352 QUAKERISM AN ABSOLUTE DEMOCRACY. XVI. Penn, i. 323. Barclay, Ib. 168, 169. Penn,iii. 183. Ib. i. 203. CHAP. every man." He is in every breast, in the ignorant drudge as well as in Locke or Leibnitz. Every moral 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 is given to all, constant and eternal, the same to all 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 and the right of property were in the world before Penn Protestantism; they came not with Luther; they do not vanish with Calvin; they are the common priviIb. 1.221. lege of mankind. Barclay, nations. 183. Penn, ii. 552. Barclay, 183. 221. Ibid. ii. 294. Barclay, 7. 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 dissolution, 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 310, 311. black or shaving the crown, obtain a monopoly of moral truth. There is no distinction of clergy and laity. Ib. 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 QUAKERISM AN ABSOLUTE DEMOCRACY. 353 XVI. endowments. As the human race ascends the steep ac- CHAP. clivity of improvement, the Quaker cherishes woman as the equal companion of the journey. Fox, 59; Barclay, 169, 305, Men are equal. The Quaker knows no abiding 312. distinction of king and subject. The universality of the Inner Light "brings crowns to the dust, and lays Fox,175. them low and level with the earth." "The Lord will be king; there will be no crowns but to such as obey his will." With God a thousand years are indeed as one day; yet judgment on tyrants will come at last, Besse and may come ere long. 523. 541. Ib. 505 Every man has God in the conscience; the Quaker knows no distinction of castes. He bows to God, and not to his fellow-servant. "All men are alike by creation," says Barclay; and it is slavish fear which Barclay, reverences others as gods. "I am a man," says every Ib. 504. Quaker, and refuses homage. The most favored of his race, even though endowed with the gifts and glories of an angel, he would regard but as his fellowservant and his brother. The feudal nobility still nourished its pride. "Nothing," says Penn, "noth- 1.430. ing of man's folly has less show of reason to palliate it." "What a pother has this noble blood made in the world!" "But men of blood have no marks of honor stampt upon them by nature." The Quaker scorned to take off his hat to any of them; he held himself the peer of the proudest peer in Christendom. With the Eastern, despotism of Diocletian, Europe. had learned the hyperboles of Eastern adulation; but "My Lord Peter and My Lord Paul are not to be found in the Bible; My Lord Solon or Lord Scipio is not to be read in Greek or Latin stories." And the Quaker 1.417. returned to the simplicity of Gracchus and Demosthenes, though "Thee and Thou proved a sore cut to Fox. 354 in son, i.57. 477 79. QUAKERISM AS WIDE AS HUMANITY. CHAP. proud flesh." This was not done for want of courtesy ; XVI. for "No religion," says Penn, "destroys courtesy, civiliPenty and kindness;" but the Quaker knew that the hat Penn, i was the symbol of enfranchisement, and was worn by the Norman nobility in presence of their king, as a proclamation that they were peers of the realm, equal with their sovereign. The Quaker historian, narrating the elevation of Cromwell, does not fail to tell, that, on assuming the power of a prince, "he covered himself, Sewel, all the others remaining uncovered." George Fox, scorning the faint-hearted republicans whose zeal melted in the sunshine of favor, refused to "eat a bit of the Protector's bread, or drink a sup of his drink;" and took care to wear the hat in his presence. After more than a century and a quarter, when, in the first great scene of the French revolution, at the opening of the states 5. general, the clergy and the nobility, according to established privilege, had, like the king, put on their square caps and plumed bonnets, the representatives of the commons, imitating the Quaker precedent, covered their heads also with their hats, that had neither plumes nor ribands; thus explaining to the Bourbons the meaning of the Quaker symbol. 1789. May George Fox declares, that he saw his doctrine in the pure openings of light without the help of any man. But the spirit that made to him the revelation was the invisible spirit of the age, rendered wise by tradition, and in a season of revolution excited by the enthusiasm of liberty and religion. There is a close analogy between the popular revolutions of France and England. In France, the same symbols and principles reappeared, but more rapidly, and on a wider theatre. The elements of humanity are always the same; the Inner Light dawns upon every nation, and is the same QUAKERISM AS WIDE AS HUMANITY. 355 XVI. in every age; and the French revolution was a result CHAP. of the same principles as those of George Fox, gaining dominion over the mind of Europe. They are expressed in the burning and often profound eloquence of Rousseau; they reappear in the masculine philosophy of Kant. The professor of Konigsberg, like Fox, and Barclay, and Penn, derived philosophy from the voice in the soul; like them, he made the oracle within the categorical rule of practical morality, the motive to disinterested virtue; like them, he esteemed the Inner Light, which discerns universal and necessary truths, an element of humanity; and therefore his philosophy claims for humanity the right of ever-renewed progress and reform. If the Quakers disguised their doctrine under the form of theology, Kant concealed it for a season under the jargon of a nervous but unusual diction. But Schiller has reproduced the great idea in beautiful verse; Chateaubriand avows himself its advocate; Coleridge has repeated the doctrine in misty language. It beams through the poetry of Lamartine1 and Wordsworth; while, in the country of beautiful prose, the eloquent Cousin, listening to the same eternal voice which connects humanity with universal reason, has gained a wide fame for "the divine principle," and, in explaining the harmony between that light and the light of Christianity, has often uncon 2 Raison, for the Inner Light. And 356 PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS. CHAP. Sciously borrowed the language and employed the arguments of Barclay and of Penn. XVI. Every where in Europe the Quakers were exposed to persecution. Their seriousness was called melancholy enthusiasm; their boldness, self-will; their frugality, covetousness; their freedom, infidelity; their conscience, rebellion. In England, the general laws against dissenters, the statute against Papists, and special statutes against themselves, put them at the mercy of every malignant informer. They were hated by the church and the Presbyterians, by the peers and the king. The codes of that day describe them as "an abominable sect;" "their principles as inconsistent with any kind of government." During the Long Parliament, in the time of the protectorate, at the restoration, in England, in New England, in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, every where, and for long, wearisome years, they were exposed to perpetual dangers and griefs. They were whipped, crowded into jail among felons, kept in dungeons foul and gloomy beyond imagination; fined, exiled, sold into colonial bondage. They bore the brunt of the persecution of the dissenters. Imprisoned in winter without fire, Bewel, they perished from frost. Some were victims to the barbarous cruelty of the jailer; twice George Fox 534. 1 "La vérité absolue est donc une révélation même de Dieu à l'homme par Dieu lui-même; et comme la vérité absolue est perpétuellement aperçue par l'homme et éclaire tout homme à son entrée dans la vie, il suit que la vérité absolue est une révélation perpétuelle et universelle de Dieu à l'homme." Cousin, Fragmens Phil. 2de edi p. 310, 311. Now Barclay. "The object of the saints' faith is the same in all ages." "The testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can be only revealed." "This divine revelation forces assent." "It enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world." Barclay, Prop. ii. and v "There is no true knowledge of God, but that which is revealed inwardly by his own Spirit." Barclay, p. 20. On this point I can see no difference between Cousin and the Quakers. I have already quoted Penn's assertion of their agreement with Plotinus and Plato. |