Fox appeared before the Lord Protector. The meeting of the two at Whitehall must have been a remarkable scene. Both mystical, but in different degrees--both enthusiastic in religion, and perhaps equally sincere in the most erratic forms of their respective faiths--the man in power excelled in that practical shrewdness and common sense, which were not altogether wanting in his persecuted brother; and, while the latter was throwing the religious world into disturbance, the former aimed at restoring it to order. Cromwell reproached Fox for opposing the regular clergy. Fox told Cromwell that all Christendom had the Scriptures; but that those who preached were destitute of the Spirit by which the Scriptures were written. Thus two strong wills came into collision. But when the Quaker went on lovingly to talk upon the mysteries of spiritual experience, it touched the heart of the Lord Protector at once; and pressing his friend's hand, whom he allowed to wear his hat in his presence, he said: "Come again to my house; if thou and I were together but one hour in every day we should be nearer to each other. I wish you no more ill than I do to my own soul." [Sidenote: _Fox's Disciples._] Fox had many followers,[376] and the character of the master reproduced itself in his disciples. Organization in so large a body soon became a necessity; and, in spite of the extreme spiritualism of the system, the Quakers were consolidated into a sect, having a gradation of ecclesiastical courts, under the name of "meetings," as elaborate as those of completed Presbyterianism, yet vesting all power in the people, and combining liberty with subordination. Some early Quaker preachers vied with Fox in simplicity, earnestness, and courage. Edward Burroughs, a man of great spirituality and power, would step into the wrestlers' ring--as lusty peasants on a summer's evening kept up the ancient sports on the village green--and speak to the rustic spectators with "a heart-piercing power." He thundered against sin--to use the Scripture-coloured language of his admirers, and broke stony hearts; his bow never turned back, and his sword returned not empty from the slaughter of the mighty. "And, although coals of fire, as it were, came forth of his mouth, to the consuming of briars and thorns; and he, passing through unbeaten paths, trampled upon wild thistles and luxuriant tares, yet his wholesome doctrine dropped as the oil of joy upon the spirits of the mourners in Zion."[377] But there were people numbered amongst the Quakers--for the term was widely and vaguely applied--who had not the wisdom and gentleness of Edward Burroughs. One at least of these persons--in imitation of the Oriental method of teaching by signs, as seen in the Hebrew prophets; and also after the manner of the Russian anchorites--went forth in public stripped and naked, making a wailing like the dragons, and a mourning as the owls. George Fox himself says: "the Lord made one to go naked among