John Bunyan, and years younger than George Fox, the founder of that
faithful band of worshippers known as the Society of Friends. They
turned from all forms and ceremonies that involved untruth or
insincerity, now the temple of God in man's body, and, as Saint Paul
said the Corinthians, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you," they sought to bring
Christ into their hearts, and speak and act as if Christ was within
governing their words and actions. They would have no formal
prayers, no formal preaching, but sought to speak with each other as
the Spirit prompted, soul to soul. They would not, when our plural
pronoun "you" was still only plural, speak to one man as if he were
two or more. They swore not at all; but their "Yea" and "Nay" were
known to be more binding than the oaths of many of their
persecutors. And as they would not go through the required form of
swearing allegiance to the Government whenever called upon to do so,
they were continually liable to penalties of imprisonment when
imprisonment too often meant jail fever, misery, and death. George
Fox began his teaching when Ellwood was eight years old. Ellwood
was ten years old when Fox was first imprisoned at Nottingham, and
the offences of his followers against established forms led, as he
says, to "great rage, blows, punchings, beatings, and
imprisonments." Of what this rage meant, and of the spirit in which
it was endured, we learn much from the History of Thomas Ellwood.

Isaac Penington, whose influence upon young Ellwood's mind is often
referred to in this book, was born in the year of Shakespeare's
death, and had joined the Society of Friends in 1658, when his own
age was forty-two and Ellwood's was nineteen. He was the son of
Alderman Isaac Penington, a Puritan member for the City of London,
who announced, at a time in the year 1640 when the Parliament was in