The Quakers in Puritan England is a classic study in the beginnings of Quakerism and its relationship to the other religious movements of mid-seventeenth-century England. Hugh Barber presents vivid descriptions of early Quaker personalities and explains the complex puritanism from which they emerged. Central to the book is a chapter on "The Terror and Power of the Light" which emphasizes that "early Quakers affirmed that the same Light that condemned and wounded them was the source of their new power and joy."