Thus going on, there is something in him that fascinates one or two
here, and three or four there, until gradually there were others who
went about in the same spirit, and by degrees the Society of Friends
took shape, and stood among the thousand religious sects of the
world. Women also catch the contagion, and go round, often shamefully
misused. By such contagion these ministerings, by scores, almost
hundreds of poor travelling men and women, keep on year after
year, through ridicule, whipping, imprisonment, &c.--some of the
Friend-ministers emigrate to New England--where their treatment
makes the blackest part of the early annals of the New World. Some
were executed, others maim'd, par-burnt, and scourg'd--two hundred die
in prison--some on the gallows, or at the stake.
George Fox himself visited America, and found a refuge and hearers,
and preach'd many times on Long Island, New York State. In the village
of Oysterbay they will show you the rock on which he stood, (1672,)
addressing the multitude, in the open air--thus rigidly following the
fashion of apostolic times.--(I have heard myself many reminiscences
of him.) Flushing also contains (or contain'd--I have seen them)
memorials of Fox, and his son, in two aged white-oak trees, that
shaded him while he bore his testimony to people gather'd in the
highway.--Yes, the American Quakers were much persecuted--almost as
much, by a sort of consent of all the other sects, as the Jews were
in Europe in the middle ages.
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