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The History of Thomas Ellwood Written By Himself By: Thomas Ellwood (1639-1714?) |
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INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY The life of the simple Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, to whom the pomps and
shows of earth were nowhere so vain as in association with the
spiritual life of man, may serve as companion to another volume in
this Library, the "Life of Wolsey" by George Cavendish, who, as a
gentleman of the great prelate's household, made part of his pomp,
but had heart to love him in his pride and in his fall. "The
History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself," is interesting for
the frankness with which it makes Thomas Ellwood himself known to
us; and again, for the same frank simplicity that brings us nearer
than books usually bring us to a living knowledge of some features
of a bygone time; and yet again, because it helps us a little to
come near to Milton in his daily life. He would be a good novelist
who could invent as pleasant a book as this unaffected record of a
quiet life touched by great influences in eventful times. Thomas Ellwood, who was born in 1639, in the reign of Charles the
First, carried the story of his life in this book to the year 1683,
when he was forty four years old. He outlived the days of trouble
here recorded, enjoyed many years of peace, and died, near the end
of Queen Anne's reign, aged 74, on the first of March 1713, in his
house at Hunger Hill, by Amersham. He was eleven years younger than
John Bunyan, and years younger than George Fox, the founder of that
faithful band of worshippers known as the Society of Friends. They
turned from all forms and ceremonies that involved untruth or
insincerity, now the temple of God in man's body, and, as Saint Paul
said the Corinthians, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you," they sought to bring
Christ into their hearts, and speak and act as if Christ was within
governing their words and actions. They would have no formal
prayers, no formal preaching, but sought to speak with each other as
the Spirit prompted, soul to soul. They would not, when our plural
pronoun "you" was still only plural, speak to one man as if he were
two or more. They swore not at all; but their "Yea" and "Nay" were
known to be more binding than the oaths of many of their
persecutors. And as they would not go through the required form of
swearing allegiance to the Government whenever called upon to do so,
they were continually liable to penalties of imprisonment when
imprisonment too often meant jail fever, misery, and death. George
Fox began his teaching when Ellwood was eight years old. Ellwood
was ten years old when Fox was first imprisoned at Nottingham, and
the offences of his followers against established forms led, as he
says, to "great rage, blows, punchings, beatings, and
imprisonments." Of what this rage meant, and of the spirit in which
it was endured, we learn much from the History of Thomas Ellwood. Isaac Penington, whose influence upon young Ellwood's mind is often
referred to in this book, was born in the year of Shakespeare's
death, and had joined the Society of Friends in 1658, when his own
age was forty two and Ellwood's was nineteen. He was the son of
Alderman Isaac Penington, a Puritan member for the City of London,
who announced, at a time in the year 1640 when the Parliament was in
sore need of money, that his constituents had subscribed 21,000
pounds to a loan, which the members of the House then raised to
90,000 pounds, by rising, one after another, to give their personal
bonds each for a thousand pounds. Isaac Penington the son, whom
Ellwood loved as a friend and reverenced as a father, became a
foremost worker and writer in the Society of Friends. In a note
upon him, written after his death, Thomas Ellwood said that "in his
family he was a true pattern of goodness and piety; to his wife he
was a most affectionate husband; to his children, a loving and
tender father; to his servants, a mild and gentle master; to his
friends, a firm and fast friend; to the poor, compassionate and
open hearted; and to all, courteous and kind?' In 1661 he was
committed to Aylesbury gaol for worshipping God in his own house
(holding a conventicle), "where," says Ellwood in that little
testimony which he wrote after his friend's death, "for seventeen
weeks, great part of it in winter, he was kept in a cold and very
incommodious room, without a chimney; from which hard usage his
tender body contracted so great and violent a distemper that, for
several weeks after, he was not able to turn himself in bed... Continue reading book >>
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Philosophy |
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