Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth - As Revealed in the Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger, Mystic and Rationalist, Communist and Social Reformer by Lewis Henry Berens
page 65 of 360 (18%)

[47:2] "That which the people called Quakers lay down as a main
fundamental in religion, is this, that God, through Christ, hath placed
a principle in every man, to inform him of his duty, and to enable him
to do it; and that those who live up to this principle, are the people
of God; and that those who live in disobedience to it, are not God's
people, whatever name they bear, or profession they may make of
religion.... By this principle they understand something that is Divine,
and though in man, not of man, but of God; it came from Him and leads to
Him all those who will be led by it ... it is the spirit given to every
man to profit withal."--William Penn, _Primitive Christianity Revived_
(1696). Quoted from J. S. Rowntree's _The Society of Friends; its Faith
and Practice_.

[48:1] Speaking of the early Quakers, Cotton Mather, after attributing
the origin of this sect "to some fanatics here in our town of Salem,"
describes the principles of "the old Foxian Quakerism" as follows:
"There is in every man a certain excusing and condemning _principle_,
which indeed is nothing but some _remainder_ of the Divine Image left by
the compassion of God upon the conscience of man after his fall.... They
scoffed at our imagined God beyond the stars." He also contends that
"the new turn such ingenuous men as Mr. Penn" had given to Quakerism,
had made of it "quite a new thing." See his _History of New England_,
book vii. chap. iv.

[49:1] The Rev. Thos. Bennet, on p. 4 of _An Answer to the Dissenters'
Pleas for Separation_, published in 1711, referring to the origin of the
various sorts of dissenters, speaks of the time "when Winstanley
published the principles of Quakerism, and enthusiasm broke out." In a
footnote he mentions _The Saint's Paradise_.
DigitalOcean Referral Badge