Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Rooted firmly and deeply in the pamphlet and manuscript sources of the period, this study embodies a masterful exploration of early Quaker life and thought. In its lucidity and depth, Rosemary Moore’s book clearly deserves an honored place among the first rank of studies of Quaker origins. No one interested in the topic can afford to pass this fine book by. Let’s call it what it is: history at its finest.”
—H. Larry Ingle,Author of First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism
“I would urge an investment in Rosemary Moore’s readable prose and clear exposition of Quaker theology.”
—Gil Skidmore Reading Monthly Meeting
“By highlighting the enduring tension between the individual interpretation of the Light and the importance of group witness, this book provides the prologue not only to the Wilkinson-Story controversy which threatened to split the Quaker movement in the 1670s, but to the continuing and accelerating evolution of a socially abrasive Puritan sect into a respectable, and respected, religious movement. With analytical material moved to endnotes, this book is well-suited to the interested general reader. However, the integrity of its scholarship and useful critique of source material also makes this work very suitable as a text for those studying early modern religion, and especially the fragmenting nature of English Protestantism in the seventeenth century.”
—Beverly Adams Ecclesiastical History
“Rosemary Moore provides a welcome addition to early Quaker studies.”
—Arthur J. Worrall Pennsylvania History
“[T]his is a fine contribution to Quaker studies. . . . Since its publication in 1964, Hugh Barbour’s The Quakers in Puritan England has been the indispensable starting point for studying the first generation of Friends. Although Barbour’s work is still useful, Rosemary Moore’s The Light in Their Consciences has supplanted it as the essential foundation to explore early Quaker history.”
—Richard L. Greaves Sixteenth Century Journal
