Lodowicke Muggleton - Muggleton and The Quakers

Muggleton and The Quakers

Muggleton's opposition to the Quakers, and to all things Quaker, was uncharacteristically bitter for three reasons. Firstly, he believed them guilty of 'spiritual witchcraft' which he saw as a manipulation of that fear from which faith should be free. Secondly, he regarded them as unreconstructed Ranters and the Ranter legacy was a delicate personal issue. Thirdly, they were the seventh, and last, anti-church of the latter days and thus their mere existence was seen as holding up everyone else's journey to paradise.

By and large, the charges Muggleton brings against the Quakers are the same as those the Quakers lay against Muggleton. As a result, the exchange of letters and pamphlets rarely rises above contradiction, quibbling and name-calling; the latter Muggleton employs with great verve.

Richard Farnesworth (1662) brusquely tells Muggleton that his commission has been faked and that he is trying to act as judge in the stead of Christ. What, he asks, has happened to the pardoning power of Christ? In turn, Muggleton asks what Quakers would have said to St. Peter after he had been given the keys to the kingdom, the power to bind and to loose, the power to remit or to retain sin, all whilst still a man? He jeers at Quaker "out-sputterings" so that, "Christ hath never a body of his own but is forced to make use of every Quaker's body for his spirit to dwell in."

One of Muggleton's more telling criticisms of the Quakers is that they try too hard to entice God to move in their direction, thus falling into the trap of seeing their own lights and fancies as coming to them from without. Muggleton does not allow that the Quakers themselves may have been well aware of the dangers. As a result, Muggleton dismisses Quakers as warmed-over Ranters, "for you have got your Christ all within you."

Edward Bourne asks Muggleton if the two seeds theology does not make God the harbinger of evil in the world? He does not receive a straight answer although Muggleton says that faith in a time of innocence is one thing, but that faith through knowledge of good and evil is a higher state of consciousness altogether. Thus, evil is a sort of necessary evil.

Samuel Hooten enquires if Muggleton should not pay heed to the instruction Christ gave to his disciples, "Bless and curse not"? But Muggleton dismisses this instruction as a temporary expedient for the disciples' use only. In Acts, St. Peter receives a quite different instruction and Peter, like Lodowicke, has a commission. In a similar vein, Muggleton is reminded there is nothing in scripture foretelling the coming of one Lodowicke Muggleton, to which the reply is, "For, if there had been such a name written in scripture, many men would have named their sons Lodowicke Muggleton." Richard Farnesworth also taxes Muggleton about the failure of John Reeve and himself to live out their part from the book of Revelation. Muggleton says that prophets come to impose their commission which lives on after them no matter what happens to the prophet himself. Thus, Moses commission was to bring the law and that did not end with the death of Moses but with the death of John the Baptist.