sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially. Thus
he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield,
crying, "Woe to the bloody city."36 But it does not appear that
he ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without
that decent garment from which his popular appellation was
derived.

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his
own actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him,
morally or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna
Southcote. But it would be most unjust to rank the sect which
regards him as its founder with the Muggletonians or the
Southcotians. It chanced that among the thousands whom his
enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose abilities and
attainments were of a very different order from his own. Robert
Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learning. William
Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired
abilities, was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should
have become the followers of George Fox ought not to astonish any
person who remembers what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated
intellects were in our own times duped by the unknown tongues.
The truth is that no powers of mind constitute a security against
errors of this description. Touching God and His ways with man,
the highest human faculties can discover little more than the
meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between
Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It
is not strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation,
tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet
seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves
absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay