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Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Jackson I. Cope
Jackson I. Cope*
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis 5, Mo.
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Extract

The Early Quakers, who liked to call themselves the First Publishers of Truth, swept from the north of England across the nations roughly between 1650 and 1675. And during this same quarter century what we have dubiously labelled “plain” style manifestly supplanted the highly-ornate, rhetorical tradition of English prose which had burgeoned in extravagances of Arcadian rhetoric and Euphuism to flower in the earlier seventeenth century's “Senecan amble.” Clearly, rhetorical analysis can tell us much about the skeletal structure of prose style even in the later years of the century, but it can no longer lay open the center of energy-informing expression, as it can in much earlier prose. The aim of this essay will be to discover those bedrock aspects of expression which are demonstrably homologous with the profoundest conception of life shared by the first Quakers, the most feared and fastest-growing sect of the later seventeenth century, as well as the religious body most neglected by modern students of prose form. The rise of the new “plain” prose has been attributed to the heightened philosophic interest in scepticism, with its pragmatic theories of action; to the intensified interest in empirical science which centered in the Royal Society; and to the rise of a semi-t educated bourgeoisie. But these decades in England's story were characterized most widely by continuous theological debate and exhortations So it would seem probable, granting the convergence of several streams of cause, that the peak swell on which the new prose tradition rode to dominance can most intelligibly be traced to an ultimately theological tide. The literature of early Quakerism is of unparalleled value in testing and illustrating this hypothesis because—with the incalculable human distance between George Fox and William Penn—this evangelistic group cut across all social and educational distinctions, even dimmed the dualism in the rôles of the sexes. Yet when the Quakers pour forth their heart's belief and hope, they do so again and again in the same modes of expression, modes only approximately and infrequently appearing in the sermons and tracts of non-Quaker contemporaries like Everard and Saltmarsh. These characteristics, explained by and explaining the earliest Quaker faith, I should like to call seventeenth-century Quaker style.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 4-Part-1 , September 1956 , pp. 725 - 754
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 This study was made possible during 1954 by a Folger Library Fellowship, a grant from the Graduate School of the Ohio State University, and a Gustav Bissing Fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University.

2 As has been so amply demonstrated in George Williamson's Tlw Senecan Amble (London and Chicago, 1951).

3 The only literary study worthy of mention is the ground-breaking survey by Luella M. Wright, The Literary Life of the Early Friends, 1650–1725 (New York, 1932).

4 The Journal of George Fox, ed. John L. Nickalls (Cambridge, 1952), p. 2. This is a composite text (see pp. vii-xii) which incorporates the Cambridge Journal, the Short Journal, Ellwood's edition, and the American diaries. Modernized spelling, checked against the Cambridge Journal, has been adopted in this study.

5 Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford, 1947), pp. 39–40.

6 Rachel Knight—The Founder of Quakerism: A Psychological Study of the Mysticism of George Fox (London, 1922)—although she insists upon Fox's keen senses, can adduce no passage but the one I have quoted to illustrate his gustatory sensitivity (pp. 62–63).

7 Rise and Progress of the Quakers in The Peace of Europe and Other Writings by William Penn (Everyman's Library, London, n.d.), p. 209.

8 Grace Abounding, ed. John Brown (Cambridge, 1907), p. 20.

9 One major reservation must be made. In the several vividly-detailed scenes of mob punishment and prison conditions Fox—-like George Bishop in New England Judged or William Sewell in The History of the Quakers —is acting as a deliberate Quaker propagandist, not as a spiritual diarist. On this Quaker concern for creating an acta martyrorum from Friends' lives see Wright, Literary Life of Early Friends, pp. 87–96.

10 Other interesting occurrences of the sort appear on pp. 21, 235, 242, 349, 375, 542 and 544.

11 Quoted by M. Whitcomb Hess, “A Quaker Plotinus,” Bibbert Jour., XXIX (1931), 483.

12 Cf. 2 Cor. xii:4.

13 This was no passing flight of imagination for Fox. Ten years later he met a group of “mountebanks” whom he asked “whether any knew the virtue of all the creatures in the creation, whose virtue and nature was according to its first name, except they were in the wisdom of God by which they were made and created” (Journal, p. 287).

14 A General Epistle to be Read in all the Christian Meetings in the World (n.p., 1662), pp. 1–2. My italics indicate a passage showing that Fox believed all who come to perceive Christ Within will share his own experience of being “showed how all things had their names given them according to their nature and virtue.”

15 A Few Plain Words of Instruction given forth as Moved of the Lord (London, 1658), p. 18.

16 The Morning-Watch: Or, A Spiritual Glass Opened (London, 1660), pp. 11–12.

17 “Truth's Principles (London, 1662), pp. 8–9.

18 Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 6th ed. (London, 1736), p. 184.

19 Cf. Kate W. Tibbals, “The Speech of Plain Friends,” Amer. Speech, i (1926), 200: “Every word in the specific Quaker vocabulary is a Bible word to which a still more mystical connotation has been given. The whole intent of Friends was to direct attention away from the creature, their expression for the material side of phenomena, the created things, live or not, to the spirit, the indwelling principle that formed the essence of their specific variation of primitive Christianity.”

20 In A Memorable Account of the Christian Experiences of Stephen Crisp (London, 1694), pp. 122–123. Besides those cited in the text, the following are some important statements of the primary place of the “Name” in Quaker thought during the early years: Fox, Journal, pp. 2, 122, 125, 603, 604; James Nayler, Love to the Lost (London, 1665 [1656]), sig. B2r, pp. 1–7, 10–11; Edward Burrough, A Standard Lifted Up [1657] in Memorable Works of a Son of Thunder and Consolation ([London], 1672), pp. 249–250; William Smith, The Morning-Watch (London, 1660), pp. 1–3, 13; Robert Barclay, Apology, Prop, n, sect, v; Prop. XII, sect, viii; Margaret Fell, A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages and Occurrences (London, 1710), p. 194, and An Evident Demonstration to Gods Elect (London, 1660), p. 3; William Penn, Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People Called Quakers [1696], Everyman ed., pp. 236–237.

21 A Mite into the Treasury, Being a Word to Artists, Especially to Heptatechnists, the Professors of the Seven Liberal Arts, So Called (London, 1680), p. 17.

22 “Anti-fanatical Religion and Free Philosophy,” Essays on Several Important Subjects (London, 1676), pp. 31–32.

23 Anna Cox Brinton, “The Function of Quaker Literature,” Friends' Quarterly Examiner, LXVI (1932), 367.

24 On the vogue and revival of the “witty” sermon see W. Fraser Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson (London, 1932), pp. 148–194, 308–309, 352–357.

25 Lancelot Andrewes, XCVI Sermons (London, 1635), p. 45.

26 Rise and Progress of Quakers, Everyman ed., p. 208.

27 An Evident Demonstration to Gods Elect (London, 1660), pp. 5–6.

28 A Testimony far the Lord, by John Swinton (n.p., n.d. [London, 1663?]), pp. 6–7.

29 Cf. esp. A Warning to all Teachers which are Called School-Masters and School-Mistresses (London, 1657); A General Epistle (n.p., 1662) already cited; The Line of Righteousness and Justice Stretched forth over All Merchants (London, 1661); An Epistle to be Read in all the Assemblies of the Righteous (n.p., 1666); Journal, pp. 13, 59–60, 228, 575–576. Extended “incantatory” passages in the Journal occur (with a single exception) in “epistles” interpolated into the narrative.

30 A Manifestation of Divine Love (London, 1660), pp. 13–14.

31 To All the Faithful in Christ Who Have Stood in his Council the Light (n.p., 1663).

32 Circumstances which we shall later examine converged to cool the evangelistic optimism which the First Publishers brought to the founding of Quakerism and, as a corollary, to curb the “incantatory” outbursts of the earlier prose. Yet the old mode held on sometimes when writers of the second generation were “moved” to intense exhortation, and one finds occasional vestiges even in such an unlikely author as the courtly William Penn. A passage in his Advice to His Children (Everyman ed., pp. 96–97) is the most interesting, because Penn is there writing within a conscious rhetorical structure. Having explained the Light and Spirit logically, he launches into an “incantatory” passage of exhortation, then drops back into an explanation of Grace, after which he again adapts the “incantatory” style to an exhortation to “love the grace.” It is a late example (publ. posthumously 1726, composition date indeterminate) of the style which shows its adaption to a larger rhetorical pattern. Penn, apparently unaware of the aim of such passages in earlier Quaker literature and meetings (as his remarks on Fox's “broken” style indicate), simply utilizes it as a sort of imagination-stirring purple passage which is common in his religious tradition.

33 The Quakers Plea, Answering All Objections, and they proved to be no way dangerous, but Friends to the King … (London, 1661).

34 An Apology for the Quakers: Wherein is shewed, How they Answer the Chief Principles of the Law, and Main ends of Government (London, 1662).

35 Liberty of Conscience Pleaded by Several Weighty Reasons on the Behalf of the People of God Called Quakers (London, 1663).

36 Womens Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures (London, 1666).

37 A Tolleration Sent down from Heaven to Preach (n. p., 1665).

38 Fiat Lux ([Douay?], 1662), pp. 171–172. Canes's attitude was more generous than that of most critics of “Foxonian” Quakerism. Charles Leslie thought Fox and his fellows ignorant of “Sense and English” (The Snake in the Grass [London, 1696], p. 5; cf. p. 58), and Cotton Mather found Fox a “proud fool who could scarce write his name,” and hence an appropriate leader for the Quakers (Magnolia Christi Americana, [1702; Hartford, 1820], ii, 455). Henry More was suggestive. Having discussed Quakers, he passed to David George with whom—through Familism and mistakenly—he associated the sect. Of George he says: “For a man illiterate, as he was, but of good parts, by constant reading of the Bible will naturally contract a more winning and commanding Rhetorick then those that are learned; the intermixture of Tongues and of artificiall Phrases debasing their style, and making it sound more after the manner of men, though ordinarily there may be more of God in it then in that of the Enthusiast” (Enthusiasmus Triumphatus [1656] in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, London, 1662, p. 24).

39 It was a common 17th-century view that the 16th-century Family of Love, founded by the German, Henrik Niklaes, and extant in England from about 1560 into the 18th century, was the origin of Quakerism. Cf. Allen C. Thomas, The Family of Love, or the Familists, Haverford Coll. Studies, xii (Haverford, 1893), pp. 25–26, 34–37; Rufus M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London, 1909), pp. 428–448; and Marjorie Nicolson, Conway Letters (New Haven, 1930), pp. 378–383. The latter book treats More's relations to Quakerism, pp. 378–451. Cf. also Nicolson's “George Keith and the Cambridge Pla-tonists,” Philos. Rev., xxxix (1930), 36–55.

40 Divine Dialogues [1668] (London, 1713), pp. 456–70.

41 Ibid., p. 461. Closely relevant, because of the analysis of interaction between sensible outwardness and inward essence, is More's warning a propos of Boehme's pretension to having discovered the internal Kingdoms of the “Light World” and the “Dark Fire World”: “He that will averr he has discovered those internal Worlds by Sense, must first assure himself that he is not imposed upon by his Imagination. … But if they did believe there were such an internal World, and did vehemently desire to converse there, how exceedingly credible is it that these People would take their inward Phantasms for external Objects in that inward World!” (ibid., p. 466).

42 Trans. John Sparrow [1654] (London, 1924), i, ix–x.

43 All of Boehme's books were in English by 1662. Cf. Robert Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth (London, 1876), pp. 213–215; Margaret L. Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme (New York, 1914), pp. 96–104; Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Cenhiries (London, 1914), pp. 221–227; Henry J. Cadbury, “Early Quakerism and Uncanonical Lore,” Harvard Theol. Rev., XL (1947), 203–204; Nils Thune, The Behmenists and the Philadelpkians (Uppsala, 1948), pp. 62–67, all of which support an influence of Boehme upon the Quakers. Nuttall, Holy Spirit, pp. 16–18, rejects the influence of Boehme more sweepingly than his evidence would seem to justify.

44 Harold C. Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, Moffatt New Testament Commentary (London, 1946), p. xxi, uses terms to describe the style of the First Epistle which might be applied to the Quaker characteristic under discussion. He finds “little direct progression” as “the author ‘thinks around’ a subject,” and he echoes a previous description of the style as “spiral.”

45 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The 17th Century (New York, 1939), p. 295. Pages 280–299 expound the system and its relations to the sermon.

46 Holy Spirit, pp. 38, 39. Cf. pp. 38–41, 135, 139, 142. The Gospel according to St. John: 6:26–63 and 17:9–26, shows a diffused version of the style, but scarcely seems capable of arousing the same effect.

47 William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), p. 96. Cf. pp. 94–117.

48 Some Gospel Treasures opened (London, 1653), p. 230.

49 Grace Abounding, p. 44.

50 “A Journal of the Life of Stephen Crisp,” in A Memorable Account, pp. 27–28.

51 It is pertinent to notice Fox's claim that “we were redeemed out of days by Christ Jesus and brought into his day” (Journal, p. 669).

52 For general discussions of Quaker spiritual lives see Wright, Literary Life of Early Friends, pp. 155–198; Howard H. Brinton, “Stages in Spiritual Development as Recorded in Quaker Journals,” in Children of Light, ed. Brinton (New York, 1938), pp. 381–406; Owen Watkins, “Quaker Spiritual Biographies,” JFHS, XLV (1953). Both Wright (p. 158) and Brinton (p. 384) insist upon the “dual characteristic of the writers' motives, merging with those of the group” (Wright).

53 Quoted from Swarthmore MSS. 4.211, in Geoffrey Nuttall, Studies in Christian Enthusiasm (Wallingford, Pa., 1948), pp. 34–35. Cf. William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (London, 1912), pp. 126–127, on Sale and this letter.

54 Sale here demonstrates one of the most notorious Quaker practices by which Scripture was made to live anew in a naïve sense. Going in sackcloth and ashes, carrying candles at midday, walking naked in the streets were common behavior among Quakers who wished to give “signs” of warning to the “world's” people. It embraced both sexes and all classes —even Robert Barclay once felt called upon so to humiliate himself. See Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, pp. 126–127, 148–151, 252–258; Nuttall, Holy Spirit, p. 26; Nuttall, Christian Enthusiasm, pp. 33–34.

55 It is interesting to see that a student of Quaker terminology says of “experiences”: “this word is never used of outward events, mere creaturely happenings” (Tibbals, p. 200).

56 What the Possession of the Living Faith Is … (London, 1659), p. 12. This whole first-person narrative of Nayler's passage through successive spiritual states is an excellent example of the stylistic phenomenon under discussion.

57 See Journal, pp. 15, 19, 21, 31, 57, 96, 98, 106, 108, 133, 142, 192, 358, 367–368, 407, 416, 424, 663 for the most interesting occurrences. Occasionally Fox speaks only of the similarity of his own and Scriptural experiences, but in these few cases he is anxious to show detailed coincidences of event as well as of spiritual state. Nuttall suggests that Fox spoke inaccurately of the First Publishers as “a matter of 70 ministers” because he had in mind the seventy sent out by Jesus (Christian Enthusiasm, p. 18). A subsidiary cause for this stylistic trait is suggested in an exhaustive analysis of Fox's “craving for the unchanging, and the deep impression that the transitoriness of events made upon him” (Rachel H. King, George Fox and the Light Within: 1650–1660, Philadelphia, 1940, pp. 113–116, 166).

58 Magnolia Christi Americana, ii, 452. John Whiting, in the definitive Quaker answer to Mather's attack, flatly denied the charge, of course: “this is false, and I dare him to prove who ever said so” (Truth and Innocency Defended … In Answer to Cotton Mather [1702] printed with George Bishop, New England Judged, Philadelphia, 1885, p. 442). The point was that no one said so, but that the fact was implicit in the whole structure of the Quakers' expression of spiritual experience and insight.

69 See Owen Watkins, “Early Quaker Biographies,” JFHS, xlv (1953), 69.

70 Concerning the Sum or Substance of Our Religion Who Are Called Quakers [1666] in Works of the Long-Mournful and Sorely-Distressed Isaac Peninglon (London, 1681), i, 459–460.

61 Journal, p. 19. Cf. p. 31.

62 With what caution and yet sublime confidence the First Publishers must have chosen the Scriptural terms for describing their experiences can be partially inferred from their general demur from psalm singing because persons in a wicked state, or those who felt no genuine “motion,” would thus take the holy words of David into their own mouths (Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Societies, pp. 456–458; Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 237).

63 Journal, p. 96. Cf. Fox's statement about a man who saved him from stoning: “and he was Lot, I told him” (p. 98), or his accusation to Cromwell that “he was Pilate, though he would wash his hands” (p. 192)

64 A Call to Christendom [written 1677], Everyman ed., p. 155.

65 Nuttall, Christian Enthusiasm, p. 23.

66 Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism-, p. S08.

67 Ibid., p. 512.

68 See J. F. Maclear, “Quakerism and the End of the Interregnum: A Chapter in the Domestication of Radical Puritanism,” Church Hist., xix (1950), 240–270. Questionnaires had actually been tabulated by some Quaker county groups.

69 Snake in the Grass, p. 5.

70 Cf. Luella M. Wright, Literature and Education in Early Quakerism, Univ. of Iowa Stud., Humanistic Stud., v, ii (Iowa City, 1933), p. 26, on the infrequency of “distinct ‘openings’ or of mystic voices” in the writings of the later generations.

71 A Faithful Warning and Exhortation to Friends to Beware of Seducing Spirits and to Keep on the Armour of Light … in A Memorable Account, pp. 478–497.

72 I have condensed and quoted from the analysis by King, Fox and the Light Within, pp. 39–47.

73 The influence of Amyraidus is analyzed in Herbert G. Wood, “William Penn's The Christian Quaker,” in Children of Light, pp. 1–23. It is ironic that the most learned and persistent Quaker-baiter among contemporary Puritans was Richard Baxter, whose own theology owed a considerable debt to Amyraidus' “hypothetical universalism” (see F. J. Powicke, The Reverend Richard Baxter Under the Cross, 1662–1691, London, 1927, pp. 236–238).

74 The Christian Quaker in Select Works of William Penn (London, 1782), I, 279. Cf. pp. 277–282 for the argument as I have summed it up.

75 Apology, p. 9. Cf. Leif Eeg-Olofsson, The Conception of the Inner Light in Robert Barclay's Theology (Lund, 1954), pp. 71–82.

76 Apology, p. 205. Cf. p. 305, where Barclay is willing to grant a special degree of Grace to ministers in whom the Seed has brought forth extraordinary morality. Cf. Eeg-Olofsson, Inner Light, pp. 56–60, 120.

77 Rufus M. Jones, in his introduction to William C. Braithwaite's Second Period of Quakerism (London, 1919), pp. xxx-xlv, first traced the Quietistic decline in vigor of 18th-century Quakerism to Barclay's Calvinism.

78 Braithwaite, Second Period, pp. 82–87.

79 See Norman Penney, “George Fox's Writings and the Morning Meeting,” Friends' Quarterly Examiner, xxxvi (1902), 63–72. The fullest account of the Morning Meeting's censorship activities is in Wright, Literary Life of Early Friends, pp. 97–109.

80 Arnold Lloyd, Quaker Social History, 1669–1730 (London, 1950), pp. 150–151, 156.

81 Nuttall, Christian Enthusiasm, p. 40. So far as I know, Leslie was the first publicly to notice this Quaker practice. He pounced with delight upon the fact that “in the Reprinting the Works of their Prophets since 1660, they leave out these NOW unsavory passages. Their Infallibility needs an Index Expurgatorius as well as that of Rome,” then went on to give chapter and verse from the collection of Burrough's works (Snake in the Grass, pp. xcvii-civ).

82 Wright, Literary Life of Early Friends, pp. 128–129.