x's mission and of
the creation of the new "Society" than has the writer of the "Epistle to
the Reader" in Fox's strange book _The Great Mystery of the Great Whore_
(1659). This "Epistle to the Reader" was {338} written by Edward
Burrough and was printed, also under the same title, in Burrough's
_Works_ in 1672.[1] In this striking document the writer gives his
account of the existing Church, and over against this dark background he
sets God's new Reformation that is just beginning, of which he feels
himself to be the divinely sent herald and prophet. "As our minds became
turned, and our hearts inclined to the Light which shined in every one of
us," he writes, "we came to know the perfect estate of the Church; her
estate before the apostles' days, and in the apostles' days and since the
days of the apostles. And her present estate we found to be as a woman
who had once been clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, who
brought forth Him that was to rule the nations; but she [the Church] was
fled into the wilderness, and there sitting desolate, in her place that
was prepared of God for such a season, in the very end of which season,
when the time of her sojourning was towards a full end, then _we_
[Friends] were brought forth."[2]

In the Light which broke in upon them, he says, they saw that "the world
was in darkness" and that "anti-Christ was set up in the temple of God,
ruling over all, having brought nations under his power, and having set
up his government over all for many ages; even since the days of the
apostles and true churches hath he reigned.~.~.~. As for the ministry,
first, looking upon it with a single eye in the Light of the Spirit of
God which had anointed us, we beheld it clearly _not to be of Christ, nor
sent of Him, nor having the commission, power, and authority of Christ,
as His ministry had in the days of true churches; but in all things, as
in call, practice, maintenance, {339} and in everything else, in fruits
and effects we found it to disagree, and to be wholly contrary to the
true ministry of Christ in the days of the apostles_."[3] His charge
against the ministers of his day is one now very familiar to us: "You
preach to people what you have studied out of books and old authors, and
what you have noted down you preach by an hour-glass and not as the
Spirit of God gives you utterance. You preach other men's words which
you have collected."[4] The "call" to ministry, he urges,