Part 12

[28] The incident is thus told more fully and picturesquely by Wilson Armistead. "Calm and self-possessed, he looked the robber in the face, with a firm but meek benignity, assured him he was his and every man's friend, that he was willing and ready to relieve his wants; that he was free from the fear of death through a divine hope of immortality, and therefore was not to be intimidated by a deadly weapon, and then appealed to him whether he could find in his heart to shed the blood of one who had no other feeling or purpose but to do him good. The robber was confounded; his eye melted; his brawny arm trembled; his pistol dropped out of his hand on to the ground, and he fled from the presence of the non-resistant hero whom he could no longer confront." Mr. Armistead's memoir was published long after the publication of the contemporary letters which give the simpler narrative; the reader must take his choice.

Barclay like William Penn was charged with doubtful relations with James II. They both believed him sincere in his professed regard for religious liberty; they both felt for him a real, though it seems to us an unmerited regard. He showed them both special kindness, and listened to their pleas for their brethren and for others. George Fox writes to Barclay in 1686:--"Friends were very sensible of the great service thou hadst concerning the truth with the king and all the court; and that thou hadst their ear more than any Friend when here." But it must not be supposed that they were therefore indifferent to the constitutional principles at stake. (See sketch of Penn.) There is a curious disproof of this in a hint conveyed in the Friends' address to the king on his Declaration of Indulgence, drawn up by the Yearly Meeting of 1687, when it is almost certain that Barclay was present and must have concurred. "We hope," they say, "the good effects thereof may produce such a concurrence from the parliament as will secure it to our posterity." This influence at court caused Robert Barclay often to be wanted in London, and he seems to have been a constant attender of the Yearly Meetings up to 1688.

In 1685 we are told that Barclay was again in London at the Yearly Meeting, and employed himself in many acts of kindness. Charles II. had died on the 6th of February, and James at once ascended to the throne. If Barclay had been anxious for the royal favour, as some asserted, he would at once have gone to court to salute the rising sun. Instead, we find him going simply to the May gatherings of his brethren, and only at a later date seeking the royal presence on behalf of others.

In 1686 he repeated his visit on the same errand and took part with George Whitehead in an appeal to the king, which resulted in the liberation of 1200 Friends. Whitehead says he took Barclay with him, "the king having a particular respect for him from the knowledge he had of him in Scotland;" but Whitehead seems to have been the chief speaker. In the end the king granted a commission to the attorney-general, Sir R. Sawyer, to issue warrants to release all whom he could legally discharge as the king's prisoners, which through George Whitehead's energy was thoroughly carried out.

Soon after Barclay's return, his aged father sickened, and died on the 12th of October. His son published a very full account of his last days, which seem to have been full of heavenly calm and restful faith. The old soldier, after a youth of adventures and a manhood of perils and persecutions, "fell asleep," says his son, "like a lamb." The feelings that first won him to Quakerism were strong to the last. To the doctor who attended him he said, "It is the _life_ of righteousness that we bear witness to, and not an empty profession." To the Friends who gathered round his dying-bed, he said, "How precious is the love of God among his children, and their love to one another! My love is with you--I leave it among you." As the end drew near, he exclaimed, "Now the time comes! Praises, praises to the Lord! Let now thy servant depart in peace." And so he crossed the river.

Again in 1687 Robert Barclay visited London, travelling with Viscount and Lady Arbuthnot, the latter as a daughter of the Earl of Sunderland being a distant cousin of his own. The Scotch Quakers had previously met in Aberdeen, and had drawn up in their General Meeting an address of acknowledgment to the king on his recent Declaration of Indulgence; this Robert Barclay presented. A similar one, prepared by this London Yearly Meeting of 1687 and presented to the king by William Penn, has been already mentioned. On this occasion, Barclay visited the seven bishops who were in the Tower for refusing to circulate this very Declaration. They had declared that the Quakers had belied them by reporting that they had been the death of some of them. Probably Barclay felt not only that the charge, which certainly had been made, must be sustained for the credit of his brethren, but what was more important, that the bishops were now in a position better to understand the Quaker pleas for liberty of conscience. So he produced to them unquestionable proof that some Friends had been kept in gaol until they died, even after trustworthy physicians had warned their persecutors that death must be the result of their longer detention. However, he assured them that they would not publish the damaging facts, lest it should furnish a handle to their enemies.

His last visit to London was early in 1688, and he remained all the summer. On the journey he had the company of his brother-in-law, Sir Ewen Cameron, of Lochiel. He took with him his eldest son Robert, then a boy of sixteen, remarkable alike for his piety and for his precocious Scotch prudence, and introduced him to the court at Windsor. There he remained for some time, "being much caressed, it is said, on account of his father's interest, which occasioned numerous dependents; and he appears to have conducted himself so as to incur no reproach even with Quakers." A sermon which Robert Barclay preached at this time in Gracechurch St. Meeting, was reported and has been published. One great object of this journey was to see justice done to his brother-in-law, who had a difference with the powerful Duke of Gordon. Barclay set himself in good earnest to get the matter righted. First he wrote to several English noblemen with whom he was intimate, but they were shy of the difficult task, though they all professed their willingness to help him in anything else. Then he appealed to the king, and "succeeded in obtaining from him a full hearing upon the whole matter, in the presence of the Marquis of Powis and the Earls of Murray and Melfort, who were requested to become referees. Persevering through all obstructions raised by the opposite party, Barclay was able at length to obtain a final settlement, much to the advantage of Cameron of Lochiel." Thus again James appears under Barclay's influence as the good genius of the oppressed.

On one of his visits to the court, he found the king full of the thought of the coming of the Prince of Orange. They had a serious conversation about the state of affairs, and Barclay, like Penn, sincerely sympathised with the royal culprit in his troubles. "Being with him near a window, the king looked out and observed that 'the wind was then fair for the Prince of Orange to come over.' Robert Barclay replied, 'it was hard that no expedient could be found to satisfy the people.' The king declared he would do anything becoming a gentleman, except parting with liberty of conscience, which he never would whilst he lived."

After the Revolution, the calumnies by which he was assailed led to his drawing up a "Vindication," which is the last known production of his pen. For himself he would have been content to bear these calumnies in silence. Two reasons overruled this choice. Some men of judgment who found how completely he could refute them, wished his answers to be well known. On the other hand, the loss of his reputation caused damage to the Society to which he belonged, and of whose interests he was so jealous. Yet his own contempt for the charges laid against him, and for the popular opinion of him, is evident in almost every paragraph. There is more than courageous outspokenness; there is the indifference of one who feels, "With me it is a small thing that I should be judged of you. He that judgeth me is the Lord."

He sums up the charges against him thus:--"That I am a papist and some will needs have me a Jesuite; that the access and interest I have been thought to have had with the king is thereto ascribed; that I have been a great caballer and councealor of those things that have been done for the advancement of the Romish interest and agrieving of the people: and thence have been a joint contriver with the Jesuit Peters and others; and that for this I have received advantages and money from the king, and so consequently am chargeable with the odium and censure that such doings merit." To this he replies, that he has been married eighteen years and has several children, which proves him no Jesuit; that for twenty-two years he has been no Papist, "without being under the least temptation to return to it again;" that he has always avowed his opposition to those principles "in the opinion of some more forwardly than prudently," when the catholic party was strong, "judging it," he adds sarcastically, "a fitter season then than now to show zeal for the Protestant religion." The only money ever paid to him from the treasury is acknowledged in the published accounts, and so on. But what is most daring is his charity towards the fallen monarch and his Catholic friends in the hour of their unpopularity. "For I must confess that the fatal stroaks the interest of the Church of Rome seems to have gotten in these nations does not a whitt increase my aversion to their religion, for that I judge truth and error is not rightly measured by such events; and as to the persons of Roman Catholics, as it never agreed with the notions I have of the Christian religion to hate these persons, so their present misfortunes are so far from embittering my spirit towards them that it rather increases tenderness and regard to them, while I consider the ingenerous spirit of those who cannot take a more effectual way to lessen the reputation of the Protestant religion."

"I come now to the great charge of my access to and interest with the king. And if I should ask whether that were a crime? I find few reasonable men, if any, would say so. But I am neither afraid nor ashamed to give a candid account of that matter." He then gives the occasion of their meeting in 1676, as narrated elsewhere, and proceeds:--"To do him right, I never found reason to doubt his sincerity in the matter of liberty of conscience.... After his happening to be in Scotland, giving me an opportunity of more frequent access, and that begetting an opinion of interest, I acknowledge freely that I was ready to use it to the advantage of my friends and acquaintances, what I esteemed just and reasonable for me to meddle in." Again he says, "In short I must own nor will I decline to avow that I love King James, that I wish him well, that I have been and am sensibly touched with a feeling of his misfortunes, and that I cannot excuse myself from the duty of praying for him that God may bless him, and sanctify His afflictions to him. And if so be His will to take from him an earthly crown, He may prepare his heart and direct his steps so that he may obtain through mercy an heavenly one, which all good Christians judge the most preferable."

The last two years of Robert Barclay's life seem to have been spent in social enjoyment and quiet usefulness at home. "There," we are told, "his mild and amiable virtues found their happiest sphere of exercise, and he enjoyed the esteem of his neighbours." But such serene happiness was not to last. In 1690, he travelled in the ministry in the north of Scotland, accompanied by another Quaker preacher named James Dickinson. Soon after his return home, he was seized with a violent fever, under which he soon sunk, and died on the 3rd of October, 1690. He was laid beside his father in the vault in the burial place in the beautiful grounds of Ury which his father had prepared. (Thither his descendants and namesakes were gathered one by one for 160 years, until in 1854, the last laird, Capt. Barclay-Allardice, after mortgaging his estates to their full value, and bringing sadness to the hearts of all who loved the name he bore, was brought there to his last rest.) There was great lamentation, especially in his own society, when the news got abroad. Fox, Penn, and others bore no grudging testimony to his gifts and services. The latter edited his works, with an ample preface, in which the subjects and merits of the different treatises are spoken of with judgment, yet with all the warmth of a personal friend.

Barclay's Apology has been spoken of as a system of Divinity. It is nothing of the kind, but simply an exhaustive treatise on the points in which Quakerism differs from the current evangelical Christianity of his day. The point is of importance, because otherwise the reader may be led astray both by the omissions from the work, and by the proportions allotted to different subjects. He must look elsewhere, for instance, for proofs that the early Friends were substantially orthodox in their views of the Trinity.

Much has been said about the Apology being framed on a plan similar to the Assembly's Catechism, and being indeed a reply to it. But that Catechism itself is on the plan of Calvin's Institutes, the trusted guide of Scotch orthodoxy. It would be an interesting point to trace the relation between the Institutes and the Apology. As to the Calvinistic controversy, a recent writer says, "No man ever gave Calvinism such mighty shakes as Barclay did. And he shook it from within. He understood it. As the religion of his country he had entered into it and made himself master of it. His controversy with Calvin was on fundamental principles." (Theological Review, 1874, p. 553). These assertions must be modified by remembering that, as we have seen, almost from childhood Barclay disliked Calvinism, so that whilst he might effectually combat some of its positions, he was little likely to do justice to its strong points, and can hardly be said to have shaken it from within. The Arminianism of the Catholic Church would strengthen his instinctive dislike, so that though he found the Quakers Arminians, he in nowise owed his convictions on this point to them.

The style of the Apology is beautifully clear. The best proof of its simplicity is to be found in the fact that many of the artisan class have so followed its reasonings as to be led to accept Quakerism by this book alone. Probably it has brought more converts to Quakerism than any other book that ever was written. It is grand in its efficient handling of great questions without any appearance of labour or effort. There is a cumulative power in many of the paragraphs that is very effective; epithet piled on epithet, clause following up clause like the waves of the incoming tide, until mind and heart are alike borne along by its rush. The thought is made to stand out not only boldly and clearly, but clothed with that subtle power which is only wielded by the transparently honest and the intensely earnest. At times the writer condescends to brusque vehemence or touching appeal to his own experience.

Whatever claim for originality of thought is advanced on behalf of Robert Barclay, must principally be based on his arguments in defence of Quakerism, and on his systematising of Quaker thought.[29] His namesake and descendant, the late Robert Barclay of Reigate, bestowed great pains and labour on investigations to find out how far the ideas of the Early Friends were known to the world before George Fox preached them. He has shewn in his "Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth" that to a large extent the religious phrases and tenets of the Friends, were those used and held by Caspar Schwenkfeld, and his followers amongst the Mennonite churches of Holland and Germany. Churches of their faith and order were established in York and Lincoln when George Fox began to preach, through which he may have received their views.[30]

[29] In the "Yorkshireman," a religious paper conducted by the eminent meteorologist, Luke Howard, F.R.S., before he left the Society of Friends, in consequence of their action in the "Beacon" controversy--there is (vol. III. pp. 8-14) an interesting enquiry as to Barclay's indebtedness to George Keith for his views as to the "hypothesis or system relating to the 'Seed or Birth of God in the soul, which makes it a distinct being or substance as the Vehiculum Dei, &c.'" The writer terms Barclay's view a Platonising doctrine. Certainly Keith felt very kindly towards Dr. Henry More, the great Platonist, and urged Friends to shew him loving sympathy "notwithstanding of his mistakes." Keith declared afterward that Barclay learnt the doctrine from him, and the writer produces proofs of this from Keith's writings. But the recent proofs of a common source in the writings of Schwenkfeld, makes the enquiry less interesting.

[30] The Mennonites condemned all oaths, all war, all adornment in dress, and frivolity in conduct and conversation. They had times for silent prayer in their worship; they had no paid ministry; they taught that a university training alone did not fit a man for the ministry. They also set the fatal example of excluding from their membership those who married either unconverted persons, or Christians of other denominations. They had circulating Yearly Meetings like the early Friends.

But the followers of Caspar Schwenkfeld were still more like Friends than were other Mennonites. The same authority says (p. 237):--"The teaching of Schwenkfeld and Fox was identical on three important points. First, on what is called the doctrine of the 'Inward Light, Life, Word, Seed, &c.' Secondly, on 'Immediate Revelation;' that is, that God and Christ in the person of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, communicates with the human soul without the absolute necessity of the rites and ceremonies of the church, or of any outward means, acts or things, however important they may be.... Thirdly, that as a necessary consequence, no merely bodily act, such as partaking of the Lord's Supper or Baptism, can give the inward and spiritual reality and power of the Lord's 'body and blood,' or that of the spiritual 'washing of regeneration;' nor can the soul be maintained in spiritual union with him by bodily acts." Schwenkfeld and his followers therefore discarded baptism and the Lord's Supper.

At least Mr. Barclay has proved that Fox was acquainted with these views, though possibly he may not have known their source. But it is evident that they were not received by him mechanically. They were assimilated, not swallowed; that which seemed to him chaff being separated from the wheat with intelligent appreciation, and such variations being introduced as his own experience and conscience indicated.

The Apology develops with systematic thoroughness, the doctrine of the "Seed" or "Light within." The "Light within" is given to every man in measure, whether he be born in Christian or heathen lands; and so has been given since the Creation. It manifests his sins with kindly severity. As it is attended to, it grows in clearness, more light is given until the whole soul is filled with light, and joy, and peace. At first, the "seed" lies all but dormant in the human soul, until its faint impulses are recognised, accepted and honoured. Then it grows in power, it subdues the corruptions of the flesh, it spreads its influence throughout the whole nature and the whole life. Its power is sufficient for every duty and for all righteousness. But the early Friends are not at all careful to maintain unity of idea and congruity of figure with regard to the terms "Light" and "Seed." They use them indiscriminately to describe the Divine In-dwelling in all its stages. They are the secret of man's capacity for salvation. Through the "Universal Light" all men may be led to a saving knowledge of God. It prepares the way for those "Immediate Revelations" of divine truth, which Barclay declares to have been the formal objects of faith in all ages. By these "Immediate Revelations" or discoveries of vital truth to the soul, and by these alone, every Christian becomes savingly acquainted with the things of God.

Like the Mennonites, the Quakers did not believe the Seed to have any vitality apart from the Spirit of God. Neither the early Friends nor any of their successors have ever believed in any natural power in man, by which he could savingly know God, or work out his soul's salvation. The seed or light was the gift of God; it was not the soul, as Barclay is careful to explain, but a "substance"[31] divinely given to every man, not naturally, but by grace. The seed was not separable from Christ, and when it was quickened, Christ was formed in the heart, and became the life of the soul.[32]

[31] Barclay uses the term in its scholastic sense as opposed to "attribute."

[32] The following extract will assist in correcting one mistaken idea of the "Light within." It is from a speech made in the Yearly Meeting of 1861, by my respected former tutor, Isaac Brown, whose solid learning and sound judgment have won him the greatest confidence amongst Friends. The notorious "Essays and reviews" were under discussion, and he said, "Some thought the work ought to be hailed by our Society, because of the views it advanced on the doctrine of the 'inward light.' He believed this idea was a misconception. The opinion of the Essayists appeared to coincide rather with those of the Hicksite body in America, than with those preached by George Fox and now held by our Society. It was not the 'inward light' (by which our early Friends clearly stated that they meant nothing else than the light of the Spirit of Christ) to which these writers referred us, but the 'enlightened reason.' He thought it was time for us to discontinue the use of this term 'the inward light,' as it had been grievously misinterpreted out of the Society, and was not found in Scripture."

Let me here say that any one may find the essentials of Quakerism without the Platonising doctrine of the "Seed," in J. J. Gurney's "Distinguishing Views and Practices of the Society of Friends."

Another peculiar feature of the Quaker view of the Divine In-dwelling is developed by Barclay in his chapter on Perfection. He has before claimed that justification is all as one with sanctification; he now explains that, in the view of Friends, regeneration implies the possibility of perfection in this life. He contends earnestly for a lofty view of the power of Christ in the believer. His proposition runs thus:--"Proposition VIII. In whom this pure and holy birth is fully brought forth, the body of death and sin comes to be crucified and removed, and their hearts united and subjected to the truth, so as not to obey any temptation or suggestion of the evil one, to be free from actual sinning and transgressing of the law of God, and in that respect perfect; yet doth this perfection still admit of a growth, and there remaineth always in some part a possibility of sinning, where the mind doth not most diligently attend unto the Lord."