Puntos estacionarios

John Whitehead, writing in 1661, declared that Quakers testified to this view of creation²⁶⁸ in their simplicity of living, which John William Wilson considered

‘emerged from a spirit within’.²⁶⁹ Like Burrough’s reference to the original creation (2.5.1), Whitehead used the term ‘steward’ to describe Quaker attitudes to the utilisation of the creation:

And being sensible that the earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof, and that they [the Quakers] are but Stewards of the portion he has given them…yet do not use things superfluous, which are destructive to the creation, and hurtful to their neighbours, but in apparel they are modest, in meats and drinks

temperate, that they may have wherewith to give a portion to the afflicted…²⁷⁰

Burrough and Whitehead suggested that the restored believer, having ‘turned to the Light’, would conduct himself or herself in a way befitting the restored order of creation. For Fox, too, the way in which Friends behaved in relation to the creation was an integral part of their witness to the new covenant. However, restoration of God’s true order for creation brought with it responsibilities as well as gifts of the spirit, and Fox was generally more didactic in his approach. The restoration of human dominion over the rest of creation was of great importance for Fox, and the wisdom to manage creation as God intended came from God:

Hearken to the spirit of God in you, that checks you for vanity, that you may come into the fear of God, whereby you may learn wisdom, and may not destroy the creation…love the Lord God above all his creatures, and delight

267 Burrough, Standard Lifted Up, 19.

268 John Whitehead, A Small Treatise, wherein is briefly declared some of those things which I have heard, and seen, and learn’t of the Father, 2^nd ed., (London: n.p., 1665)

269 John William Wilson, ‘From the House of the Four Winds XXXIX’, Friends Quarterly Examiner no. 264, March 10, 1932, 289-90. Wilson quoted this section from Whitehead, without giving its author or title.

270 Whitehead, Small Treatise, 16-17.

not in vanity, that to the Lord God in your generation, you may be a blessing, for all the destroyers of the creatures are accursed;²⁷¹

According to Fox, ‘that wisdom which is pure, is from above, which is gentle, and easy to be entreated, nor hurtful, nor destructive, but is to the preserving of the whole creation’.²⁷² Heeding the divine light would bring the wisdom to treat the creation properly, the same wisdom by which it had been made by God originally. Fox also warned that human strife over the use of the creation is ‘not from the light’:

And wait all in the light for the wisdom by which all things were made, with it to use all the Lord’s creatures to his glory, (and none to stumble one another about the creatures, for that is not from the light), for which end they were created, and with the wisdom by which they were made, ye may be kept out of the misuse of them, in the image of God, that ye may come to see, that the

‘earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof’, and the earth may come to yield her increase, and to enjoy her sabbaths…²⁷³

In practice, Fox repeatedly found it necessary to remind Friends to be diligent to order their lives and their dealings with the creation always according to the will of God, and not according to ‘the cares of the world’. True spirituality brought the gift of wisdom: those whose minds were ‘kept up to God’ rather than dwelling on material concerns would receive the wisdom to use the creation according to God’s will:

All Friends, to that which is pure, take heed, that with that all your minds may be kept up to God, who is pure: that as the lily ye all may grow, and receive wisdom from God how to use the creatures in their places, to the glory of him that created them…Look at the life which is more than food, and the body which is more than raiment; and consider the lilies and the ravens, and who feedeth them, and clotheth the earth?²⁷⁴

His reference to ‘the lilies and the ravens’ here might be understood to mean that contemplation of the outward creation could inform humanity about the unseen mind of God. However, Fox’s advocacy of such a notion was restricted to the endorsement

271 George Fox, ‘To the High and Lofty Ones’ (c.1655), in Works 4: 50.

272 George Fox, ‘Truth’s Triumph in the Eternal Power, Over the Dark Inventions of Fallen Man’

(1661), in Works 4: 272.

273 George Fox, ‘To Friends, for all to wait and walk in the truth’ (1653), in Works 7: 40.

274 George Fox, ‘To all Friends, to keep in the power of God, out of the cares of the world’ (1656), in Works 7: 121.

of conventional biblical metaphors. His emphasis, like that of other early Quakers, was invariably on the primacy of the inward spirit of Christ which gave true

knowledge, whilst purely human reactions to outward forms of the creation could be misleading:

And all be diligent in your places, serving the Lord, and that your spirits may not be plucked down with earthly things nor limited by them; but that in the power of the Lord God ye may act over them, (the handiworks of God) out of the entanglements and thraldom of them, and out of the vain inventions of men, but keep in the power of the Lord God over them; in which power is the mystery of the fellowship and the dominion…²⁷⁵

Fox’s account of an invitation to join him in a pipe of tobacco reveals that whilst he considered the concept of ‘unity with creation’ to be an important part of the Quaker revelation, others interpreted the phrase differently:

and there came John Story to me, and lighted his pipe of tobacco, and, said he

‘Will you take a pipe of tobacco’, saying, ‘Come, all is ours’;²⁷⁶ and I looked upon him to be a forward, bold lad. Tobacco I did not take, but it came into my mind that the lad might think that I had not unity with the creation, for I saw he had a flashy, empty notion of religion; so I took his pipe and put it to my mouth and gave it to him again to stop him lest his rude tongue should say I had not unity with the creation.²⁷⁷

Braithwaite suggested that Fox’s use of the phrase was probably related to his

‘interest in herbs and in medicine’.²⁷⁸ Catherine Wilcox remarks that Fox would also have been reluctant to leave the impression that Friends enjoyed ‘a lesser revelation than the Ranters’²⁷⁹ (2.6.3). However, the latter interpreted ‘unity with the creation’

as a license for hedonistic excess in relation to physical pleasure of all kinds.²⁸⁰ Thus, Fox also would have wished to distance Friends from the pantheistic ideas and the

275 George Fox, Epistle CLXXXI (1659) in Works 7: 171.

276 The same phrase, ‘all is ours’, was used by a Ranter to Fox in London in 1655 (Nickalls, Journal, 195).

277 Nickalls, Journal, 110.

278 Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism, 553.

279 Wilcox, Theology and Women’s Ministry, 27.

280 See, for example, Gwyn, Seekers Found, 167-70.

hedonism of the Ranters, and passed judgement on one who mistook indulgence in tobacco for ‘unity with the creation’.²⁸¹

Concern for Animals

Fox was particularly concerned with the practical consequences of restoration in Christ for human behaviour, including people’s treatment of animals. Whilst his views on the stewardship of creation were yet to be fully developed (3.5.2), being faithful to the truth that was revealed to him meant acting upon it in everyday dealings with people and God’s creation. Whilst early Friends usually regarded games in general, and not just those involving animals, as worldly pleasures out of keeping with true Christian witness,²⁸² there are several instances where concern was

expressed specifically about the treatment of animals. Thomas Taylor was prominent among early Friends in expressing specific concerns about the cruelty of animal sports:²⁸³

And all ye, that can please yourselves with beholding one Creature hurt and torment another, yea, sometimes even to Death, as at Bull-baitings, Bear-baitings, Cock-fightings and the like. O! what Minds have ye, and how contrary are ye herein to the Tender Nature of Christ, and all Christians truly so called, who could never Rejoice in any such things, by reason of their tender, pitiful and merciful Nature! O ye Children of Cruelty! When will your Hearts break, your stony Hearts melt into Tears before the Lord for all your mighty Sins?²⁸⁴

281 Carolyn Merchant quotes the Ranter, Jacob Bauthomley, writing in 1650, that ‘God is in everyone and every living thing, man and beast, fish and fowl, and every green thing, from the highest cedar to the ivy on the wall…God is in this dog, this tobacco pipe, he is me and I am him.’ (Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Fransisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 124; no further reference given)

282 William C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 508-13. See also Moore, Light in Their Consciences, 128.

283 Braithwaite, Second Period of Quakerism, 223-4.

284 Thomas Taylor, ‘A Faithful Warning to Outside Professors, and Loose Pretenders to Christianity of all sorts’ (1661), in Truth’s Innocency and Simplicity Shining (London: T. Sowle, 1697), 129. This is one of several references to the subject in Taylor’s collected works. See also Adams, ‘Early Friends Witness to Creation’, 149.

James Nayler condemned bull-baiting because it was ‘setting one of the creatures of God against another to torment’.²⁸⁵ For these Quakers at least, concern about the treatment of animals went further than the condemnation of worldly pleasures.

Leo Damrosch argues that Nayler’s position can be contrasted to that of the Puritans, whose well-known objection to bear-baiting was not on the grounds that it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.²⁸⁶

James Parnell specifically criticised the rich and powerful, accusing them of oppressing the poor, and spending their time ‘in Pleasures…according to your lustful minds, in Hawking and Hunting…’.²⁸⁷ Fox, too, attacked ‘hawkers and hunters’, whom he likened to animals, and described as ‘carried up in the flesh’, ‘glorifying in your strength’ and ‘puffed up, lofty and high-minded’.²⁸⁸ Describing these pursuits as

‘contrary to the way of God’, ‘contrary to the light’ and ‘to be condemned with the light’,²⁸⁹ Fox recalled an incident at Aberystwyth in 1657:

And in that inn also I turned but my back from the man that was giving oats to my horse, and I looked back again and he was filling his pockets with the provender that was given to my horse, a wicked thievish people to rob the poor dumb creature of his food, of which I had rather they had robbed me.²⁹⁰ Fox was prepared to make himself unpopular on this issue. Whilst being arrested at Ulverston, he described his captors setting him upon and then beating ‘a poor little horse’ at which point he alighted ‘and told them they should not abuse the creature at

285 James Nayler, A Dispute between James Nayler and the Parish Teachers of Chesterfield, by a Challenge against him (London: Giles Calvert, 1655), 1.

286 Leo Damrosch, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 45.

287 James Parnell, ‘The Trumpet of the Lord Blown or, A Blast against Pride and Oppression; and the defiled Liberty, which stands in the Flesh’, in A Collection of the Several writings from the Spirit of the Lord, through that Meek, Patient and Suffering Servant of God, James Parnell…(n.p., 1675), 29.

288 Fox, Vials of Wrath, 5.

289 Ibid., 5-6. Such pursuits were ‘contrary to the way of God, and all such they that dwelt in the life of the Scriptures declared against, and all this which is acted out from the nature, which is contrary to the light, is to be condemned with the light, and all that will fade and wither away…Now to that in your consciences I do speak, which he hath enlightened you with all, it will let you see your prophaneness, your hunting ravening mind, your destroying minde, which destroys the creature, and destroys the creation upon your own lusts, and the whole creation groaneth with the bondage of corruption: nay you take pleasure in destroying the creatures, and make yourselves sport in destroying them…’ (ibid).

which they mightily raged’.²⁹¹ That these incidents were included in the Journal suggests that both Fox and his editors considered them to be significant.

2.6 CONCLUSION

The main findings of this chapter are presented in terms of the place of the creation in the conceptual framework of the first Quakers, and in their personal spiritual

experiences. The section continues with a brief exploration of possible differences in outlook between early Friends, and at the ways in which the early Quaker witness to the creation was distinctive in relation to mainstream Puritan thinking.