A Book of Quaker SaintsHodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Religion
A Book of Quaker Saints
Hodgkin, L. V. (Lucy Violet)
Society of Friends
As he departed, George Fox came upon another group of people assembled
at a little distance. These were the men and women who had listened to
him gladly in church, who now wished to hear more of the new truths he
had been declaring. Among them was James Nayler, a man older than
Fox, who had been convinced by him a year earlier. This second visit,
however, clinched Nayler's allegiance to his new friend. Possibly,
having been a soldier himself, he began by admiring Fox's courage.
Here was a man who refused to strike a single blow in self-defence. He
was apparently quite ready to let the angry mob do what they would,
and yet in the end he managed to quell their rage by the force of his
own spiritual power. The Journal simply says that a great many people
were convinced that day of the truth of the Quaker preaching, and that
'they were directed to the Lord's teaching _in themselves_.'
Hereupon the priest of the church became very angry. He spread abroad
many untrue stories about Fox, saying that he 'carried bottles with
him, and made people drink of them and so made them follow him and
become Quakers.'
At Wakefield, also, in those days, as well as farther North,
'enchantment' was the first and simplest explanation of anything
unusual. This same priest also said that Fox rode upon a great black
horse, and was seen riding upon it in one county at a certain time,
and was also seen on the same horse and at the very same time in
another county sixty miles away.
'With these lies,' says Fox, 'he fed his people, to make them think
evil of the truth which I had declared amongst them. But by those lies
he preached many of his hearers away from him, for I was travelling on
foot and had no horse; which the people generally knew.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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