George Fox’s Great Mistery and the New England Returnees

This article focuses on the anti-Quaker critiques of three Puritan ministers returned from New England (Francis Higginson, Jr., Thomas Weld, and Samuel Eaton), as well as the response by George Fox in his 1659 work, The Great Mistery, and in other works. It identifies two areas in which these Puritans, because of their American experiences, made a contribution to sharpening debates over Quakerism in ways different from other Puritans: first, highlighting concerns about the similarity of Quaker views of immediate revelation with those of Anne Hutchinson, exiled from Massachusetts for embracing that alleged heresy; and second, exploring how the salvation of Indigenous Americans could best be described on an experiential basis, whether doctrinally or ethically. In response, Fox strongly defended immediate revelation and developed his view of Light-guided ethics as a means for discerning the presence of the divine Light of Christ in Indigenous Americans

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