tate, of tyranny and freedom. No wonder that
at such a time everyone was too busy to spare much sympathy or many
thoughts for the spiritual perplexities of one obscure country lad.

Right into the very middle, then, of this troubled, seething England,
George Fox plunged when he left his home at Fenny Drayton. The battle
of Marston Moor was fought the following year, July 1644, and Naseby
the summer after that. But George was not heeding outward battles. Up
and down the country he walked, seeking for help in his spiritual
difficulties from all the different kinds of people he came across;
and there were a great many different kinds. The England of that day
was not only torn by Civil War, it was also split up into innumerable
different sects, now that the attempt to force everyone to worship
according to one prescribed fashion was at length being abandoned. In
one small Yorkshire town it is recorded that there were no less than
forty of these sects worshipping in different ways about this time,
while new sects were continually arising.

Perhaps it was a generous wish to give the professors another chance
and not to judge the whole party from the bad specimens he had met,
that made George go back to the Puritans for help. At first they made
much of the young enquirer; but, alas! they all had the same defect as
those he had met already. Their spoken profession sounded very fine,
but they did not carry it out in their lives.

'They sought to be acquainted with me, but I was afraid of them, for I
was sensible they did not possess what they professed.' In other
words, their faith did not ring true. The professors were certainly
not 'Pure as a Bell.'

George Fox's test was always the same, both for his own religion and
other people's: 'Is this faith real? Is it true? Can you actually live
out what you profess to believe? And do you? Is your faith pure? Is
your joy sure?'

Finding that, in the case of the professors, a sorrowful 'No' was the
only answer that their lives gave to these questions, George says: 'A
strong temptation to despair came over me. I then saw how Christ was
tempted, and mighty troubles I was in. Sometimes I kept myself retired
in my chamber, and often walked solitary in the Chace to wait upon the
Lord.'

It must not be forgotten that part of the Puritan worship consisted in
making enormously long prayers in spoken words, and preaching sermons
that lasted several hours at a time. George Fox became more