CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SEPARATION OF WILKINSON AND STORY; AND THE HERESY OF JEFFERY BULLOCK.

THE

HE Spirit of Truth by which our Friends professed to be guided, was abundantly able to preserve the sincere and obedient and persevering followers thereof from all the wiles of the enemy. But when any slackened in watchfulness, and gave no longer unremitting heed to its monitions, it was no marvel that they were suffered to become entangled in the mazes of error. They had practically abandoned the ground of their profession, though they might still pertinaciously adhere to it in words; and having therefore only themselves to blame for the bitter fruits of their unfaithfulness, the integrity of the principles remained unshaken, and the Society pursued the even tenor of its way.

About the year 1675, a spirit of dissatisfaction crept into the minds of some members in the north of England; who giving themselves up to a headstrong spirit of party, opposed the wholesome discipline which had been established by the body, and particularly the institution of women's meetings. John Wilkinson and John Story were at the head of this disaffected party, and by plausible insinuations engaged in their favor a considerable number of persons of weak minds and strong wills, who from one cause or another had imbibed disgust and unsettlement. They inveighed severely against George Fox, who had been a prominent instrument in establishing the discipline, and they endeavored to introduce the fallacious doctrine, that inasmuch as the Divine Spirit was given to every man to guide him aright, any attempt by rules and laws to introduce

order into the Society, was a departure from that principle, and an imposition on their gospel liberty. Wilkinson and Story had been in the station of ministers: but beginning to thirst after pre-eminence, and to look for greater deference from their fellow-members than the most sensible of their brethren thought it right to pay them, they became restive under the admonitions and warnings which these believed themselves called upon to extend, in gospel solicitude for their welfare, and for the integrity of the church.

The Quarterly Meeting of Westmoreland, to which they belonged, observing with pain the dangerous tendency of their proceedings, used Christian efforts to reclaim them, but without success; and in order to prevent, if possible, an open breach, concluded to refer the case to the judgment of impartial and disinterested Friends of the neighboring counties. Accordingly six of the most judicious and eminent Friends of Cumberland, and several from Yorkshire, went over to a meeting appointed by Westmoreland Quarterly Meeting, on purpose to hear and determine the matter of difference. But the disaffected per sons refused to give their attendance. The committee being desirous, if possible, to give them a fair and full hearing, appointed another day, and themselves personally waited on the heads of the secession, to request their attendance. But their message and advice were treated with slight and contempt; and seeing that these men were not by any means to be induced to a reconciliation, they drew up a testimony against them, and left it with Friends of the Quarterly Meeting of Westmoreland.

Still another attempt was made the next year, to reclaim and recover those who had thus gone out of the way. A meeting was appointed at Drawell, near Sedburgh, on the borders of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, at which they were again offered a fair opportunity of being heard upon the subjects of their discontent. On this occasion, they

condescended to attend, and were fully heard by the Friends formerly appointed, and by many other aged and experienced Friends from other parts, who spent four days in the investigation. But as it plainly appeared that the defection proceeded from a spirit of contention and opposition to all regularity and good order in the church, they were affectionately entreated to return to the unity of the body. Obstinately persisting, however, in their opposition, they were testified against by this meeting also; and soon afterwards detached themselves entirely from the Society, and set up a separate meeting.

John Story travelled over the country, endeavoring to propagate the dissent in various parts of the nation, and gained some adherents in the western counties, particularly at Bristol.

This defection drew forth from William Penn a small treatise on Church Discipline, designed to inform the judgments of the discontented; and Robert Barclay also came forth with his well known work entitled "The Anarchy of the Ranters," &c., in which, with his usual clearness and strength of reasoning, he vindicated the discipline established among Friends, against those who accused them of confusion and disorder on the one hand, or of tyranny and imposition on the other. These books elicited contentious replies from William Rogers, one of the prominent seceders; which, however, being more remarkable for passionate intemperance of language than soundness of reasoning, and abounding in personal invectives against many of the most eminent members of the Society, particularly George Fox, soon ran their ephemeral course and sunk into oblivion.

William Rogers becoming puffed up by the applause of his party, went to London at the time of the Yearly Meeting, and challenged Friends to an open dispute. He was met accordingly, and was so completely foiled in all his

sophistry, and his errors and petulancy were so fully exposed, that framing a frivolous excuse, he left the meeting, and departed abruptly from the city, refusing a second opportunity for further discussion.

Thomas Ellwood and George Whitehead were also engaged in this controversy, both replying to William Rogers's books, and defending the principles and practices of the Society. The compact by which these separatists were bound together, was found too slight to maintain their union, and was soon dissolved. The more sincere among them coming in time to perceive the groundless nature of their separation, were united once more to the body, and the rest fell to pieces and dwindled away; leaving only, as their memorial, a solemn warning on the page of history, of the unsubstantial nature of all attempts, made in the spirit of party and of self-aggrandizement, to divide and scatter the church of Christ.

About the same time that this defection of Wilkinson and Story broke out in the north of England, a spirit of unsoundness showed itself in the east; which, though confined in its sorrowful effects to one individual, became important as a matter of history, inasmuch as it once more drew forth the testimony of the faithful members of the body, to their belief in the divinity and atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, as a fundamental and integral part of the doctrines of the Society of Friends. A certain Jeffery Bullock, of Sudbury, elated by a fond conceit of his own attainments, and mistaking the vagaries of a deluded imagination for the pure influences of the Spirit of Christ, adopted and promulgated the false and anti-christian notion, that the gift of divine grace in the soul superseded the necessity, and cancelled the benefits, of the coming and sufferings in the flesh, of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Being rebuked for this and other errors, he assumed an

air of great importance, and inveighed with much acrimony against the faithful elders, whose concern it was to administer counsel and reproof, in order to reclaim him from the gross delusions into which his self-confidence had betrayed him; and he denounced the good order and government of the church, as tyranny, oppression, and usurpation of power; declaring that every one should be left to the guidance of the Spirit in himself, with no control of outward rules. Becoming, notwithstanding the brotherly admonitions of his friends, still more refractory and overbearing, and going on to propagate his unsound opinions, he was, about the year 1675, disowned by Friends, who issued several clear and cogent testimonies against his anti-christian

errors.

Irritated by this disownment, he made use of the press, and published a book against the Society, upbraiding its members with much bitterness. Giles Barnardiston and Isaac Penington stepped forward in defence of the truth, replying to his charges and false assertions; vindicating the faith of the Society in our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, and the only Justifier and Saviour of the repenting sinner; and showing that as those are to be blamed who despise the doctrine of the Light within, relying on the death and sufferings of Christ, without coming to an experience of his cleansing and sanctifying operations in the soul, so those, on the other hand, who, pretending to exalt this Light, despised the loving-kindness of the Lord in sending his Son Jesus Christ into the world, to lay down his precious life a sacrifice for the sins of man, cannot be owned as maintaining sound doctrine; for that such as speak and act under the promptings of that divine Light, can never disregard or deny the efficacy of what the Son of God did and suffered in the prepared body.

This unhappy man was afterwards mercifully enabled to see the delusion into which he had fallen: and in 1686, he