There is in humanity an element of mysticism presenting manifold
developments. It characterizes both individual minds and schools of
thought: mediæval theologians, and men and women of Romish Christendom,
altogether ignorant of scientific divinity, and only burning with pious
fervour, have been mystics without knowing that they were so. Since the
Reformation particular members of all sects have been tinged with this
peculiarity; and a whole body of religionists in England have from the
very beginning of their remarkable history avowed the love and walked
in the light of a mystical spiritualism. Though the Anglo-Saxon race
are believed generally to have less sympathy with transcendental views
than Spaniards, Germans, or Frenchmen, yet it is a fact that nowhere
as in this country has mysticism produced a distinct and permanent
ecclesiastical organization. And what is further remarkable, whilst
it claims a purely spiritual basis--there is no other sect which has
an equal distinctness of form and an equal prominence in external
singularity; for not only in worship and discipline does it stand out
in marked visibility before the world, but so obvious are or were its
outward signs that, until very lately, a member of the Society might be
as easily recognized as a Roman Catholic priest or a Capuchin friar.
[Sidenote: _Rise of Quakerism._]
The origin of the Quakers, as they were first derisively called,[363]
of the Friends, as they prefer to be designated, was under the
Commonwealth. Then the freedom granted to enquiry within Evangelical
limits, the violent reaction which had set in against the forms
and ceremonies of Anglo-Catholicism, the generally unsettled state
of religious thought, the activity of tendencies towards a sort of
ultra-spirituality, and a natural craving--amidst the revolutions of
an age which tore up old conventionalities of belief--to get at the
pure substance of truth, and at the heart of things, combined to draw
out and to nourish whatever of the mystical element there might be in
English souls. Sympathies of that order were vaguely working and were
indefinitely expressed in many quarters.
Quakerism, as a congenial centre, speedily attracted them to itself.
The true Friend, travelling in modern days on religious service,
finds in churches the most remote, persons whose inner life presents
strange affinities to his own. Discoursing in his peculiar way upon
the mysteries of religious experience, he evokes recognitions of
brotherhood from the Spanish Catholic and the Russian Greek;[364] no
wonder, therefore, when mysticism in England found for itself such
a voice in the middle of the seventeenth century, that it soon drew
within the circle of its fellowship thousands who were waiting for its
call.
[Sidenote: _George Fox._]
The rise of Quakerism must be sought in the life of its founder. If
ever the child was father to the man, it certainly was so in the case
of George Fox. Born of humble but virtuous parents--his father,
Christopher, an honest weaver, winning amongst his companions the name
of "righteous Christer;" his mother, Mary Lago, a pure-minded woman,
sprung from a family stock which had borne fruits of martyrdom--he
was not likely in his early days to see much of immorality, nor
were the folks who crossed his parents' threshold, and whom the
boy heard talking round the hearth-stone, likely to be otherwise
than of the better sort in morals; yet their cheerfulness and mirth
shocked little George so much, that he would say within himself,
"If ever I come to be a man surely I will not be so wanton." He was
too precocious to like childish games, and shewed his activity of
intellect and depth of feeling in strange questions about religion,
and in ways of worship unlike his mother's. When only eleven, he had
inward monitions, inclining him to an ascetic life, and impulses
which two hundred years earlier would have made a youth of his stamp
an exemplary monk. Apprenticed to a dealer in leather and wool,
who bred sheep for the sake of the fleece, George was set to watch
the flocks, and in his shepherd life he found "a just emblem of
his after ministry and service." As he grew older, men admired the
justness of his dealings, and in his "verily" found what was more
than equivalent to another man's oath, so that it became a proverb,
"If George says verily there is no altering him." When business or
persuasion took him to the market or the fair, his righteous soul was
vexed with what he saw and heard--for even drinking healths appeared
offensive--and he would return from the gaiety of the gathering to
mourn in secret, through sleepless nights, over the world's vanity and
sin. He resolved to separate from his acquaintances and to spend a
life of retirement and devotion. None of the professions of religion
in those days met his views. The Episcopal Church seemed little
better than the world--Baptists and Independents were not sufficiently
spiritual--current forms of theology did not supply the necessities
of the young enquirer--and therefore in solitude and fasting, in the
Scriptures, and in communion with his own deep thoughts, George Fox
sought to satisfy the hunger of his soul.[365]
The intellectual character of this remarkable person is not easily
measured. Possessing little of the logical faculty, eschewing
argumentative forms of thought, and altogether ignorant of Baconian
methods of induction, he had nevertheless a keen, lightning-like power
of penetrating hidden truths and of laying open secret things. By
intuitive perception he reached spiritual truths. He felt a great deal
to be right which he could not prove to be so; and much which to men of
another mould seemed occult and shadowy, to him appeared firmer than
the earth on which he trod. He cared not for the coverings of truth,
the nakeder it was to him the better. He could boast of no poetical
imagination, yet he possessed a prodigious power of realizing what he
believed, and had he been a school-man, he would have been as decided a
Realist as Thomas Aquinas.
George Fox had strong sympathies with what is spiritual everywhere
and in all things, but especially with what is so in religion. As in
striving after truth he was ever breaking shells to get at kernels,
so in his pantings for fellowship with God, which constituted the
most pressing need of his nature, he was intolerant of forms. He had
no patience with any ceremonial avenues by which to walk up to the
temple of the Eternal, but rather longed for an eagle's wing to fly at
once to the mount of God; forgetful, in his sincere raptures, of the
conditions of humanity, and not considering that in the pursuit of the
noblest as of the humblest ends, mortals cannot dispense with means,
and that we are all of us two-sided beings, needing helps from without
to strengthen and preserve what is most Divine within.
In morals his character was more than unimpeachable. Rarely has a man
been found so just and true, so virtuous and temperate, so benevolent
and pacific; although, withal, so bold, and even severe in rebuking
falsehood, hypocrisy, and every kind of sin. His moral indignation,
which was sometimes misplaced, made him forgetful of the courtesies of
life, and the rudeness which he thus displayed served to increase both
the animosity and the number of his enemies.[366]
[Sidenote: _George Fox._]
Mysticism formed his whole character. It penetrated his intellect.
It pervaded his spirit. It was the soul of his religion, and the
mainspring of his morality. It inspired him with the love of solitude
and the love of nature. To get away from his fellow-creatures to
commune with himself, and with God, amidst the solitudes of creation,
became his chief delight. Not that when he speaks of wandering in
fields and orchards, and of getting into the depths of forests, and
the hollows of trees, it was with a poet's perception of nature's
mysteries. He rather wished, whilst away from the noisy world, in
the deep silence of a summer's noon or a winter's night, to open his
inmost self to the Spirit of God, to uncover the hidden harp that an
invisible finger might touch the strings; to walk in an inward light,
to enjoy the indwelling Christ, and to receive revelations of truth
and love from those pure realms where they everlastingly reign. George
Fox often deluded himself, and mistook for the Divine what was merely
human: but that the Holy Ghost wrought within his heart in a powerful
manner, who can doubt? His errors were often the shadows of everlasting
verities; some of his aberrations came from noble self-denying
impulses; and with respect to him it might be aptly said, "And e'en the
light that led astray was light from heaven."
The solitary became ascetic, as was natural. He denied himself the
common comforts of life, he would not eat and drink like other people,
and for a while he belied the name of "friend," and walked about
like a hermit or a ghost. "And when he came into a town, he took a
chamber to himself there, and tarried sometimes a month, sometimes
more, sometimes less, in a place; for he was afraid of staying long
in any place, lest, being a tender young man, he should be hurt by
too familiar a conversation with men."[367] He had deep spiritual
exercises of soul. No one could be more conscious of the existence of
evil powers--of Satanic agencies in the invisible world to which the
inner nature of man belongs even in the present life. But applying to
himself the holy words, "in returning and in rest shall ye be saved,
in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength," he sought
refuge from his mysterious troubles by abiding "under the shadow of
the Almighty." Describing his experience when he was pressed by the
greatest of mystical problems, he says:--"One morning, as I was sitting
by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me;
but I sat still. And it was said, 'All things come by nature,' and
the elements and stars came over me, so that I was in a manner quite
clouded with it. But as I sat still, and said nothing, the people of
the house perceived nothing. And as I sat still under it, and let it
alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice which said:--'There
_is_ a living God, who made all things,' and immediately the cloud and
temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my heart was glad,
and I praised the living God."[368]
[Sidenote: _George Fox._]
Fox was mighty in prayer. So great an effect he produced on one
occasion, that the persons present felt as if the house were shaken by
a mighty wind and the day of Pentecost had once more fully come; and
Penn declared: "The most awful living reverent frame I ever felt or
beheld, I must say, was his in prayer."[369] By Fox's public teaching
he became more widely known, and exerted an influence which has lasted
from that day to this. Believing in the fundamental doctrines of
Christianity,[370] and regarding them in an anti-Calvinistic light,
strong in a simple Evangelical faith, but without any theological
discipline of thought, preferring the language of Scripture to the
words of men--he added to all this, as the first-fruit of his mystical
tendencies, a belief in the "inward light," even the revelation of
Christ in the soul, not as superseding holy Scripture, but as its
necessary witness and its gracious supplement. He dwelt very largely
upon redemption through Christ, as consisting in deliverance from sin,
not simply from its guilt, but from its power;--a view of salvation of
the very last importance, and one which had been, at least partially,
obscured through the prominence given by some theologians of the
day to the doctrine of pardon, and the change effected in our legal
relationship by the work of Christ, without a due exhibition of
the moral change in the heart and life which forms so important an
aspect of the one salvation of the Gospel of God. He dwelt much on
the subject of man's deliverance from sin itself--from its power and
practice--which the Divine Redeemer had accomplished. Ideas of human
perfectibility through Christ[371] blended with Fox's conceptions of
holiness and of the work of the Spirit; and his notion of Christianity
as a purely spiritual system[372] led to further peculiarities
which, in fact, chiefly distinguished this remarkable teacher in
the estimation of contemporaries. Hence sprang his opposition to
sacraments, to ceremonies, and to forms of prayer, and also his delight
in the exercises of silent worship. Hence, too, his dislike to all
compulsory support of the ministry, whether by tithes or taxation;
together with a horror of human priesthoods, and even of any order
of Christian teachers educated and exclusively set apart for the
service. His condemnation of the use of oaths and of the practice of
war resulted from his reverence for the Supreme Being, and from the
deep sympathies of his benevolent nature with the pacific spirit of the
Gospel.
[Sidenote: _George Fox._]
But his oddities attracted still more notice than his preaching. He
wore very long hair, and clothed himself in a suit of leather; things,
however, of which too much has been made by his biographers, seeing
that this sort of dress was worn only for a time, and was adapted
for rough use, while it was not so very strange in an age of leather
doublets. Nor was his numbering the days of the week, instead of
calling them by their usual names, so peculiar as is supposed, since
it appears to have been the practice of Independents and Baptists to do
the same. Nor did "thee" and "thou" sound so strange as in the present
day. But the stern refusal to take off his hat before anybody, even
before magistrates; the violence with which he assailed "priests,"
and all ministers; the terms he applied to parish churches, calling
them "steeple-houses;" the encouragement he gave to the preaching of
women; and the manner in which he publicly testified against evil,
made this spiritual reformer appear a most eccentric personage, and
brought down upon him ridicule and abuse, and a great deal of what
was very much worse.[373] His testimonies were delivered at wakes, at
fairs, at inns, in courts of justice, and in places of worship. When
the bell rang for church, it smote his soul as a sign that the Gospel
was going to be sold, not given without money and without price; and
off the honest enthusiast went to the steeple-house, to interrupt the
minister, and protest against his ministry. This, of course, could not
be tolerated, and presently he found himself shut up in filthy cells,
or set in the public stocks. The punishment was severe, monstrously
and beyond all proportion to the offence, but the offender clearly put
himself in a false position. With no taste for Gothic architecture,
looking upon cathedrals as popish mass-houses, he could not endure the
sight of the beautiful spires of Lichfield; so, pulling off his shoes,
he walked through the streets, and thinking of pagan persecutions
there in old times, cried "Woe, woe to the bloody city."[374] The
magistrates of Derby most unjustly convicted him of blasphemy, under
the late Act against atheistical opinions, and sentenced him to six
months' confinement in the House of Correction. He subsequently
moderated some of his excesses, but this did not secure him against
outrageous persecutions and intolerable sufferings. The Quaker reveals
his character as he tells his story. "When the Lord first sent me forth
in the year 1643, I was sent as an innocent lamb (and young in years)
amongst (men in the nature of) wolves, dogs, bears, lions and tigers
into the world, which the devil had made like a wilderness, no right
way then found out of it. And I was sent to turn people from darkness
to the light, which Christ, the Second Adam, did enlighten them withal;
that so they might see Christ, their way to God, with the Spirit of
God, which He doth pour upon all flesh, that with it they might have an
understanding to know the things of God, and to know Him, and His Son,
Jesus Christ, which is eternal life; and so might worship and serve
the living God, their maker and creator, who takes care for all, who
is Lord of all; and with the light and Spirit of God they might know
the Scriptures, which were given forth from the Spirit of God in the
saints, and holy men and women of God.
"And when they began to be turned to the light (which is the life in
Christ) and the Spirit of God, which gave them an understanding, and
had found the path of the just, the shining light, then did the wolves,
dogs, dragons, bears, lions, tigers, wild beasts and birds of prey make
a roaring and a screeching noise against the lambs, sheep, doves, and
children of Christ, and were ready to devour them and me, and to tear
us in pieces. But the Lord's arm and power did preserve me; though many
times I was in danger of my life, and very often cast into dungeons and
prisons, and haled before magistrates. But all things did work together
for good, and the more I was cast into outward prisons, the more people
came out of their spiritual and inward prisons (through the preaching
of the Gospel). But the priests and professors were in such a great
rage, and made the rude and profane people in such a fury, that I could
hardly walk in the streets, or go in the highways, but they were ready
oft-times to do me a mischief. But Christ, who hath all power in heaven
and in the earth, did so restrain and limit them with His power, that
my life was preserved; though many times I was near killed.
"Oh! the burdens and travels that I went under! Often my life pressed
down under the spirits of professors and teachers without life, and
the profane! And besides, the troubles afterwards with backsliders,
apostates, and false brethren, which were like so many Judases in
betraying the truth, and God's faithful and chosen seed, and causing
the way of truth to be evil spoken of! But the Lord blasted, wasted,
and confounded them, so that none did stand long; for the Lord did
either destroy them or bring them to nought, and His truth did
flourish, and His people in it, to the praise of God, who is the
revenger of His chosen."[375]
Fox appeared before the Lord Protector. The meeting of the two at
Whitehall must have been a remarkable scene. Both mystical, but in
different degrees--both enthusiastic in religion, and perhaps equally
sincere in the most erratic forms of their respective faiths--the man
in power excelled in that practical shrewdness and common sense, which
were not altogether wanting in his persecuted brother; and, while the
latter was throwing the religious world into disturbance, the former
aimed at restoring it to order. Cromwell reproached Fox for opposing
the regular clergy. Fox told Cromwell that all Christendom had the
Scriptures; but that those who preached were destitute of the Spirit
by which the Scriptures were written. Thus two strong wills came into
collision. But when the Quaker went on lovingly to talk upon the
mysteries of spiritual experience, it touched the heart of the Lord
Protector at once; and pressing his friend's hand, whom he allowed to
wear his hat in his presence, he said: "Come again to my house; if thou
and I were together but one hour in every day we should be nearer to
each other. I wish you no more ill than I do to my own soul."
[Sidenote: _Fox's Disciples._]
Fox had many followers,[376] and the character of the master reproduced
itself in his disciples. Organization in so large a body soon became
a necessity; and, in spite of the extreme spiritualism of the system,
the Quakers were consolidated into a sect, having a gradation of
ecclesiastical courts, under the name of "meetings," as elaborate
as those of completed Presbyterianism, yet vesting all power in the
people, and combining liberty with subordination. Some early Quaker
preachers vied with Fox in simplicity, earnestness, and courage. Edward
Burroughs, a man of great spirituality and power, would step into the
wrestlers' ring--as lusty peasants on a summer's evening kept up the
ancient sports on the village green--and speak to the rustic spectators
with "a heart-piercing power." He thundered against sin--to use the
Scripture-coloured language of his admirers, and broke stony hearts;
his bow never turned back, and his sword returned not empty from the
slaughter of the mighty. "And, although coals of fire, as it were,
came forth of his mouth, to the consuming of briars and thorns; and
he, passing through unbeaten paths, trampled upon wild thistles and
luxuriant tares, yet his wholesome doctrine dropped as the oil of joy
upon the spirits of the mourners in Zion."[377] But there were people
numbered amongst the Quakers--for the term was widely and vaguely
applied--who had not the wisdom and gentleness of Edward Burroughs.
One at least of these persons--in imitation of the Oriental method
of teaching by signs, as seen in the Hebrew prophets; and also after
the manner of the Russian anchorites--went forth in public stripped
and naked, making a wailing like the dragons, and a mourning as the
owls. George Fox himself says: "the Lord made one to go naked among
you, a figure of thy nakedness, and as a sign amongst you, before your
destruction cometh, that you might see that you were naked and not
covered with the truth."[378] But, notwithstanding he speaks of this
singular manifestation in such terms, he is not to be held responsible
for the manifestation itself. Nothing of the kind occurred in his own
history, nor, as far as we can discover, in that of any distinguished,
or of even any recognized member of the Society of Friends in this
country.[379]
[Sidenote: _Fox and Cromwell._]
In the "Broadmead Records" strange suspicions about Quakerism are
expressed, and tales are told to shew how "the Papists, by their
emissaries and agents, did promote this error and delusion." A
public declaration of the magistrates of Bristol testified to the
same effect.[380] But nothing appears beyond surmises. Some people
in those days, like some people still, were wild upon the subject of
Romanism, and fancied that they saw the print of the Papacy all over
the country.[381] The source of this terror has been already explained;
and, looking at what was then attributed to the Roman Catholics, we see
that the feeling, under the circumstances, is not wonderful. Impartial
historians of the present day, however, will require more than vague
rumours, and unsupported accusations, to convince them of the existence
of a scheme so subtle and so unreasonable. That Rome could promote
its interests through the spread of Quakerism seems an idea even
more absurd than the current story of the Queen's Jesuit confessor,
plotting the death of Charles, and riding up and down the street
before Whitehall upon the day of the monarch's execution with a drawn
sword in his hand. How could Franciscans, in the garb of Quakers, fail
to be detected by Quakers themselves, who of all sectaries perhaps,
most hated Popery? How can the activity of well-known preachers
amongst them--who loathed the ritual and the polity of Rome, and who
were sincere in following the inward light in opposition to all human
authority whatever--be reasonably believed to have received support
from Catholic intriguers?[382]
The amount of persecution inflicted upon Quakers by magistrates and
by mobs during the Commonwealth is almost incredible. "Fox's Journal"
and "Sewel's History" abound in examples of the cruelties which they
endured. Cromwell's latter Parliaments disliked Quakers as much as
other people did; but Cromwell himself, although disapproving of their
disorderly conduct, shewed mercy to the offenders. Treatment such
as they generally received reflects, beyond anything else, upon the
character of the times for toleration and Christian justice. England
at large could not have learned the doctrines of religious liberty,
and must have been sadly out of sympathy with Cromwell and others, to
have inflicted such wanton barbarities upon people who were harmless
as a rule, and mischievous only in a few exceptions. As they quietly
worshipped God, parish ministers would rush into their places of
meeting--accompanied by people armed with staves, cudgels, pitchforks,
"and such like armour"--and interrupt the Quaker preacher more than
any Quaker preacher at the very worst had ever interrupted them. Yet,
under these circumstances, the poor Quakers disturbed--not the people
disturbing--were hustled off to gaol. Katherine Evans, who publicly
exhorted the citizens in Salisbury market-place, was whipped for the
first offence, and for the second was thrown into the "blind-house,"
the worst part of the bridewell.[383]
The justices of Exeter, in the month of June, 1656, made an order of
sessions to apprehend as vagrants all Quakers travelling without a
pass:[384] and the year afterwards a Bill came before Parliament to the
same effect, supported by Major-General Desborough, Mr. Bampfield, an
Independent, and Sir Christopher Pack, a Presbyterian.[385]
[Sidenote: _James Nayler._]
James Nayler brought much dishonour on the whole sect. The nineteenth
century, with all its rationalism, has seen Joanna Southcote, and
her numerous disciples. The seventeenth, with all its fanaticism,
witnessed, in the greatest enthusiast of the age, less absurdity, and
with him a smaller following than we have witnessed even in our own
time. Though Nayler was a convert of George Fox, George Fox regarded
Nayler with some suspicion, "struck with a fear," as he said, "and
being, as it were, under a sense of some great disaster that was like
to befal him."[386] Nayler's fall grieved the hearts of his own
people, and filled the whole country with exaggerated reports of his
shame. While a sufferer in Exeter gaol, his deluded followers addressed
him as "the Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the fairest among ten
thousand." He fancied himself possessed of the Divine nature in some
inexplicable way. Reports were circulated that he pretended to raise
to life one Dorcas Erbery two days after her death. Liberated from
gaol, he marched through Glastonbury and Wells, men and women walking
before him, bareheaded, and strewing the ground with their clothes,
in imitation of what was done at Christ's entrance into Jerusalem.
At Bristol people shouted as he passed along, "Holy, Holy, Holy,
Lord God of Israel, Hosanna in the highest." In prison he received
greetings from fanatics who sung hymns to him, and cried, in Scripture
words: "Rise up, my love, my dove, my fair one, and come away: why
sittest thou among the pots?" This national scandal, as the Parliament
deemed it, could, in their judgment, be washed out only by pains and
penalties; a fact which has received attention in our account of the
second Protectorate Parliament. Although a fanatic, James Nayler
demands justice. It has been rarely meted out to him. His fanaticism
was mystical. He had a notion of some extraordinary indwelling of
the Spirit within his soul, which he enjoyed, as he supposed, not in
consequence of his own superiority, but entirely from abounding grace.
Not himself, but the indwelling Lord, he deemed the object of the
honours paid--honours, it would appear, volunteered by enthusiasts
who were madder than himself. This point is largely noticed in his
trial.[387] Things were laid to his charge which he denied, and he
distinctly repudiated the pretence of raising the dead. Most important
of all is the fact that he repented of his folly, and published a
recantation of his errors in several forms.[388]
The Quakers lamented Nayler's madness and backsliding, and they must
not be held responsible for his aberrations, although they humanely
sympathized with him in his sufferings, which were both unrighteously
inflicted, and patiently endured. Nobody now will vindicate the
treatment he received; yet few besides members of his own sect
condemned it then. To the honour of Lord Fairfax's Presbyterian
chaplain, Joshua Sprigg, it should be mentioned that he, with thirty
other petitioners, personally sought, at the hands of Parliament, some
mitigation of the culprit's doom.[389]
[Sidenote: _Number of Sects._]
Certain parties under the Commonwealth had the habit--and the fashion
still exists--of exaggerating the number of religious denominations.
Ephraim Pagitt--in his "Heresiography," published in 1654--gives a
list of between forty and fifty sects: the historical worth of which
enumeration we may estimate, when we observe that he distinguishes
between Anabaptists and plunged Anabaptists--between Separatists and
semi-Separatists--between Brownists and Barrowists--and then proceeds
to specify three orders of Familists. Edwards, in his "Gangræna,"
with the strongest wish to make the most of his subject, cannot
advance beyond the enumeration of sixteen kinds of schismatics:
but immediately impeaches his own distinctions, by informing us that
one and the same society of persons were Anabaptistical, Antinomian,
Manifestarian, Libertine, Socinian, Millenary, Independent, and
enthusiastical.[390] Our distrust is increased by a subjoined catalogue
of one hundred and seventy-six errors, swollen by statements of
substantially the same thing in varied forms of words, and by the
inclusion of all sorts of trivial opinions and absurd vagaries. Edwards
also gives another catalogue of "particular practices," twenty-eight
in number; besides an array of "blasphemies" culled from sectarian
prayers. Adopting such methods, there is no religious denomination
which we might not subdivide at pleasure. A dozen different names may,
with a little ingenuity, be given to almost every Church upon earth;
and thus twelve different Churches may be made out of one.
Baxter mentions only five, in addition to the larger religious parties.
He describes the minor sects as Vanists, Seekers, Ranters, Quakers,
and Behmenists. With all his power of analysis, however, he very
unsatisfactorily performs his task; for it is idle to represent Vane
as the founder of a sect, and the chief reason why the Kidderminster
polemic placed him in this category seems to be, that he honestly
disliked the man, and that he had been "a means to lessen his
reputation."[391] The account of the Seekers, many of whom, according
to his statement, were "Papists and Infidels," runs into that of the
Ranters. The Quakers he describes as Ranters, turned from profaneness
and blasphemy to asceticism. With the writings of Jacob Behmen it
appears that Baxter had little acquaintance. But he mentions, as chief
of the English Behmenists, one Pordage, who had "sensible communion
with angels," who was acquainted with spirits "by sights and smells,"
who fought fiery dragons, and who saw an impression upon the wall
of his house representing a coach drawn by lions and tigers, which
could not be removed without pickaxes.[392] The record of such idle
rumours, whilst it does not raise our opinion of Baxter as a historian
of religious sects--for the man he describes seems to have been a
lunatic--gives some little insight into the psychological curiosities
of the times, and brings us into acquaintance with "spiritualists" of
the seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: _Number of Sects._]
Besides Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and
Quakers, there were no sects, properly so called--no groups of
professing Christians distinctly organized. Socinianism, however,
existed. John Biddle--who has been already noticed in connection with
the proceedings of Cromwell's first Parliament--contended, at a public
disputation in St. Paul's with Griffin, a Baptist minister, that Christ
was not the Most High God, and this man never lost an opportunity of
avowing Unitarian sentiments.[393] But he founded no party, nor are
there traces of any separate congregations under the Commonwealth
maintaining similar views. There was also much floating mysticism.
The theology of Jacob Behmen, through an "Account of his Life and
Writings," written in English, produced some effect in this country.
The spiritualism of that extraordinary person--akin to the "Theologia
Germanica"--anticipated in "Tauler's Sermons"--and possessing some
affinity to certain Lutheran principles, fed the devotion of English
transcendentalists. Notwithstanding its errors and visionary fancies,
on its better side it nourished a spirit of self-abnegation, protested
against formality, exposed the dangers of dogmatical dispute, opposed
High Calvinism, and pronounced millenarian speculations as of little
profit. And, independently of all foreign culture, mysticism, deeply
rooted in humanity, grew freely on Anglo-Saxon soil; not always
with quiet grace, as in the Cambridge school under the husbandry of
learning, but with twisted roots, gnarled trunks, and oddly-forked
branches, bent and torn by those political and theological storms
which swept so wildly over the whole country. But mysticism of this
description did not settle down into any sectarian type. It has been
common to pass strong and indiscriminate votes of censure upon all the
Commonwealth theology which was leavened by an element of this kind;
but now that such theology is better understood, because more carefully
studied, the universal application of such censure is seen to be
exceedingly unfair.
[Sidenote: _Floating Mysticism._]
Mysticism, in German and English books of the better class, is
opposed to Antinomianism; but, no doubt, mysticism existed in the
middle of the seventeenth century in close alliance with high
predestinarian opinions, and with very loose views of moral obligation
and responsibility. Dr. Tobias Crisp, a Puritan clergyman, who died
in 1643, was the most distinguished Divine of the Antinomian class;
yet, although unguarded and violent in his theoretical statements
to the very last degree, he is described as having been a man of
undeniable Christian virtue. Habits of thinking like his--not marking
the boundaries of a sect--pervaded, in all probability, many minds
which, by an inconsistency happily for mankind very common, were
preserved, through the force of better impulses, from carrying their
principles into practice. But Antinomianism did, in some cases, become
practical, if heed be given to contemporary reports. Monstrous excesses
were committed by individuals;[394] and communities arose, called
_Families of Love_, amidst which, according to contemporary pamphlets,
a shameless immorality prevailed.[395] These monstrous outgrowths of
fanaticism, however, as we might expect from their very nature, were
but short-lived; and they mostly belonged to the soldiery during the
continuance of the Civil Wars. In short, things of this sort formed the
filthy surf thrown up by lashed waters, and disappeared when the storm
had subsided.
We may name, in addition, four eccentric, if not crazy, individuals,
called founders of sects, who in their strangeness really represented
only themselves. The first was John Robins, who pretended to work
miracles, to ride on the winds, and to exhibit angels and other
supernatural sights--proclaiming himself to be an incarnation of the
Deity; the second was John Tawney, the high priest of this Robins, and
who joined with him in a commission to lead a company of followers
to Jerusalem; and the third and fourth, men equally hare-brained,
were named Reeve and Muggleton, who called themselves the witnesses
predicted in Revelation, and who said they were able by fire to devour
their adversaries. These fanatics cursed everybody who did not agree
with them. It is useless to pursue the subject further. Enough has
been said to prove that the number of sects under the Commonwealth has
been enormously exaggerated; that various opinions were held then,
as now, without forming distinct ecclesiastical communions; and that
the greatest absurdities were little more than the hallucinations of
individual minds.[396]
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