I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and
Mary Hawke--for that was the woman's name--said, 'Do you not feel it is
wrong to smoke?' I said that I felt something inside telling me that
it was an idol, a lust, and she said that was the Lord. Then I said,
'Now, I must give it up, for the Lord is telling me of it inside, and
the woman outside, so the tobacco must go, love it as I may.' There
and then I took the tobacco out of my pocket, and threw it into the
fire, and put the pipe under my foot, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust.'
And I have not smoked since. I found it hard to break off old habits,
but I cried to the Lord for help, and he gave me strength, for he has
said, 'Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.'
The day after I gave up smoking I had the toothache so bad that I did
not know what to do. I thought this was owing to giving up the pipe,
but I said I would never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in my head.
I said, 'Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is
light,' and when I said that, all the pain left me. Sometimes the
thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but the Lord
strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not
smoked since."

Bray's biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he thought
that he would chew a little, but he conquered this dirty habit, too.
"On one occasion," Bray said, "when at a prayer- meeting at Hicks Mill,
I heard the Lord say to me, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So, when we
got up from our knees, I took the quid out of my mouth and 'whipped
'en' [threw it] under the form.

But, when we got on our knees again, I put another quid into my mouth.
Then the Lord said to me again, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So I
took the quid out of my mouth, and whipped 'en under the form again,
and said, 'Yes, Lord, I will.' From that time I gave up chewing as
well as smoking, and have been a free man."

The ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and purity of life may
take are often pathetic enough. The early Quakers, for example, had
hard battles to wage against the worldliness and insincerity of the
ecclesiastical Christianity of their time. Yet the battle that cost
them most wounds was probably that which they fought in defense of
their own right to social veracity and sincerity in their thee-ing and
thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was
laid on George Fox that th