2

WRITERS OF OTHER SECTS.

I cannot, of course, pretend to their talents or their reputation, and in many respects I must be far less agreeable to your Society than they are. They meet you as members of a brother sect in committees and societies. I know you only as individuals with whom I have had much agreeable intercourse. Two of the four, probably, would account you allies in politics,-me, ex-officio, at least, an enemy. Moreover, in all questions respecting the dignity of Sacraments, the connection between the constitution of the Church and the idea of Christianity, and the importance of Episcopal Ordination to Ministers, and of Apostolic Succession to Bishops-they would all agree with you in denouncing my opinions as antiquated, bigoted, and ridiculous.

But I do not approve of the method which these writers have adopted in addressing you. I dislike it from taste, from experience, from principle. To inspire men with contempt or indifference for those whom they have been taught from their infancy to admire and love-from the accounts of whose deeds and whose sufferings they have acquired their first perceptions of moral courage, and beauty and dignity of character,-— from whose teaching they have probably first learnt to love their brethren, and revere the operations of their own spirits,-seems to me at all times a most heartless proceeding. I know the phrases that are used to defend it. I know what they say about the paramount worth and preciousness of truth. In my heart of hearts I own

OBJECTIONS TO LINE OF THEIR ARGUMENT. 3

that preciousness, and hope that I may die rather than part with the sense of it. But I believe a tender and reverent spirit is inseparable from the love of truth. I never saw the last permanently strong where the other was wanting; and I believe that anything which tends to weaken either, weakens both of them. I do not believe that those of your Friends, who are tempted by their own hearts, or the sneers of others, to think scornfully of their ancestors, will be half so zealous and affectionate in their determination to risk everything for the truth's sake, as those who retain. a fond admiration for their beauties, and are willing to throw a veil over their deformities. I cannot forget that Ham was cursed though Noah was drunk. I cannot forget what his curse was; -the most affronting to the proud spirit of independence which dictated his crime-" A servant of servants shall he be." And a servant of servants-the slave of every fanatic, who is himself the slave of his own delusions do those high-minded persons most generally become, who, after his example, commence their career of free inquiry with detecting and exposing the absurdities of their earthly or spiritual fathers.

A moral instinct would lead me to the conclusion; all the experiments that I have seen or heard of abundantly confirm it.

I have known persons, brought up in your Society, tempted by such arguments as Mr. Newton's pamphlet contains, to join our church. I

4

INSTANCES OF ITS EFFECTS.

saw no reason to question their sincerity or their zeal. But I observed that their views were always more negative than positive; that they were led to embrace a doctrine, not so much because they believed that to be true, as because they perceived its opposite to be false; that they could perceive what was inconsistent much more quickly than they could recognize what was orderly; that their minds were unquiet, unharmonious, and ricketty. In a few years our proselytes departed, gone, as we ought to have expected beforehand, to join or establish some newer sect, denouncing us now, as they have denounced you before; destined shortly to become as discontented with their present notions as with either. I say it in sorrow, not in bitterness; in reproach to us for seeking converts, by exciting unhallowed feelings, not that I dare to pass uncharitable judgment upon them. There are instances equally recent and better known, of some, high in cultivation, and, as I am well assured, in feeling and in honesty, who had fled to us, from what most would consider, a much worse faith than yours,—a faith which almost every Dissenter, Quaker, and Churchman thinks himself at liberty to scorn and satirize. We raised a shout when they joined us; we listened with delight while they laid bare the gross abominations of the body from which they had escaped; we thought it a mighty compliment to our faith, that such sagacious champions should adopt it; we thought we had a security for the permanence of their convictions, which scarcely any other circum

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE DOCTRINES.

5

Time showed

stances could have afforded us. what sage prophets we were. These learned and able Neophytes were as little constant as those ardent ones; they soon left us, proclaiming to the world as the reason of their departure, the grand discovery, so often made before, (never, perhaps, since the days of the Athenian sophists announced with equal boldness), that that only is true which seems so to each man. Nothing can abate the grief which we feel on their own account for their change. To us they have made abundant compensation for our loss, by learning us the lesson, never to be conned over or prized too much, that the mind which is continually dwelling on the falsehood of any system, even though it do not in the least exaggerate the amount or evil of that falsehood, contracts an incapacity for welcoming or perceiving truth, in that or any other system.

On these grounds, if on no other, I should have disapproved of the method which several churchmen and dissenters have taken in their recent addresses to you. All seem to make it their business to undermine your respect for your founders, and your belief in the positive principles which they taught. I say positive principles, for the Eclectic Reviewer, and Dr. Wardlaw and Mr. Newton will be ready to exclaim, we agree with George Fox and his friends most entirely, in their denunciations of your church, though their language may seem to us occasionally too uncourteous, and though we may believe that they pushed their objections

6

6

EARLY QUAKERS;

too far, when they attacked all pecuniary provision for the support of ministers.' These were their negative doctrines; in these I am perfectly aware that they may find admirers and supporters in every vestry-room and tavern. But I need not

inform you, that your early Friends rested their opinions on these subjects on certain principles relating to the heart and spirit of man. Whether they were good logicians in linking together these premises with these conclusions, is a point upon which you and I may differ, and upon which I may have occasion to speak hereafter. But this at least is certain, that they never for one moment severed in their minds the results from the principles. You are well aware, that in their mere hatred of Episcopacy, and of all the ecclesiastical institutions that had been connected with it, they would have found allies and abettors enough among the Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, of the age in which they arose. Yet you know that they acknowledged no fellowship with these men, but denounced their doctrinalism in language as merciless as that which they used against our forms; and that in turn they endured persecutions from them, at least as severe as any which they suffered from us after the Restoration. Why do I say these things? not with a design which would be much more foolish than cunning, (and for my purpose quite unnecessary), of leading you to dread and dislike those who bear these names in the present day-but to show you, that they have no actual ground of sympathy with you, merely because they agree with you in detesting a third