Quaker Ministry, 1691-1834 (review)

Book Reviews119 Reading these pamphlets makes one hope that there will be many more publications by Howard and Anna Brinton. Swarthmore CollegeFrederick B. Tolles Quaker Ministry, 1691-1834. By Lucia K. Beamish. Published by the author, Oxford, England. 1967. 129 pp. 23 shillings postpaid from the author, 76c Woodstock Road, Oxford, England. Quaker Ministry, 1691-1834 belongs on the select shelf of indispensable Quaker books alongside Brinton's Friends for 300 Years, the 1960 London Discipline, Gladys Wilson's Quaker Worship, Hugh Barbour's Quakers in Puritan England, and Lewis Benson's Catìwlic Quakerism. In her book Lucia Beamish has traced the origin and development of ministry from George Fox through Stephen Grellet in masterful fashion. In the early part of her study she delineates two chief elements of George Fox's message, his concept of the church, and how these resulted in the distinctive form and practice of Friends ministry. She sees the two foci of Fox's message as first "that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became incarnate, lived, taught, died and rose again for man's salvation. The second was his conviction that salvation was directly communicated to men only insofar as they respond to the inward light of the Spirit of Christ. This illuminates, instructs and guides the heart and will of every man who recognizes and obeys it." Beamish sees Fox's chief emphases in the work of Christ as illumination and victory. Fox therefore conceived his function as minister to preach "God's everlasting Gospel and Kingdom," and "to turn people to the inward Spirit who would show them how the Gospel might effect their salvation." The task of the early Quaker minister was therefore to "publish Truth, to rebuke sin, and to strengthen faith by means of the spoken and written word." Quaker ministry expressed itself in two forms, one always leading to the other: The first as spontaneous utterance born out of the expectant silence of corporate Quaker worship and the second as itinerant ministry with the blessing of the home meeting to a wider and wider circle of men. To her correct insight that Quaker ministry was an essential expression of the conviction "that the Risen Christ had come to teach His people Himself and to be present in the midst of their worship," Lucia Beamish would do well to add Lewis Benson's conclusion that therefore no humanly contrived offices of ministers or clergy can have any legitimate place among Christ's covenant people. Putting special positive emphasis on Thomas Story, Thomas Chalkley, Samuel Bownas, and Stephen Grellet, the author then traces the development of ministry from 1691 onwards. She characterizes the ministry of two of these in comparison with Fox thus: "If victory through the Cross and through the Spirit of Christ was the mainspring of Fox's vocation, and gratitude the first incentive of Story, it might be said that Bownas found his call to minister through the fresh illumination ... of Scripture." 120Quaker History Beamish seriously questions the direct influence of Continental Quietism as a cause of decline in Quaker ministry during the eighteenth century. She suggests many other causes, the most interesting of which is negative reaction to Methodist revivalism. George Whitehead had begun the century on a note of caution and a vision of smallness. Samuel Fothergill tended to throttle new ministry by his proselyting for strict discipline and supervision of ministers by elders. But Beamish suggests that the enthusiastic emotionalism of the Methodists and their resort to "creaturely" methods enhanced sharply the Quaker mistrust of both. Paradoxically, as the last appendix shows, while the fear of "creaturely appearances " in the ministry and the number of men ministers decreased during the century, the number of Quaker women in the ministry rose sharply! The nineteenth century saw evangelical Methodist influence break through the Quaker defenses by the convincement to Quakerism of outsiders who had been active in the revival, such as Mary Stokes Dudley, David Sands, and Thomas Shillitoe. Beamish is satisfied with none of these but makes a real hero of Stephen Grellet who in her judgment restored the apostolic vision, balance, and joy to Friends ministry which had been declining throughout the eighteenth...