ABSTRACT
The Lollard movement in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had been a primitive reaction against the rapacity and ostentation of Rome and of the Roman clergy, rather than a profound spiritual movement; while Puritanism, which was a genuine spiritual manifestation in the sixteenth and even in the first half of the seventeenth century, had through its conflict with monarchic absolutism become increasingly formal and shallow from a religious point of view, especially in the degree that it had been espoused by the proprietary classes. The Quakers believe in God and are Christians, adhering as strictly as possible to primitive Christianity. The rejection of the letter led the Quakers, among other things, to reject the strictly literal conception of the Sabbath rest, which was observed by the other Puritans, whom they often reproved on account of their “Judaizing tendencies”.
