God’s Controversy: The Quaker Writings of Paul Moon

In 1653, Edward Moon, a husbandman of the Fylde coast, his wife Isabel and three of their sons left the Church of England to join the Religious Society of Friends which had been founded as a result of a vision George Fox had experienced on nearby Pendle Hill just a year earlier. The Moons were fined, distrained of their property and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle for their newfound adherence to Quakerism. However, Edward’s son Thomas attempted to escape persecution by migrating south to Bristol where he raised two sons John and Paul who eventually established a leatherworks business in the city. While his brother John emigrated to Pennsylvania with other Quakers, Paul remained in Bristol, becoming a prominent Quaker there and published two notable broadsides advocating his beliefs, the first A Visitation of Love to All People in 1681 which he wrote while imprisoned in Newgate gaol and the second God’s Controversy in 1693 which he wrote while on a preaching tour in Ireland. In 1696, Moon served as a witness at the second wedding of William Penn to Hannah Callowhill while an analysis of his writings reveal that he made some contributions to early Quaker literature.