A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE convictions were formed and fixed by painful struggle ; and the Church was to them nothing but a new system of persecution more intolerant if possible than that from which they first broke away. The minister of Fenny Drayton in 1644, Nathaniel Stevens by name, was an orthodox Presbyterian : he was steadfast and sincere enough in his own principles to be willing to resign his cure in i662. S3r He and his fellows were to Fox in the worst sense ' priests ' : S38 not because they had been ordained by bishops, but because they desired, as he thought, to stand between God and man. Fox had a message to the world which seemed to him like a new gospel. He had wandered up and down the country for five or six years : J39 he had met and reasoned with Baptists and Presbyterians, with some who said that women had no souls, with others who followed the guidance of dreams, with some who said that there was no God, but all things came by nature, and with others who said that they themselves were God. 2 * All these he saw ' where they were ' blind leaders of the blind. Then it came to him, ' not by the help of man but in the light of our Lord Jesus Christ and by His immediate spirit and power,' that ' the manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to every man ; that Christ died for all and enlightened all.' To see this clearly was to have ' come up in the Spirit through the flaming swords into the paradise of God ' : and one who said it could have no other desire than to lead others into the same light, that all ' might by the inward spirit know their salvation and their way to God.' This theology, familiar and scriptural as it seems to us, was, of course, in direct opposition to the popular Calvinism of the day ; and even in the Church it could find but little sympathy at a time of such keen controversy. The Church of the Interregnum and the Restoration was by its very circum- stances forced to hold firmly and to lay stress upon the outward framework of order and discipline : the great Caroline divines had scarcely leisure for much interest in mystical theology. They were fully occupied in defining the limits of religious thought and the relations of the churches ; they could not understand that for men like Fox there was only one question worth asking : ' Can a man meet God face to face, and speak to him as friend with friend ? ' In happier days that question might have found a welcome and an answer within the Church, 241 but to George Fox it seemed that he could find no man able to ' speak to his condition.' So in the depth of his disap- pointment he came to the conclusion that the Church and all the sects had
- " Calamy, Nonconformists' Memorial, ii, 385.
K Fox calls all the Presbyterian ministers appointed by Parliament ' priests ' without distinction. 39 From 9 July, 1643, when he was nineteen years old, and left his home at the bidding of a voice which seemed to say ' Thou seest how young people go together into vanity and old people into the earth ; thou must forsake all, both young and old, and keep out of all, and be a stranger to all ' until about 1649, w ^ en his spiritual conflicts ended in peace. 10 For descriptions of all these see his Journal. The last-named sect was that of the Ranters, or Family of Lore, to whom at first Fox seems to have felt some drawing. 41 It is precisely the same question which has been asked by the mystics of all ages, within and without the Church ; and the great Catholic mystics from St. Augustine onwards have answered it with quite as much assurance as any of the sectaries. The best of Fox's teachings, found in his letters to the persecuted brethren, e.g. ' Patience must get the victory ' ; ' Life and light will outlast all, is over all, and will overcome all ' ; ' Be patient and still in the power and in the light ' ; ' The good will overcome the evil, the light darkness ... to be faithful and live in that which doth not think the time long ' ; ' Your rest is in Christ Jesus ; therefore rest not in anything else ' : all these have hundreds of parallels in the writings of the orthodox mystics. How could it be otherwise ? They are all echoes, conscious or unconscious, from the gospel of St. John. 386
