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
But besides this general care two or more persons of age and experience,
and of moral lives and character, and two or more women of a similar
description, are directed to be appointed, to have the oversight of
every congregation or particular meeting in the kingdom. These persons
are called overseers, because it is their duty to oversee their
respective flocks.
If any of the members should violate the prohibitions mentioned in the
former part of the work, or should become chargeable with injustice,
drunkenness, or profane swearing, or neglect of their public worship, or
should act in any way inconsistently with his character as a christian,
it becomes the particular duty of these overseers, though it is also the
duty of the members at large, to visit him in private, to set before
him the error and consequences of his conduct, and to endeavour by all
the means in their power to reclaim him. This act on the part of the
overseer is termed by the society admonishing. The circumstances of
admonishing and of being admonished are known only to the parties,
except the case should have become of itself notorious; for secrecy is
held sacred on the part of the persons who admonish. Hence it may
happen, that several of the society may admonish the same person, though
no one of them knows that any other has been visiting him at all. The
offender may be thus admonished by overseers and other individuals for
weeks and months together, for no time is fixed by the society, and no
pains are supposed to be spared for his reformation. It is expected,
however, in all such admonitions, that no austerity of language or
manner should be used, but that he should be admonished in tenderness
and love.
If an overseer, or any other individual, after having thus laboured to
reclaim another for a considerable length of time, finds that he has not
succeeded in his work, and feels also that he despairs of succeeding by
his own efforts, he opens the matter to some other overseer, or to one
or more serious members, and requests their aid. These persons now wait
upon the offender together, and unite their efforts in endeavouring to
persuade him to amend his life. This act, which now becomes more public
by the junction of two or three in the work of his reformation, is still
kept a secret from other individuals of the society, and still retains
the name of admonishing.
It frequently happens that, during these different admonitions, the
offender sees his error, and corrects his conduct. The visitations of
course cease, and he goes on in the estimation of the society as a
regular or unoffending member, no one knowing but the admonishing
persons, that he has been under the discipline of the society. I may
observe here, that what is done by men to men is done by women to women,
the women admonishing and trying to reclaim those of their own sex, in
the same manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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