The most remarkable sect in this land of sectaries is unquestionably that of the Quakers. They wear a peculiar dress, which is in fashion such as grave people wore in the time of their founder, and always of some sober colour. They never uncover their heads in salutation, nor in their houses of worship; they have no form of worship, no order of priests, and they reject all the Sacraments. In their meeting-houses they assemble and sit in silence, unless any one should be disposed to speak, in which case they suppose him to be immediately moved by the Spirit; and any person is permitted to speak, women as well as men. These, however, are only a few of their peculiarities. They call the days of the week and the months according to their numerical order, saying that their common names are relics of idolatry. The English, instead of addressing each other in the second person singular, use the second plural. This idiom the Quakers reject as the language of flattery and falsehood, and adhere to the strict grammatical form. They will not take an oath; and such is the opinion of their moral character, that their affirmation is admitted in courts of justice to have the same force. They will not pay tithes; the priest therefore is obliged to seize their goods for his due. They will not bear arms, neither will they be concerned in any branch of trade or manufactory which is connected with war, nor in any which is so dependent upon accident as to partake of the nature of gaming. They prohibit cards and other games, music, dancing, and the theatre. A drunken Quaker is never seen, nor a criminal one ever brought to the bar. Their habits of patient and unhazarding industry ensure success; and accordingly they are, in proportion to their numbers, wealthier than any other set of people. They support their own poor, and take the lead in every public charity. What is truly extraordinary is, that though they seem to have advanced to the utmost limits of enthusiasm as well as of heresy, so far from being enthusiastic, they are proverbially deliberate and prudent: so far from being sullen and gloomy, as their prohibitions might induce you to suppose, they are remarkably cheerful: they are universally admitted to be the most respectable sect in England; and though they have a church without a priesthood, and a government without a head, they are perhaps the best organized and most unanimous society that ever existed.
Were it not for their outrageous and insufferably heretical opinions, it might be thought that any government would gladly encourage so peaceable, so moral, and so industrious a people. On the contrary, though they are at present peculiarly favoured by the English laws, there was a time when they were the objects of especial persecution. I will endeavour briefly to sketch their history;—it contains some interesting facts, and may furnish some important inferences. One of the many remarkable circumstances belonging to this remarkable body is, that though they are now the least literate of all the English sects, they possess more ample collections of their own church history than any other Christian church, or even than any monastic order. If the acts of the Apostles had been as fully and faithfully recorded as the acts of the Quakers, what a world of controversy and confusion would have been prevented.
George Fox, their founder, began his career during the great rebellion. There never was a time in which it could be more excusable to go astray. The heretical church of England, by attempting to assimilate itself to the church of Rome, in a few forms, while it pertinaciously differed from it in essentials, and by persecuting those who refused to submit to those forms, had provoked a resistance which ended in its own overthrow. It was an age of ecclesiastical anarchy. Hypocrisy was the reigning vice; the least sincere were the most zealous: discordant doctrines were preached every where, and pious and humble-minded men, puzzled by this confusion of errors, knew not which to chuse. They who in this perplexity stood aloof from any community were so many, that they were distinguished by the name of Seekers. George Fox seems to have possessed much of the zeal, the simplicity and tenderness of the seraphic St Francis, (if I may be allowed to compare a heretic with so glorious a saint in his human qualities,)—but, having no better guide to follow than his own nature, no wonder that he was misled. His mind ran upon religious things when he was but a youth, and he had leisure to think of them in the solitary employment of keeping sheep. At length, unable to bear the burthen of his thoughts, he went to one of the heretical priests and laid open to him the state of his mind. The priest's advice was, that he should take tobacco and sing psalms.
In this uneasy state he abandoned all other pursuits, and wandered about the country in search of truth, which at last, by following wholly the feelings of his own heart, he thought he had attained. During his wanderings he met with many persons of a similar state of uneasiness; and, being thus emboldened, began to fancy himself divinely commissioned to call men to repentance,—a commission which he and his followers soon thought proper to put in execution. Their zeal was not at first accompanied with discretion; they went into the churches and interrupted the preachers;—there needed not this imprudence to provoke men who were already sufficiently irritated by their doctrines. The priests became their cruel enemies, and often instigated the people to fall upon them. The heretics even in their churches used their Bibles to knock down these enthusiasts with; they were beaten down with clubs, stoned, and trampled upon, and some of them lost their lives.
The Presbyterians during their short tyranny treated them with great rigour, but their greatest sufferings were after the restoration of the monarchy. No sooner had the heretical hierarchy recovered its power, than it began to persecute the dissenters with such bitterness as the rancorous remembrance of its own injuries excited. Charles willingly permitted this, because he dreaded the political opinions of these sectarians; it is probable, too, that as he had been secretly reconciled to the true faith, he was not displeased to see a church which dared not pretend to be infallible, pursuing measures which nothing but infallibility can justify, thus accustoming the people to intolerance, and weakening heresy: so he protected the Catholics from the false bishops, and left the sectarians to their tender mercy. Other sectarians made use of every artifice to escape; but it was contrary to the principles of the Quakers to avail themselves of any subterfuge; and their dress, language, and manner made it impossible for them to pass unnoticed. The prisons were filled with them; the prisons were then dreadful places; filth, cold, and wet brought on diseases which were aggravated by the uniform brutality of the jailors; and in this manner numbers were destroyed by the cowardly cruelty of those who were ashamed openly to put them to death.
Erroneous as the principles of these people are, it was impossible that any men could lead more blameless lives, and display more admirable integrity or more heroical self-devotement. George Fox was more than once set at liberty on his bare promise of appearing upon a certain day to take his trial, no other security being thought needful;—more than once opportunities of escaping from prison were avowedly given him, of which he would not avail himself; and a pardon from the king offered him, which he refused to accept, saying, that to accept a pardon, would imply that he had committed a crime which needed it. The usual snare for them was to tender the oath of supremacy, a test enacted against the Catholics. It was in vain that they declared their full assent to the vile heresy of this oath, and that they affirmed its substance in other words; the act of swearing was insisted upon, and for refusing this their property was confiscated, and themselves sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. No injustice, no cruelty, ever provoked them to anger; they exhorted their persecutors, but never reproached them. Instances often occurred of one man's offering to suffer confinement for another. The principle of selfishness seemed to be extinguished among them. Even the instincts of resentment and self-defence, perhaps the most powerful and deeply-rooted in our nature, they had subdued. Men who had borne arms and approved their courage in battle, not only submitted to insults and blows themselves, but saw their wives and daughters insulted, beaten, and trampled upon, without lifting a hand to protect or revenge them. It was in vain to block up their meeting-houses; they met in the open streets, and in open day, though sure that soldiers would be there to arrest, and a rabble to assault them; and when the parents were cast into prison, the children voluntarily followed their example, held their meetings in the like manner, and submitted to the same sufferings, with the same quiet and unconquerable endurance.
It is worthy of remark, that these excellent people (as assuredly they were in every thing not appertaining to the articles of their faith), while they were thus persecuted by their brother heretics, were treated by the true church with a tenderness which it has never shown towards any others. Two female preachers who went to Malta to promulgate their opinions, were seized there by the Holy Office and confined, that they might not pervert others; but when it was found impossible to reclaim them, they were set at liberty, and sent out of the island. A man in his way from visiting them landed at Gibraltar, which was then in our possession, and went on Holy Thursday into the church, while the priest was celebrating mass; he took off his cloak and rent it, and appeared in sackcloth; cried out repentance thrice in a loud voice, and then returned unmolested to his ship. One man went to Jerusalem to bear his testimony against pilgrimages at the Holy Sepulchre! Several went to Rome to convert the pope, for whom they seemed to be particularly concerned;—they were safely lodged in the Holy Office, permitted to write as many memorials as they pleased to his holiness and the cardinals; and when they had said all that they had to say, they were sent out of Italy. With this tenderness did the church behave to them, while in England they were whipt and imprisoned, and in America put to death by the Calvinists.
Even the infidels respected them. A woman left her family in the hope of converting the Grand Turk:—he received her in his camp, gave her audience, listened to her respectfully, and dismissed her with a safe conduct through his dominions. A ship, of which the master and the mate were Quakers, was taken by the Algerines, who put a party of Moors on board to carry her into Algiers. The crew thought themselves strong enough to recover the vessel, and would have attempted to kill the Moors; but these men, true to their principle of not fighting, and not hazarding human life, refused to assist in regaining their liberty, except by such means as they could conscientiously approve. They contrived to secure their weapons, and took possession of the ship. These people profess also to act up to the Gospel precept of returning good for evil; and in conformity to this the master promised the Moors that they should not be sold as slaves. They put into Majorca, where the islanders to their great astonishment found that the prisoners were not to be sold: they were proceeding to take them by force, but these Quakers actually set the Moors loose from their confinement, that they might assist in working the ship out of port and escaping. The rascally infidels, not in the slightest degree influenced by this example, attempted twice or thrice to become masters again, and it required all the authority and exertions of the Quakers to prevent their men from knocking them on the head. At the imminent risque of being recaptured, they stood over to the Barbary coast, and landed their prisoners in their own country. King Charles was dining in his palace at Greenwich when the vessel came up, and news was brought him that a Quaker ship was just arrived which they had won from the Algerines without fighting. The king went himself to see it, and when he had heard the story, told the Quakers they were fools for letting the Moors go,—"You should have brought them to me," he said. "I thought it better for them," replied the quaker, "to be in their own country."
One of their tenets is, that man, when truly born again of the Spirit, is restored to the state of Adam before the fall; an error which approximates nearer to truth, than the diabolical heresy of the Calvinists and Gnostics. It might lead to a perilous confidence in those who presumed they had attained to this state; but it must needs produce the best effect upon the feelings and lives of such as are aspiring to it. The doctrine of inspiration is more dangerous, but the tenet which forbids all violence prevents those evil consequences which it might else occasion.—The Quakers were always ready to carry a message from the Lord, but they never thought of delivering it upon the point of a dagger. An individual now and then appeared in sackcloth, crying Repentance, in the streets. One man in Ireland went into a Catholic church, naked above the waist, and burning brimstone in a chafing-dish, as a token to the congregation of what they were to expect unless they repented of their errors. Such extravagancies exposed none but themselves to danger.
They lay claim to miracles; and it is good proof of the fidelity of their chronicler that none of these miracles can be considered as impossible, nor even unlikely. George Fox came into a house at a time when they had bound a madwoman, and were attempting to bleed her. He addressed her with his wonted gentleness, quieted her fears, soothed her, persuaded the people to unbind her, and converted her to his own opinions. Her phrensy never returned; it had found its proper channel. A few of their numerous persecutors came to untimely ends. One in particular, who had been active in torturing and putting them to death in New England, was thrown from his horse and killed upon the place of their execution: it was natural and perhaps not erroneous to ascribe this to divine vengeance. In the days of their persecution they often denounced a visitation of pestilence against London:—a tremendous plague made its appearance and carried off 100,000 of its inhabitants. As they had announced it, they naturally thought it came upon their account. One Thomas Ibbitt went about the streets of the metropolis denouncing a judgment by fire. On the very next day the fire of London broke out, which consumed thirteen thousand houses. The effect which this produced upon the prophet authenticates the story. So utterly was he astonished at beholding the accomplishment of his prediction, that his character was totally changed; he immediately conceived himself to be something more than human, advanced to meet the conflagration, holding out both his arms to stay its progress, and would infallibly in this delirium have rushed into the flames, if he had not been carried away by force.
The sufferings of the Quakers ceased upon the accession of JamesII., who would willingly have purchased toleration for the true faith by granting it to all others. He favoured them also for the sake of one of their great leaders, whose father had been his personal friend. It is related of this king, whom the English themselves acknowledge to have been the best of his family, that when one of this sect was one day addressing him in the palace, with his hat on as usual, the king took off his own; upon which the Quaker observed that the king need not be uncovered on his account. "My friend," replied James, "you don't know the custom of this place;—only one hat at a time must be worn here."
That these people should have borne up against persecution is not wonderful.—There is a stubborn principle in human nature, which in a good cause is virtue, and even in an erroneous one is akin to it. Indeed without persecution, or at least without opposition, the enthusiasm of a sect cannot be kept up,—it is its food and fuel; and without it, it must starve and be extinguished. From the time of their legal recognition the enthusiasm of the Quakers ceased. No prophecies have since been uttered by them in the streets, no testimony borne in sackcloth and ashes; the Grand Turk has been abandoned to his misbelief, and the Pope, notwithstanding their concern for him, given up as irreclaimable. Yet such is the admirable oeconomy of this extraordinary sect, that they continue to flourish, if not to spread.
So pure a system of democracy was never elsewhere exhibited as that of the internal government of this society. Each parish regulates its own affairs in a monthly meeting, each diocese or district in a quarterly one, the whole body in a yearly one, which is held in the metropolis.—Deputies go from the lesser to the larger assemblies; but every member of the society, who can conveniently, is expected to attend. The women have their meetings in like manner; the equality of the sexes in all things being practically acknowledged. In all other collective bodies the will of the majority is the law. The Quakers admit no such principle: among them nothing is determined upon unless it is the sense of the whole; and as the good of the whole is their only possible motive, (for no member of the society receives any emolument for discharging any office in it,) they never fail, whatever difference of opinion may at first have existed, to become unanimous.
Their preaching strikes a stranger as ludicrous. You may conceive what it must needs be, when the preacher imagines himself to be the organ of inspiration, and, instead of thinking what he shall say, watches for what he believes to be internally dictated to him. Nothing in fact can be more incoherent than their discourses, and their manifest inferiority to those of any other sect ought to convince them of the fallacy of the opinion upon which they proceed. That the admonition of the spirit, in other words the faculty of conscience, when it be wisely and earnestly cultivated, is an infallible guide of conduct, may and must be admitted; but that which will make a good man act well, will not always make him talk wisely. It is not however the matter of these discourses which impresses those who are disposed to be impressed: knowing the speaker to be seriously affected, they partake his feelings, and become seriously affected also. Their history affords a curious illustration of this. The mother of their chronicler was a Dutchwoman, who being moved, as she believed, by the Spirit, came to preach in England in the days of persecution. She understood no English, and therefore delivered herself through an interpreter. One day it happened that the interpreter was not at hand when the call came upon her, and the person who attempted to translate her meaning found that he could not understand her. The congregation, however, called upon her to proceed, affirming that the religious feeling which she impressed upon them could not be stronger if they had understood her. In the hands of a lying chronicler this would have been magnified into a gift of tongues. The story is not the less valuable, though it may provoke a smile.
The chief cause which exasperated the clergy so greatly against them, was their obstinate refusal to pay tithes, and this is now operating to diminish the sect. Could they be content to pay, and salve their consciences by protesting against it, all would go on smoothly; instead of this, they suffer their goods to be distrained and sold upon the spot; by which they sustain a loss themselves, and tempt others to profit fraudulently at their expense. The consequence is, that the Quakers have very generally forsaken the country and taken up their abode in cities. This is doubly detrimental to them. Those who remain in the country are left as insulated families, and zeal even more than gaiety requires the stimulus of fellowship. By their laws, anyone who marries out of the pale of the society is dismissed from it; but these families who live apart from their fellows are likely to fall off on this account for want of neighbourhood. They who are collected in cities, are lessened by another cause. Their principles exclude them from all professions except that of physic, in which few only can find employment; commerce therefore may be considered as their sole pursuit; their plain and moderate habits lessen expense, and their industry insures success; they grow rich, and their children desert the society. The children of the rich find its restraints irksome, and are converted—not by strong argument, not by incontrovertible authority, not by any honourable and worthy sense of duty, but by the pleasures of the card-table, the ballroom, and the theatre. But the great agents in converting young Quakers to the established Church of England are the tailors. The whole works of Bellarmine could not produce such an effect upon them as a pattern-book of forbidden cloths and buttons. Nor could any reason be urged to them so forcible as the propriety of appearing like other people, and conforming to the strict orthodoxy of fashion.
Odd as it may seem, this feeling has far more influence among the men than among the women of the society. The women who quit it usually desert for love, for which there is this good reason, that the Quakers have too much neglected the education of their sons. Women are easily converted in their youth; they make amends for this pliancy as they advance in life, and become the most useful diffusers of their own faith.
The diminution of the sect is not very manifest; and it is kept up by proselytes who silently drop in, for they no longer seek to make converts, and are even slow in admitting them. Perhaps these new members, if they are sufficiently numerous, may imperceptibly bring them nearer to the manners of the world in their appearance, and thus lessen the main cause of their decline.
