ABSTRACT
Something needs to be said of two issues which every writer was involved in through the very act of undertaking a spiritual autobiography. One was the nature of the individual identity presented through narrative and commentary, how this was formulated and understood first by the writer and then by his readers. The other was the problem of finding an adequate language in which to express religious experience and its effects. The narratives of the Old Testament were even more extensively adapted. Friends portrayed their inward warfare as a conflict between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman, or as the struggle of Esau and Jacob in the womb. The language of the Quakers themselves was even more striking and they carried the use of set terms to a greater length. Some were peculiar to the early Friends, but many were sanctioned by Scriptural example, though used in accordance with the Quaker interpretation of the Bible.
