Hard Hearts and Gentle People: a Quaker Reply to Persecution

Abstract

The witchcraft trials aside, few examples of Puritan intolerance surpass in intensity the persecution of Quakers. The Puritans' defense of their doctrines and action is well known, but little is known of the Quaker re- sponse. Examining a representative document of the Quaker response to persecution allows analysis of both Puritan antipathy and of its causes in Quaker belief and practice. Francis Howgil's The Heart of New England Hardned through Wickedness (London, 1659)1 is a summation of the basic tenets of Quakerism as it then existed, although it is professedly primarily an answer to another specific work: John Norton's The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation, or a brief tract concerning the Doctrine of the Quakers, shewing the destructive nature thereof to Religion, Churches and State (London, 1660).2 Norton's "brief tract" contains a series of charges against the purported errors and heretical beliefs of the Quakers, ending with Norton's proposal for and approval of punishments considered meet and just for such transgressors. It is still a document startling for its ferocity of attack. Yet the gentle Quakers themselves were capable of counterattacks that in themselves exceed their merely professing, however obnoxiously, their alternative mode of worship in the Puritan colonies.