of
self-control, but that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the
prophets"; that the divine inworking does not suspend nor supersede
man's volition and activity, but that it behooves man to "work, because
God worketh in him to will and to work." The lapse from these
characteristically Christian principles into the enthusiastic, fanatic,
or heathen conception of inspiration has been a perpetually recurring
incident in the history of the church in all ages, and especially in
times of deep and earnest spiritual feeling. But in the case of the
Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil
consequences. Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and
hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the
Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some
peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with
sincere and conscientious reformers, adding to the unpopularity of the
new opinions the odium justly due to their own misdemeanors. But the
prophet whose life and preaching had begun the Quaker Reformation was
not found wanting in the gifts which the case required. Like other great
religious founders, George Fox combined with profound religious
conviction a high degree of tact and common sense and the faculty of
organization. While the gospel of "the Light that lighteth every man"
was speeding with wonderful swiftness to the ends of the earth, there
was growing in the hands of the founder the framework of a discipline by
which the elements of disorder should be controlled.[114:1] The result
was a firmly articulated organization compacted by common faith and zeal
and mutual love, and by the external pressure of fierce persecution
extending throughout the British empire on both sides of the ocean.

Entering into continental Europe, the Quaker Reformation found itself
anticipated in the progress of religious history. The protests of the
Anabaptists against what they deemed the shortcomings of the Lutheran
Reformation had been attended with far wilder extravagances than those
of the early Quakers, and had been repressed with ruthless severity. But
the political and militant Anabaptists were succeeded by communities of
mild and inoffensive non-resistants, governing themselves by a narrow
and rigorous discipline, and differing from the order of Quakers mainly
at this point, that whereas the Quakers rejected all sacraments, these
insisted strenuously on their