of the baptism by fire and by the Spirit. In early youth he felt inclined to ascetic retirement, like the hermits of old. He was a thorough mystic, and desired to get at the naked truth without the obstruction of church, sacrament, ceremonies, theology, and ordinary study, except the Scriptures spiritually understood. He loved to commune with nature and nature's God, to walk in the inward light, to enjoy the indwelling Christ, and to receive inspirations from heaven. He spent much time in fasting and prayer, he wrestled with the devil, and passed through deep mental distress, doubt, and despondency. His moral character was beyond reproach--pure, truthful, unworldly, just, temperate, meek, and gentle, yet bold and utterly regardless of conventional usage and propriety. He began his public testimony in his twenty-third year, and traveled through England, Holland, and the American colonies, preaching and praying with pentecostal fervor and power, revealing hidden truths, boldly attacking pride, formality, and worldliness, and exhorting to repentance, humility, and mercy. He sometimes interrupted the clergymen at public service, and the lawyers in court, and warned them against the wrath to come. He was a stern ascetic, clad in leather, and wearing long hair. He addressed every body 'thou' or 'thee,' and sublimely ignored all worldly honors and dignities. [1649] He was nine times thrown into prison for breaches of the peace and blasphemy, and suffered much hardship and indignity with imperturbable temper; but towards the close of his meteoric career he enjoyed comparative rest. His 'Journal' gives an account of his labors, and is, in the language of Sir James Mackintosh, 'one of the most extraordinary and instructive narratives in the world.' Fox was providentially provided with the best aid in founding his society.
Robert Barclay (1648-1690) was the apologist and theologian of the Quakers, the only one known to fame. Descended from a noble family in Scotland, and educated in Paris, he became a convert first to Romanism, then to Quakerism (1667). He had therefore the advantage of an experimental as well as theoretical knowledge of the Scotch Calvinistic and the Roman Catholic creeds. He made various missionary journeys in company with William Penn; he walked through the streets of Aberdeen in sackcloth and ashes, and was several times imprisoned, but spent his last years in peace on his estate of Ury.
William Penn (1644-1718), the statesman and politician of the Quakers, and the founder of Pennsylvania, was the son of an admiral, and enjoyed the favor of James II. (his father's friend), which he used in the cause of justice and mercy. [1650] He himself was expelled for his religion from the University of Oxford and his father's house, and was twice imprisoned, but ably defended the liberty of conscience, and was acquitted. By his influence more than twelve hundred Quakers were set at liberty. In 1680 he obtained from the king, in payment of a claim of £16,000, an extensive tract of land west of the Delaware River, and organized a colony on the basis of perfect freedom of religion (1682). The city of Philadelphia, or brotherly love, became the chief asylum of persecuted Quakers, a century afterwards the cradle of American independence, and in 1876 the theatre of the most remarkable centennial ever celebrated by any nation. Penn was twice in America, but died in England. He made a treaty with the Indians, of which Voltaire said that it was the only treaty never sworn to and never broken. The United States government would have fared better with the aborigines of the country if it had followed the humane example of Roger Williams and William Penn.
The Quakers, during the first forty years of their history, were more severely persecuted than any sect of Christians had ever been, with the exception of the Waldenses, and bore it with unflinching heroism. Their eccentricities and fanatical excesses, their utter disregard for the courtesies and conventionalities of civilized life, their fierce abuse of the national churches (or 'steeple-houses') and clergymen, their opposition to tithes, salary, the oath, and military service, provoked the combined hostility of magistrates, ministers, and people. Their places of worship were invaded by the populace armed with staves, cudgels, and pitchforks; the windows broken by stones and bullets; their religious services rudely interrupted by hallooing and railing; their property destroyed or sold; their persons ridiculed, buffeted, assailed with stones and filth, dragged by the hair through the streets, or thrown into loathsome prisons and punished as heretics and blasphemers.
Cromwell, who had a tender feeling for all 'godly' radicals and enthusiasts, was rather pleased with George Fox, with whom he had an interview (1654); he allowed him to keep on his hat, and to speak about the mysteries of spiritual experience; and, although he disapproved his disorderly conduct, he pressed his hand and said, 'Come again to my house; if thou and I were together but an hour in every day, we should be nearer one to the other.' But Cromwell could not control the local magistrates and the rabble.
Under Charles II. the Quakers fared much worse, and notwithstanding the influence of Penn upon James II., who favored them for political reasons in the interest of the Roman Catholics, they continued to suffer until the Act of Toleration, in 1689, or rather until 1696, when by a special Act of Parliament their solemn affirmation was recognized as equivalent to an oath.
During the period from 1650 to 1689, according to the patient researches of their historian, Joseph Besse, no less than 13,258 Quakers suffered fine, imprisonment, torture, and mutilation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 219 were banished, and 360 perished in prisons, some almost literally rotting in pestilential cells.
In New England they were not treated any better: 170 instances of hard usage are enumerated, 47 were banished, and 4 hanged (three men and one woman, Mary Dyer). In explanation, though not in justification, of this severity of the Puritan colony towards them, we should remember those offenses against public decency which led some Quaker men and women to invade churches during divine service, and to promenade the streets of Boston, Cambridge, and Salem in sackcloth and ashes, even in puris naturalibus, for 'a sign and wonder' (in imitation of Isa. xx. 2, 3), to symbolize the 'naked truth,' and to utter a prophetic 'testimony' against the 'hireling priests,' the tyrannical magistrates, and the wicked and perverse generation, warning them of the impending judgments of the Lord, who would come with fire and sword. [1651] Even Roger Williams, in his debate with the Quakers at Newport (1672), with all his liberality, condemned such conduct. [1652]
Notwithstanding these persecutions, the Society of Friends spread rapidly, and numbered about 70,000 members towards the close of the seventeenth century. They afterwards diminished in England, but increased in America, though not as much as other denominations. On the Continent they had only a few adherents in Holland and Germany.
The fanatical heat of the martyr period of the Quakers cooled down with the cessation of persecution. They became a sober, quiet, orderly, and peaceful community. The oddities which they still retain are perfectly harmless, and form an interesting chapter in the history of morals. Quakerism is not so much a new theology as a new mode of Christian life, representing the utmost simplicity in opposition to show, ornament, and amusement.