an agreeable one in a matter wherein the liberty of other people was concerned. The Dewsbury code enjoined that in every particular "meeting" (i.e. society), there should be chosen "one or two who are most grown in the power and life, and in the pure discernment in the Truth, to take care and charge over the flock of God in that place." These men were to rule "in the power of the Spirit in all purity." They were to see that order be kept in the church, in constant meeting together" once a week or more, if it may be, besides the First-day meeting." Scattered Friends were to meet together "to wait on the Lord, three or four hours, as the Lord orders it, one night or two in the week ;" and all were to watch over one another "with a pure, single eye." Disorderly members were to be privately reproved, then privately admonished, then-if still heedless-publicly reprehended, and finally, if still "walking in filthiness," charged to depart from the Society: "So cast them out, and have no union with them, not so much as to eat with them, until they repent; then receive them again." Should any "root of bitterness spring up" among members; these were to be called together and examined closely no effort was to be spared that strife should be "kept out and the innocent set free to serve the Lord." So should Friends "have unity together in that which is pure, eternal, begotten of God."1 In the irreproachable life of the young sect, bound into unity mainly by the invisible ties of spontaneousness, this code was enough for a time-the time of spiritual purity-and for a little while one might have applied to the flock of the Companions those lines of Milton:— So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, σ That-when a soul is found sincerely so- Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear." But Quakerism's primitive unity was soon disturbed and broken by one or another of its own children: the spirit of controversy drove out the spirit of peace. Pride and self-will would assert themselves, and these must divide if they must rule. Dewsbury always subordinated doctrinalism to the pure life, and, ere we proceed to note his conduct in the first Quaker schism, we will look at a portion of one of his prayers :"Even so, dear Father! carry on Thy work in all the churches of the saints scattered over the face of the earth, that in the eternal unity 1 For further details, see Smith's "Life of Dewsbury," 63. they may be established in the Lord (being one, and His Name one), and all the contrary swept away with the breath of Thy mouth and brightness of Thy coming. So come, Lord Jesus!" 1 Thomas Thompson, a Quaker, tells how, in the year 1652, he first heard the Friends talked about. They were calumniated, and their quaking, or trembling, ridiculed. Thomas was anxious to see for himself, and hearing one day that Dewsbury was to preach at Frodingham, he went from Brigham to hear him. "Coming into the room where William was," says Thompson, "I found him writing, and the rest of his company sitting in great silence, seeming to be much retired in mind and fixed towards God. After a little while William ceased writing, and many of the town's people coming in, he began in the power and wisdom of God to declare the Truth. And oh, how was my soul refreshed, and the witness of God reached in my heart-I cannot express it with pen. I had never heard nor felt the like before; for he spake as one having authority, and not as the scribes so that if all the world [had] said Nay, I could have given my testimony that it was the everlasting Truth of God." We are subsequently told by Thomas that he was converted at this meeting, became a Quaker minister, and often accompanied Dewsbury, John Whitehead, and sometimes James Nayler, and other early ministers, to and fro in the East Riding of Yorkshire. "The glorious presence and power of the Lord our God," he adds, "was richly with us to the overcoming of our immortal souls, the comfort of His heritage, and praise of His own Name." Dewsbury had not devoted himself to preaching very long ere he was brought up before the magistrates and sent to jail. Some of the answers elicited from him at the different examinations he had to undergo are curious. Nothing could better show at what a fever-pitch of enthusiasm Primitive Quakerism sought for a time to keep itself; we can also see with what truth these early Friends could say of themselves, "Our conversation is in heaven." 66 66 When asked where he lived, Dewsbury replied that "he lived in the Lord." "What is thy name?" asked the judge; " Unknown to the world," was the answer. "What countryman art thou?" Of the land of Canaun." "That is far off," exclaimed the judge. "Nay, it is very near," was the Quaker's response. "All that dwell in God are in the Holy City, New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven. There the soul is at rest, and enjoys the love of God in Jesus Christ, in 1 For description of this, see Lamb's Essays of Elia, “A Quaker's Meeting." whom the union is with the Father of Light." After a little parleying, the judge further remarked, "Thou hast an eloquent tongue, and art proud of it." "Pride I deny," answered the other; "but the truth I witness, which will judge pride, and will torment all that live in it, until it be destroyed!" Evidently to a mystic like this man-certain of an organic spiritual contact of the Lord Jesus Christ with the humanity of a regenerating church-imprisonment would be a small matter. "Principled in virtue's book, And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever," Dewsbury would rest satisfied in the Light of God's inward pre sence. But, in the solitude of that cell, imagination would take up with faith, and, in the absence of a philosophy to control and direct, would necessarily o'erstep the bounds of experience and necessity. From the common gaol at Northampton, the 7th of the 11th month, 1655, Dewsbury sent forth a booklet for circulation among Friends: "The mighty day of the Lord is coming, in which Christ is exalted King upon the Holy Hill of Zion." The book was a warning to mankind, "to submit to Christ, the Light of the world, lest they perish in the day of His fierce wrath." Piety at fever-pitch would have men straightway burn their primers, throw down their trowels, tear up their plans, sink their ships, and make way for the Millennium! "The Day of Judgment is quite close at hand," said the equally sanguine Martin Luther, full a century before this. "We are getting very near to the close of the forty years, at the expiration of which, according to my calculations, all this will have a final end." It was the same a century after Quakerism's alarming paper went forth. Thomas Hartley (as yet unacquainted with Swedenborg) tells of "alarming signs in the heavens, in the earth, and in the waters." There are earthquakes in divers places, repeated and multiplied beyond what was ever known since the creation of the world;" there are hurricanes and tempests," "darkness at noonday as in the night," etc., A century later still, and we have the same alarming anticipations. There is "The Coming Struggle of the Nations of the Earth;" we are told that Napoleon III. is destined Monarch of the World— nay, what improbability are we not told? Only Swedenborg, among the prophets of the Golden Age before us, escapes suspicion of error here. When he, a century after Dewsbury, announced the advent of Michelet's "Luther" (Bohn's ed.), 344-5. * Hartley's "Paradise Restored," pp. 308-312. a New Dispensation, he showed that the sphere of its activity was mainly the Spiritual world-not this. Spiritual liberty would indeed be restored to the man of the Church, but with nations so slow in substantial improvements-with nature consequently so stubborn an effect our business is tranquil work and worship in this beautiful world of the Lord,-sin notwithstanding. A year later, and Dewsbury was again free. There is reprinted, in the quarto edition of his works, a letter he now wrote during the time the Act enforcing an Oath of Abjuration was in force. He begins by telling of his doings "in the service of his Lord" since his previous letter from Land's End in Cornwall. He journeys through Devonshire, preaching at various places on the way; is at one place seized as a Jesuit, and cast into prison for two days and nights. "Here," writes Dewsbury, "in answer to their questions, I was free in the Lord to declare to them how I came to be a minister of Christ,—this cut them to their hearts [so] that one justice wept." The Quaker, nevertheless, was had again to prison until the next assizes, for all the magistrates were not so tender as the one who wept. Dewsbury had to lie on the prison floor without straw or anything; but was shortly afterwards brought up before the bench again. "My God had pleaded my cause, and had changed the heart of man," writes he,-the judge "pulled the mittimus all in pieces before my face, and said, 'Thou art free !'" Dewsbury next itinerates through Somersetshire and Wiltshire, addressing gatherings of as many as a thousand and two thousand people occasionally. We find him next in Gloucestershire, where he settles down for a time to labour among the people of Bristol:-" further then, as my freedom is in my moving in the Lord; the presence of God keep you with me in His life, and [hold] all the elect faithful to the end. Amen." John Burnyeat was one of Dewsbury's companions in his missionary labours occasionally, and if we would understand this early Quaker movement, we must be able to appreciate the exclamations of Burnyeat when he looked back to this time of wanderers meeting at this or the other little centre of Friends for a day or two, then again forward in the work of the Lord. which our hearts were overHow were our hearts melted Lord; and our spirits as oil, "O! the joy, the pleasure, and the great delight with come many times in our reverent and holy assemblies. as wax, and our souls poured out as water before the frankincense and myrrh offered up to the Lord as sweet incense, when not a word outwardly in all our assembly, has been uttered! And then did the Lord delight to come down into His garden, and walk in the midst of the beds of spices. He caused the north wind to awake, and the south wind to blow upon His garden, and the pleasant showers to descend, for the refreshing of His tender plants, that they might grow still more and more!" James Nayler is the most completely misrepresented character in Quaker history. He was an early co-worker with Dewsbury, and we find Alexander Parker, in 1655, writing of him in terms of highest praise. Nayler "is fitted for this great place [London], and a great love is begotten in many towards him." He is represented as being “very serviceable,”—“ his fame begins to spread in the city, seeing that he hath had public disputes with many." Such was the man who this same year is brought into controversy with a Westmoreland priest. To the latter's declaration that our Lord was in heaven with a carnal body, Nayler replied-"Christ filleth heaven and earth, and is not carnal, but spiritual." Further disputation, then arrest and imprisonment followed:-the Quaker's sensitive mind to brood over the indignities heaped upon him, his restless spirit to chafe under an enforced inactivity; with his imagination restricted, his thoughts hampered, his hopes defeated, who can wonder if his intellect became dominated by his favourite idea-the Christhood of God? Such was the case. Nayler not only believed the Human Natural of the Lord had become spiritualized by the Ascension, but also that to quote a modern couplet "Christ's human form dissolved on high did now "fill all things." The notion at length injured an already overtasked brain. From the belief that Christ was within him, and constituted his life and thought, to the belief that in a certain sense he was Christ and might accept honours as Christ, was but a step: he took that step, and found admirers foolish enough to sanction and defend it. Disaster followed disaster afterwards; the man is freed from gaol only to be sent back there for blasphemy. He had ridden into Bristol as the Messiah ! An anticipation of Swedenborg's doctrine of discrete degrees would have made such a confusion of theological principles impossible. As it was, Nayler declared "he took the honour given him, not as to himself, but as to Christ in him." "Bowing to the creature I deny; but if they beheld the power of Christ, wherever it is, and bow to it, I have nothing by which I might resist or gainsay that." Nayler was sent to London to be examined by Parliament itself! On ten different days the attention of the House was directed to the subject, and while some men were for flaying the poor Quaker alive, others showed reasons why he should be let lightly off. George Fox, meantime, made increasing efforts to influence the Protestants "Letters of Early Friends," xiv., and footnote. |