Besides clergymen and other ministers, the converts included magistrates, like Justice Hotham and Anthony Pearson, author of "The Great Case of Tithes;" and officers in the army like Col. West and Capt. Pursloe, besides gentlemen of substance and standing like I. Pennington, and scholars like Samuel Fisher and Thomas Lawson just mentioned. But among them all Fox stood chief, not only as the father of the fathers among them, but also in his firm and clear grasp of the truth, his entire devotion, his gifts of leadership, his many labours and sufferings, and his God-given success. "I notice," says a contemporary letter, "that in any company when George is present all the rest are silent;" and a joint letter by Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill says, "Oh but for one hour of his company! what a treasure it would be to us!" Even those who had held similar views before they met with him, often gained from him more clearness of view and fulness of knowledge.
The manner of conducting the Quaker "meetings for worship," was the result of practical conviction rather than of theory. They thought that for Christians to meet together in order to go through a stated form of service, was at once to cramp the outpouring of the heart to God, and to interfere with the Holy Spirit in his direction of the utterances of Christ's ministers. When they met in silence, each could speak to God what was in his heart, and each could hear in his spirit "what God the Lord would speak;" and if any one was "moved" to declare any truth, the way was clear. Thus Christ was owned practically as a present Lord, and the Holy Spirit trusted as a real and practical guide. They read in their New Testaments that when the saints met together, all the gifted might prophesy one by one as anything was revealed to them; and that each might contribute to the service his psalm of thanksgiving, or hymn of adoration, or edifying doctrine. It seemed to them that in the "apostacy" of the churches not only the rights of private Christians, but the claims of the Holy Spirit had been interfered with by the "one-man ministry." And probably none of them, whatever his gift of discernment, imagined in those days of burning zeal and abundant labours, that the time would come when their simple system would prove a rigid bond, which would leave half their meetings without ministry of any kind. Encouragement of a true ministry is as needful as discouragement of the spurious.