“On the 2nd of July [1682], Lord’s Day, our pastor preached in another place in the Wood. Our friends took much pains in the rain, because many informers were ordered out to search, and we were in peace, though there were near twenty men and boys in search.” “On the 16th brother Fownes first, and brother Whinnell after, preached under a tree, it being very rainy.” “On the 13th [of August] our pastor preached in the Wood, and afterwards broke bread at Mr. Young’s in peace. But Hellier and the rest were busy that day, and shut up the gates, and kept watch at the Weir, and behind St. Philip’s in the morning, to prevent any going out, and in the evening to catch them coming in, and took up several in the evening as vagrants on the Lord’s Day, and sent some to Newgate, and some to Bridewell, watching till seven in the evening for that purpose.” “On the 20th met above Scruze Hole, in our old place, and heard brother Fownes preach twice in peace. Brother Terrill had caused workmen to make banks on the side of the hill to sit down on, several of them like a gallery. And there we met also on the 27th in peace. And both days we sang a psalm in the open wood.”[250] No doubt if other Congregational Church books, Baptist and Pædo-baptist, had been as minute and copious in detail, and had been as safely handed down to us as the Broadmead Records have happily been, we should have found in them somewhat similar information, touching different kinds of Independent communities. [Sidenote: DEVELOPMENT OF NONCONFORMITY.] The history of the Quakers, throughout the period under review, is a history of spiritual life, of intense suffering, of calm endurance, of inflexible adherence to principle, of heroic zeal, of indefatigable activity, and of large success, both as to the increase of numbers, and the moral improvement of mankind. It is also a history of organic ecclesiastical development. So spiritual an impulse worked out a graduated system of co-operation and discipline. Quakers differed from the Presbyterians, from the Independents, and from the Baptists in doctrinal opinions, and they also rejected the celebration of sacraments, which all the others reverentially observed; but in ecclesiastical government the Quakers were much less unlike the Presbyterians than the other two denominations. Quakers’ Societies were not distinct Churches, independent of each other, but they formed one large spiritual aggregate, the various parts being united, not only in sympathy and general action, but in certain definite social arrangements. In respect to corporate unity, Quakers attained to a perfection at which the Presbyterians of the Commonwealth aimed in vain, and which the Presbyterians of the Restoration never attempted. After the first few years of struggle and suffering, Quakerism consolidated itself into the following shape, as described by Sewell, the historian of the sect:--