John Woolman as Quietist

I mentioned John Woolman earlier as a strong figure in the age of Quaker Quietism. (Marshall Massey noted a number of others I need to learn about as well.)

While Woolman's Journal seems to involve nearly constant motion, as Woolman crisscrossed the American colonies ministering to Quakers, Native Americans, and others, the motivations for all of that action, discussed at one point in Chapter VII, are decidedly Quietist:

The poverty of spirit and inward weakness, with which I was much tried the fore part of this journey, has of late appeared to me a dispensation of kindness. Appointing meetings never appeared more weighty to me, and I was led into a deep search, whether in all things my mind was resigned to the will of God; often querying with myself what should be the cause of such inward poverty, and greatly desiring that no secret reserve in my heart might hinder my access to the Divine fountain. In these humbling times I was made watchful, and excited to attend to the secret movings of the heavenly principle in my mind, which prepared the way to some duties, that, in more easy and prosperous times as to the outward, I believe I should have been in danger of omitting. (124)

Fénelon would doubtless have approved of Woolman's concern that a "secret reserve in my heart might hinder my access to the Divine fountain." Woolman is constantly studying his motivations and actions to ensure that they correspond to God's desires, not his own, and when he finds the two have parted he strives to connect with God once again.