A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers, by William Penn

Transcribed from the 1834 Harrison and Crosfield edition by David Price, email [email protected]

A BRIEF ACCOUNT
of the
RISE AND PROGRESS
of the people
CALLED QUAKERS,
in which their
fundamental principle, doctrines, worship, ministry, and discipline, are plainly declared.

WITH A SUMMARY RELATION OF THE FORMER DISPENSATIONS OF GOD IN THE WORLD; BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.

BY WILLIAM PENN.

AS UNKNOWN, AND YET WELL KNOWN.  2 COR. VI. 9.

TWELFTH EDITION.

MANCHESTER:

Printed by Harrison and Crosfield, Market Street.

sold by

HARVEY & DARTON, GRACECHURCH STREET, LONDON.

1834.

AN EPISTLE TO THE READER.

Reader, this following account of the people called Quakers, &c. was written in the fear and love of God: first, as a standing testimony to that ever blessed truth in the inward parts, with which God, in my youthful time, visited my soul, and for the sense and love of which I was made willing, in no ordinary way, to relinquish the honours and interests of the world.  Secondly, as a testimony for that despised people, that God has in his great mercy gathered and united by his own blessed Spirit in the holy profession of it; whose fellowship I value above all worldly greatness.  Thirdly, in love and honour to the memory of that worthy servant of God, George Fox, the first instrument thereof, and therefore styled by me—The great and

blessed apostle of our day.  As this gave birth to what is here presented to thy view, in the first edition of it, by way of preface to George Fox’s excellent Journal; so the consideration of the present usefulness of the following account of the people called Quakers, by reason of the unjust reflections of some adversaries that once walked under the profession of Friends, and the exhortations that conclude it, prevailed with me to consent that it should be republished in a smaller volume; knowing also full well, that great books, especially in these days, grow burthensome, both to the pockets and minds of too many; and that there are not a few that desire, so it be at an easy rate, to be informed about this people, that have been so much every where spoken against: but blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is upon no worse grounds than it was said of old time of the primitive Christians, as I hope will appear to every sober and considerate reader.  Our business, after all the ill usage we have met with, being the realities of religion, an effectual change before our last and great change: that all may come to an inward, sensible, and experimental knowledge of God, through the convictions and operations

of the light and spirit of Christ in themselves; the sufficient and blessed means given to all, that thereby all may come savingly to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent to enlighten and redeem the world: which knowledge is indeed eternal life.  And that thou, reader, mayst obtain it, is the earnest desire of him that is ever thine in so good a work.

WILLIAM PENN.

CHAP. I.

Containing a brief account of divers dispensations of God in the world, to the time he was pleased to raise this despised people, called Quakers.

Divers have been the dispensations of God since the creation of the world, unto the sons of men; but the great end of all of them, has been the renown of his own excellent name in the creation and restoration of man: man, the emblem of himself, as a God on earth, and the glory of all his works.  The world began with innocency; all was then good that the good God had made: and as he blessed the works of his hands, so their natures and harmony magnified him their Creator.  Then the morning stars sang together for joy, and all parts of his work said Amen to his law.  Not a jar in the whole frame; but man in paradise, the beasts in the field, the fowl in the air, the fish in the sea, the lights in the heavens, the fruits of the earth; yea, the air, the earth, the water, and fire, worshipped, praised, and exalted his power, wisdom, and goodness.  O holy sabbath!  O holy day to the Lord!

But this happy state lasted not long; for man, the crown and glory of the whole, being tempted to aspire above his place, unhappily yielded, against command and duty, as well as interest and felicity, and so fell below it; lost the divine image, the wisdom, power, and purity he was made in; by which, being no longer fit for paradise, he was expelled that garden of God, his proper dwelling and residence, and was driven out, as a poor vagabond, from the presence of the Lord, to wander in the earth, the habitation of beasts.

Yet God that made him had pity on him; for he, seeing man was deceived, and that it was not of malice, or an original presumption in him, but through the subtilty of the serpent, who had first fallen from his own state, and by the mediation of the woman, man’s own nature and companion, whom the serpent had first deluded, in his infinite goodness and wisdom provided a way to repair the breach, recover the loss, and restore fallen man again by a nobler and more excellent Adam, promised to be born of a woman; that as by means of a woman the evil one had prevailed upon man, by a woman also he should come into the world, who would prevail against him, and bruise his head, and deliver man from his power: and which, in a signal manner, by the dispensation of the Son of God in the flesh, in the fulness of time was personally and fully accomplished by him, and in him, as man’s Saviour and Redeemer.

But his power was not limited, in the manifestation of it to that time; for both before and since his blessed manifestation in the flesh, he has been the light and life, the rock and strength of all that ever feared God; was present with them in their temptations, followed them in their travels and afflictions, and supported

and carried them through and over the difficulties that have attended them in their earthly pilgrimage.  By this, Abel’s heart excelled Cain’s, and Seth obtained the pre-eminence, and Enoch walked with God.  It was this that strove with the old world, and which they rebelled against, and which sanctified and instructed Noah to salvation.

But the outward dispensation that followed the benighted state of man, after his fall, especially among the patriarchs, was generally that of angels; as the scriptures of the Old Testament do in many places express, as to Abraham, Jacob, &c.  The next was that of the law by Moses, which was also delivered by angels, as the apostle tells us.  This dispensation was much outward, and suited to a low and servile state; called therefore, by the apostle Paul, that of a schoolmaster, which was to point out and prepare that people to look and long for the Messiah, who would deliver them from the servitude