Prepared to accompany a workshop
At the FWCC Conference on Peace
Guilford College
Greensboro North Carolina
First Month 17-20, 2003
I
If Quaker are asked, Where can I find the ‘Quaker Peace Testimony’? where would we turn to find it?
Most of us in North America and England would pick up a book of Discipline or Faith & Practice. There the answer seems straightforward. All the many such contemporary books I have examined, from across the various branches, include the same statement, with only minor variations. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s 1997 version of what it calls the “historic peace testimony” is typical:
“The Society of Friends has consistently held that war is contrary to the Spirit of Christ. It stated its position clearly in the Declaration to Charles II in 1660:
‘We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever,. this is our testimony to the whole world . . . . The Spirit of Christ, by which we guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move us unto it; and we certainly know, and testify tot he world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the Kingdoms of this world…. Therefore, we cannot learn war any more.’” (F&P pp. 76f)
When I speak of reconsidering the Peace Testimony, these few sentences are the starting point. They are treated in our Disciplines as a definitive expression of this witness, one drafted by our founders, bearing the seal of history, and ratified today by Friends of all branches.
Indeed, such is the stature of these few phrases that I call them the “canonical” Peace Testimony, because they have become a kind of Quaker scripture. And this status makes them all the more ripe, indeed overripe for reconsideration.
II
Before this reconsideration begins, four preliminary points need to be made:
First, these sentences are only a brief excerpt from the 1660 Letter (about 110 words out of a total of 2500).
Secondly, they are not really representative of the full letter, which as we shall see is indeed much more complex and even ambiguous.
Third, to put it gently, even these excerpts are more qualified than they appear in our Disciplines. More plainly, they are presented in a way that significantly alters their actual import. Take, for instance, the opening statement: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife . . . .” “We” however is not the beginning of that statement; in the text it actually starts like this:
“All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars and strife . . . .”
It can be argued that the phrase “as to our own particulars,” is very important here, especially as a qualifier; we shall see why in a few moments. Further, what is presented as the sentence “Therefore we cannot learn war any more.” is actually the beginning of a longer sentence, and occurs close to the end of the statement, three pages away. These standard excerpts, in short, have been significantly altered and misquoted.
Fourth, while the 1660 Letter is obviously ancient, it turns out that its elevation to “canonical” or scriptural status is not an ancient piece of Quaker history, but actually quite a recent development. Examining old books of Discipline, I have not found it anywhere before the 1920s. In fact, prior to that, it’s hard to find any statement of a “Peace Testimony” as such. Instead, there was a testimony against war. Here’s how most Yearly Meetings Disciplines put it throughout most of the 19th century, under the heading of “War” (There was no heading of “Peace”):
“Friends are exhorted faithfully to adhere to our ancient testimony against wars, and fightings, and in no way to unite with any in warlike measures, either offensive or defensive, that by the inoffensiveness of our conduct we may convincingly demonstrate ourselves to be real subjects of the Messiah’s peaceful reign, and be instrumental in the promotion thereof, towards its desired completion; when, according to ancient prophecy, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea; and its inhabitants shall learn war no more.’”
(There followed specific directives about loss of goods for refusal of war taxes, and avoidance of military ceremonies and the like.)
The other reference to the testimony in these books came in the Queries. Here’s the one from Baltimore Yearly Meeting (Hicksite) in 1861, which was typical:
“Sixth Query. Do you maintain a faithful testimony against oaths; an hireling ministry; bearing arms, training, or other military services; being concerned in any fraudulent or clandestine trade; buying or vending goods so imported, or prize goods; and against encouraging lotteries of any kinds?”
Again, there is no mention of peace in this laundry list of miscellaneous mandates; and not “bearing arms” comes after the prohibitions on oaths and hireling ministry, suggesting that these were held to be greater evils.
Indeed, it is not until after World War One, that the 1660 (mis)quote begins appearing in books of Discipline. My own hypothesis about this sudden emergence is that it stems from a report on peace made to the first Friends World Conference in 1920, where delegates from all the branches were present, in which the quotes appeared.
In sum, what is presented as a definitive, unambiguous, and perennial statement in our current books of Faith and Practice, is on closer examination shown to be something quite different, and, I would contend, considerably more ambiguous and challenging.
The Friends Peace Testimony Reconsidered
– page 2 –
III
To begin to explain why, two major features of the 1660 Letter’s context need to be underlined, one textual and one historical.
The first is that the 1660 Letter is biblical through and through. This of course is typical of early Friends; but three biblical themes are particularly salient in it. They are:
1. The Peaceable Kingdom (e.g., in Micah 4)
2. The State as God’s Enforcer (Romans 13:1-7)
3. Spiritual Warfare against Principalities and Powers (2 Corinthians 10:3 - 5; Ephesians 6:10-18)
The second important contextual aspect is the Letter’s historical situation: Friends in England in 1660 were a people without worldly power, facing threats of massive persecution by the authorities. The letter to Charles II hoped to ward off or mitigate this official persecution (and didn’t succeed very well at that). Nevertheless it assumed and expressed attitudes about power and social order which were soon to become important to the shape and evolution of the testimony it was articulating.
Turning to the 1660 Letter itself, one passage in particular seems to me to best express the basis of what could be called 1660 Quaker pacifism. Here it is:
Therefore consider these things, ye men of understanding: for plotters, raisers of insurrections, tumultuous ones, and fighters, running with swords, clubs, staves, and pistols, one against another; these, we say, are of the world, and have their foundation from this unrighteous world, from the foundation of which the Lamb hath been slain; which Lamb hath redeemed us from this unrighteous world, and we are not of it, but are heirs of a world of which there is no end, and of a kingdom where no corruptible thing enters. (Emphasis added)
That is, while in a physical, temporal sense these Friends were still residents of England in 1660; by the work of Christ’s Spirit within them, in their essential being they were living somewhere else, namely: in the peaceable kingdom, an entirely different spiritual reality. In this new community/state of being, they add, warfare is undertaken in a characteristic, qualitatively different manner:
“Our weapons are spiritual, and not carnal, yet mighty through God, to the plucking/pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan, who is the author of wars, fighting, murder, and plots. Our swords are broken into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, as prophesied of in Micah iv. Therefore we cannot learn war any more, neither rise up against nation or kingdom with outward weapons, though you have numbered us amongst the transgressors and plotters.” (Emphasis added.)
Here we see two of the Letter’s key biblical themes: the peaceable kingdom and spiritual warfare. These themes pervade another passage, which could be called the 1660 Quaker Peace Plan:
“. . . [A]s for the kingdoms of this world, we cannot covet them, much less can we fight for them, but we do earnestly desire and wait, that, by the Word of God’s power, and its effectual operation in the hearts of men, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Christ; that he may rule and reign in men by his Spirit and truth; that thereby all people, out of all different judgements and professions, may be brought into love and unity with God, and one with another; and that they may all come to witness the prophet’s words, who said, ‘ Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,’ Isa. ii. 4., Mic. iv. 3.” (Emphasis added.)
Let’s parse this out a bit: For these Friends, war will end when the Word of God’s power changes enough of the hearts of men, that they will abandon physical (or carnal) warfare, and immigrate into the peaceable kingdom. The Friends’ role in this process is principally to desire and wait for this transformation.
The contrast between this quietist outlook and the activist preoccupations of contemporary Friends is rather stark, and worth pausing over briefly. The modern ethos of Quaker peace witness was stated in classically concise form by Lucretia Mott in 1876:
“If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we must also believe that by proper efforts on our part it can be done away with.”
This outlooks adds two new features to the received witness: First, doing away with war in our time. Few if any of the earlier statements spoke of this; they implicitly presumed war’s tragic persistence, and called for Friends not to take part in it. In the 1660 Letter, the end of war is put off to a distant, likely post-historical future when “the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Christ. . . .” (This is virtually a direct quote from Revelation 11:15, which is definitely talking about the “end of history.”)
The other new feature here is the stress given “proper efforts on our part.” War, it seems, is a social problem like slavery, or like a disease such as smallpox. In a scientific, progressive society these plagues have been all but eradicated, and war is not essentially different; we’re still just working on developing the “proper efforts,” and mobilizing the necessary energy to apply them. The spirit of Quaker peace action today is, I contend, still essentially the same as that expressed by Lucretia Mott in 1876, and it is utterly different in tone and emphasis from what came before it.
But the earlier spirit and emphasis are not absent from our world today. The 1660 Letter and the later Queries remind me very much of the attitude of the stricter Amish sects. Some of these had colonies in a Pennsylvania valley near where I lived in the late 1990s. These Anabaptists carry on their lives as if they are already residents of the peaceable kingdom: they grow their crops, raise large families, trade with the “English” (i.e., non-Amish like me), attend their house church worship services, and otherwise do their best to ignore the corrupt outside world.
And one more thing: they don’t do war.
In the years of the draft, their men trekked off to conscientious objector assignments in quiet droves–indeed, in much higher percentages than did draft age male Friends of those decades. While these Amish do contribute to relief projects, they are hardly peace activists; they don’t show up for demonstrations; and the constant, Mott-like busyness of my Quaker meeting a few valleys away would leave them cold. If they have a peace plan at all, it would rather closely resemble that of the ancient Friends just cited, focused on “the inoffensiveness of [their] conduct” as a model and a signpost..
IV
So far, this reexamined 1660 testimony may differ in mood and expression from the excerpts in today’s Disciplines, but not much in substance. But that is not the case when we consider two other excerpts, addressed specifically to the role of the rulers who were persecuting them. Let’s hear them:
“Therefore in love we warn you [King Charles] for your soul’s good, not to wrong the innocent, nor the babes of Christ, which he hath in his hand, which he cares for as the apple of his eye; neither seek to destroy the heritage of God, nor turn your swords backward upon such as the law was not made for, i.e., the righteous; but for sinners and transgressors, to keep them down.” (Emphasis added.)
This mention of the ruler’s sword is a rephrasing of Romans 13:1-4. This passage is worth repeating here in full:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” (Emphasis added.)
This brief text is one of the most important biblical passages in Western political history, repeated down the centuries as the scriptural sanction for civil power and official use of violent force. And in the 1660 Letter, this view of it is explicitly affirmed – not once, but twice. Here it is again:
“And whereas all manner of evil hath been falsely spoken of us, we hereby speak the plain truth of our hearts, to take away the occasion of that offense; that so being innocent, we may not suffer for other men’s offenses, nor be made a prey of by the wills of men for that of which we were never guilty; but in the uprightness of our hearts we may, under the power ordained of God for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well, live a peaceable and godly life, in all godliness and honesty.” (Emphasis added.)
The “power ordained of God for the punishment of evil-doers . . . .” Does this phraseology ring any bells for us today? It too comes out of Romans 13.
Well, so what? Do these two allusions make any difference to the Peace Testimony?
Yes, I believe they do. Certainly they did in practice. And the difference did not take long to become manifest. Only twelve years, to be more precise.
The Friends Peace Testimony Reconsidered
– page 3 –
V
The 1660 Letter portrayed Friends as a meek and apolitical people: “ . . .as for the kingdoms of this world,” it said, “we cannot covet them, much less can we fight for them . . . .” But this sentiment evidently did not survive the passage across the Atlantic: in Rhode Island, Friends not only coveted worldly power, but achieved it. Although not founded by Friends, the colony’s annual election in 1672 produced a Quaker Governor, Deputy-Governor, and a Quaker majority in the colonial assembly. And Friends held most or much of the local political power in the colony for many years afterward.
This novel development (almost a decade before William Penn began the “Holy Experiment” in Pennsylvania) soon had the recognition and endorsement of no less a Quaker authority than the first signatory to the 1660 Letter, George Fox himself. He visited Rhode Island in 1672, attended New England Yearly Meeting there, and stayed on for several weeks afterward, the honored guest of the Quaker governor, Nicholas Easton.
In a sermon there, Fox expressed great satisfaction with the new regime: “What an honor is it that Christ should be both Priest, Prophet, Minister, Shepherd & Bishop, Councellor (sic) Leader, & Captain & Prince in your Colony,” he declared. He also – as was his habit– gave them lots of concrete advice, about outlawing drunkenness, swearing, etc., and upholding their ancient liberties. (Quotes from Weddle, see below.)
But with the power of the magistrate or governing authority for upholding righteousness, there also came the issue of bearing the sword against evil-doers. This role was, remember, explicitly affirmed in the 1660 Letter. Now this sword was in Quaker hands. What were they to do with it?
For Rhode Island’s new leaders, this was not an abstract question: on the one side, from the sea, there were threats of invasion by French and Dutch naval forces. On the other side, they were surrounded by forests inhabited by increasingly restive native tribes.
No mention of war by Fox in Rhode Island has been found. But in other contemporary epistles, he made clear his support for the Romans 13 stance. For instance, in a 1676 letter to Friends on the Caribbean island of Nevis, Fox wrote,
“For if any should come to burn your house, or rob you, or come to ravish your wives or daughters, or a company should come to fire a city or town, or come to kill people; do not you watch against all such actions? And will you not watch against such evil things in the power of God in your own way? You cannot but discover such things to the magistrates, who are to punish such things; and therefore the watch is kept and set to discover such to the magistrate, that they may be punished; and if he does it not, he bears his sword in vain.” (Emphasis added.)
Fortunately for the Rhode island Quaker magistrates, the naval threats did not materialize. But in the late summer of 1675, an alliance of native groups launched a massive, region-wide terror war aimed at driving white settlers from New England. This struggle, known to history as King Philip’s war (after the Christian name given to its leading chieftain, whose Indian name was Metacomet.)
The horrifying impact of this war, and its impact on settlers in Rhode Island and elsewhere, was powerfully evoked by the historian Meredith Baldwin Weddle, in her pathbreaking recent book, Walking In the Way of Peace, (Oxford, 2001):
. . . [T]o appreciate the moral task facing each Quaker during King Philip’s War, it is essential to imagine the immensity of the danger threatening the people of New England; the fear of violence shredding all certainty and all expectations, just as sword and hatchet shredded the bodies fallen in their way. . . . . The imminence of death alone would have been enough to shake each vulnerable settler or Indian; when death itself was dressed up in atrocity, whether real or rumored, it would be the rare person who could be sure that principle would not yield to terror or rage. For the Quaker, alone in his small house, miles perhaps from a neighbor, fear and horror faced down the ordained love for his enemies. . . . To the extent that the danger and fear can be approximated from the security and predictability of modern America, to this extent no hesitation can be seen as remarkable or shameful.
(From the security and predictability of modern America? This must have been written in the good old days, of late 2000.)
What was a governing authority to do in the face of such unbridled terror? More pointedly, what was the duty of a Quaker “governing authority”?
We don’t know if those Friends in office engaged in much theorizing or soul-searching. We do know that they did two things:
First, they adopted and upheld the first conscientious objector statute, exempting from militia duty those whose religious scruples forbade the bearing of arms. (We can be reasonably confident that this law was largely the product of their Quaker convictions, because as soon as non-Friends regained political control, they repealed it.)
And second, they went to war.
VI
As Weddle summarizes their course:
“Rhode Island exiled Indians, supplied boats to the Plymouth and Massachusetts armies, blockaded Philip on Mount Hope, rescued English soldiers, provisioned and provided a safe haven for colonial troops, raised and dispatched soldiers, stored ammunition, transported troops across Narragansett Bay to battle, encouraged the mobilization and training of the local militias, deployed gunboats, manned an official garrison, contributed troops to the final search for Philip himself–and, at last, tried and executed prisoners of war. This is scarcely the record of either a neutral government or an inactive one.” (p. 170)
How did the Quaker officeholders reconcile this record with the pronouncements of the 1660 Letter? As far as Weddle’s extensive research could determine, they didn’t bother. But we can plausibly speculate that in their course they were attempting to make room for both their pacifist brethren who still thought they were living in Micah 4’s Peaceable Kingdom, while also observing Romans 13’s stern mandate for magistrates to “execute God’s wrath upon wrongdoers”; after all, both of these texts were in the 1660 Letter.
At this point, the Letter’s phrase “as to our own particulars,” which was edited out of the sentence as quoted in modern Disciplines, comes back into focus. How much different were the “particulars” of powerless, persecuted Friends in England in 1660 from the “particulars” of Friends elected to office in Rhode Island? And how much difference did such divergent “particulars” make?
Weddle did find one testimony by a group of Rhode Island Friends denouncing other unnamed Friends for abandoning their conviction of “dwelling with [Christ] in his peaceable kingdom” and returning to “that faith which stands in carnal weapons, or the arm of flesh . . . .” (p. 244) But she did not turn up any response from the authorities to this criticism.
Another authority who had no comment or complaint was George Fox, who sent an epistle to Rhode Island Friends in 1677, ten months after the war’s end. In it, among other things, he cautioned the Quaker colonists against hasty marriages, and chastised a member for killing a neighbor’s horses which had strayed onto his property. But amid these advices, he made no mention of the Rhode Island Quaker officials’ involvement in carnal warfare; not a word.
If we consider only the familiar excerpts from the 1660 Letter, it is quite possible to look back at these official Friends in Rhode Island and join the critics who challenged their faithfulness to the peace testimony. But it is equally possible to fit them right into the Letter’s text if we consider it as a whole, because it takes such a role for granted..
That is, this canonical document, far from dictating the unambiguous prohibition of all Quaker involvement in any war suggested by the widely-known excerpts from it, includes the very tensions and ambiguities, rooted in their turn in guiding texts from the Bible, which very likely gave rise to these Friends’ course.
What can be learned from this fuller examination of both the 1660 Letter and this brief case study of its first application by Quakers in public power? One lesson would be to take a more critical attitude to the texts presented to us in our books of Discipline.
Another would be to disabuse ourselves of the notion, often heard today, that once upon a time there was a golden age of uncomplicated faithfulness to a clear standard of Quaker witness, which was followed by a steep decline into the moral morass of today. Early Friends may indeed have had moments and periods of exaltation, where they felt a strong sense of Christ’s presence and divine favor. But they also, from early on, had to wrestle with the application of their convictions in life situations which called such certainties starkly into question, and in which people of good will followed their light and testimony to very different places.
A third lesson, the last for this essay, is that the Friends Peace Testimony has been subject to reconsideration from early on in our history, and such reexaminations continue even now. We are not thereby abandoning our Quaker heritage, but very likely engaging it in one of the deepest and most faithful ways.
If this beginning reconsideration of the “canonical” 1660 Letter, or rather the familiar but bowdlerized excerpts from it, deprives some Friends of easy answers to hard questions, and a comfortingly secure belief in the uncomplicated Quaker Good Old Days, this Friend is not sorry. They – and we– are actually better off to be shucked of such illusions, and to begin the sometimes hard but critical work of rethinking and reclaiming a peace testimony for us, and for our time.
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Next page: APPENDIX: The 1660 Letter–Full text
The Friends Peace Testimony Reconsidered
– page 4 –
APPENDIX: The 1660 Letter–Full text
1660
A DECLARATION FROM THE HARMLESS AND INNOCENT PEOPLE OF GOD, CALLED QUAKERS, AGAINST ALL SEDITION, PLOTTERS, AND FIGHTERS IN THE WORLD: FOR REMOVING THE GROUND OF JEALOUSY AND SUSPICION FROM MAGISTRATES AND PEOPLE CONCERNING WARS AND FIGHTINGS.
George Fox and others.
Presented to the King upon the 21st day of the llth Month, 1660.
[EDITOR’S NOTES: This text has been broken into paragraph units for modern readers; but the text has not been otherwise altered. Where sections are in bold type, this emphasis has been added to highlight key passages. The text is from the 2 Volume 8th and Bicentenary Edition of Fox’s Journal, London: Friends’ Tract Association, 1891
“OUR principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace and ensue it; to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God; seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. We know that wars and fightings proceed from the lusts of men, as James iv. 1–3, out of which the Lord hath redeemed us, and so out of the occasion of war. The occasion of war, and war itself (wherein envious men, who are lovers of them-selves more than lovers of God lust, kill, and desire to have men’s lives or estates) ariseth from lust. All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with - outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.
“And whereas it is objected:
“But although you now say ‘that you cannot fight, nor take up arms at all, yet if the Spirit move you, then you will change your principle, and you will sell your coat, buy a sword, and fight for the kingdom of Christ.’
“To this we answer, Christ said to Peter, ‘Put up thy sword in his place;’ though he had said before, he that had no sword might sell his coat and buy one (to the fulfilling of the law and the Scripture), yet after, when he had bid him put it up, he said, “he that taketh the when the sword, shall perish with the sword. And further, Christ said to Pilate, ‘Thinkest thou, that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?’ And this might satisfy Peter, Luke xxii. 36, after he had put up his sword, when he said to him. ‘He that took it, should perish with it ;’ which satisfieth us, Matt. xxvi. 51-53 And in the Revelation, it is said, ‘He that kills with the sword, shall perish with the sword; and here is the faith and the patience of the saints.’ And so Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, therefore do not his servants fight, as he told Pilate, the magistrate, who crucified him. And did they not look upon Christ as a raiser of sedition? And did he pray, ‘Forgive them?’ But thus it is that we are numbered amongst transgressors, and fighters, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.
“That the Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.
“First, Because the kingdom of Christ God will exalt, according to his promise, and cause it to grow and flourish in righteousness; ‘not by might, nor by power (of outward sword), but by my Spirit, saith the Lord,’ Zech. iv. 6. So those that use any weapon to fight for Christ, or for the establishing of his kingdom or government, - –their spirit, principle, and practice we deny.
“Secondly, as for the kingdoms of this world, we cannot covet them, much less can we fight for them, but we do earnestly desire and wait, that, by the Word of God’s power, and its effectual operation in the hearts of men, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Christ; that he may rule and reign in men by his Spirit and truth; that thereby all people, out of all different judgements and professions, may be brought into love and unity with God, and one with another; and that they may all come to witness the prophet’s words, who said, ‘ Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,’ Isa. ii. 4., Mic. iv. 3.
“So we, whom the Lord hath called into the obedience of his truth, have denied wars and fightings, and cannot more learn them. This is a certain testimony unto all the world, of the truth of our hearts in this particular, that as God persuadeth every man’s heart to believe, so they may receive it. For we have not, as some others, gone about with cunningly-devised fables, not. have we ever denied in practice what we have professed in principle; but in sincerity and truth, and by the word of God, have we laboured to manifest unto all men, that both we and our ways might be witnessed in the hearts of all.
“And whereas all manner of evil hath been falsely spoken of us, we hereby speak the plain truth of our hearts, to take away the occasion of that offense; that so being innocent, we may not suffer for other men’s offenses, nor be made a prey of by the wills of men for that of which we were never guilty; but in the uprightness of our hearts we may, under the power ordained of God for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well, live a peaceable and godly life, in all godliness and honesty. For although we have always suffered, and do now more abundantly suffer, yet we know that it is for righteousness’ sake; ‘for our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our consciences, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wis dom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world,’ 2 Cor. i. 12, which for us is a witness for the convincing of our enemies. For this we can say to all the world, we have wronged no man, we have used no force nor violence against any man: we have been found in no plots, nor guilty of sedition. When we have been wronged, we have not sought to revenge ourselves; we have not made resistance against authority; but wherein we could not obey for conscience’ sake we have suffered the most of all people in the nation. We have been counted as sheep for the slaughter, persecuted and despised, beaten, stoned, wounded, stocked, whipped, imprisoned, haled out of synagogues, cast into dungeons and noisome vaults, where many have died in bonds, shut up from our friends, denied needful sustenance for many days together, with other the like cruelties.
“And the cause of all these sufferings is not for any evil, but for things relating to the worship of our God, and in obedience to his requirings. For which cause we shall freely give up our bodies a sacrifice, rather than disobey the Lord: for we know a s the Lord hath kept us innocent, so he will plead our cause, when there is none in the earth to plead it. So we, in obedience unto his truth, do not love our lives unto death, that we may do his will, and wrong no man in our generation, but seek the goo d and peace of all men. He who hath commanded us that we shall not swear at all, Matt. v. 31, hath also commanded us that we shall not kill, Matt. v.; so that we can neither kill men, nor swear for or against them This is both our principle and practice, and has been from the beginning; so that if we suffer, as suspected to take up arms, or make war against any, it is without any ground from us; for it neither is, nor ever was in our hearts, since we owned the truth of God; neither shall we ever do it, because it is contrary to the Spirit of Christ, his doctrine, and the practices of his apostles; even contrary to him, for whom we suffer all things, and endure all things.
“And whereas men come against us with clubs, staves, drawn swords, pistols cocked, and beat, cut, and abuse us, yet we never resisted them; but to them our hair, backs, and cheeks, have been ready. It is not an honour, to manhood or nobility, to run upon harmless people, who lift not up a hand against them, with arms and weapons.
“Therefore consider these things, ye men of understanding: for plotters, raisers of insurrections, tumultuous ones, and fighters, running with swords, clubs, staves, and pistols, one against another; these, we say, are of the world, and have their foundation from this unrighteous world, from the foundation of which the Lamb hath been slain; which Lamb hath redeemed us from this unrighteous world, and we are not of it, but are heirs of a world of which there is no end, and of a kingdom where no corruptible thing enters. Our weapons are spiritual, and not carnal, yet mighty through God, to the plucking/pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan, who is the author of wars, fighting, murder, and plots. Our swords are broken into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, as prophesied of in Micah iv. Therefore we cannot learn war any more, neither rise up against nation or kingdom with outward weapons, though you have numbered us amongst the transgressors and plotters. The Lord knows our innocency herein, and will plead our cause with all people upon earth, at the day of their judgment, when all men shall have a reward according to their works.
“Therefore in love we warn you for your soul’s good, not to wrong the innocent, nor the babes of Christ, which he hath in his hand, which he cares for as the apple of his eye; neither seek to destroy the heritage of God, nor turn your swords backward upon such as the law was not made for, i.e., the righteous; but for sinners and transgressors, to keep them down. For those are not peacemakers, nor lovers of enemies, neither can they overcome evil with good, who wrong them that are friends to you and all men, and wish your good, and the good of all people on the earth. If you oppress us, as they did the children of Israel in Egypt, and if you oppress us as they did when Christ was born, and as they did the Christians in the primitive times; we can say, ‘ The Lord forgive you;’ and leave the Lord to deal with you, and not revenge ourselves. If you say, as the council said to Peter and John, ‘speak no more in that name;’ and if you serve us, as they served the three children spoken of in Daniel, God is the same that ever he was, that lives for ever and ever, who hath the innocent in his arms.
“O, Friends! offend not the Lord and his little ones, neither afflict his people; but consider and be moderate. Do not run on hastily, but consider mercy, justice, and judgment; that is the way for you to prosper, and obtain favor of the Lord. Our meetings were stopped and broken up in the days of Oliver, under pretense of plotting against him; in the days of the Committee of Safety we were looked upon as plotters to bring in King Charles; and now our peaceable meetings are termed seditious. O! that men should lose their reason, and go contrary to their own conscience; knowing that we have suffered all things, and have been accounted plotters from the beginning, though we have declared against them both by word of mouth and printing, and are clear from any such thing! We have suffered all along, because we would not take up carnal weapons to fight, and are thus made a prey, because we are the innocent lambs of Christ, and cannot avenge ourselves! These things are left on your hearts to consider; but we are out of all those things, in the patience of the saints; and we know. as Christ said, ‘He that takes the sword, shall perish with the sword;’ Matt. xxvi. 52; Rev. xiii. 10.
“This is given forth from the people called Quakers, to satisfy the king and his council, and all those that have any jealousy concerning us, that all occasion of suspicion may be taken away, and our innocency cleared.
George Fox
Richard Hubberthorne
John Stubbs
Francis Howgill Gerrard Roberts
John Bolton
Leonard Fell
Samuel Fisher Henry Fell
John Hinde
John Furley Junr.
Thomas Moore
21/11 M/1660
“Postscript. Though we are numbered amongst transgressors, and have been given up to rude, merciless men, by whom our meetings are broken up, in which we edified one another in our holy faith, and prayed together to the Lord that lives for ever, yet he is our pleader in this day. The Lord saith, ‘They that feared his name spoke often together’ (as in Malachi); which were as his jewels. For this cause, and no evil-doing, are we cast into holes, dungeons, houses of correction, prisons (neither old nor young being spared men nor women), and mad a prey of in the sight of all nations, under the pretense of being seditious, etc., so that all rude people run upon us to take possession. For which we say, ‘The Lord forgive them that have thus done to us;’ who doth, and will enable us to suffer; and never shall we lift up hand against any that thus use us; but desire the Lord may have mercy upon them, that they may consider what they have done. For how is it possible for them to requite us for the wrong they have done to us? Who to all nations have sounded us abroad as seditious, who were never found plotters against ally, since we knew the life and power of Jesus Christ manifested in us, who hath redeemed us from the world, all works of darkness, and plotters therein, by which we know the election, before the world began. So we say, the Lord have mercy upon our enemies and forgive them, for what they have done unto us!
“0! do as ye would be done by; do unto all men as you would have them do unto you; for this is the law and the prophets.
“All plots, insurrections, and riotous meetings we deny, knowing them to be of the devil, the murderer; which we in Christ, who was before they were, triumph over. And all wars and fightings with carnal weapons we deny, who have the sword of the Spirit; and all that wrong us, we leave to the Lord. This is to clear our innocency from the aspersion cast upon us, that we are seditious or plotters.”
Added in the reprinting.
“COURTEOUS READER,
“This was our testimony above twenty years ago; since then we have not been found acting contrary to it, nor ever shall; for the truth, that is our guide, is unchangeable. This is now reprinted to the men of this age, many of whom were then children, and doth stand as our certain testimony against all plotting and fightings with carnal weapons. And if any by departing from the truth should do so, this is our testimony in the truth against them, and will stand over them and the truth will be clear of them.
Copyright © 2003
Chuck Fager.
All rights reserved.