XVI. CHAP. Like vanities of dress, the artifices of rhetoric were despised. Truth, it was said, is beautiful enough in plain clothes; and Penn, who was able to write exceedingly well, too often forgot that style is the gossamer on which the seeds of truth float through the world. Careless of style, the Quakers employ for the propagation of truth no weapons but those of mind. They distributed tracts; but they would not sustain their doctrine by a hireling ministry. "A man thou hast corrupted to thy interests will never be faithful to Fox,44. them ;" and an established church seemed "a cage for unclean birds." When a great high-priest, who was a doctor, had finished preaching from the words "Ho every one that thirsteth, come buy without money," George Fox" was moved of the Lord to say to him, 'Come down, thou deceiver! Dost thou bid people come to the waters of life freely, and yet thou takest three hundred pounds a year of them?' The Spirit 100. is a free teacher." Still less would the Quaker employ the methods of persecution. He was a zealous Protestant, but in the season of highest excitement, he pleaded for absolute liberty of worship, and sought to enfranchise the Roman Catholic himself. To persecute, he esteemed a confession of a bad cause; for the design that is of God has confidence in itself, and knows that any other 480, will vanish. "Your cruelties are a confirmation, that truth is not on your side," was the remonstrance of a woman of Aberdeen to the magistrates who had imprisoned her husband. Barclay, 595 In like manner, the Quaker never employed force to effect a social revolution or reform, but, refusing obedience to wrong, deprived tyranny of its instruments XVI. ii 512 Ibid. 521. The Quaker's loyalty, said the earl of Arrol at Aberdeen, CHAP. is a qualified loyalty; it smells of rebellion to which Alexander Skein, brother to a subsequent governor of 1576. West New Jersey, calmly answered, "I understand not loyalty, that is not qualified with the fear of God rather than of man." The Quaker never would pay Besse, tithes; never yielded to any human law which traversed his conscience. He did more: he resisted tyranny with all the moral energy of enthusiasm, bearing witness against blind obedience not less than against will worship. Believing in the supremacy of mind over matter, he sought no control over the government except by intelligence; and therefore he needed to hold the right of free discussion inviolably sacred. He never consented to the slightest compromise of this freedom. Wherever there was evil and oppression, the Quaker claimed the right to be present with a remonstrance. He delivered his opinions freely before Cromwell and Charles II., in face of the gallows in New England, in the streets of London, before the English commons. The heaviest penalties, that bigotry could devise, never induced him to swerve a hair's breadth from his purpose of speaking freely and publicly. This was his method of resisting tyranny. Algernon Sydney, who took money from Louis XIV., like Brutus, would have plunged a dagger into the breast of a tyrant; the Quaker, without a bribe, resisted tyranny by appeals to the monitor in the tyrant's breast, and he labored incessantly to advance reform by enlightening the public conscience. Any other method of revolution he believed an impossibility. Government-such was his belief-will always be as the people are; and a people imbued with the love of liberty, create the irresistible necessity of a free gov Barc.ay, XVI. Pean, i CHAP. ernment. He sought no revolution, but that which ~ followed as the consequence of the public intelligence. Such revolutions were inevitable. "Though men consider it not, the Lord rules and overrules in the 125 kingdoms of men." Any other revolution would be transient. The Quakers submitted to the restoration of Charles II., as the best arrangement for the crisis; confident that time and truth would lead to a happier issue. "The best frame, in ill hands, can do nothing that is great and good. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion imparted to them; they depend on men, rather than men on government. Let Proud, men be good, the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it." Even with absolute power, an Antonine or an Alfred could not make bricks without straw, nor the sword do more than substitute one tyranny for another. Penn, in 198. Penn, li 536. Penn, i. The moral power of ideas is constantly effecting changes and improvement in society. No Quaker book has a trace of skepticism on man's capacity for progress. Such is the force of an honest profession of truth, the humblest person, if single-minded and firm, "can shake Fox,11 all the country for ten miles round." The integrity 47, 348. of the Inner Light is an invincible power. power. It is a power which never changes; such was the message of Fox to the pope, the kings, and nobles of all sorts; it fathoms the world, and throws down that which is conPcm,176 trary to it. It quenches fire; it daunts wild beasts; it turns aside the edge of the sword; it outfaces instruments of cruelty; it converts executioners. It was remembered with exultation, that the enfranchisements of Christianity were the result of faith, and not of the sword; and that truth in its simplicity, radiating from the foot of the cross, has filled a world of sensualists XVI. with astonishment, overthrown their altars, discredit- CHAP ed their oracles, infused itself into the soul of the multitude, invaded the court, risen superior to armies, and led magistrates and priests, statesmen and generals, in its train, as the trophies of its strength exerted 47, in its freedom. 348 Thus the Quaker was cheered by a firm belief in the progress of society. Even Aristotle, so many centuries ago, recognized the upward tendency in human affairs; a Jewish contemporary of Barclay declared that progress to be a tendency towards popular power; George Fox Fox,175 perceived that the Lord's hand was against kings; and one day, on the hills of Yorkshire, he had a vision, that he was but beginning the glorious work of God in the earth; that his followers would in time become as numerous as motes in the sunbeams; and that the party of humanity would gather the whole human race in one sheepfold. Neither art, wisdom, nor violence, said Barclay, conscious of the vitality of truth, shall Barclay quench the little spark that hath appeared. The atheist-such was the common opinion of the Quakersthe atheist alone denies progress, and says in his heart, All things continue as they were in the beginning. Besse, ii. 523. Penn, 1 202 If, from the rules of private morality, we turn to political institutions, here also the principle of the Quaker is the Inner Light. He acquiesces in any established government which shall build its laws upon the declarations of "universal reason." But 909 government is a part of his religion; and the religion Fox, 72 that declares "every man enlightened by the divine light," establishes government on universal and equal enfranchisement. "Not one of mankind," says Penn, "is exempted from this illumination."-"God discovers himself to Penn, 1 390 XVI. 323. i. Barclay, Ib. 168, 169. Penn,iii. Ib. i.203 Barclay, CHAP. every man." He is in every breast, in the ignorant drudge as well as in Locke or Leibnitz. Every moral Penn truth exists in every man's and woman's heart, as an incorruptible seed; the ground may be barren, but the 295, 299. seed is certainly there. Every man is a little sovereign to himself. Freedom is as old as reason itself, which 183. is given to all, constant and eternal, the same to all 183. nations. The Quaker is no materialist; truth and conscience are not in the laws of countries; they are not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; they cannot be abrogated by senate or people. Freedom Xand the right of property were in the world before Penn Protestantism; they came not with Luther; they do Ibid. not vanish with Calvin; they are the common privi lege of mankind. Penn, fi 552. b.1.21 Barclay, The Bible enfranchises those only to whom it is carried; Christianity, those only to whom it is made known; the creed of a sect, those only within its narrow pale. The Quaker, resting his system on the Inner Light, redeems the race. Of those who believe in the necessity of faith in an outward religion, some have cherished the mild superstition, that, in the hour of dis7 solution, an angel is sent from heaven "to manifest the doctrine of Christ's passion;" the Quaker believes that the heavenly messenger is always present in the breast of every man, ready to counsel the willing listener. Man is equal to his fellow-man. No class can, " by long apprenticeship" or a prelate's breath, by wearing mo, a black or shaving the crown, obtain a monopoly of moral truth. There is no distinction of clergy and laity. 309, The Inner Light sheds its blessings on the whole human race; it knows no distinction of sex. It redeems woman by the dignity of her moral nature, and claims for her the equal culture and free exercise of her |