USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 4
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a reign of terror created that quietism was never heard of again in the Roman Church .*
Thus the Quaker movement came to naught in Italy and Spain. But it flourished abundantly in England, had considerable success in Germany, and spread to a slight extent in France, where there are still a few Quakers. It hardly suited the French temperament, or indeed the temperament of any people that had Latin blood in their veins. But it was natural enough to the German, and most natural of all to the serious-minded Englishman.
The Quaker, having made up his mind that every man could be saved and the religious life developed by sitting still and listening for the voice of God in the soul, had, necessarily, no use for any of the ordinary doctrines of his age. His extreme development of the principle of private judgment excluded them all. Other sects had played with that principle, or only half accepted it. But the Quaker took it to heart. The feeling that man must look within himself to discover his relations to the Deity, the feeling which inspired the heresies of the Antinomians and the Familists, and the philosophy of Descartes, reached its utmost religious expansion in the Quakers.
Most of the sects had retained two sacraments, bap- tism and the communion. But the Quaker felt that he had passed beyond the need of such aids and he rejected them altogether. The doctrine of exclusive salvation, which still lingered among Protestants, was swept out of existence in the Quaker's mind without the least hesi-
* Bigelow's Molinos the Quietist.
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tation. He believed in the universal light which had come not only to every Christian heart, but to the heart of every heathen, and all would be saved who followed it. Belief in the universal light necessarily excluded predestination and election, and accordingly the Quakers were entirely outside the pale of Calvinism and became advocates of free will.
They succeeded in ridding themselves of every one of the ancient dogmas except, perhaps, the inspiration of Scripture. The Trinity they explained in a way of their own, which would not have been accepted by any other church of that age, Protestant or Catholic. They held that, although the three persons were mentioned in the Scriptures and declared to be one, yet the compli- cated doctrine of the Trinity as stated in the Athanasian creed was never heard of until three hundred years after Christ. They preferred, they said, the statement of Scripture to the statement of the schoolmen. They ac- cepted the simple account in the New Testament, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were one. But they rejected the scholastic doctrine that the three were each separate and distinct persons and substances, and yet also one. It was useless, they said, to inquire whether each one of the three, considered by itself, was a separate substance, or a separate manifestation, or a separate op- eration. Such idle metaphysics tended not to righteous- ness and were unknown to the primitive Christians.
On the doctrine of the atonement they were somewhat at sea. There were in reality two schools among them, and this is the point where they gradually took some backward steps. The first school were inclined to carry the doctrine of the inner light very far, and hold that the
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appearance of Christ on the carth was solely to confer his spirit, that is, the inner light, on all men; that it was his spirit that would save mankind, and not the shedding of his blood, or any mere act or event in his life ; that he came to save men by giving them a spiritual principle which would change their hearts; that the idea of it being necessary, in order to save mankind, that Christ should be sacrificed and tortured, was a mere material and vulgar notion unworthy of belief and inconsistent with any sense of justice on the part of God.
This first school had their counterpart among some of the Germans and were very liberal. The other school were inclined to accept the doctrine of the atone- ment as usually stated, and held that the sacrifice and death were in themselves means of salvation, and no mere manifestations and proofs of the gift of the inward light.
During the first hundred and fifty years of Quakerism, the first, or liberal, school were quite numerous. The first occasion when the two parties had a direct and open dispute was in Pennsylvania in 1691. At that time George Keith, a prominent preacher among the Quakers, maintained that the sect was wrong in worshipping only the light and spirit of Christ within ; they must worship also the man who was crucified at Jerusalem and was now in heaven as Mediator. The Quakers replied that they accepted not the man Christ in heaven as a mediator. The only Christ they worshipped was the spiritual Christ in each heart. His sufferings and death as man were simply incidents of his earthly life, and not fit subjects for worship. In other words, Keith attempted to give Quakerism a body and get rid of some of the
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vague spirituality. As he expressively put it, " the candle should have a candle-stick."
He gathered quite a number of followers in Penn- sylvania and New Jersey. They separated from the sect and set up meeting-houses of their own, calling themselves Christian Friends, and were called by others Keithian Quakers. But their leader soon deserted them and joined the Church of England, after which they were gradually dispersed : some returned to the sect, but the majority were divided among the Baptists and the Church of England.
For more than a hundred years after this event there was no schism or open controversy. But, meanwhile, the party which Keith had represented was growing in numbers, slowly in America, more rapidly in England. By the year 1827 the large majority of Quakers had adopted the opinions which Keith and a small minority had been disowned for holding in 1691.
The change was gradual, and might have gone on for many years without attracting much notice. But the majority, or Orthodox Quakers, as they called them- selves, insisted on a complete triumph, and in 1827 forced a separation, which seems likely to be permanent. The Hicksites, as the minority were called, were driven out of the sect for maintaining the very opinions which, in 1691, the Keithian Quakers were driven out for not maintaining.
Since the Hicksite separation there has been another split among the Quakers, which has created the Wilbur- ites, who have taken ground midway between the Hicks- ites and the Orthodox. The Wilburites hold that Hicks went too far in his rationalistic treatment of the Bible, in
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regarding the story of the fall and the personality of the devil as mere allegories. They also hold that he exag- gerated the doctrine of Christ within. On the other hand, they believe that the Orthodox have exaggerated the doctrine of the atonement and made too much of Christ's mere death and suffering, to the exclusion of his spirit. They of course claim to be the original Quakers.
The substance of the faith of the early Quakers was that they liked to believe that Christ was divine without being obliged to state his divinity in the form of a meta- physical subtlety. They liked to believe that he came to save the world, but in a spiritual sense, and not by means of death and physical suffering. This general spiritual idea of his divinity has now spread to every division of Christendom, and is the most sincere form of belief on the subject held in modern times. Millions of men and women who announce themselves as Trinita- rians mean only that they believe in a general way in the divinity of Christ. Few of them care for the doctrine of the Trinity as taught in the Middle Ages, and few of them could even state it.
The inspiration and authority of the Scriptures were accepted by the Quakers, and this was the only point where they were at one with the great sects of the Ref- ormation. But they added to this belief a new doctrine, which again took them far away from all other Protes- tants. They held that by means of the inner light new revelations could at any time be made to individuals, and as a matter of fact were often made; that these revela- tions of the spirit were equal in authority with the Script- ures, were from the same source, and would therefore never contradict the Holy Writings. The Scriptures,
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they said, were merely the utterances of the spirit, not the spirit itself. This belief in the doctrine of immediate and continued revelations, since the time of the Script- ures, somewhat resembled the Roman Catholic belief in the continuance of miracles since the time of the apostles, and was, perhaps, one reason why the Quakers were con- stantly charged with having a tendency towards papacy.
The doctrine of immediate revelations was the heresy for which Mrs. Hutchinson, the Antinomian, was ban- ished by the General Court of Massachusetts. The Quakers absorbed pretty much all the Antinomians. They also held that heresy so dear to the Familists, as well as to the Antinomians, that the Old Testament was entirely abrogated and the New Dispensation alone in force.
We can, perhaps, realize more fully what a complete reversal of religious thought the Quaker movement rep- resents when we consider that they were perfectionists. They believed that by contemplation and quietude a man could in this life reach a state in which he was free from sin. In this they contradicted not only all the other sects of the Reformation, but the whole tone of ecclesiastical thought for more than a thousand years. No doctrine of the Church had been more generally taught and believed than that which held that every human being remained miserable and wicked to the end of his days, and that perfection was possible only to God. When we find a great religious movement spreading over all Europe and holding out the possibility of human perfection, it is easy to see that the Middle Ages are past.
Having freed themselves from so much dogma, and especially from the dogma of exclusive salvation, the
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minds of the Quakers were back again in the normal human state, and they became strong believers in liberty of conscience. It was not a matter of expediency with them, but a principle about which there could not be the slightest doubt, and which they scarcely ever violated.
It is impossible to withhold admiration from them. They have the honor of being one of the few divisions of Christendom against which the charges of inhuman cruelty and selfish love of power cannot be brought.
Among the Quakers first appeared those ideas of philanthropy which may now be called the prevailing religion of the modern world. Long before Beccaria thought of writing his book on the misery of prisons, the Quakers had carried into effect in Pennsylvania the reforms which he is supposed to have originated. They introduced the idea that a prison should be a reformatory as well as a place of punishment-an abode of discipline and cleanliness, instead of a source of dirt, pestilence, and disorder.
As early as 1727 they began to agitate for the abolition of slavery, and many years before that date they had had the subject under discussion. Their fundamental prin- ciple, that all religious development must arise from a natural and direct relation between the individual soul and God, lias had an enormous influence on modern thought, has stimulated morality, enlarged liberty, checked big- otry and despotism, and affected indirectly every other church and sect.
Fox is often spoken of as the founder of the Quaker sect, but that is hardly a correct description of him. He found the movement already in existence, and was himself aroused and inspired by it. Quakerism origi-
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nated in natural causes far beyond the influence of any one man. But Fox undoubtedly organized the move- ment and forged it into shape. He was not a man of learning and intelligence, like his successors William Penn and Robert Barclay. But he was deep-hearted, full of religious fervor, and carried away and out of him- self by the feeling of the times-qualities, perhaps, better suited to his purpose than mere logical or intellectual power.
He caught up the ideas around him, expressed them in vigorous speech, and made them respected by his heroic suffering. He was eminently fitted for the task. Tall of stature, with a piercing eye, commanding presence, and perfect courage, wild, fanatical, and superstitious, he fulfilled the idea of a prophet. He went up and down England preaching everywhere, and even visited America. He was continually getting into prison, and, his suffer- ings becoming as conspicuous as his earnestness, he was soon the rallying-point for the Quakers, and formed them into a sect. He slept so often in the woods, in barns, or in the cell of a prison, that he wore a suit of leather clothes, and Carlyle has quaintly remarked that it was an important day in the history of the world when George Fox decided to make himself a pair of leather breeches.
The outlandish doings of the Quakers, the bottle- breaking, and the giving warning of doom in the streets, were confined to the early days of the movement. They suffered severely for these irregularities, which gave the government an excuse for arresting them. But they were driven to irregularities by the laws which prevented their holding regular meetings. As the sect organized it
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grew more regular in behavior; it spread to the more orderly middle classes, and became the sedate, sober body which we know in our own time. Thus we find the Quakers who came to Pennsylvania were a very different set of people from those who thirty years before went to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They were less extravagant in their behavior, and possessed more wealth and better education.
The method of enforcing the Quaker faith, as finally established, consisted of a severe discipline in morals and manners, and most of it was reasoned out on the prin- ciples of quietism. They prohibited every act of life, every amusement, and every occupation which interfered with tranquillity of mind, which tended to disturb the repose and meditation which were necessary to the devel- opment of the inward light. Not only cards and games of chance were forbidden, but all games of skill, all kinds of hunting and field sports, which, they said, aroused too much excitement in the mind. Balls and the theatre were equally dangerous. A man came home from such entertainments with his imagination heated and unfit for quietude. Novels and all works of fiction and poetry had the same effect and were condemned. They were particularly opposed to music. They not only banished it from their religious meetings, but refused to have their children taught it.
So far did the Quakers carry the idea of quietism that even the raising of the voice beyond ordinary limits was discouraged as tending to disturb the mind. For the same reason they tried to adopt plain clothes, and have them of the same fashion from year to year and from century to century. The sermons-or, rather, the testi-
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monies in their meetings, for they hated the word ser- mon-showed no variety or range of knowledge, and were delivered in a peculiar monotonous tone. Com- placency and serenity, evenness and monotony, were the great regulations of their lives. They opposed all kinds of speculation, and all hazardous or daring enterprises.
Two of their principles have always attracted great attention,-their objection to taking an oath and their objection to taking part in war. There was nothing new in these ideas. Plato, Epictetus, and other spiritually- minded philosophers had been opposed to oaths, for the same reason as the Quakers. They held them to be useless ceremonies, because men were bound to tell the truth at all times and under all circumstances, and the Quakers added to this argument several passages of Scripture.
The objection to war had been a very common opinion among the primitive Christians, as well as among some of the old sects. Ambrose, Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril, and many other saints and fathers had declared that to fight, or go to battle, or join an army was contrary to the express commands of Christ. The idea became a very definite principle with the Quakers, but they utterly failed in living up to it.
Part of their discipline was the duty of each member to watch the others and report their failings. Having no dogmas or ceremonies to occupy their attention, their whole energy was given to the correction of manners, and the most minute details of manners. Every family was carefully guarded and inquired into. A Quaker who married one of another faith was immediately dismissed from the society, and the reason given for this severe
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rule, which greatly depleted their numbers, was, that it was impossible to discipline the family of a mixed mar- riage. Failure to live up to Quaker habits and manners was supposed to be always followed by dismissal. The Quakers carried to a great extreme that idea so prevalent in the Reformation, that a church should consist only of the pure and perfect.
Their form of government began with the meeting or congregation, which consisted of the people of a neigh- borhood. From this delegates were sent to the monthly mecting, which was composed of the representatives from the congregations of a certain district, usually part of a county. From the monthly meeting delegates went to the quarterly meeting, which included a still larger district, and from these quarterly meetings delegates went to the yearly meeting, which represented the whole country. This system, which reminds us somewhat of the Presbyterian form of government, seems to have had for its object the minute investigation of the morals of the whole Quaker community. By an arrangement of written questions and answers between these different representative bodies, the condition of the people was passed in review every year.
A remarkable part of these Quaker assemblies was that they had no presiding officer, and that a question was never put to vote. The clerk, or secretary, watched the discussion and framed a resolution which seemed to him to be the sense of the meeting. If he failed to judge aright, the debate went on and the resolution was re- framed by the clerk, and this process was kept up until debate ceased and the sense of the meeting had been ascertained.
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One characteristic of the Quakers, which distinguished them in a marked degree from nearly all the other sects of the Reformation, was their indifference to politics. They avoided political discussions, as too exciting and disturbing, and the subject was generally a forbidden one in Quaker families.
Their objection was also grounded on their dislike of war and of oaths. They saw that governments were founded on force, and could be maintained only by armies, and that it was impossible to hold office in the governments of that time without taking an oath. They, therefore, except in Pennsylvania, their own colony, took no part in public life, and had no desire to do so. They lived quietly by themselves, and made it a rule to mix as little as possible with what they called the world. Since the time of the primitive Christians there never had been such apostles of gentleness. They were a striking contrast to the Puritans, every one of whom was a restless politician, whose religion included a theory of civil government which he felt it his duty to enforce.
That the result of the Quaker belief and discipline was remarkable purity of morals and innocence of life it is impossible to deny, and so evident has this been to all the world that the most cynical critics have seldom ques- tioned it. But in their efforts to attain this result they lost sight of many qualities which are not only consistent with an upright life, but necessary to its perfection.
One of their foundation principles was that religious experience and growth were guided by the inward light, and in no way dependent on intellectual ability or knowl- edge. Fox, an unlettered man, was at great pains to show this, and it might have been expected from him.
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But Barclay, a very learned and accomplished man, and the greatest theologian the Quakers have produced, was at equal pains to show it, and has taken up several pages of his book in proving the uselessness of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and natural philosophy. This was also very different from the Puritans, who made their religion an affair of the most hard-headed reasoning, who were always hungry for knowledge and never tired of argu- ment.
It was strange that the Quakers, after having freed themselves almost entirely from dogma, should get into a state of mind that despised high learning. Their belief has been aptly described as a distorted rationalism. Not that they encouraged absolute ignorance and illiteracy, for they always had schools, and made a point that every child should be taught, and they were particularly care- ful in giving instruction to the poor. But their idea of education stopped at these schools. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were enough. For the higher walks of education, for scholarship, and extended knowledge they not only had no desire, but they distinctly disapproved of them.
In modern times they have greatly changed in this respect, and the Philadelphia Quakers have made most successful efforts in the direction of higher education, as their colleges, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore, abundantly prove. They have interested themselves in the education of women, and also in women's rights, which is the natural outgrowth of the liberty always al- lowed by them to women in preaching and in the con- duct of church affairs. But in 1789 John Dickinson had great difficulty in getting them to accept money to estab-
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lish a high-class boarding-school, for most of them at that time doubted the value of anything beyond mere rudiments.
The contemplative, peaceful Quaker was in many re- spects no match for the argumentative, fighting Puritan. And yet there were circumstances in which the Quaker would have the advantage. There are two kinds of strength,-the strength of an astute mind and an aggres- sive spirit, and the strength of a martyr's nature, gentle- ness, perseverance, and resignation. When, thirty years before the settlement of Pennsylvania, the Quakers at- tempted to introduce their religion into Massachusetts, their method was triumphant in the face of both Puritan argument and Puritan cruelty.
It is easy to see a great deal in the regulations of the Quakers that seems narrow, belittling, or impolitic. The rule which dismisses every member who marries out of meeting seems suicidal, and has undoubtedly depleted their numbers. Many of their other customs seem also calculated to drive away able, spirited men and retain only the dull and commonplace. Yet it is astonishing how many remarkable men have been Quakers, and it is also curious to observe that most of them became remarkable by disregarding some of the most important regulations of the sect.
John Bright, who so long held such an eminent po- sition in English politics, was, however, unusually con- sistent for so distinguished a Quaker. But most of the others have seemed to grow great by breaking the rules. William Penn was a man of this sort. He had not been bred a Quaker, and he indulged in politics, handsome dress, and appointed military governors over his colony,
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to an extent that might have brought dismissal to a man of less ascendency of character.
It is rather curious that the most eminent Quakers should have excelled in the fields of politics, war, art, and poetry, which were all under the ban of their doc- trine. They have produced abler men in these lines than in philanthropy, which was their special province. Their contemplativeness and spirituality may be the cause of the poets. As for war, it was said, in Philadelphia dur- ing the Revolution, that the young Quakers who en- listed learned the manual of arms quicker than any others. It is certainly rather remarkable that Pennsyl- vania, a Quaker colony, should have produced so many distinguished generals and sent such a large proportion of troops to every war. One of the best painters of his time, Benjamin West, two of our best poets, Whittier and Bayard Taylor, and two of the ablest generals of the Revolution, Greene and Mifflin, were Quakers.
Whittier was born and bred in Massachusetts, of a Quaker family which was converted from Puritanism towards the close of the seventeenth century, when the Quakers invaded Boston. Benjamin West was a Penn- , sylvanian. He had a natural genius for art, which, i unless it came by direct inspiration from heaven, must have been by reaction from extreme Quaker doctrine, for there was nothing in his surroundings to develop it. He could not even get brushes. But so strong were his instincts that, when a boy, as the story goes, he manu- factured brushes out of the tail of the family cat, and made paint from the red and yellow earths given him by the Indians.
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