Thomas Pole, M.D. / written by Edmund Tolson Wedmore for the Friends' Historical Society ; with notes by Norman Penney ; illustrated by portrait, and forty-eight drawings by Dr. Pole.

  • Wedmore, Edmund Tolson.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thomas Pole, M.D. / written by Edmund Tolson Wedmore for the Friends' Historical Society ; with notes by Norman Penney ; illustrated by portrait, and forty-eight drawings by Dr. Pole. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    19/142
    sense ol the depths to which he had slipped. For some time “a fearful battle raged within” him, and he speaks of a course of iniquity mercifully cut short, and says, “I was early plucked as a brand out of the fire.” It was in the nineteenth year of his age that he experienced this change, and then had to pass through the darkness of Atheism before emerging into the light of God’s Spirit. His conflicts humbled him, and after long wrestling a degree of faith was kindled within him, and at last he rejoices: “ Then did the Lord break forth in His power, bursting open the prison doors, proclaiming a glorious deliverance to my captive soul. May all the faculties of my soul bow in reverent thankfulness for this mercy, and may my life be devoted to the service of my Redeemer.” Before he was twenty he appeared in the ministry. In the prosecution of this important service his journals record his spiritual trials at this time as at later times throughout his life. The presence of former evil-disposed associates in the meeting to which he then belonged, their taunts at his religious ardour, the aloofness of fellow apprentices in the tanning industry, added to his difficulties, and were as snares set for him amidst new temptations. “ But the loving-kindness of the Lord,” he says, “ encom- passed me, and I was brought to walk humbly and to seek after Truth.” feavee America. Thomas Pole left Burlington to visit his relations in England in 1775, being recommended to Bristol Meeting in a certificate signed by nearly forty Friends. He was then in his twenty-second year. In fulfilling this design and in visiting Friends and their meetings, within the two or three years following he travelled in England and Wales 6642 miles, partly on foot and partly by coach, but chiefly on horseback. Setting sail down the Delaware on April 80th, he