of want, what is "needful for meat and clothing" may be received by preachers, if they feel "liberty given them in the Lord;" about which, however, the inward counsellor is in every case specifically to be consulted.

XX. Women have as good a right to preach as men, and are as legitimately and as often called to the work of the ministry.

XXI. "All true and acceptable worship to God, is offered in the inward and immediate moving and drawing of his own Spirit," without all restriction "to places, times, or persons." Other worship, the whole of it, is resolvable into "superstitions, willworship, and abominable idolatry in the sight of God; which are to be denied, rejected, and separated from, in this day of his spiritual arising ;" whatever favors from God or man it might have anciently received.36

XXII. "Baptism is a pure and spiritual thing, to wit, the baptism of the Spirit and fire;" attended with no outward observance: and "the baptism of infants, is a mere human tradition."

"all

XXIII. The Lord's supper is much in the same predicament. It might have been "for the cause of the weak-even used in the church for a time," with other obsolete and unprofitable ceremonies; which are commanded with no less authority and solemnity than the former; yet seeing they are but the shadows of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance."

XXIV. The magistrate has no right to intermeddle with the affairs of the church or the laws of

conscience; but ought to do his duty impartially in his own secular sphere.

XXV. All outward and ordinary signs of reverence and respect; "such as the taking off the hat to a man, the bowings and cringings of the body, and such other salutations of that kind;" and all vain and unprofitable sports; all heathen numbering of months, days, and so forth, contrary to numerical simplicity; all plural speech to one person; all gay and beauteous clothing; all war and resistance of evil; all swearing, before magistrates and elsewhere; all slavery; and all proud conformity to "the world's people," in words, manners, or equipage: all these are absolutely unlawful and wrong.

XXVI. God hath no absolute purpose of salvation to any individuals; and it is all a matter of chance who gets or stays converted to the truth; as all have equal opportunity in the light, and the will is left in every sense free and fortuitous.

XXVII. Respecting the "eternal damnation" of the wicked; the reality of hell torments; the certainty and evidence of a state future and immortal ; the resurrection of the body; the millennium; the end of the world; and the day of judgment: there is a remarkable vacancy in all their enunciations. Barclay almost wholly omits even the incidental treatment of these topics; and is very unsatisfactory, loose, and cursory, in what he says. Some of the most important of them, I believe, he never mentions. In an index or "table of chief things," of sixteen pages, suffixed to his volume, there is no such"chief thing" as punishment, wicked, depra

vity, resurrection, perdition, hell, damnation, immortality, eternity, futurity, regeneration, repentance, humility, hope, despair, assurance, fanaticism, bigotry, martyrdom, incarnation, trinity, atonement, expiation, propitiation, sacrifice, justice, satisfaction, penalty, unpardonable, pardon, confession, supplication, intercession, mediation, mediator, means of grace, mercy, righteousness, orthodoxy, heterodoxy, wisdom: while such "chief things" are there as, woman, William Barclay, voices, vespers, turks, titles, tithes, theseus' boat, taulerus, talk, tables, silence, shoe-maker, servetus, seed, sect, saxony, rustic, recreations, ranters, quakers, plays, physics, oil, number, liturgy, letter, laic, hai eben yokdan, freely, exorcism, ear, dancing, clothes, clergy, calvinists, bow, appearances, anicetus! Their views of sin, law, justice, atonement, mercy, accountability, repentance, perdition, genuine affections in religion as contra-distinguished and discriminated from spurious, and the truth so clearly revealed in the word of God that a man (no matter who) will be lost for ever in point of fact, who dies without obeying the gospel; their views of these vital subjects of "truth and soberness are, I fear, exceedingly superficial and worthless, vague and erroneous :—while, for the honor of their omniscient light, they have to act as if they knew all things about all things!

XXVIII. On the subject of the christian Sabbath, or as the beloved apostle calls it, THE LORD'S DAY, Rev. 1 10. Friends have discovered that there is no such thing under the gospel; that all that was

judaical and evanescent, as the vapors at the rise of light; that to observe the first day of the week is probably convenient and of christian expediency: but that the "fourth command," either virtually or literally, has any "moral obligation," they are "not so superstitious as to believe;" nor do they "superstitiously strain the scripture for another reason besides that of expediency, as they "have meetings also for worship at other times."

This is a very evil feature, I think, of their orthodox system. Those who know Friends, in this country at least, may judge of the principle by its fruits. Let all observe their practices. They regard the day of rest as abrogated, and judaical; and typical merely, and so temporary: although its obligation is fixed in the decalogue, where NO OTHER COMMANDMENT OF THE TEN is abrogated; and though it is there declared to be no judaizing day, but continued from the creation of the world, and at that time two thousand five hundred years old when the Jewish dispensation commenced; and though no statute of abolition can be found in the New Testament, but simply an indication, sufficient and conclusive, of its change from the seventh to the first of the week, in commemoration of THE NEW CREATION FINISHED and all "very good" and infinitely more glorious than the former! and though Jesus Christ declares to us that "the Sabbath was made for man ;" mark, he says not for the Jews-centuries before they existed, but-for man! and though all the moral reasons now exist, for something stronger than expediency to bind the conscience of man to

the service and worship of his Creator, which ever did exist! and though God hath put his seal on its observance most notably in all ages of the christian era, and his brand of judgments marked and terrible on the violators of its sanctity! and though to take away the time when God is to be worshipped, is to take away his worship from the earth! and though the scath of ruin, menacingly rests on those places of profligacy and infidelity, in nominal christendom, where the Sabbath is profaned; so as to demonstrate palpably the fact that WITHOUT THE SABBATH, IS WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY.3

But I have sketched an outline which exhibits Quakerism much as it is, in its best features; for all the symbols which they show, are the masterpieces of the society, of which the vast majority know only enough for implicit confidence, in what their inspired leaders have, with care, concert, and some perplexity, prepared; as their "yearly epistles," and other public documents; which are generally, in my judgment, both more correct, and less exceptionable every way, than their primitive and standard writings; and much better than one in twenty of their members, either knows, thinks, or feels. You, who know what christianity is, can judge whether Quakerism is at all consistent with it; whether it ought to be doctrinally tolerated and practically approved; whether I err in having some special zeal for its extirpation, as a moral nuisance in the community; and to how great an extent I may have mistaken my duty in matter or manner,