Robert Barclay

Robert Barclay (1648–1690) was born into opulence and educated in some of the finest schools of the time, where his natural genius gained the admiration of both teachers and peers. But at seventeen years of age, upon entering a meeting of the people called Quakers, he said, “I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart.” And as he abode under the powerful operations of grace, he “came to receive and bear witness of the Truth,” not being convinced “by strength of argument, or by a particular discussion of each doctrine, but by being secretly reached by Life.” Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity was first published in 1675, and came to be considered the definitive exposition and defense of Quaker principles for the next 200 years.