A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



convictions were formed and fixed by painful struggle ; and the Church 

 was to them nothing but a new system of persecution more intolerant if 

 possible than that from which they first broke away. 



The minister of Fenny Drayton in 1644, Nathaniel Stevens by name, 

 was an orthodox Presbyterian : he was steadfast and sincere enough in his 

 own principles to be willing to resign his cure in i662. S3r He and his 

 fellows were to Fox in the worst sense ' priests ' : S38 not because they had 

 been ordained by bishops, but because they desired, as he thought, to stand 

 between God and man. Fox had a message to the world which seemed to 

 him like a new gospel. He had wandered up and down the country for five 

 or six years : J39 he had met and reasoned with Baptists and Presbyterians, 

 with some who said that women had no souls, with others who followed the 

 guidance of dreams, with some who said that there was no God, but all things 

 came by nature, and with others who said that they themselves were God. 2 * 

 All these he saw ' where they were ' blind leaders of the blind. Then it 

 came to him, ' not by the help of man but in the light of our Lord Jesus 

 Christ and by His immediate spirit and power,' that ' the manifestation of 

 the Spirit of God was given to every man ; that Christ died for all and 

 enlightened all.' To see this clearly was to have ' come up in the Spirit 

 through the flaming swords into the paradise of God ' : and one who said it 

 could have no other desire than to lead others into the same light, that all 

 ' might by the inward spirit know their salvation and their way to God.' 

 This theology, familiar and scriptural as it seems to us, was, of course, in 

 direct opposition to the popular Calvinism of the day ; and even in the 

 Church it could find but little sympathy at a time of such keen controversy. 

 The Church of the Interregnum and the Restoration was by its very circum- 

 stances forced to hold firmly and to lay stress upon the outward framework 

 of order and discipline : the great Caroline divines had scarcely leisure for 

 much interest in mystical theology. They were fully occupied in defining 

 the limits of religious thought and the relations of the churches ; they could 

 not understand that for men like Fox there was only one question worth 

 asking : ' Can a man meet God face to face, and speak to him as friend with 

 friend ? ' In happier days that question might have found a welcome and 

 an answer within the Church, 241 but to George Fox it seemed that he could 

 find no man able to ' speak to his condition.' So in the depth of his disap- 

 pointment he came to the conclusion that the Church and all the sects had 



*" Calamy, Nonconformists' Memorial, ii, 385. 



K Fox calls all the Presbyterian ministers appointed by Parliament ' priests ' without distinction. 



39 From 9 July, 1643, when he was nineteen years old, and left his home at the bidding of a voice which 

 seemed to say ' Thou seest how young people go together into vanity and old people into the earth ; thou 

 must forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be a stranger to all ' until about 1649, w ^ en 

 his spiritual conflicts ended in peace. 



10 For descriptions of all these see his Journal. The last-named sect was that of the Ranters, or Family 

 of Lore, to whom at first Fox seems to have felt some drawing. 



41 It is precisely the same question which has been asked by the mystics of all ages, within and without 

 the Church ; and the great Catholic mystics from St. Augustine onwards have answered it with quite as much 

 assurance as any of the sectaries. The best of Fox's teachings, found in his letters to the persecuted brethren, 

 e.g. ' Patience must get the victory ' ; ' Life and light will outlast all, is over all, and will overcome all ' ; 

 ' Be patient and still in the power and in the light ' ; ' The good will overcome the evil, the light darkness 

 ... to be faithful and live in that which doth not think the time long ' ; ' Your rest is in Christ Jesus ; 

 therefore rest not in anything else ' : all these have hundreds of parallels in the writings of the orthodox 

 mystics. How could it be otherwise ? They are all echoes, conscious or unconscious, from the gospel 

 of St. John. 



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