A Portraiture of Quakerism (Vol. 1-3). Thomas Clarkson
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to be the erroneous doctrine it contained, that he could not help publicly contradicting it. For this interruption of the service he was seized, and afterwards confined in prison. At Mansfield again, as he was declaring his own religious opinions in the church, the people fell upon him and beat and bruised him, and put him afterwards in the stocks. At Market Bosworth he was stoned and driven out of the place. At Chesterfield he addressed both the clergyman and the people, but they carried him before the mayor, who detained him till late at night, at which unseasonable time the officers and watchmen put him out of the town.
And here I would observe, before I proceed to the occurrences of another year, that there is reason to believe that George Fox disapproved of his own conduct in having interrupted the service of the church at Nottingham, which I have stated to have been the first occasion of his imprisonment. For if he believed any one of his actions, with which the world had been offended, to have been right, he repeated it, as circumstances called it forth, though he was sure of suffering for it either from the magistrates or the people. But he never repeated this, but he always afterwards, when any occasion of religious controversy occurred in any of the churches, where his travels lay, uniformly suspended his observations, till the service was over.
George Fox spent almost the whole of the next year, that is, of the year 1650, in confinement in Derby Prison.
In 1651, when he was set at liberty, he seems not to have been in the least disheartened by the treatment he had received there, or at the different places before mentioned, but to have resumed his travels, and to have held religious meetings, as he went along. He had even the boldness to go into Litchfield, because he imagined it to be his duty, and, with his shoes off to pronounce with an audible voice in the streets, and this on the market-day, a woe against that city. He continued also to visit the churches, as he journeyed, in the time of divine service, and to address the priests and the people publicly, as he saw occasion, but not, as I observed before, till he believed the service to be over. It does not appear, however, that he suffered any interruption upon these occasions, in the course of the present year, except at York-Minster; where, as he was beginning to preach after the sermon, he was hurried out of it, and thrown down the steps by the congregation, which was then breaking up. It appears that he had been generally well received in the county of York, and that he had convinced many.
In the year 1652, after having passed through the shires of Nottingham and Lincoln, he came again into Yorkshire. Here, in the course of his journey, he ascended Pendle-Hill. At the top of this he apprehended it was opened to him, whither he was to direct his future steps, and that he saw a great host of people, who were to be converted by him in the course of his ministry. From this time we may consider him as having received his commission full and complete in his own mind. For in the vale of Beevor he conceived himself to have been informed of the various doctrines, which it became his duty to teach, and, on this occasion, to have had an insight of the places where he was to spread them.
To go over his life, even in the concise way, in which I have hitherto attempted it, would be to swell this introduction into a volume. I shall therefore, from this great period of his ministry, make only the following simple statement concerning it.
He continued his labours, as a minister of the gospel, and even preached, within two days of his death.
During this time he had settled meetings in most parts of the kingdom, and had given to these the foundation of that beautiful system of discipline, which I shall explain in this volume, and which exists among the Quakers at the present day.
He had travelled over England, Scotland, and Wales. He had been in Ireland. He had visited the British West-Indies, and America. He had extended his travels to Holland, and part of Germany.
He had written, in this interval, several religious books, and had addressed letters to kings, princes, magistrates, and people, as he felt impressions on his mind, which convinced him, that it become his duty to do it.
He had experienced also, during this interval, great bodily sufferings. He had been long and repeatedly confined in different gaols of the kingdom. The state of the gaols, in these times, is not easily to be conceived. That of Doomsdale at Launceston in Cornwall, has never been exceeded for filth and pestilential noisomeness, nor those of Lancaster and Scarborough-castles for exposure to the inclemency of the elements. In the two latter he was scarcely ever dry for two years; for the rain used to beat into them, and to run down upon the floor. This exposure to the severity of the weather occasioned his body and limbs to be benumbed, and to swell to a painful size, and laid the foundation, by injuring his health, for future occasional sufferings during the remainder of his life.
With respect to the religious doctrines, which George Fox inculcated during his ministry, it is not necessary to speak of them here, as they will be detailed in their proper places. I must observe, however, that he laid a stress upon many things, which the world considered to be of little moment, but which his followers thought to be entirely worthy of his spiritual calling. He forbade all the modes and gestures, which are used as tokens of obeisance, or flattery, or honour, among men. He insisted on the necessity of plain speech or language. He declaimed against all sorts of music. He protested against the exhibitions of the theatre, and many of the accustomary diversions of the times. The early Quakers, who followed him in all these points, were considered by some as turning the world upside down; but they contended in reply, that they were only restoring it to its pure and primitive state; and that they had more weighty arguments for acting up to their principles in these respects, than others had for condemning them for so doing.
But whatever were the doctrines, whether civil, or moral, or religious, which George Fox promulgated, he believed that he had a divine commission for teaching them, and that he was to be the RESTORER of Christianity; that is, that he was to bring people from Jewish ceremonies and Pagan-fables, with which it had been intermixed, and also from worldly customs, to a religion which was to consist of spiritual feeling. I know not how the world will receive the idea, that he conceived himself to have had a revelation for these purposes. But nothing is more usual than for pious people, who have succeeded in any ordinary work of goodness, to say, that they were providentially led to it, and this expression is usually considered among Christians to be accurate. But I cannot always find the difference between a man being providentially led into a course of virtues and successful action, and his having an internal revelation for it. For if we admit that men may be providentially led upon such occasions, they must be led by the impressions upon their minds. But what are these internal impressions, but the dictates of an internal voice to those who follow them? But if pious men would believe themselves to have been thus providentially led, or acted upon, in any ordinary case of virtue, if it had been crowned with success, George Fox would have had equal reason to believe, from the success that attended his own particular undertaking, that he had been called upon to engage in it. For at a very early age he had confuted many of the professors of religion in public disputations. He had converted magistrates, priests, and people. Of the clergymen of those times some had left valuable livings, and followed him. In his thirtieth year he had seen no less than sixty persons, spreading, as ministers, his own doctrines. These, and other circumstances which might be related, would doubtless operate powerfully upon him to make him believe, that he was a chosen vessel. Now, if to these considerations it be added, that George Fox was not engaged in any particular or partial cause of benevolence, or mercy, or justice, but wholly and exclusively in a religious and spiritual work, and that it was the first of all his religious doctrines, that the spirit of God, where men were obedient to it, guided them in their spiritual concerns, he must have believed himself, on the consideration of his unparalleled success, to have been providentially led, or to have had an internal or spiritual commission for the cause, which he had undertaken.
But this belief was not confined to himself. His followers believed in his commission also. They had seen, like himself, the extraordinary success of his ministry. They acknowledged the same internal admonitions, or revelations of the same spirit, in spiritual concerns. They had been witnesses of his innocent and blameless life. There were individuals in the kingdom, who had publicly professed sights and prophecies concerning him. At an early age he had been reported, in some parts of the country, as a youth, who had a discerning spirit. It had gone abroad, that he had healed many persons, who had been sick of various diseases.