A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
In his disposition he was meek, and tender, and compassionate. He was
kind to the poor, without any exception, and, in his own society, laid
the foundation of that attention towards them, which the world remarks
as an honour to the Quaker-character at the present day. But the poor
were not the only persons, for whom, he manifested an affectionate
concern. He felt and sympathized wherever humanity could be interested.
He wrote to the judges on the subject of capital punishments, warning
them not to take away the lives of persons for theft. On the coast of
Cornwall he was deeply distressed at finding the inhabitants, more
intent upon plundering the wrecks of vessels that were driven upon their
shores, than upon saving the poor and miserable mariners, who were
clinging to them; and he bore his public testimony against this
practice, by sending letters to all the clergymen and magistrates in the
parishes, bordering upon the sea, and reproving them for their
unchristian conduct In the West-Indies also he exhorted those, who
attended his meetings to be merciful to their slaves, and to give them
their freedom in due time. He considered these as belonging to their
families, and that religious instruction was due to these, as the
branches of them, for whom one day or other they would be required to
give a solemn account. Happy had it been, if these christian
exhortations had been attended to, or if those families only, whom he
thus seriously addressed, had continued to be true Quakers; for they
would have set an example, which would have proved to the rest of the
islanders, and the world at large, that the impolicy is not less than
the wickedness of oppression. Thus was George Fox probably the first
person, who publicly declared against this species of slavery. Nothing
in short, that could be deplored by humanity, seems to have escaped his
eye; and his benevolence, when excited, appears to have suffered no
interruption in its progress by the obstacles, which bigotry would have
thrown in the way of many, on account of the difference of a persons
country, or of his colour, or of his sect.
He was patient under his own sufferings. To those, who smote his right
cheek, he offered his left; and, in the true spirit of christianity, he
indulged no rancour against the worst of his oppressors. He made use
occasionally of a rough expression towards them; but he would never have
hurt any of them, if he had had them in his power.
He possessed the most undaunted courage; for he was afraid of no earthly
power. He was never deterred from going to meetings for worship, though
he knew the officers would be there, who were to seize his person. In
his personal conversations with Oliver Cromwell, or in his letters to
him as protector, or in his letters to the parliament, or to king
Charles the second, or to any other personage, he discovered his usual
boldness of character, and never lost, by means of any degrading
flattery, his dignity as a man.
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