Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/593

] ; and priests and professors, magistrates and people, swelled against him like the raging waves of the sea.'"

Roger Williams' Departure for Salem Island.

And well they might; for there was no tyranny, imposition, fake ambition, or selfishness of any kind—whether wrapped in the lawn of the bishop, the purple of the prince, the ermine of the judge, whether assuming the mask of the priest, or the legislator, or the merchant, or the man in any profession who sought to indulge self at the expense of his neighbour, no rottenness, no stubble or chaff in the human system of canning forms and pretences—which this all-searching principle did not go to hurl down, expose to scorn, and blow away from the face of society. Despotism, slavery, war, tyranny of all kinds and hues fell before it. Nor are we to seek for the full effects of this principle within the narrow limits of the society which continues to own Fox as its founder. That society soon became influenced by the world around it; and the very means which Fox had adopted to cut them off from the world, by making them rich brought the spirit of the world in upon them in a flood; but the great principle—that the Divine Spirit must be and is the only and hourly teacher of the human soul, displaying there the uncompromising moral laws developed in the Gospel—has overleaped these narrow bounds, and is going on conquering and to conquer. It is now frequently remarked that Fox taught only what almost every Christian minister now acknowledges; but what was it in Fox's time? Where can we point to any one denomination which so fully and unequivocally based all religion on the direct teaching of the Divine Spirit, and so completely abandoned all forms and ceremonies as being neither part nor parcel of this divine work? Even the advanced and enlightened independents were willing in Cromwell's time to accept state pulpits and state pay for preaching the Gospel—a thing, in Fox's opinion, holy and unpurchasable, and which must stand apart from all mere human props and establishments. How many yet actually believe in the direct and conscious teaching and communion of the Holy Spirit? With Fox it was no principle of mere faith, but a thing of consciousness, and as palpable as his own bodily existence. Hence the ridicule which even professing Christians still often cast on the doctrine of "the Spirit moving the quakers," and of "the illuminating aid of the Holy Spirit, as Fox imagined," says Knight's History—as if yet it was folly to believe that the Holy Spirit is that which enlighteneth every man, and leads into all truth: or that the words of Christ to his disciples, "It is not you who speak, but your Father who speaketh in you," were more than a myth or a figure of speech.

Fox carried his great Christian test into every act and department of life. He was the first to elevate woman to her true place—an intellectual, moral, and political equality with man; basing his principle on the apostolic declaration that male and female are all one in Christ Jesus. Acting on this principle, the women of his society became preachers, and transacted their own affairs of association in their own meetings. He refused to take an oath before a magistrate, because Christ has expressly forbidden his