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
The Quakers believe also, that the renovated man, who loves all the
works of the creator, will carry every divine law, which has been
revealed to him, as far as it is possible to be carried on account of a
similarity of natures through all animated creation, and particularly
that law, which forbids him to do to another, what he would dislike to
be done unto himself. Now this law is founded on the sense of bodily,
and on the sense of the mental feelings. The mental feelings of men and
brutes, or the reason of man and the instinct of animals, are different.
But their bodily feelings are alike; and they are in their due
proportions, susceptible of pain. The nature therefore of man and of
animals is alike in this particular. He can anticipate and know their
feelings by his own. He cannot therefore subject them to any action
unnecessarily, if on account of a similar construction of his own
organs, such an action would produce pain to himself. His own power of
feeling strongly commands sympathy to all that can feel: and that
general sympathy, which arises to a man, when he sees pain inflicted on
the person of any individual of his own species, will arise, in the
opinion of the Quakers, to the renovated man, when he sees it inflicted
on the body of a brute.
CHAP. VIII.
_Objections started by philosophical moralists to the preceding system
of education--this system a prohibitory one--prohibitions sometimes the
cause of greater evil than they prevent--they may confuse morality--and
break the spirit--they render the vicious more vicious--and are not to
be relied upon as effectual, because built on a fake foundation--ignorance
no guardian of virtue--causes, not sub-causes, are to be contended against
--no certain security but in knowledge and a love of virtue--prohibitions,
where effectual, produce but a sluggish virtue._
I have now stated the principal prohibitions, that are to be found in
the moral education of the Quakers, and I have annexed to these the
various reasons, which the Quakers themselves give, why they were
introduced into their society. I have therefore finished this part of my
task, and the reader will expect me to proceed to the next subject. But
as I am certain that many objections will be started here, I shall stop
for a few minutes to state, and to consider them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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