Saturday, January 29, 2022

Mary Dyer 'shined in the image of God'

 © 2022 Christy K Robinson

This article is copyrighted. Copying, even to your genealogy pages, is prohibited by US and international law. You may "share" it with the URL link because it preserves the author's copyright notice and the source of the article.  
All rights reserved. This book or blog article, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

John Taylor's journal was published
in London in 1710
.

In 2013, I did some background reading on the conversion experiences of Quakers, one of them from the public journal of a man born in the early 1630s in York, England. He actually met Mary Dyer on Shelter Island, New York, in the winter of 1659-60, a few months before she was hanged for civil disobedience. John Taylor spent the rest of his 70 years as an itinerant Quaker minister (they didn't believe in paid clergy) and a trans-Atlantic trader and merchant. 

 

Taylor wrote of the 49-year-old Mary, "She was a very comely woman and grave matron, and even shined in the image of God. We had several brave meetings there together and the Lord's power and presence was with us gloriously. And Mary Dyer went away for Boston again, and said, she must go and offer up her life there and desire them to repeal that wicked law which they had made against God's people." 

 

Taylor's assertion that Mary Dyer "shined in the image of God," a Quaker expression of their belief in God as Light, was one of the reasons I titled my first book on the Dyers, Mary Dyer Illuminated. 






Christy K Robinson
 is author of these books: 
Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)   
Effigy Hunter (2015)   

And of these sites:  
Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)
Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)
William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)