But in the case of the Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil consequences.

Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with sincere and conscientious reformers, adding to the unpopularity of the new opinions the odium justly due to their own misdemeanors.

But the prophet whose life and preaching had begun the Quaker Reformation was not found wanting in the gifts which the case required.

Like other great religious founders, George Fox combined with profound religious conviction a high degree of tact and common sense and the faculty of organization.

While the gospel of "the Light that lighteth every man" was speeding with wonderful swiftness to the ends of the earth, there was growing in the hands of the founder the framework of a discipline by which the elements of disorder should be controlled.[114:1] The result was a firmly articulated organization compacted by common faith and zeal and mutual love, and by the external pressure of fierce persecution extending throughout the British empire on both sides of the ocean.
Entering into continental Europe, the Quaker Reformation found itself anticipated in the progress of religious history.