Werdendes Quäkertum (review)

44 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS* HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Werdendes Quäkertum, by Theodor Sippell. Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, 1937. 262 pp. 13.50 Mark. THIS searching piece of original investigation was undertaken by the leading German Protestant authority on the history of Quakerism and with the support of the semiofficial "Notgemeinschaft deutscher Wissenschaft." H. Weingarten's Die Revolutionskirchen Englands (Leipzig , 1868) opened up the road for German church historians into this field in which Sippell's Zur Vorgeschichte des Quakertums (Giessen, 1920) and a number of essays together with the present study represent memorable contributions. The limited scope of this latest research and its far-reaching possibilities make us hope—and the author suggests it himself—that Sippell's work will be continued by future publications. Sippell analyzes for the first time John Everard's sermons which determined to such a great extent the development of Quaker mysticism. The second contribution to the formation of early Quakerism is considered by the author to be the sermons of Roger Brereley, the "only genuine disciple of Luther in England." And interesting lights of numerous spiritual relations between Nikolaus Cusanus and Caspar Schwenckfeld complete to some degree the graphic picture of the prodigious flow of forces streaming into the thinking of our spiritual forefathers. This study is essentially a "geistesgeschichtliche Studie" ; historical and political events are followed only to the point leading into a spiritual interpretation of those revolutionary events which uprooted English Protestantism. Quakerism is analyzed as a synthesis of the pure mysticism of John Everard (who translated Sebastian Franck's De Arbore which Sippel, as he writes, discovered as the first among Fox's library) and of prophetism. According to Sippell, such a synthesis was only possible because the Friends felt their mission to be the one of the Latter Day Saints. Their testimony, their theology and, of course, their organization and customs have undergone considerable changes. But what remained essentially unchanged throughout the times is their testimony to the freedom of conscience, a concern that has had to change its points of attack but is still forceful. Sippell's study is a novel and most valuable contribution to the history of the spiritual reformers and the religious ancestry of the Society of Friends. The picture is still by no means complete but the traditional view receives a wholesome corrective by this work of an outsider who is a master of authoritative information. The author's admiration for the Friends is most agreeably balanced by frank criticism, and we can only hope that Sippell's comprehensive research may lead towards the much needed accumulation of further data from which some day a well rounded genesis of the thought and practice of the Quakers can be written. The larger part of the book consists of English texts which are not easily accessible, a circumstance which, incidentally, makes the approach of English speaking readers to the work somewhat easier. Wilhelm Hubben. ...