George Fox was the father of Quakerism, but to William Penn belongs the
distinction of being the first logical expounder of its principles.
William Penn was the son of Admiral Penn. When only twelve years old
he began “to listen to the voice of God in his soul:” and when a
student at Oxford he suffered fines and expulsion for his incipient
Nonconformity. His father, incensed by these religious peculiarities,
turned him into the streets, but this did not in the least degree
destroy his convictions; and subsequently, European travel, and
education, which it might have been expected would dissipate his
impressions, left them as deep as ever, combined with an accession of
intelligence, and an acquisition of graceful manners which rendered him
the admiration of polite society. He had learned to handle the rapier,
with all the skill of a French gentleman, yet he remained imbued with
“a deep sense of the vanity of the world, and the irreligiousness
of its religions.” “Further,” to use his own language, “God, in His
everlasting kindness, guided my feet in the flower of my youth, when
about two-and-twenty years of age. Religion is my crime, and my
innocence,--it makes me a prisoner to malice, but my own freeman.”
When the fashionable world laughed at the rumour of the accomplished
William Penn becoming a Quaker, such ridicule did not move his purpose,
he only showed more steadfastness of conviction, and avowed his
adoption of Quaker habits by going to Court with his hat on. When the
Bishop of London menaced him with imprisonment, “My prison shall be my
grave,” the youth replied. When Charles sent Stillingfleet to talk with
him, the youthful Dissenter, through that Divine, returned an answer
to every threat--“The Tower is to me the worst argument in the world.”
This was in 1668, the year in which he published his _Truth Exalted,
or a Testimony to Rulers, Priests, and Bishops_; and the same year,
and in consequence of this same book, he was actually confined as a
prisoner within the gloomy walls of the old Norman fortress, where he
remained seven months; and where he wrote his _No Cross, No Crown,
or Several Sober Reasons against Hat Worship, Titular Respect, You
to a single person, with the Apparel and Recreations of the Times,
in Defence of the poor despised Quakers, against the practice and
objections of their adversaries_. The title is modified in later
editions.
[Sidenote: QUAKERS.--WILLIAM PENN.]
The old Admiral paid his son’s fines, and on his deathbed, in altered
tones, observed to him, “Son William, if you and your friends keep to
your plain way of preaching and living, you will make an end of the
priests.” Now possessed of his father’s fortune, he surprised people
by his religious eccentricities. “You are an ingenious gentleman,”
said a magistrate before whom he was brought, “you have a plentiful
estate, why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with
such a simple people?” “I prefer,” said he, “the honestly simple to
the ingeniously wicked;” this was in 1670, when committed to Newgate,
under the Conventicle Act, for preaching to “a riotous and seditious
assembly,”--that is to say, for preaching to a company of Friends, who
met for worship in the open-air; and from Newgate, he addressed to
Parliament and the people of England, a plea for liberty of conscience,
saying, if the efforts of the Quakers cannot obtain “the olive branch
of toleration, we bless the providence of God, resolving by patience
to outweary persecution, and by our constant sufferings, to obtain
a victory, more glorious than our adversaries can achieve by their
cruelties.”[499]
These incidents in his early life were obviously connected with his
religious opinions. Far less imbued with the element of mysticism
than was the founder of the sect, this eminent disciple appears no
less earnest in the advocacy of his opinions; and he works them out
with a facility of reasoning, a compass of knowledge, and a force
and glow of diction, in which the reader cannot but recognize, in
connection with his natural ability, the fruits of his Oxford culture.
A comparison between the writings of Fox and Penn, as it regards mental
peculiarities, is interesting and instructive, showing the original
and creative genius of the one, and the effect of academical training
upon the other: in the enjoyment of a spiritual education, not of this
world, they were much alike.
The fundamental principle of Quaker theology is found in the doctrine
of the inward light; and to the exposition and establishment of that
doctrine, William Penn devotes himself in his work, entitled _The
Christian a Quaker_ (1674). He explains the light as being not
something metaphorical, nor yet the mere spirit or reason of man, but
Christ, “that glorious Sun of Righteousness and heavenly luminary
of the intellectual or invisible world, represented of all outward
resemblances, most exactly by the great sun of this sensible and
visible world; that as this natural light ariseth upon all, and
gives light to all about the affairs of this life, so that Divine
light ariseth upon all and gives light to all that will receive the
manifestations of it about the concerns of the other life.” That light
manifests sin, and reveals duty. It saved from Adam’s day, through
the holy patriarchs’ and prophets’ time down to Christ; amongst the
Jews as proved from Scripture, amongst the Gentiles, as proved from
their own literature. Under this division, Penn quotes largely from
the _Stromata_ of Clement of Alexandria, adopting his quotations
as genuine and trustworthy. The primitive Fathers expressed themselves
in accordance with this doctrine; and amongst the heathen there were
men of virtuous lives, who taught the indispensableness of virtue to
life eternal. The author contends that the latter foresaw the coming
of Christ, and curiously adds, that their refusing to swear proves the
sufficiency of the inward light.[500] In the support of these opinions,
Penn appeals to the authority of Scripture, and employs a large amount
of general reasoning.
[Sidenote: QUAKERS.--WILLIAM PENN.]
Although the inward light be _the_ rule,[501] Holy Scripture is _a_
rule, and one authoritative and binding on those who possess it. Hence,
whilst ever appealing to reason in his theological arguments, Penn
habitually refers to Scripture as an inspired revelation from God, of
great importance in determining religious controversy. The distinction
which he makes, and the place which he assigns to the Bible had better
be given in his own words:--“_A_ rule, and _the_ rule are two things.
By _the_ rule of faith and practice I understand the living, spiritual,
immediate, Omnipresent, discovering, ordering Spirit of God; and by _a_
rule I apprehend some instrument, by and through which, this great
and universal rule may convey its directions. Such a subordinate,
secondary, and declaratory rule, we never said several parts of
Scripture were not, yet we confess the reason of our obedience is not
merely because they are there written (for that were legal) but because
they are the eternal precepts of the Spirit in men’s consciences,
there repeated and declared.”[502] This is the key which unlocks
Penn’s theological system; and it is remarkable, how the controversy
between the old Quakers and their contemporaries, turned mainly upon
a question, agitated in the present day by thinkers very unlike the
Quakers in many respects.
The two rules thus defined were regarded by this writer as requiring
the rejection of the Anglican doctrine of the Trinity, and of the
Puritan doctrines respecting Christ’s Atonement, as a satisfaction
offered to God, and respecting the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness.[503]
In consequence of what he said touching the Trinity, Penn was charged
with not believing in the Divinity of Christ, and indeed was sent to
prison on that account; but he clearly avows in his apology, entitled,
_Innocency with her Open Face_, that Christ is God; for, he
observes, if none can save or be properly styled a Saviour, but God,
and yet Christ is said to save, and is properly called a Saviour, it
must needs follow that Christ the Saviour is God. The strongest passage
I have noticed in the writings of Penn in relation to the atonement is
the following:--“That as there was a necessity that ‘One should die for
the people,’ so, whoever, then or since, believed in Him, had and have
a seal or confirmation of the remission of their sins in His blood;
and that blood--alluding to the custom of the Jewish sacrifices--shall
be an utter blotting out of former iniquities, carrying them as into a
land of forgetfulness.”
The prominence which this Quaker Divine justly gave to the truth, that
Christ saves _from_ sin, is not associated with such ideas of
justification as accord with Puritan standards. According to his own
view, holiness is an integral part of that justification, which he
seems to identify with man’s entire salvation.[504]
Penn, no doubt, misunderstood both Anglicans and Puritans, and in some
cases his disputes turned very much upon the meaning of words, yet
no one who attentively studies his works, can help seeing that there
were real and momentous differences between the Quakers and their
fellow Christians. Quakers, absorbed by their inward experiences, did
not attach the importance which is due to the historical and dogmatic
instructions of the sacred volume. Not that Quakers denied what is
historical, but they often, like early mystical expositors--Origen, for
example--overlaid it with fanciful meanings. Not that they neglected
all dogmatic teaching, but they failed to bring out clearly some of the
truths revealed in the New Testament, especially in the writings of the
Apostle Paul. The bright side of Quakerism lies in the marked elevation
of the moral above the intellectual, of the spiritual above the formal,
of the Divine above the human, of the work of God above the work of
man: and it is as a corollary from the master principle of the whole
system, the principle of the inner light, rather than as a deduction
from reason or from expediency, or even from Scripture, that there is
contained in Quaker literature such a distinct enunciation of men’s
right, universally, to the freedom of religious speech and of religious
worship.[505]
[Sidenote: QUAKERS.--WILLIAM PENN.]
Liberty, in William Penn’s estimation, was identical with Christianity.
Persecution he held to be thoroughly anti-Christian. Judging people
by their conduct, not by their creed, esteeming meekness and charity
as fruits of the Spirit, inseparable from true religion, he looked
upon all persecutors, whether Churchmen or Separatists, whether sound
or heterodox, as alienated from their Maker, and as enemies to their
race.[506]
William Penn had an opportunity such as no other person amongst the
authors we are now describing ever possessed, of testing his theory of
religion and morals.
After travelling with George Fox over the Continent upon religious
service, and after finding all hopes of liberty crushed at home, Penn
in 1681 resolved to cross the Atlantic, and in America to realize the
bright dreams which had entertained his imagination from a boy--dreams
of “a free Colony for all mankind.” He landed on the banks of the
Delaware, to try “the holy experiment.” Tradition tells of his
receiving the enfeoffment of the territory, by delivery of earth and
water to him, as he stood surrounded by Swedes, Dutch, and English, in
the Court House of the Colonial town of Newcastle; and of his ascending
the river, fringed with pine trees, to the spot where was to rise the
City of Philadelphia, and of his treaty with the Indians under the
autumn-tinted elm tree of Shakamaxon. “We meet,” he said to his new
neighbours, the red-complexioned children of the forest, “on the broad
pathway of good faith and good will, no advantage shall be taken on
either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you
children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor
brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between you and me,
I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or the
falling tree might break. We are the same, as if one man’s body were
to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.” Never
had there been in the wild regions of the earth such colonizing as
that before. “We will live,” said the red men, “in love with William
Penn and his children, as long as the moon and the sun shall endure.”
God was the sole witness of that covenant. Its only memorials were the
strings of wampun which these covenanters hung up in their huts, and
the shells they counted over upon a piece of bark; yet whilst other
treaties amongst civilized Europeans have been torn into shreds as soon
as they have been sealed, this has remained inviolate. “We have done
better,” could the Colonists say, “than if, with the proud Spaniards,
we had gained the mines of Potosi. We may make the ambitious heroes
whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories. To the
poor dark souls round about us we teach their rights as men.” Penn
visited the natives in their cabins, partook of their roasted acorns,
laughed and played with the frolicksome, and spoke to them of God. “The
poor savage people believed in God, and the soul, without the aid of
metaphysics.”
The infant city, the Philadelphia, which in 1683 “consisted of three or
four little cottages,” grew and spread, hollow trees were succeeded by
houses. The chestnut, the walnut, and the ash were cut down for the use
of the emigrants, roads were made, boys and girls played in the streets
of this new Jerusalem, and the kindly-hearted Quaker, with his genial
good-humoured face, with his broad-brimmed hat, his long neckcloth, and
his drab attire, might be seen patting their heads with fatherly love.
William Penn, as a theologian, wrote books. William Penn, as a
Christian philanthropist and statesman, did a work which surpassed his
books. “How happy must be a community instituted on their principles,”
said Peter the Great, speaking of the Quakers. “Beautiful,” cried
Frederic the Great; “it is perfect, if it can endure.” It has endured.
[Sidenote: QUAKERS.--BARCLAY.]
Robert Barclay, a Scotch Friend, the son of Colonel David Barclay, of
an ancient family, and of Catherine Gordon, of the ducal house of that
name, published his famous _Apology_ in 1676, two years after
Penn had published _The Christian a Quaker_. With nothing like
the flowing style of his English contemporary, he had a more robust
understanding, a keener conception of what he meant to say, a still
more logical method of treatment, and, without any show of learning,
perhaps he had a deeper amount of scholarship, obtained during his
education and residence in France. Barclay affords the student a great
advantage wanting in Penn; whereas, in the case of Penn, we have to
search through several treatises, extending to five volumes, in order
to ascertain the beliefs which he inculcated, in Barclay they are
brought together in their proper relation and proportions, and are
compactly yet fully expressed. A remarkable coincidence of opinion
appears between the two writers, although the intimacy between them
does not seem to have commenced until after Barclay had written his
_Apology_.
He strikes the same key-note as does his friend. The inward light is
the true foundation of knowledge, and the Scriptures are not to be
esteemed the principal ground of truth and knowledge, the primary rule
of faith and manners. He maintains that there is universal redemption
by Christ, and that the saving spiritual light enlighteneth every man.
Christ is in all men a supernatural light or seed, beyond reason, above
conscience, _Vehiculum Dei_: yet there is a great difference
between Christ in the wicked, and Christ in the saints. He is quenched
and crucified in the one; He is cherished and obeyed in the other.[507]
[Sidenote: QUAKERS.--BARCLAY.]
Barclay speaks of an outward redemption wrought for man by Christ in
His crucified body, whereby we are made capable of salvation, and of
an inward redemption wrought within us by the Spirit of Christ. “The
first,” he says, “is the redemption performed and accomplished by
Christ for us, in His crucified body, without us; the other is the
redemption wrought by Christ in us, which no less properly is called
and accounted a redemption than the former. The first, then, is that
whereby a man as he stands in the fall, is put into a capacity of
salvation, and hath conveyed unto him a measure of that power, virtue,
spirit, life, and grace, that was in Christ Jesus, which, as the
free gift of God, is able to counterbalance, overcome, and root out
the evil seed, wherewith we are naturally, as in the fall, leavened.
The second is that whereby we witness and know this pure and perfect
redemption in ourselves, purifying, cleansing, and redeeming us from
the power of corruption, and bringing us into unity, favour, and
friendship with God. By the first of these two, we that were lost
in Adam are so far reconciled to God by the death of His Son, while
enemies, that we are put into a capacity of salvation, having the glad
tidings of the Gospel of peace offered unto us; and God is reconciled
unto us in Christ. By the second, we witness this capacity brought
into act; whereby receiving, and not resisting, the purchase of His
death, to wit, the light, Spirit, and grace of Christ revealed in
us, we witness and possess, a real, true, and inward redemption from
the power and prevalency of sin; and so come to be truly and really
redeemed, justified, and made righteous, and to a sensible union and
friendship with God. Thus He died for us, that He might redeem us from
all iniquity; and thus we know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His
death. This last follows the first in order, and is a consequence of
it, proceeding from it, as an _effect_ from its _cause_; for,
as none could have enjoyed the last, without the first had been (such
being the will of God); so also can none now partake of the first, but
as he witnesseth the last. Wherefore, as to us, they are both causes of
our justification; the first the _procuring efficient_, the other
the _formal cause_.”[508]
Although in Barclay’s proposition concerning justification, he seems
verbally to distinguish between that privilege and holiness of
character, yet he really confounds them together. Nor does he scruple
to style good works meritorious “in a qualified sense.” He takes care,
however, distinctly to ascribe human salvation to the merit of the
Lord Jesus Christ. In another proposition, he expresses his faith
in perfection, defining it as a freedom from actual sinning, yet
admitting a growth of goodness which, however, involves a possibility
of sin.[509] The Calvinistic doctrine of perseverance he distinctly
denies; and in the remainder of the treatise he unfolds the well-known
Quaker views concerning the ministry, Divine worship, the sacraments,
the power of the magistrate, and social intercourse.
There is remarkable breadth in the Quaker scheme of theology, it has
singular affinities to other systems; and hence, in addition to its
inherent amiable and loving spirit--which from the beginning rose above
its fierce antagonism to existing Churches--the hold it has frequently
gained upon the sympathies of Christians of different communions.
Its relationship to all mystical forms of Christianity is obvious at
a glance. Not less real is the resemblance between it and certain
aspects of Latitudinarianism on the one side, and of Anglicanism on
the other. The Quaker, like the Latitudinarian, dwells chiefly on the
moral and spiritual side of the Gospel, eschews dogmatical teaching,
sees a heavenly Teacher in every human soul, and looks for religious
instruction beyond what written texts convey. He also, like the
Anglican, treats Scripture as insufficient, taken alone; it is to both
a rule, a supreme rule, but not the only one. The Quaker finds in his
own breast the supplemental voice which the Anglican seeks in the
ancient Church.
There were at that period other Mystics besides the Quakers. Indeed,
our English theological literature of the seventeenth century is much
richer in sentiment, speculation, and imagery of this kind, than many
well-informed persons suppose.
[Sidenote: OTHER MYSTICS.--SALTMARSH.]
John Saltmarsh’s “_Sparkles of Glory_, or some beams of the
Morning Star, wherein are many discoveries as to truth and peace, to
the establishment and pure enlargement of a Christian in spirit and
truth,” is a book of considerable power, written in a compact and
lucid style, such as one rarely finds in works of this description.
The author--without condemning water baptism, or the divers organized
ministries of the Churches, or the institutes of Episcopacy,
Presbyterianism, and Independency, as the Quakers were wont to do, but
rather counting them as mere forms, full of weakness and defect, yet
to be tolerated, as having subordinate and preparatory uses--dwells
chiefly upon the passage from lower ministrations to higher, and
expatiates with much delight upon the mystery of true Christian liberty
from God, upon the glorious discoveries of the Spirit to the soul, and
upon the revelation of Christ in us. The history of Christ’s life and
death, with the new relationships in which those stupendous events
place mankind to the Divine Being, and the grand doctrines embodied
in the ancient Church creeds, are little, if at all, noticed in this
mystical treatise. Religion is resolved entirely into the experience
of a spiritual life. Personal responsibility, moral obligation, and
individual duties, are not the subjects which attract the writer’s
attention, his one chief idea throughout being, that the Christian
soul is the passive, quiet, trustful recipient of grace and love.
The highest prayer is a spiritual revelation. “All that we pray--and
not the Spirit of God in us, not that spirit of prayer spoken of
in Scripture--is but the spirit of man praying, which is but the
cry of the creature, or a natural complaining for what we want, as
the Ninevites, and the children and beasts of that city, all cried
unto the Lord.” “That which is the pure, spiritual, comprehensive
principle of a Christian is this:--That all outward administrations,
whether as to religion, or to natural, civil, and moral things, are
only the visible appearances of God, as to the world, or in this
creation; or the clothing of God, being such forms and dispensations
as God puts on amongst men to appear to them in: this is the garment
the Son of God was clothed with down to the feet, or to His lowest
appearance. And God doth not fix Himself upon any one form or outward
dispensation, but at His own will and pleasure comes forth in such
and such an administration, and goes out of it, and leaves it, and
takes up another. And this is clear in all God’s proceedings with the
world, both in the Jewish Church and State, and Christians now. And
when God is gone out, and hath left such or such an administration,
of what kind soever it is, be it religious, moral, or civil, such an
administration is a desolate house, a temple whose veil is rent, a
sun whose light is darkened; and to worship it then, is to worship an
idol, an image, a form, without God, or any manifestation of God in
it, save to him who (as Paul saith) knows an idol to be nothing. The
pure, spiritual, comprehensive Christian, is one who grows up with God
from administration to administration, and so walks with God in all his
removes and spiritual increasings and flowings; and such are weak and
in the flesh who tarry behind, worshipping that form or administration
out of which God is departed.”[510]
[Sidenote: OTHER MYSTICS.--STERRY.]
Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell’s chaplains, is described as “a
high-flown mystical Divine.” After being first much abused and then
long neglected, he has of late been named with honour in high literary
quarters. _The Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the
Soul of Man_, is a publication in which the characteristics of the
author’s mind and teaching may be fully seen. It consists of a series
of sermons upon the words, “Except ye be converted, and become as
little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven;” the
rise to the kingdom being conversion, the race to the kingdom being
a life like that of little children, and the royalty itself being
composed of the two states of present grace and future glory. The
practice of minutely dividing and subdividing a discourse, until it
becomes a thing of shreds and patches, is pushed in this instance to
an intolerable extreme; and the breaking up of sentences into distinct
paragraphs, with the carrying on of different sets of numbers from page
to page, render the perusal of the book a tremendous task. Upon reading
it, I find that the mysticism which it exhibits is of another order
than that found in the pages of Saltmarsh. The substance of Saltmarsh’s
thought is saturated with the spirit of mysticism, the whole nature and
scope of his theology is mystical from head to foot; but the mysticism
of Sterry strikes one as pertaining more to his imaginative forms of
conception and modes of expression than to anything else. His doctrines
of conversion and of religious life, of Christian experience, duty, and
hope, are of the usual evangelical type, but his ideas are ever dressed
in mystical phraseology. He quotes texts of Scripture in abundance, and
then commonly runs out into some strain of allegorical interpretation.
I will quote one passage, which, whilst a specimen of his style, is
more than ordinarily impregnated with mysticism in the substance of the
thought:--
“God comes into our nature, as the root of each single person. Here
He becomes our Jesus, making Himself a new seed; out of this seed He
brings forth a new image of Divinity, by which He breaks through the
image of the devil and nature, brings forth man out of them, brings
them into subjection to this growing beauty. As the fuel is dissolved
into smoke, and the smoke again breaks up into flame, so the image of
the devil riseth up out of the image of nature, shaking that to dust,
as it riseth: the image of God, again, sprouts forth in the midst of
the devil’s image, first spoiling, then triumphing over, and in both.
“God through nature, as the root, grows up into single persons, as the
branches. Then as the shades of night fly away before the ascending
day, so,--as this Divine seed our Jesus sends forth itself in an image
of beauty through our souls,--the image of darkness and death sinks
down into its own place, and principle.”[511]
To Sterry’s book on _The Kingdom of God_ an introduction is
prefixed, written by Jeremy White, who had been chaplain to Oliver
Cromwell, and who lived in private after the Restoration, preaching but
occasionally. White sympathized in the mysticism of Sterry, and, in
the following beautiful passage, uttered truths well worth the serious
consideration of all spiritually-minded people, especially of those who
are disposed to undervalue, perhaps to ridicule, thoughts imbued with
mystic elements:--
“Who among us is yet able to comprehend all the distinct ages and
growths of good minds; to understand the various improvements,
measures, and attainments, the several capacities, languages, and
operations which are peculiar to those ages and growths? It is
impossible for us to set the bounds to spiritual things, to stint that
spirit in ourselves or others which is a fountain of Divine light and
life in all regenerated souls, continually sending forth new streams,
and running along with a fresh succession of waters without any stop or
limit. We are too proud to understand the condescensions, too low to
take the height, too shallow to fathom the depth, too narrow to measure
the breadth, too short to reach the length of the Divine truth and
goodness, and the various communications of themselves to us. We cannot
assign the highest or the lowest state of saints whilst they are here
below. We cannot say, All above this is fancy, whimsey, dream, and
delusion; all below that is common, carnal, formal, and superstitious.
As we ought not, then, to despise and contemn that which is below,
so let us not censure and condemn that which is above us. Blessed be
God, all good souls, in the midst of their greatest distances from one
another here below, do all meet in the Divine comprehension above. We
are all enfolded in the Divine arms, we are all encircled in the Divine
love. That has breadth, and length, and depth, and height enough to
reach and hold us all. And if we cannot yet receive and embrace each
other in our several ages, growths, measures, and attainments, it is
because we have little, low, dark, narrow, and contracted hearts, feel
but little of the love of Christ, and are no more filled with that
Spirit which is the spring, the centre, the circle, the band to all
good spirits in heaven and on earth.”
Jeremy White was a follower of Origen in his views of the ultimate
safety and happiness of the whole universe, and he wrote a
book,--published after his death,--the title of which sums up his
theory: he calls it “_The Restoration of all Things_, or a
vindication of the goodness and grace of God, to be manifested at last,
in the recovery of the whole creation out of their fall.”
[Sidenote: OTHER MYSTICS.--SIR HENRY VANE.]
Sir Henry Vane is numbered amongst English Mystics, but he was more of
the mystical philosopher than the mystical theologian, and the same
may be said, to some extent, of Henry More; but the profession of the
latter, as a clergyman, naturally directed his attention to Divinity
properly so called, and how his mystical views influenced his religious
life and character, will be shown in a subsequent portion of this
volume.