The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

For three or four years, he continued to attend the meetings of the Independents, as a zealous and devout member. But it so fell out, that in the winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been released from a cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face towards Yorkshire. ‘So travelling,’ says Fox, in his Journal, ‘through the countries, to several places, preaching Repentance and the Word of Life, I came into the parts about Wakefield, where James Nayler lived.’ The worn and weary soldier, covered with the scars of out ward battle, received, as he believed, in the cause of God and his people, against Antichrist and oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of another warfare; who, in conflict with ‘principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places,’ had made his name a familiar one in every English hamlet. ‘He and Thomas Goodyear,’ says Fox, ‘came to me, and were both convinced, and received the truth.’ He soon after joined the Society of Friends. In the spring of the next year he was in his field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the great questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him go out from his kindred and his father's house, with an assurance that the Lord would be with him, while laboring in his service. Deeply impressed, he left his employment, and, returning to his house, made immediate preparations for a journey. But hesitation and doubt followed; he became sick from anxiety of mind, and