No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Athough Quakers had always cautioned their brethren about the perils of wealth, in late eighteenth-century America a generation of Quakers arose that criticized wealth far more severely than any of its forebears had. These critics included John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, two of the most renowned Quakers since George Fox, as well as a score of Friends who were the liveliest members of the church in the eighteenth century. That these men should focus their critical attention on the spiritually corrosive effect of wealth, when their predecessors had not, may be explained in part by the passing of a century in which Friends used the time to accumulate fortunes, in part by some deeply quietistic Friends' discovery of an inherent conflict between materialism and spiritual religion and in part by the political situation of late eighteenth-century American Friends, which illuminated the tension between Friends' devotion to their property and their devotion to their religious ethics.

No abstract