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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Considerable mystery has long surrounded the antecedents of the Society of Friends. George Fox, an unlettered country lad, has been pictured as having gathered the Society after receiving, through a series of direct revelations, a full-blown message of redemption. Quaker historians have sought to confirm this portrayal by emphasizing that it was “in communion with his deepest self” that he made his “great spiritual discovery,” and that it came to him from no outward source. This explanation seemed rather naive to the more sophisticated mind of Rufus M. Jones, and he set himself to the task of uncovering the actual source from which Fox's religious thinking was derived. His two volumes—Studies in Mystical Religion and Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries —are sufficient testimony of the thoroughness and scholarship with which he tackled the problem. Nevertheless, after long and careful investigation, he felt obliged to confess that nothing more positive could be affirmed than that the possible influences in Fox's environment, for the most part, “worked upon him in subconscious ways, as an atmosphere and climate of his spirit, rather than a clearly conceived body of truth.” This conclusion was tenable so long as Fox was regarded as the founder of the Quakers. It now seems evident, however, by his own admissions, that he was not the founder but simply joined a sect already in existence. This fact necessitates an attempt to identify the group with which Fox became affiliated.
1 Braithwaite, William C., The Beginnings of Quakerism (London, 1912), 35.Google Scholar
2 London, 1909.
3 London, 1914.
4 Spiritual Reformers, 343Google Scholar. He makes the same point that Fox's ideas were not consciously adopted in Studies in Mystical Religion, 495.Google Scholar
5 Fox dates the beginning of the Quaker movement as 1644, although he did not begin to participate in it until late in 1647. See my essay, “A Suppressed Chapter in Quaker History,” to be published in the near future.
6 Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1933).Google Scholar
7 Braithwaite, , The Beginnings of Quakerism, 40.Google Scholar
8 Studies in Mystical Religion, 447.Google Scholar
9 “No careful student of both writers can doubt that there was some sort of influence, direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious” (Spiritual Reformers, 220Google Scholar). It ought to be said, however, that many of the parallels he finds between the two men seem rather exaggerated and overdrawn. He says, for example, that Fox's great vision of an Ocean of Darkness and an Ocean of Light “is profoundly like Boehm's fundamental insight that there are two world-principles of Light and Darkness” (ibid., 226). Winstanley not only makes this same fundamental distinction but uses the word “ocean” as well. The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. Sabine, George H. (Ithaca, N. Y., 1941), 219, 225Google Scholar. In almost every instance, closer parallels may be found in the English interpreters of Sebastian Franck than in Bochme's interpretation of Franck's religious ideas.
10 Braithwaite, , The Beginnings of Quakerism, 24.Google Scholar
11 Jones, , Spiritual Reformers, 230–33.Google Scholar
12 The Journal of George Fox, ed. Penney, Norman (2 vols.; Cambridge, 1911), I, 18.Google Scholar
13 Heart-Bleedings for Professors Abominations (1650)Google Scholar, reprinted in Hill, E. B. Under, ed., Confessions of Faith … of the Baptist Churches of England (London, 1854), 295Google Scholar. Pagitt, , in his Heresiographie (1645)Google Scholar, lists “Quakers” among his heretics, but these are not to be identified with the group that developed into the modern Quakers, for the ecstatic feature of trembling was not introduced among them until 1648. Journal of George Fox (2 vols.; London, 1827), I, 91Google Scholar. Apparently Pagitt's group was a sect of women at Southwark who came from beyond the sea. Braithwaite, , The Beginnings of Quakerism, 57.Google Scholar
14 His words “sound strangely like the yet unborn Quakers” (Jones, , Spiritual Reformers, 263).Google Scholar
15 “William Dell has often been taken for a Quaker. His works are frequently catalogued in lists of Quaker books, and they have been published by Quaker publishers and widely circulated among Friends” (Jones, , Studies in Mystical Religion, 488).Google Scholar
16 Baxter says that “Saltmarsh and Dell were the two great preachers at the Head-Quarters” (ibid., 489). Dell had preached before the House of Commons in 1646.
17 Ibid., 495.
18 “We are assured of your moderation and friendship to us” (A Letter to the Lord Fairfax (1649)Google Scholar, Works, 285).Google Scholar
19 Calvert also published Jackson, John's A Sober Word to a Serious People (1651)Google Scholar and Higgenson, Thomas's Glory Sometimes Afar Off (1653)Google Scholar, and these two men may have been members of this group of Puritan mystics. Jackson seems to have been wrongly classified by most writers as a Seeker. Another publication of the group seems to have been the anonymous tract The Life and Light of a Man in Christ Jesus (1646).Google Scholar
20 Jones, , Spiritual Reformers, 256, 260.Google Scholar
21 Works, 125, 281, 337, 362, 403, 421, 439, 440, 448Google Scholar. See also The Saints Parodice, addressed to “my Beloved Friends whose souls hunger after sincere milk,” where the term frequently appears.
22 “You that are the Children of the Light must lie under the reproach and oppression of the world … But it shall be but for a little time. What I have here to say is to bring you glad tidings that your redemption draws near” (Berens, Lewis H., The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth [London, 1906], 54Google Scholar). These words are addressed to “The Despised Sons and Daughters of Zion, scattered up and down the Kingdom of England.” Jones says that they are evidence of “the existence of a waiting, seeking people” to whom Winstanley “promises that the day of relief is near” (Studies in Mystical Religion, 490Google Scholar). But far from being “Seekers,” they were already “finders.” They had the “power of God” within them, and they were simply waiting for Fox's “Day of the Lord” when persecution would cease.
23 “Every sonne and daughter as they are called children of light, have light within themselves” (Works, 127Google Scholar). In The New Law of Righteousness, Winstanley says that “the Saints are called, Children of the day, not of the night” (ibid., 237). Here he used “day” instead of “light” because he wished to make a play on words. The “priests” should be “dayvines” rather than “divines,” or “Diviners, witches, sorcerers, deceivers” (Ibid., 242). It is interesting to note that Francis Howgil, a Quaker leader, entitled one of Ms tracts Truth Lifting Up Its Head Above Slander.
24 Jones, , Spiritual Reformers, 259.Google Scholar
25 Ibid., 277.
26 Journal, ed. Penney, , I, 314.Google Scholar
27 Winstanley, , Works, 34Google Scholar. Even Jones says of Winstanley that “he was the most like Fox in type of mind and bent of nature of any of the great Quaker's contemporaries” (Studies in Mystical Seligion, 493.)Google Scholar
28 This conclusion was an inference based upon the erroneous date assigned to The Saints Paradice in the catalogue of the Thomason Library. It was dated 1658 instead of 1648. Winstanley, , Works, 11.Google Scholar
29 Berens, , The Digger Movement, 38Google Scholar. Saltmarsh also retained his hat before Fairfax. Jones, , Studies in Mystical Religion, 483.Google Scholar
30 Berens, , The Digger Movement, 49 f.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., 49. Berens is perhaps the most recent writer to give voice to this suspicion.
32 Studies in Mystical Religion, 11.Google Scholar
33 Winstanley, , Works, 11.Google Scholar
34 A good summary of Winstanley's religious thought has been made by Sabine in his Introduction to Winstanley, 's Works, 36–51Google Scholar. To only one statement would I offer a qualified dissent. Winstanley, says Sabine, “saw no need even for that minimum of organization by which Fox preserved the Quakers as a recognizable religious body” (ibid., 47). It was, of course, not earlier than 1652 that Fox began to perceive the need for organization. There is no satisfactory exposition of Fox's religious thinking, since all of them tend to ignore the eschatological framework in which his thought was cast. For the most part, they are analyses of Barclay's reconstruction of the Quaker message.
35 Winstanley may have been opposed to oaths, even though he does not mention the fact in his writings. It is only from the reports of others that we know of his refusal to do “hat-honor.” Nevertheless, it is likely that opposition to the taking of oaths was introduced by Fox.
36 Journal, ed., Penney, , I, 138Google Scholar. Winstanley, , Works, 152.Google Scholar
37 “When any man or woman are consented to live together in marriage, they shall acquaint all the Overseers in their Circuit therewith, and some other neighbors; and being all met together, the man shall declare by his own mouth before them all, that he takes that woman to be his wife, and the woman shall say the same, and desire the Overseers to he Witnesses” (ibid., 599). “When a dead person is to be buried, the Officers of the Parish and neighbors shall go along with the Corpse to the grave and see it laid therein, in a civil, manner; but the publique Minister nor any other shall have any hand in reading or Exhortation” (ibid., 598). The Quakers ultimately came to permit a word of exhortation if one of those present felt moved by the Spirit.
38 Journal of George Fox, 1827 ed., I xviii.Google Scholar
39 Winstanley, , Works, 187Google Scholar. Both Winstanley and Fox always quote to tithe-taker's the text: “Freely ye have received, freely give.”
40 Studies in Mystical Religion, 495.Google Scholar
41 Spiritual Reformers, 346 fGoogle Scholar. Kachel H. King makes this same point that in Fox unlike Winstanley, “the light is thoroughly supernatural. It is not conscience or the light of nature, or the light of reason” (George Fox and the Light Within 1650–1660 [Philadelphia, 1940], 57Google Scholar). This study, unfortunately, is thoroughly unreliable and untrustworthy.
42 So-called human reason “is but a candle lighted” by God, and “this lighi shining through flesh, is darkened by the imagination of flesh; so that many times men act contrary to reason, though they think they act according to reason. By that light of Reason that is in man, he may see a suitableness in many things, but not in all things…. The Spirit Reason, which I call God, the Maker and Ruler of all things is this spiritual power, that guids all mens reasoning in right order, and to a right end” (Works, 105Google Scholar). That is to say, to use Winstanley's usual terminology, it is the “light within,” the “inward testimony,” the “word” that comes from God and is God that gives one “experimental knowledge” in contrast to mere “fleshly knowledge,” “imagination,” or “notions.”
43 Jones, , Spiritual Reformers, 340.Google Scholar
44 See, e. g., Works, 121, 124, 149, 152, 163, 189, 205, 230.Google Scholar
45 The Beginnings of Quakerism, 277 f.Google Scholar
46 He goes on to say: “If your owne eye be darke, that is, if darknesse rule your whole body; then all the actions of your body toward others are in darknesse, … which is the one power you yet live in. But if your eye be … full of Light, then the Light power rules in you, and the actions of your outward man will be full of Light, and Life, and Love” (Works, 478Google Scholar). Elsewhere he says that when the power of light reigns supreme, “humility arises above pride, love above envy, a meek and quiet spirit above hasty rash anger, chastity above unclean lusts” (ibid., 173).
48 Pp. 24 f. Miss King also speaks of Winstanley's “dependence on human strength to rid the soul of evil” (ibid., 25), but like a constantly reiterated refrain Winstanley says that “the arm of the Lord onely shall bring these mighty things to passe” that “the Lord himself will do this great work,” that “the Lord alone wil be the healer, the restorer, and the giver” (Works, 153, 182, 205Google Scholar). Again she says that “Fox with greater religious insight, always has harmony with God as his primary goal” (George Fox ana the Light Within, 25Google Scholar), but the goal Winstanley emphasizes in all his writings is “to become one with him [Christ or the Seed] and with his Father” (Works, 115Google Scholar), for it is only by being lifted into “onenes” with God that one achieves unity with the Creation or Mankind (ibid., 111, 117, 120, etc.). Once more she writes that Fox “interprets the Bible without resorting to allegory” (George Fox and the Light Within, 168Google Scholar), but even the casual reader ought to discern that his entire message rests ultimately upon Franck's allegorical interpretation of scripture.
49 Winstanley, , Works, 10.Google Scholar
50 George Fox ana the Light Within, 38.Google Scholar
51 Works, 211, 105.Google Scholar
52 George Fox and the Light Within, 133.Google Scholar
53 Works, 215–223Google Scholar. See also 132 f., 211.
54 Ibid., 113, 117.
55 Ibid., 157.
56 Ibid., 478–84.
57 Braithwaite, , The Beginnings of Quakerism, 151, 148.Google Scholar
58 Works, 457Google Scholar. “This now is the cool of the day; and the heate of opposition betweene flesh and Spirit begins to decline; flesh sees his folly. … And that righteous Ruler (God) … begins to walke … in the middle of the garden (Man's heart); the sweet breathings of that pure spirit is now entertained, and falne Earth begins to see himselfe naked, and to acknowledge his nakednesse before the spirit” (ibid., 460).
59 Journal, 1827 ed., I, 287, 117.Google Scholar
60 Ibid., 81.
61 Works, 205.Google Scholar
62 Ibid., 152, 162.
63 Ibid., 206
64 Ibid., 217.
66 Ibid., 230.
67 Ibid., 132–33.
68 Ibid., 225
69 Ibid., 207–08.
70 Ibid., 5–11.
71 “My health and estate is decayed, and I grow in age, I must either beg or work for day wages, which I was never brought up to” (Ibid., 575).
72 Ibid., 315.
73 The Digger Movement, 79Google Scholar. Berens fails to give his reason for this conjecture, but presumably it rests upon his identification of Winstanley as the author of Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1648)Google Scholar, More Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (London, 1649)Google Scholar, and A Declaration from the Welaffected in the County of Buckinghamshire (1649)Google Scholar. Sabine, however, says that it is “practically certain that he could not have been the author” of these works (Winstanley, , Works, 605).Google Scholar
74 Ibid., 325–26.
75 Ibid., 315.
76 This was a common practice among the Baptists, and Winstanley had been a Baptist.
77 Ibid., 140, 141, 155, 194.
78 He speaks of declaring his revelation concerning the “common Treasurie” of the earth “by word of mouth wheresoever I came” (ibid., 315).
79 Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Lee, Sidney. Vol. LIV (New York, 1898), 179Google Scholar. Stephens, , in A Plain and Easie Calculation of the Name, Mark, and Number of the Beast (London, 1656)Google Scholar, says that Winstanley, 's New Law of Right eousnessGoogle Scholar was still in circulation among mystical persons of his acquaintance. Winstanley, , Works, 34.Google Scholar
80 For his definition of these terms, see his Works, 386.Google Scholar
81 Ibid., 104, 315. It seems probable that Winstanley had been influenced by the fusion that had taken place, across the river in Buckinghamshire, between the equalitarian ideas of his religious mysticism and the political principles of the Levellers, which resulted in a vigorous opposition to enclosures, and ultimately was transformed by Winstanley into a, radical communistic emphasis. It seems almost certain that this Buckinghamshire group was one of Winstanley's mystical communities, for in their first publication (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) they echo many of his phrases, call themselves “friends” and “children of light,” and speak somewhat detachedly, though approvingly, of the Levellers (Winstanley, , Works, 614Google Scholar). The Leveller agitation had begun in the fall of 1647 and sometime thereafter their principles had filtered into the thinking of the Buckinghamshire mystics. The blend produced something entirely new. It was no longer Leveller doctrine, and the political programme was far from their original position as “children of light.” This latter inconsistency, however, was to be harmonized by Winstanley. The Buckinghamshire group had no plan for the communal tilling of the soil, but their ideas were such as would suggest it to a fertile mind, and they later endorsed the “digging” project (ibid., 647).
82 The dramatic declaration of the revelation by action may have been the suggestion of William Everard. At least he took the lead in the project for the first three or four weeks. After that his name disappears and he was reported to have joined the Leveller rebellion which ended in defeat at Burford on May 14, 1649. Ibid., 103 f., 641. Prior to the “digging” venture, Everard had been associated with Winstanley and had been put in prison at Kingston for blasphemy. Winstanley wrote Truth Lifting Up Its Head Above Scandal to vindicate both Everard and himself. Ibid., 103.
83 “Knowing that the Spirit of righteousness does appear in many in this Land, I desire all of you seriously in love and humility, to consider of this business of publike community, which I am carried forth in the power of love, and clear light of universall righteousnesse, to advance as much as I can” (ibid., 291). Winstanley then proceeds to demonstrate to them that his revelation was of God because of the slander and fury that it had created against him; hence there could be no “selfishness in this work.” Unfortunately, so far as the reconstruction of the internal history of the larger movement is concerned, Winstanley addressed his writings, subsequent to the new revelation, to the “world”—to the House of Commons, to the City of London, to the Army, to the “Several Societies … Called Churches,” to the teachers at the universities, and to the lawyers at the Inns of the Court.
85 Ed. Penney, Norman (London, 1907).Google Scholar
86 Ibid., 12, 128, 168, 231.
87 It actually lasted a little more than a year.
