616 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY. 



his multitudinous letters, he hut rarely rises far ahove the inco- 

 herent commonplaces of a street preacher, there can he no ques- 

 tion of his power as a speaker, nor any doubt as to the dignity 

 and attractiveness of his personality, or of his possession of a 

 large amount of practical good sense and governing faculty. 



But that George Fox had full faith in his own powers as a 

 miracle-worker, the following passage of his autobiography (to 

 which others might be added) demonstrates : 



Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I had been kept 

 prisoner a pretty long time) I traveled as before, in the work of the Lord. And 

 coming to Mansfield "Woodhouse, there was a distracted woman nnder a doctor's 

 hand, with her hair let loose all abont her ears; and he was about to let her blood, 

 she being first bound, and many people being about her, holding her by violence ; 

 but he could get no blood from her. And I desired them to unbind her and let 

 her alone ; for they could not touch the spirit in her by which she was tormented. 

 So they did unbind her, and I was moved to speak to her, and in the name of the 

 Lord to bid her be quiet and still. And she was so. And the Lord's power settled 

 her mind and she mended ; and afterwards received the truth and continued in it 

 to her death. And the Lord's name was honoured ; to whom the glory of all his 

 works belongs. Many great and wonderful things were wrought by the heavenly 

 power in those days. For the Lord made bare his omnipotent arm and mani- 

 fested his power to the astonishment of many ; by the healing virtue whereof 

 many have been delivered from great infirmities, and the devils were made sub- 

 ject through his name : of which particular instances might be given beyond what 

 this unbelieving age is able to receive or bear.* 



It needs no long study of Fox's writings, however, to arrive at 

 the conviction that the distinction between subjective and object- 

 ive verities had not the same place in his mind as it has in that 

 of ordinary mortals. When an ordinary person would say " I 

 thought so and so," or " I made up my mind to do so and so," 

 George Fox says " it was opened to me," or " at the command of 

 God I did so and so." " Then at the command of God on the 

 ninth day of the seventh month 1643 [Fox being just nineteen] I 

 left my relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with 

 young or old." "About the beginning of the year 1647 I was 

 moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and 

 he sees visions, some of which he brings before the reader with 

 apocalyptic power in simple and strong English, alike untutored 

 and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary, he 

 was a master. 



" And one morning, as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud 

 came over me and a temptation beset me ; and I sate still. And 

 it was said, All things come by Nature. And the elements and 

 stars came over me ; so that I was in a manner quite clouded 



* " A Journal or Historical Account of the Life, Travels, Sufferings, and Christian Ex- 

 periences, etc., of George Fox," ed. i, 1694, pp. 2*7, 28. 



