dispute with learned men, knowing the contents of scripture without reading them, and ordained of God immediately for the rare work of utterly revolutionizing his own constitution; if sincere confidence in his own qualifications; if a bold and impudent invasion of the worship of others, interrupting and insulting it in the name of the Lord as did not the apostles, and bestowing the coarsest epithets on every other ministry whenever he could find it; if calling the Episcopalian edifices "steeplehouses," and contradicting their ministers publicly when in their own pulpits; if disturbing other congregations, hundreds of them, wherever he went, "to draw away disciples after him," without respect to individual and corporate rights or the laws and constitution of society; if provoking persecution by such means and then complaining of it; if illiterate effrontery in denouncing all liberal learning and all its possessors and professors; if a literalizing, mysticising, imaginative vein of theological dictation; if resolute perseverance in devotion to his object if all these things can constitute his claim to confidence-" Credat Judaeus Apella! non ego. "22 Such an instance ought to convince mankind, without sacrificing another of the species in the needless experiment, of THE INFINITE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCRIPTURES; as supplying the very desideratum of an adequate rule in religion, by which all opinions may be tried and all errors condemned, with unsparing and impartial steadiness, and with supreme authority. All false religion, and all infidelity, and all heresy, unite in this-to put down

the volume of inspiration; though they differ illimitably in their ways of doing it. Yet I know of nothing that makes it "void" more effectually than the leaven of Quakerism!

We ought too to be humble at the spectacle of our dishonored species. Poor human nature! where is thy boasted intellect? where thy strength of judgment, thy sane integrity, thy virtue, thy wisdom? And yet this system of distempered thought is in some of its aspects so imposing and so importunate, that in an intelligent and cordial attachment to the religion of the scriptures, and IN THAT ALONE, is there any rational safety or protection from its fascinations. The ignorant bow to it, of course! Yet who, beside the enlightened christian, is not ignorant of the contents, systematically viewed, of the word of God? Fox is the root and the trunk of the tree of Quakerism. Some of the radical sap nourishes every branch; swells every bud into a blossom; matures the fruit ; qualifies the surrounding odor; constitutes the shade of its darkness; and sustains all its homogenous parts, that have stood for nearly two centuries uplifted on such a supporter. But it is split; it is becoming weak; it is found to be hollow; and there is in it a strange inward light, which will turn into a flame of fire, and reduce it to ashes, for the good of mankind. It cannot fall too soon for the interests of christianity and of man. The heavenly dove is not seen in its branches; even when its imposing foliage and a still serenity as of death, seem to invite or

to indicate her presence. "It is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned."

We often hear it said that apostates are always strenuous in opposing the community they have abjured. This may be a general fact; but as such it is no argument. The word apostate is commonly used in a bad sense alone, and as such it becomes a brand with which to stigmatize any man who at any time and for any cause renounces any society or sect. But the word, meaning to stand off from, does of itself imply no criminality: because one may certainly apostatize from error as well as truth, from evil as well as good, and from folly as well as wisdom. When therefore they blame me for the mere fact of apostacy from them, they assume the very thing which they ought to prove; namely, that their religion is right and not wrong, is true and not false, is wise and not foolish. To apostatize from what is wrong, is the grace of repentance. Apostacy is right or wrong in reference to its object alone, and inversely as that object is right or wrong. If therefore Quakerism be what I think it is, the fact of my determined apostacy from it is what I shall recollect with pleasure in the day of judgment. "Wherefore come out from among them," &c. (2 Cor. 6: 17, 18. Rev. 18: 4.) As to the strenuous opposition of apostates in all cases, it is probably a fact: we have however no concern with it unless it can be proved that such are always wrong in proportion as they are strenuous and because they are strenuous. Paul apostatized once for all (he was no changeling) from "the Jews' religion;" and

they might call him an apostate Jew and apply to him the proverb that apostates are always strenuous in opposition to the community they have abjured. Would that prove their own rectitude or refute his arguments? Would it prove that he sinned when he apostatized from a corrupted, worldly system, which was also abandoned of God and execrated by mankind, as connected with its degenerate abettors? So Luther apostatized from popery; and was often gratuitously reviled as an apostate by the Romanists. But if that word is bad in itself then know that it may be retorted. Barclay was an apostate. He left the Romish church for the society at nearly the same age in which I left the society :-and what then? The inference is that all the talk, in which many seem to glory, about apostacy, is a show of words without sense-unless it be the sense of malignity. But here let it be observed that it requires moral courage and moral virtue, which for ever dare to exemplify, to brave the frown of thousands in apostatizing from antiquated educational error, on the single principle of faith in the testimony of God! It is true in modern as well as in ancient days that men often countervail their secret convictions from mere moral cowardice-they dare not do their duty! John, 12: 42, 43. There is perhaps no sort of pusillanimity at once so common and so despicable and so ruinous as this!

But admitting the fact of this strenuousness, and supposing any case, as that of Paul for example, where the apostacy was right, it does not follow

that the strenuousness is wrong. There are reasons why such apostates should be strenuous.

(1) They are better acquainted with the evils of the system than others. Their knowledge is experimental as well as theoretical. Their impressions are comparatively vivid, their views comparatively clear, and their convictions comparatively just. Paul's knowledge of Judaism could not, without a miracle, have been what it was unless he had been one of them. My knowledge of Quakerism could never have been what it is, had I not been educated a Friend. I know they can say that I did not understand their sentiments when I was with them; and if they mean that I was ignorant of them in contrast with christianity, that is, ignorant of them as wrong, they say truth: for I was ignorant of christianity. Not so, if they mean that I had never heard hundreds of their preachers with attention and confidence, read their books, especially George Fox's Journal, and understood their doctrine. They may say indeed that I do not understand it now, as they often have said; the light may tell them so, as it has told them many other things equally credible; but I know that I do understand their system as far as it is intelligible, and that I did this in fact before I left them. For the rest, let others judge.

(2) Apostates are more interested than others in the explosion of the errors they have renounced. Paul often alludes to his own case in illustrating the condition of the Jews; he had been one of them, and was near the verge of perdition with them; his rescue was wonderful; and his zeal was strenuous,