BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS: BEING A RECORD OF THE CHRISTIAN LIVES, EXPERIENCES, AND DEATHS, OF MEMBERS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, FROM ITS RISE, TO 1653. BY EDWARD AND THOMAS J. BACKHOUSE, AND THE LATE THOMAS MOUNSEY. VOL. I. LONDON: W. AND F. G. CASH, BISHOPSGATE-STREET WITHOUT. PREFACE. IN presenting the present volume to the notice of Friends we would observe, that it has been our endeavour, so to set forth the bright Christian example which shone in the lives of the subjects of our Memoirs, as to stimulate their successors to serve the same blessed Lord and Master, with equal love and fervency of spirit. In perusing these sketches of individuals who were afterward eminently serviceable in their day, it will be evident to many, that there was a time in their religious experience, when their glimpses of the beauty and simplicity of the truth were but partial; when their hearts were still in measure unchanged, and they did not therefore fully receive the things of the |