Of the integrity of his own character, as a christian, he was so scrupulously tenacious, that, when he might have been sometimes set at liberty by making trifling acknowledgements, he would make none, least it should imply a conviction, that he had been confined for that which was wrong; and, at one time in particular, king Charles the second was so touched with the hardship of his case, that he offered to discharge him from prison by a pardon.  But George Fox declined it on the idea, that, as pardon implied guilt, his innocence would be called in question by his acceptance of it.  The king, however, replied, that “he need not scruple being released by a pardon, for many a man who was as innocent as a child, had had a pardon granted him.”  But still he chose to decline it.  And he lay in gaol, till, upon a trial of the errors in his indictment, he was discharged in an honourable way.

As a minister of the gospel, he was singularly eminent.  He had a wonderful gift in expounding the scriptures.  He was particularly impressive in his preaching; but he excelled most in prayer.

Here it was, that he is described by William Penn, as possessing the most awful and reverend frame he ever beheld.  His presence, says the same author, expressed “a religious majesty.”  That there must have been something more than usually striking either in his manner, or in his language, or in his arguments, or in all of them combined, or that he spoke “in the demonstration of the spirit and with power,” we are warranted in pronouncing from the general and powerful effects produced.  In the year 1648, when he had but once before spoken in public, it was observed of him at Mansfield, at the end of his prayer, "that it was then, as in the days of the apostles, when the house was shaken where they were." In the same manner he appears to have gone on, making a deep impression upon his hearers, whenever he was fully and fairly heard.  Many clergymen, as I observed before, in consequence of his powerful preaching, gave up their livings; and constables, who attended the meetings, in order to apprehend him, felt themselves disarmed, so that they went away without attempting to secure his person.

As to his life, it was innocent.  It is true indeed, that there were persons, high in civil offices, who, because he addressed the people in public, considered him as a disturber of the peace.  But none of these ever pretended to cast a stain on his moral character.  He was considered both by friends and enemies, as irreproachable in his life.

Such was the character of the founder of Quakerism, He was born in July 1624, and died on the thirteenth of November 1690, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.  He had separated himself from the word in order to attend to serious things, as I observed before, at the age of nineteen, so that he had devoted himself to the exercises and services of religion for no less a period than forty-eight years.  A few hours before