But the swing-back for the imitative mass to the easily grasped dogma of an infallible Scripture did not take place at once. It appears as a clearly accomplished fact at the time of the mid-eighteenth-century departure of Quakerism on its second missionary effort. Meanwhile, we must consider the intervening hundred years--the second period of Quakerism--generally known as the century of Quietism. The first generation of Quakers had passed away. The great mission--the going forth to win mankind to live by the Inner Light--had failed. Better fitted, apparently, than any since the early Christians to evangelize the world, catholic to the limit of the term, knowing nothing of "heathen" nor of any "living in darkness"; a body of devotees culled from all existing groups, hampered by no official church, unhindered by luxury, undaunted by distance and difficulty, working in the open under storms of persecution that had driven their companion groups to hiding or dissolution, the Friends of Truth had failed to bring even the churches to the acknowledgment of that on which they all ultimately rested. Passing through European Christendom and beyond, they gathered in their fellows, retreated to camp, gave up their original enterprise, and became a separatist sect. The greater number of them were flourishing tradespeople, owing their success in business largely to the fact that, whereas trade as a whole was still subject to those passions which had called forth in old times the law forbidding any transaction beyond the sum of twenty pennies to be made without the presence of the port-reeve or other responsible third person, here were men who required neither bond nor agreement, who were as good as their word, asking one price for their goods, and refusing to bargain. Their social life at the beginning of the second period has been described for us by one of the last of the earlier generation, coming late in life to English Quaker circles after twenty years of absence. William Bromfield was a medical man who had followed James II. to Ireland because of his goodness to the Quakers, had served him for years in Paris as his secretary, and had suffered imprisonment in the Bastille for conscience' sake. At one moment we see him visiting a Trappist monastery, explaining to the Fathers the Quaker faith and manner of living--the Trappists acknowledging the Quakers as ripe for sainthood--and then we read of his bitter disillusionment. He finds[14] "riches, pride, arrogancy, and falling into parties." He notes with grief that onlookers are saying "that the Quakers, who might have converted the world had they kept their first faith, are now become apostates and hypocrites, as vain in their Conversation, Habits, and Dresses, as any other people." Even the poor tradesmen and mechanics amongst them wore periwigs: "a wicked covering of Horse-hair and Goats'-hair." Men were "trick'd out in cock'd Hats, their fine Cloathes with their Cuts _à la mode_ and long cravats."