moonev] THE QUAKER DOCTRINE 1137 



insufficient food and brutal treatment. Individuals even in the estab- 

 lished church began to assert supernatural power, while numerous new 

 sects sprang' up, with prophecy, miracle working, hypnotism, and con- 

 vulsive ecstasy as parts of their doctrine or ritual. Chief among those 

 were the Banters, the Quakers, and the Fifth-Monarchy Men. The first 

 and last have disappeared with the conditions which produced them; 

 but the Quakers, being based on a principle, have outlasted persecution, 

 and, discarding the extravagances which belonged to the early period, 

 are. now on a permanent foundation under the name of the •• Society of 

 Friends." One of the banter prophets, in 1650, claimed to be the rein- 

 carnation of Melchizedek, and even declared his divinity. He asserted 

 that certain persons then living were Cain, Judas, Jeremiah, etc, whom 

 he had raised from the dead, and the strangest part of it was that the 

 persons concerned stoutly affirmed the truth of his assertion. Others 

 of them claimed to work miracles and to produce lights and apparitions 

 in the dark. In Barclay's opinion all the evidence -supports the view 

 that these persons were mad, and had a singular power of producing a 

 kind of sympathetic madness or temporary aberration of intellect in 

 others." 



We are better acquainted with the Quakers (Friends), although it is 

 not generally known that they were originally addicted to similar prac- 

 tices. Such, however, is the fact, as is shown by the name itself. 

 Their founder, (ieorge Fox, claimed and believed that he had the gift 

 of prophecy and clairvoyance, and of healing by a mere word, and his 

 biographer, .lanney, of the same denomination, apparently sees no 

 reason to doubt that such was the ease. As might have been expected, 

 he was also a believer in dreams. 



We are told that on one occasion, on coming into the town of Lich- 

 field, "a very remarkable exercise attended his mind, and going through 

 the streets without his shoes he cried, ' Woe to the bloody city of Lich- 

 field.' His feelings were deeply affected, for there seemed to be a 

 channel of blood running down the streets, and the market place 

 appeared like a pool of blood." On inquiry he learned that a large 

 number of Christians had been put to death there during The reign of 

 the Emperor Diocletian thirteen centuries before. "He therefore 

 attributed the exercise which came upon him to the sense that was 

 given him of the blood of the martyrs." 



We are also told that he ''received an evidence" of the great lire of 

 London in 1660, before the event, and Janney narrates at length a 

 '■still more remarkable vision" of the same fire by another Friend, 

 '•whose prophecy is well attested." According to the account, this 

 man rode into the city, as though having come in haste, ami went up 

 and down the streets for two days, prophesying that the city would be 

 destroyed by fire. To others of his own denomination he declared that 

 he had had a vision of the event some time before, but had delayed 

 to declare it as commanded, until he felt the fire in his own bosom. 



