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UNPUBLISHED THESES Robert Krehbiel Goertz, "To Plant die Pleasant Fruit Tree of Freedom: Consciousness, Politics and Commonality in Digger and Early Quaker Thought." Ph.D. dissertation. City University of New York, 1977. Pamela Mary Clare Oliver, "Quaker Testimony and the Lamb's War." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Melbourne, Australia, 1977. William Wayne Spurrier, "The Persecution of the Quakers in England: 1650-1714." PhD. dissertation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1976. The definition of the salient characteristics of early Friends has received more sustained scholarship than any other facet of Quaker history. The three dissertations summarized here show that many additional insights can still be gained by a careful analysis of sources. What makes these works more valuable is that the authors are not trying to justify the practices of any groups of contemporary Friends, but to determine the kinds of information obtainable from different kinds of writings, political pamphlets, theological tracts, and the records of sufferings. Robert Goertz focuses on the political theories of Quakers and the Diggers during the Commonwealth period and finds striking similarities. Both groups did not distinguish among religious, ethical, and political concerns. Both began with a radical conversion experience and their social concerns grew from an attempt to foster and maintain a community based upon a common knowledge of the inward light. Having witnessed the corruption of a seventeenth-century England, Quakers and Diggers wanted a reformulation of institutions including church, law, monarchy, and property which stood in the way of the experience of Christ. Their critiques contained dissections of the evils of existing society and provided guidelines and detailed suggestions for reform of society. Even where the Digger diagnosis was more far-reaching as on property, Goertz discovered Quaker parallels. Quakers and Diggers wanted a rule of the saints resting upon republican and theocratic principles and permitting autonomy and harmony. Both encountered difficulties in combining freedom for the light, individual initiative, opposition to personal and corporate sin, and liberty. Goertz makes a convincing case for the early Quakers' repudiation of basic tenets of liberal political theory (die sacred nature of property, the necessity of conflict, and interest groups) . The main element missing is a discussion of the nature of the church and its relationship to the community. For Goertz a key to early Quaker political theory was individual perfection. Conversion resulted in perfect persons, with their own measure of truth, creating a community of saints living by a rule of love. Pamela Oliver also stresses the importance of the Quaker experience of perfection, but she finds its significance in relation to Friends' distinctive typology and eschatology. Quakers divided history into three eras: the first dispensation was of Moses and the type was the law; the second was Christ from his birth to ascension and the figure was the outward church; the third, presently occurring in seventeenth-century England, was the second coming 123 124Reviews of Christ bringing an imminent end to time. Christ's return, fulfilling the prophecies of the earlier dispensations, was purely spiritual and inward and true religion had to partake of the same spiritual and inward qualities. Discovering Christ within brought to the believer deliverance from sin and liberation from outward or carnal observances like tithes, a hireling ministry, and religious persecution. The earliest Friends experienced an absolute separation of good from evil and felt compelled to witness what the Lord was doing. Conversion was a personal as well as cosmic event, the coming of the Kingdom. Since Friends were closely attuned to history, political and personal events after 1652 shaped changes in their interpretation of the spiritual return of Christ. The difficulties in living in a condition of sinless perfection, the necessity of supervising each other's writings, and Naylor's fall made reality more complex . Still, Quakers instructed Oliver Cromwell, a series of Parliaments, the army, and Charles II on God's requirements using a complex interweaving of direct revelation, scriptural prophecy, and current events. The occurrences of the 1660's—severe persecution, the character of Charles II, indiscriminate suffering in the fire of London and the plague—caused Friends to rethink their premises. The result was an internalization of die Lamb's War, downplaying of...

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