been so rendered in EVERY instance. It would then have prevented a vast amount of dotage, mistake, and lawless affectation. Love means, benevolence, "good will to men." And if I have outraged this pure celestial principle, how was it done? I have been satirical, ironical, sarcastic, possibly. True; and I wish I could have done it all with more address; "wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove." I wish that I could have maintained more palpably throughout the distinction between the persons of Friends and their individual interests on the one hand, and their corporate and public rrors on the other. But may I not appeal to them and to all, in my turn, for honesty, for justice? Will they not credit me when I assure them that I aimed to honor the distinction adequately, and that it is against their errors alone that I have desired to be bold and even severe ?

If they ask why I have been willing to make them appear ridiculous, and why, on such a serious subject, I have been so willing to excite sometimes the laughter of the reader? I answer, mainly for two reasons: first, because it appears to me that some of their chief errors are so antiquated, and at the same time so venerable in their own view, and incorrigible by ordinary measures, that it was like Elijah at Mount Carmel, when he demonstrated the ridiculous but most devout worship of the idolaters to be what it was, by holding their folly obvious to the multitude, in a vein of the most biting and acrimonious irony of which we have any example; and second, because the genius of their system, by inducing a spurious

solemnity on every religious subject, puts the whole matter ordinarily out of the reach of men, who ought to have religion familiarized to their thoughts, and interwoven with their daily associations, and engrafted upon all the objects of their converse in life; instead of being shrouded in unapproachable solemnity and inscrutable mystery. I have therefore endeavored so to write, that if, through the infinite grace of Jesus Christ, we should meet at last in a better world, where prejudice shall be done away for ever, my charity will be accredited; my motives unimpeached; my reasons vindicated even for the alleged severities. Let them remember that charity, the name and the thing, is a matter among the most abused in our language, "the sport of mere pretenders to the name," and the very antipodes often of christian benevolence. This "rejoiceth in the truth;" and "hateth every false way ;" and will in any wise maintain pure the religion of heaven. I suppose it charity to abet the truth; to expose and frustrate, by rational argument and moral means, all the errors that would corrupt it; to become aggressively a controvertist or even a champion for its sake; and in valor to "contend earnestly for the faith ONCE DELIVERED"-mark, not delivered millions of times, or oftener, but ONCE delivered"to the saints." "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for, he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds." This is charity of a genuine stamp; charity coined in the mint of heaven, and having

"the image and superscription of God." Of what kind of love becomes it the destruction, practically to honor such of his commandments? That kind that postpones the first table of the law to the second; talks well of both, and obeys neither; delights in those imaginings which truth denounces, and courts darkness rather than light, as the atmosphere of all its flourishing! It is charity to-self, dear self, partial, evil, deceitful self! And is not the selfishness of the original the reason why the picture is denied?

It may be proper here to view the subject in another aspect. There is a great schism in the body. Friends are divided, or rather subdivided into two distinct sects, at least in this country; the Orthodox and the Hicksites. I have reason to believe that the letter already referred to, written by myself to the committee at Philadelphia, A. D. 1813, had some influence, in the providence of God, in producing the event. It was the first bill of attainder that ever was filed in that city, I ween, against the oraculous Simon of the Samaritans ; who had widely "bewitched the people, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God. And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries." However that be, I wish to remark on the fact: 1. That it is only a change in the progress of the times and the increase of evangelical light, which requires and portends other revolutions. It has broke the charm of infallibility, in which the semi-papacy of the seventeenth century

(when other monstrosities were "spouted from the crater of a revolutionary volcano ") may be identified in Quakerism. That human infallibility must exist somewhere on earth, our ancestors held it sacrilegious to doubt. The Pope and Fox agreed in the general sentiment; and each of them claimed it as his own only one challenged it by virtue of St. Peter's investiture, the other as the result of interior illumination. Hence the dogmatizing of Quakerism is all "anointed" with infallibility. What could inspiration more? But the charm is broken. Altar is reared against altar; and opposite batteries, equally infallible, pour their polemical vollies into each other, with new methods of gunnery and fortification. I think this is well, rather than the opposite. It may yet open the eyes of both belligerents to the real light. "A living dog is better than a dead lion." Any thing but stagnation, "silent meetings," and a sleepy congregation— telling how " refreshed" they felt! Concussions in the atmosphere, with the glare of lightning, and the roll of thunder, and the terror of all terrestrial consciousness, may still be necessary to purity, health, and even life. "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife: and some also of good will. What then? Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein. do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." I allude mainly to the idea of action and inquiry on the subject of religion, as better than dotage and supineness-not that I think the preaching of either party is the pure truth of the gospel, or that either properly "preach Christ"

at all. I am convinced of the contrary. Still, there is no hope of those who take all for granted "even as they are led," and who examine nothing. Excitement is not religion-but it is ordinarily indispensable to it. This may be the very means selected by that admirable Economist who is "wonderful in counsel and excellent in working," to rouse them from the lethargy of ages; and necessitate their practical searching, so as to bring them, it may be, savingly to know the "truth and soberness" of the gospel. God is a real and glorious, though an invisible and little accredited agent, in all these teeming wonders of his sovereignty. O let us pray more, that his prospering breath may vivify, through the truth, an awakened and confounded population! 2. We may be in danger of thinking too much of it; of dishonoring too much in comparison the one party, and of crediting the other prematurely for attainments they have yet to make; and so of injuring both parties, and really retarding their common proficiency. I have something gravely to allege against those called orthodox-only by contrast with notions the most infidel, and sordid, and impudent in error; something, on account of which, while it remains, I feel pressed, in judgment and in conscience too, to deny to them boldly a recognition of christian character. I cannot at all fellowship them, so corrupt is their confession, and so equivocal their "professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ" I say again, in the ear of earth and the eye of heaven, that I cannot do it; nor do I think, most excellent sirs, that one of you, or those whom