A New Beginning

Part One

“Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Bechorath, the son of Aphiah, a Benjamite, a mighty man of power. And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.”* (1 Samuel 9:1-2)

It is part of the spiritual landscape about us—new beginnings. But why not continue in the old way of doing things? Why a new beginning?

“Is there not a cause?”* (1 Samuel 17:29) And so there was in this new beginning of a king in Israel. It had been God’s preferred way of dealing with His people by raising up judges, and it is plain that the people could have been blessed under the leadership of judges for the entire history of Israel, had two things been true. First, if the nation had been true to God. Secondly, if the judges had been true to God and uncorrupted by their position in any way, then the people could have retained their confidence in this way of God’s dealing with them. But neither of these two things were followed as they should have been, and there were consequences. There always are. The law of sowing and reaping always proves out in the end. If the people had been true to God, the judges would have done better. If the judges had been absolutely true to God, even as the people failed, then the judges would have been a faithful reflection of the trueness and rightness of God to the people. A faithful ministry is a source of faithful guidance and faithful reproof to an unstable people. The failures of the people become reflected in the ministry, if the ministry steps away from absolute faithfulness to God; and the failures in the ministry have a bad effect on the weaknesses in the people, too.

Eli’s administration as a judge of Israel was a disaster. He restrained not his sons, and they caused men to abhor the sacrifice of God (1 Samuel 2:17). Judgment from God came down on Eli and his sons. The ark of God was captured by the Philistines. The successor of Eli, the then young child Samuel, was the last of the judges. He started out well, but the same sin that had ruined Eli marred Samuel’s administration, too. “And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel…. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.”* (1 Samuel 8:1,3)

Here is where a great humbling down before God would have helped a great deal. If the people and their leaders had prostrated themselves before God and acknowledged in the words of another:

We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments: neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against thee. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him; Neither have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.

[Daniel 9:5-11]

Such a confession and acknowledgment as this, if prayed by all the people, laity and ministry alike, will not result in a new beginning, but in a solid and enduring return to unshakeable values on the solid Rock. But alas! It is rare even for an individual to seek God in this way, much less a whole group of people.

Now we note, that even though God had instituted the administration of judges, and even though Samuel comprehended immediately that the people’s turning away from the way of judges was a turning away from God Himself, yet God kept working with them in their uninspired desire to have a king over them. Here was their reasoning: “Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”* (1 Samuel 8:5) We see in this failure to do things the right way, the only way, God’s way, that the great mercy of God and His compassion to us is not taken away entirely when men turn from Him. The voice of the Bridegroom will be heard for some time, yet we will say that it is not heard as clearly as it should be (Hebrews 5:11-12). We also must here assert that this kind of living will result in less and less of God among a given people, until the saying is brought to pass, “The sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee.”* (Revelation 18:22-23) Note the awful finality of that phrase, “no more at all in thee.” There are places where this process is just starting; there are places where the dimming of light and the fading of the voice of God is well under way; and there are places where God does not even smell in their assemblies (Amos 5:21).

If we do not love the truth as we should, we will surely lose it. Loving the truth is more than loving the doctrine and attempting to hold it as a mental understanding.

The New Beginning of the Kings

God is not limited to working with one form of a government or another. He can deal with a nation through judges or through kings, yet certain types of government lend themselves to human vanity and are susceptible to the flesh in compromising or fanatical form that are exceedingly dangerous to us. And in thinking of the matter in this way, we see immediately that a king was in a particularly slippery place.

Now a judge had tremendous discretion in his authority and power, and a king did, too. In our conditioned thinking of today, shaped as we are by “democracy ideals” and the supposed power of the vote, most of us would be rather horrified at being under either dictatorship. But no way of man is safe in itself; each way has favorable and unfavorable aspects. The people of Israel were disillusioned with the method by which God allowed them to be governed (the judges), when they should have been disillusioned by their own sinful natures. And they failed to acknowledge that they would not do any better under a king than under a judge. We should be thinking that without possessing full salvation in our hearts, we will not do well under democracy or any other form of government. Without real salvation working and controlling our lives, we will not do well, period. No method will make up for a lack of really loving God and His ways. This anything-but-facing-the-real-roots-of-what-is-wrong leads to putting trust in methods and formulas which seem to have some merit to the fleshly mind. For example, some fixate on codes of dress and conduct; others think the ministry is not educated enough to communicate effectually; still others believe the ministry is too educated. As the people of Israel looked around at other nations while they contended with Samuel’s sons with the remembrance of Eli’s sons still in their minds, they concluded (on their own) that other nation’s kings were serving the interest of their people better than their system of judges was serving them, so they desired a king for themselves.

So God let them have one, and He gave them “a choice young man, and a goodly: and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he.”* (1 Samuel 9:2) As we read of his humility (1 Samuel 10:22,27; 15:17) and his faithfulness in the search for his father’s missing livestock, we grasp the scope of the character at the beginning of this choice, goodly young man. However, being in the position of a king brought him to disaster. That position is exceedingly dangerous to any man’s soul; consider how few survived spiritually.

But the beginning looked so good. In the account of Saul and the Israelites’ first victory during his administration (1 Samuel 11), we read of the king’s mercifulness to those who previously opposed him. At the conclusion of the account, “Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there…. there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the LORD; and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.”* (1 Samuel 11:14-15)

How often has it been thus! A group humble themselves before God to an extent. He blesses them. They get some victories. God does some things for them. There is great rejoicing. God encourages them in the right way. But they do not go far enough. They do not dig deeply enough. There is a long way to go. There is much needed beyond that first victory. It will take more humbling down than one is aware to even exist. David had no idea of all that would be required of him to follow the Lord all the way in his day and time, nor did Saul. We do not know either. We learn as we go; it is unfolded to us, fold by fold. The temptation to take things into our own hands is always before us. Satan would make it easier for us if we would only give him a little place, secretly.

No Christian movement has escaped this gauntlet of temptation. We read of the start of movement after movement. We read of the testimonies of men and women of God, new in their beginnings; how God blessed them; the place and authority that God granted them with Himself; the depth of their love and sacrifice for God—blessed of Him and indisputably acknowledged of Him. What happened? Something happened—over and over. What can we learn from this?

The Friends

Quakerism, the Religious Society of Friends, began in northern England in 1647 through the labors of George Fox. At its beginning, it was not an “ism.” This group of people originated from an exhaustive and relentless search for truth, clearly illustrated in Brother George Fox. He was raised a Puritan, but he was “wearied… by the rigid, unsatisfying, external religion of Puritan ‘professors.’ ”1 Such legalism brought no real satisfaction to the soul. They ignored the work of the Holy Ghost, emphasizing the Word only. Nor was he drawn “by the lofty pretensions of the High Church clergy”2—the Church of England (Episcopal). These two Protestant sects (as distinguished from the Roman Catholic Church) represented the two poles of professed Christianity in the time in which George Fox lived—the Puritans fanatical and grim, the Church of England almost as compromised and corrupt as the Catholics.

Almost all genuine new beginnings are attempted because there becomes a growing conviction that something is wrong. And all attempts to satisfy the seeker of truth with the status quo do not touch the need of the soul. One of the remarkable messages we have on record for Brother George Fox is the message he preached at a Puritan congregation where Margaret Fell and her family attended. He used the text, “For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.”* (Romans 2:28-29) On the basis of this light, he condemned a religion that, instead of emphasizing the great need of a changed heart, was leaning strongly to legalism. The Puritans stressed outward conformity to the Bible to reach the heart, rather than a revolutionary inward change that bore fruit on the external. Fox warned the people of the consequences. Margaret Fell, a devout Puritan, was deeply moved and repented of her devotion to the religion of the Pharisees (Puritans), saying to God, “We are all thieves! We are all thieves!” This is a very perceptive summary of where she and the entire Puritan group were. It is in accord with John 10:1. We note that Sister Fell did not try to defend her religion with an accounting of all the good that was in the Puritan movement (and there was good—Brother John Bunyan, for an example), but she recognized that she was part of a religious idol that appropriated the truth of God to its own purposes. Her statement and the stand that she took cost her dearly the rest of her life. She spent many years in prison for taking this bold stand for truth.

The Quakers believed in holiness of heart and life. They believed in deliverance from sin, from an inside deliverance to an outside. They believed in treating all men the same, for our Father in heaven is no respecter of persons. They believed the Bible taught to “swear not,”* (Matthew 5:34) and they refused to do so, suffering fines and imprisonment as a result. They refused to take up arms against their fellow man. (The Puritans had defeated the Royalists on the field of battle.) The Friends began in that period of English history when Oliver Cromwell was the Protector of England. The monarchy that had existed for centuries before had been abolished at that time and the last king executed. During the first few decades of the Quaker movement’s existence, the monarchy was restored. There was enormous confusion, fear, and turmoil in the country, and the Friends were caught between the two sides: Puritan and Royalist. Oaths were required of all men to the existing ruler, whether king or protector. Those who refused to take the oaths were cast into prison. Usually their properties and goods were confiscated. Many died. The Quakers were forbidden to meet in worship assemblies, as it was maintained that these were treasonous.

The movement grew in spite of all opposition. Quaker history tells us of the sixty-six ministers, those who first responded to the truth discovered by Brother George Fox, who went everywhere in England and even beyond, preaching the truth. Of these was one James Nayler, a particularly blessed minister, of whom we shall have more to say.

What was characteristic of the meetings of these remarkable people? How did they go about church government? Can we perceive and describe the “seeds of their destruction,” which we all have within us in one form or another?

The Quaker perspective of truth is built around the idea of “the inner light.” It is the embodiment of 1 John 2:27, “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” Therefore their meetings started out with a conscious effort to exalt no person above another. They rejected all hierarchy, all systems of some people ruling over the others. Instead, there was a quiet waiting on the inner light to prompt someone to speak unto edification in their meetings. If someone spoke without the anointing, then the others, quietly, would simply not receive the unenlightened speech.

This awesome amount of liberty and quiet reliance on God was a reaction to the controlling hierarchies of the Puritans, the Episcopalians, and the Catholics. And it is of great interest to us. The underlying foundation of the Quaker approach was that all of us are equal before God, and we find that teaching is solid doctrine. “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”* (Matthew 20:25-28)

God blessed these people in their humility and submission to Him. A man or woman who sincerely and honestly wanted to live for God with all the heart, would and did prosper in such a spiritual environment. Such an individual would benefit from the removal of hindrances caused by the rule of men (the image of the beast—Revelation 14:9-12). But no formula is safe in itself. The Quaker church model was probably the closest to the New Testament church model of anything that had existed among people for centuries before the seventeenth century.

In the early church of the New Testament, we can easily visualize Brother Peter, Brother John, Brother James, and Brother Paul sitting in a congregational setting. There are no big I’s or little you’s. There is room for Brother Ananias (the brother who was sent to Paul after his conversion) to speak as the Spirit of God impresses him, or Sister Priscilla to exhort as she was moved of God. The Spirit of God within each believer assists them to be edified by what is said or done. The same Spirit brings conviction; He reproves; he enlightens. The focus is on the inner light, available to all. “The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.”* (1 Corinthians 12:7) “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”* (Galatians 3:28) All of this was the same in the beginning of the Friends, as it had been in the church as revealed in Acts and the rest of the New Testament.

As to exactly how much light and understanding the Quakers had on the New Testament standard of Holy Ghost government, we will quote from a writing first published in 1859, approximately two hundred years after the their beginning.

It does not however, appear that any of the early Reformers carried their Protestantism so far as was afterwards done by George Fox, in advocating the entire abolition of a human priesthood in the Church of Christ, and the recognition of the Lord Jesus as its one holy Head and great High Priest. The idea of the continued presence of the Saviour with His followers had been so obscured by the Romish apostasy, that it was but slowly men awoke to the consciousness of its reality, and hence throughout the entire period from 1500 to 1650, religion was too often treated as a sort of State engine painfully indicating the forgetfulness of the apostolic truth, that the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

[John S. Rowntree; Quakerism, Past and Present, “Chapter I”]

The Quakers had no membership rolls; they did not practice mandatory tithing, either within their ranks or without (the government imposed tithing as a kind of tax to support the government-sponsored form of Christianity); they believed in “an inner light” (the light of conviction) that guided the individual; and they had a profound respect for the various scruples and “convincements” that attended these individual convictions. They believed that God could use men or women as vessels to speak to them (Galatians 3:28). They were determined not to set up a ruling body of ministers, but trusted God to govern them directly by both waiting upon Him in their individual lives and waiting upon Him as a corporate body in worship services. In church services, this took the form of a careful refraining from directing the proceedings. They wanted God to order and direct the service, and their part was to be there and to wait upon God to move whoever He wanted to speak, pray, or sing. This quiet waiting became the most common feature of their meetings, and in the first fifty years or so of these services, God greatly blessed them.

So, how is such a stand contested by our adversary? What are the ins and outs of valid Holy Ghost spiritual government? What does God allow Satan to do? What is the equivalent of the church of God being tested as Job was tested? How should we behave? What should we do and when, and what should we never do? If a group of people should loose the spiritual vitality that they had found, how would things develop after the loss?

I certainly do not know all the answers to these questions, save to generally observe that we should never take things into our own hands. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.”* (Proverbs 3:5-8) And it is plain that if we formulate policy, we lean to our own understanding. If we go about things in a democratic fashion, by the popular vote, we are trusting in the vote; we are trusting in the judgment of a membership to which we have added or subtracted. The original conception of the Quaker people was not a group formed by human hands. They actually possessed the prophetic standard: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.”* (Daniel 2:44)

Some might think that “other people” must refer to people other than the ones to whom it was supposedly left to govern this kingdom, but it is said of Christ that “the government shall be upon his shoulder…. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.”* (Isaiah 9:6-7) Reader, the Almighty has set up a kingdom on earth which will never be corrupted, not now in time nor in eternity. He does not permit man to run it or govern it; He has never relinquished control. The gates of hell have never prevailed against the church because God governs it, and the gates of hell have not, are not, and will not ever prevail against God Himself. If we can abide in this church that Jesus built, of which He is the Head, then we can share in its invincibility. No Christian can be overthrown if he will abide in Christ. No corporate body of Christians can be overthrown if they will abide in Christ. How to do so amid favorableness or adversity is of great interest to us.

Considering how rare it is for a group of people to find the blessing of abiding contentedly under the divine government, we are greatly interested in how they found it, how they kept it, and (alas!) how they lost it. And the aftermath; how can they be accurately described now?

The High Water Mark of the Reproaches of Excess

In October 1656, a strange procession made its way towards Bristol. It was the newly-released [James] Nayler and a band of eight Quakers. They were all mad.

Nayler rode upon a horse, his hatted head bowed, his hands folded in prayer. Surrounding him, in various stages of undress, were seven men and women on foot, slogging through the muddy cartways and puddle-filled roads. At the head of the procession, leading the horse by the bridle, were Hannah Stranger and Martha Simonds. Occasionally they would let go of the bridle and fling down their garments or bunches of wildflowers in the mud before the horse so it might step on them instead of the water. All the while, the strange, mad company—with the exception of the praying Nayler—sang “Hosannah! Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”

If anyone along the way jeered or asked questions, they were answered with songs, wild songs of praise and hallelujahs. Without hesitating, the odd processional kept up through the rain and the mud towards the town of Bristol.

It was an insane parody of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, for those crazed followers had convinced both themselves and Nayler that he was the Son of God. Hannah Stranger’s husband had even written to Nayler that “Thy name shall be no more James Nayler but Jesus,” a letter which was, for some insane reason, tucked in Nayler’s pocket as he made his Triumphant Entry into Bristol on October 24, 1656.

The company started to make their way towards St. Mary Redcliffe Church. At the High Cross, they were met by the sheriff’s men and dragged away to prison, to the jeering of an enormous crowd.

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He alone was brought before Parliament and convicted of blasphemy, not only because of the mad procession, but also on the strong evidence of the stranger letter which was found in his pocket. Nayler missed the death sentence by a small vote: 82-96. But it might have been preferred to the sentence he did receive. It was one of the most brutal and bloody ever passed down by the British House of Commons. It was not only unconstitutional, it was also against Cromwell’s wishes. And all for what was essentially a mad man’s bit of rococo role-playing.

On December 16, James Nayler heard his sentence. He was to be pilloried for two hours, half-naked in the icy cold. Then he was to be roped to a cart and dragged through the streets of Bristol while the executioner hit him more than 300 times with a knotted whip. A week after the whipping, he was pilloried again, and one of his not-so-helpful followers placed a sign above his head which read “This is the King of the Jews.” The letter B, for blasphemer, was branded on his forehead with a red-hot iron, and a hole pierced through his tongue with a red-hot wire. Finally, he was committed to solitary confinement and hard labor for as long as Parliament wished. They wished it for three years.

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The “fall” of James Nayler, as it is called today, almost dealt a mortal blow to the infant Quaker movement. It had two immediate bad effects: public opinion was entirely against the Quakers, with whom Nayler was intimately associated, and the Quakers themselves were frightfully shamed.

But in the end it was a bad cause that had a good effect, for Fox was forced to be more explicit about what was meant by the Inner Light of Christ being present in every person. He was forced to see how easily an unbalanced mind could jump from the notion of the divine light within to that of its own divinity.

Fox was an idealist, but a practical one. He knew that he would have to discipline the men and women in his growing movement. So he began to make them aware that there can be a higher thing than individual inspiration—the check and balance of collective inspiration. “Feel the power of God in one another,” wrote Fox. And “know one another in this love that changeth not.”

This was the beginning of the shift in Quakerism to group mysticism, a change from simple communion to community. From now on, Fox would write and preach much about unity in prayer, unity with one another, unity with God. This new emphasis saved Quakerism from disappearing into anarchy. Friends all sought to follow the same inward light, and in this way come to unity. Fox said it best when he wrote: “The Light is but one; and all being guided by it, all are subject to one, and are one in the unity of the Spirit.”

[Jane Yolen; Friend: the Story of George Fox and the Quakers; emphasis added]

If Satan cannot cause you come to short of the Bible standard, he will try to push you to excess. And recovering from excess is no small matter, as Brother George Fox discovered by experience. It seemed best to him to set up a system of community, and the setting up of this system gave our adversary an advantage over these people that utterly ruined the spirituality of the group. Brother Fox certainly didn’t mean for that to happen, nor did he foresee it. He was reacting to a disaster caused by the toleration of excess. This toleration existed because of an excessive reverence for the liberty of every man to walk in the light or reject it. This liberty had been focused upon because of the surrounding lack of individual liberty in professed Christianity all around them; it was a reaction—and it went too far and became unbalanced. The loss of step-by-step Holy Ghost leadings in dealing with excess put Brother Fox and the others at extreme disadvantage in dealing with the aftermath of this huge, disastrous excess of James Nayler.

Now if you lose the balance in the little things, you are not likely to get it back in the big things. There are a lot of things that need to be dealt with as God would have them dealt with, little by little. If this is not done, it simply is not possible to easily regain the right path. It is rather like driving an automobile on a slick road surface. If little adjustments are made as needed, then one can keep on the road is spite of treacherous conditions. But if one tries to fix everything while in the middle of violent and excessive sliding or fishtailing, then it is far more likely that you will end up off the road. Or consider: if you neglect careful, early training and correction with your children while they are young, you need not expect to recover things in their teenage years that will make up for the early lack.

If the past steps are neglected to which one should have given diligent heed, there is nothing to do but humble down. Way down. Way, way down. How far? There must be an acknowledgment of the early errors. Here is the Bible standard: “For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.”* (2 Corinthians 7:11) Notice the depths of this. A sorrow, a depth of sorrow that leads to a complete repentance.

What carefulness.

What clearing.

What indignation.

What fear.

What vehement desire.

What zeal.

What revenge.

Now this is really something, isn’t it? Any person who goes about forsaking sin to such a depth, can be recovered. Can be fixed. Can be healed. And on the contrary, anything less than this depth is not enough.

Now what is true of the individual in this, is again true of a group of individuals, too. But it is even rarer for a group of individuals to fully repent and be recovered than one person. Yet this is what is necessary.

We observe that Brother Paul was dealing with sectarian party spirits early in their manifestations at Corinth. And also observe that the reproof of the man of God was received and effective.

The System Devised and Imposed to Correct Excess

Brother Fox’s entire focus was on this question: “How can we keep this from happening again?” Not, “How did we miss the leading of the Lord that would have not allowed things to develop to such a point?” And so the brother devised a way to keep “Nayler 2” from occurring, and the method adopted was a way of human control with the power and authority invested in monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings that allowed or did not allow. This did prevent Nayler 2, but this change of focus also produced an enormous deadening effect. It was really a turning away from the Holy Ghost, of restricting Him to work within a certain framework. As other brethren have said, who valued God above men, “You can’t put God in a box.” People try to do so over and over—using different boxes, trying to learn from the failures of certain boxes. It won’t work. God won’t cooperate. He is not experimenting. He already knows. We need to know. We need to trust completely. We are either led or we must experiment (try something) or we must do nothing. We had better be led. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”* (Romans 8:14)

But how did Satan take advantage of these dear people, who had suffered so much for the gospel, who had gained so much in drawing close to God? What happened?

We will quote from Quakerism, Past and Present: Being an Inquiry into the Causes of its Decline in Great Britain and Ireland, published in 1859:

Connected with this branch of our subject is the working of the Quaker system of “Discipline,” or church government. George Fox commenced its definite organization in 1667, and devoted much time and labour to its elaboration during the remainder of his life….

“The whole community of Friends is modeled somewhat on the Presbyterian system. Three gradations of meetings or synods—monthly, quarterly, and yearly—administer the affairs of the Society, including in their supervision matters both of spiritual discipline and secular policy. The monthly meetings, composed of all the congregations within a definite circuit, judge of the fitness of new candidates for membership, supply certificates to such as move to other districts, choose fit persons to be elders, to watch over the ministry, attempt the reformation or pronounce the expulsion of all such as walk disorderly, and generally seek to stimulate the members to religious duty. They also make provision for the poor of the Society, and secure the education of their children. Overseers are also appointed to assist in the promotion of these objects. At monthly meetings also marriages are sanctioned previous to their solemnization at a meeting for worship. Several monthly meetings compose a quarterly meeting, to which they forward general reports of their condition, and at which appeals are heard from their decisions. The yearly meeting holds the same relative position to the quarterly meetings that the latter do to the monthly meetings, and has the general superintendence of the Society in a particular country.” [Report of Religious Census, 1851.]

George Fox says that his object in the organization of this system of church government was “the promotion of piety and virtue.” These are general terms; and there can be no doubt that he foresaw several important ends that might be attained by these frequent meetings for other purposes than religious worship, as the efficient relief of the poor, the succouring of the persecuted and down-trodden, as well as the several matters mentioned in the preceding extract, and others which we shall hereafter consider; but perhaps more powerful than any other consideration that influenced his mind, was the perception he had of the necessity that existed for putting a restraint on the proceedings of some injudicious but ardent followers. This may be inferred from his own writings, and the strenuous opposition offered to the establishment of “Meetings for Discipline” by a number of the more enthusiastic spirits in the Society is strong corroborative testimony.

[James S. Rowentree; Quakerism, Past and Present, “Chapter III”; emphasis added]

This perception of Brother George Fox of the need of the discipline of men by men and the imposition of a system of man rulership upon a group of people, who had been gathered and endued by the Spirit of God, completely changed the character of the Quakers eventually. One of the chief characteristics of the Friends was a profound and far-reaching respect for individual leading, for the solemn necessity of each person to walk in the light as they realized and were convinced of the light, and it was this precise characteristic that had left room for the toleration of excess, such as James Nayler and others, who followed such dubious practices as stripping naked before the public to show that everyone’s souls were naked before God, etc. Like the saints at Thyatira, the Quakers tolerated what should have not been tolerated (Revelation 2:20). Would not the Spirit of God have inspired a stand against the immodesty of presenting oneself naked, to say nothing of being exalted and receiving the praise of men, which led in turn to blasphemy? “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.”* (Proverbs 6:10-11) Like other things that are wrong, excess grows and becomes more excessive.

Now in all fairness to Brother Fox, it must be said that the system that he devised (in the fear of God) prevented more James Nayler reproaches, as well as other reproaches. However, the cure was worse than the disease, although that unhappy result did not appear for quite a while. At the time, the disease was in their face, in all of its hellish reproach, and it nearly destroyed them. Would to God they had got it right and applied His remedy for the need of the hour! We quote further:

The first effect the “Discipline” had on the body at large, was (if we may use so mechanical a simile) not unlike that occasioned by the addition of a fly-wheel to a powerful but irregularly acting machine—there was some loss of power, but more than an equivalent gain in the greater regularity of action induced. A check was put on the proceedings of parties whose zeal outran their knowledge. At the period of which we now write, “membership,” in the modern sense of the term, was unknown in the Society. Fox’s views were far more extensive than the mere founding of a sect: as before remarked, he aimed at nothing less than the reformation of the entire Church: thus, in his Epistles he hardly appears to address the Friends as a sectional body of Christians, they are “the children of light, in scorn by the world called Quakers,” “the church of God,” &c. Thus wishing to include all within its pale, it would have been contrary to the genius of primitive Quakerism to have made a definite statement as to who were “members” and who were not: the habitual attendance at the religious meetings was the only popular test which indicated, who were to be regarded as “Friends;” and persons so attending, of every shade of religious experience and of all degrees of earnestness, were blended together, though the incessant persecution which attended the Society in nearly all parts of the country, for the first forty years of its history, generally prevented the long-continued adhesion of the lukewarm and indifferent. Widely differing from the promiscuous gatherings for divine worship were the first “Meetings for Discipline:” they were not popular assemblies; children and young people did not sit in them, as they do now; but “two or three true and faithful Friends” from each particular meeting constituted the monthly meetings; and George Fox is still more precise in defining fit constituents for the quarterly meetings, which, says he, are to be made up “of weighty, seasoned, and substantial Friends, that understand the business of the church; for no unruly or unseasoned person should come there, nor indeed to the monthly meeting, but those who are single-hearted, seasoned, and honest.” [Fox’s Epistles.] To these meetings ministers (if personally unknown in the parts they wished to visit) must apply for certificates, “to prevent any bad spirits that may scandalize honest men.” In examining into the actual business transacted in these church meetings, as we may style them, it is remarkable how large a part of it was connected with the relief of the persecuted—of those in prison, or their destitute families. The early Friends merit a passing tribute of high praise, for their affectionate care of one another in those dark days of grinding persecution.

[James S. Rowentree; Quakerism, Past and Present, “Chapter III”]

The spirituality of those who had it did not nosedive when the false step was taken, for it was taken in innocence, without rebellious motive. Furthermore the structure that was erected was used for a pressing and precious burden—the financial relief of those relentlessly persecuted. How could this not seem necessary and meritable? There was not much perceptible diminishment of God’s blessing upon them. How typical is this of many false steps of far-reaching import! If we step only a little ways from God’s path for us, then His blessings are only a little diminished. If we step far away, especially if we are stubborn and headstrong, skirting the areas of outright rebellion, then the loss of divine favor is equally swift and radical. This is how God responds to the exercise of our free will: “With the merciful thou wilt show thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt show thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward.”* (Psalm 18:25-26) It should be plain to all of us that only a very humble and sensitive attitude on our part will catch “the checks” and the guidance of the Spirit of God that will keep us on the King’s Highway. A little hubris on our part, an overly-excited, zealous enthusiasm will lead to us running ahead of God and getting into trouble. Then, when trouble comes (and it always does), we take things into our own hands, even if we do not realize we are doing so, and God lets us. He warns us; He is faithful to correct and reprove, but if we are not listening as we should be, we do not get it. Think about this; consider the state of the people in this scripture text: “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.”* (Hebrews 5:11) Are you dull of hearing, dear reader?

If you had lived in Brother Fox’s day, would the Spirit of God have used you to see and to bring out truth about what was transpiring? Suppose you were an Ananias of Damascus (Acts 9:10-18), and God spoke to you to address what Brother Fox was doing. If you were not sold out to God, dead to reputation and what the people thought, would it have not have had an intimidating effect on you, to oppose the equivalent of, say, Brother Peter? I would remind you that Brother Paul, that ex-persecutor of the church, who had at one time made havoc of it, was put in that precise place and was faithful to God and to the light given from heaven (Galatians 2:11-14). What did the saints think of the former persecutor confronting and reproving publicly one of the pillars of Christianity? We are not told directly, but we read, “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”* (Galatians 1:10)

It is no small matter for God to get our eyes off each other and to keep them off each other and on Him instead, and I am satisfied that certain of our appointed trials and tests are exactly for that purpose. The system that Brother Fox set up had the inherent weakness of focusing the attention of men on men, rather than only and exclusively, focusing men on God. For a while this weakness was masked by the spirituality and carefulness of the men who used it, but the system was man-made, not God-made, a way of dealing with excess that was of men, not God, and it had side-effects and unforeseen consequences that exerted themselves in due season.

We ignore this example to our hurt, to our destruction. It is better to have God’s judges than God’s kings, so to speak. It is better to have God’s preferences than our own. If we choose to have a king, God will warn us and continue to work with us all that He can, but the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the path that we have chosen will manifest themselves. How much God wants to give us His best! How much does the Creator of man desire that His free-will creation voluntarily choose God’s way, rather than what seems best to their eyes! The vessel turns in the Potter’s hands; He patiently remakes it (Isaiah 18:1-6).

“Had I the choosing of my pathway,
In blindness I should go astray,
And wander far away in darkness,
Nor reach that land of endless day.”*

—To be continued