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
It is upon the excitement of the passions, which must have risen to a
furious height, before such desperate actions as those, which have been
specified, could have commenced, that the Quakers have founded their
second argument for the prohibition of games of chance, or of any
amusements or transactions, connected with a monied stake. It is one of
their principal tenets, as will be diffusively shewn in a future volume,
that the supreme Creator of the universe affords a certain portion of
his own spirit, or a certain emanation of the pure principle, to all his
rational creatures, for the regulation of their spiritual concerns. They
believe, therefore, that stillness and quietness, both of spirit and of
body, are necessary for them, as far as these can be obtained. For how
can a man, whose earthly passions are uppermost, be in a fit state to
receive, or a man of noisy and turbulent habits be in a fit state to
attend to, the spiritual admonitions of this pure influence? Hence one
of the first points in the education of the Quakers is to attend to the
subjugation of the will; to take care that every perverse passion be
checked; and that the creature be rendered calm and passive. Hence
Quaker children are rebuked for all expressions of anger, as tending to
raise those feelings, which ought to be suppressed. A raising even of
their voices beyond due bounds is discouraged, as leading to the
disturbance of their minds. They are taught to rise in the morning in
quietness, to go about their ordinary occupations with quietness, and to
retire in quietness to their beds. Educated in this manner, we seldom
see a noisy or an irascible Quaker. This kind of education is universal
among the Quakers. It is adopted at home. It is adopted in their
schools. The great and practical philanthropist, John Howard, when he
was at Ackworth, which is the great public school of the Quakers, was so
struck with the quiet deportment of the children there, that he
mentioned it with approbation in his work on Lazarettos, and gave to the
public some of its rules, as models for imitation in other seminaries.
But if the Quakers believe that this pure principle, when attended to,
is an infallible guide to them in their religious or spiritual concerns;
if they believe that its influences are best discovered in the quietness
and silence of their senses; if, moreover, they educate with a view of
producing such a calm and tranquil state; it must be obvious, that they
can never allow either to their children, or to those of maturer years,
the use of any of the games of chance, because these, on account of
their peculiar nature, are so productive of sudden fluctuations of hope,
and fear, and joy, and disappointment, that they are calculated, more
than any other, to promote a turbulence of the human passions.
SECT. IV.
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