But
he believ' d always in the universal church, in the soul of man,
invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to universal truths.--He
was fond of pithy proverbs. He said, "It matters not where you live,
but how you live." He said once to my father, "They talk of the
devil--I tell thee, Walter, there is no worse devil than man."
GEORGE FOX (AND SHAKSPERE)
While we are about it, we must almost Inevitably go back to the origin
of the Society of which Elias Hicks has so far prov'd to be the most
mark'd individual result. We must revert to the latter part of the
16th, and all, or nearly all of that 17th century, crowded with so
many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout
Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were
unusually arous'd--(some would say demented.) It was a special age of
the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were
hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an
age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were
wrestling like giants for the mastery, straining every nerve. Only to
think of it--that age! its events, persons--Shakspere just dead, (his
folios publish'd, complete)--Charles 1st, the shadowy spirit and the
solid block! To sum up all, it was the age of Cromwell!
As indispensable foreground, indeed, for Elias Hicks, and perhaps sine
qua non to an estimate of the kind of man, we must briefly transport
ourselves back to the England of that period.
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