That there are difficulties with respect to texts of scripture, must be admitted; for if all men were to understand them alike, there would be but one profession of the Christian religion. One man endeavours to make his system comport wholly with human reason, and the consequence is, that texts constantly stare him in the face, which militate against it. Another discards reason, with a determination to abide literally by that, which is revealed, and the consequence is, that, in his literal interpretation of some passages, he leaves others wholly irreconcileable with his scheme. Now the religion, of the Quakers has been explained, and this extensively. In its doctrinal parts it is simple. It is spiritual. It unites often philosophy with revelation. It explains a great number of the difficult texts with clearness and consistency. That it explains all of them I will not aver. But these which it does explain, it explains in the strictest harmony with the love, goodness, justice, mercy, and wisdom of God. As to the creed of the Quakers, we have seen its effects. We have seen it to be both encouraging and consolatory. We have seen it produce happiness in life, and courage in death. The doctrine of the possibility of human perfection, where it is believed, must be a perpetual stimulus to virtue, it must encourage hope and banish fear. But it may be said, that stimulative and consolatory as it may be, it wants one of the marks which I have insisted upon, namely, a sound foundation. But surely they, who deny it, will have as many scriptural texts against them as they who acknowledge it, and will they not be rendering their own spiritual situation perilous? But what do the Quakers mean by perfection? Not the perfection of God, to which there are no limits, as has been before explained, but that which arises to man from the possibility of keeping the divine commands. They mean that perfection, such as Noah, and Job, and Zacharias, and Elizabeth, attained, and which the Jewish rabbies distinguished by the name of Redemption, and which they conceived to be effected by the influence of the Holy Spirit, or that state of man in Christian morals, which, if he arrives at it, the Divine Being (outward redemption having taken place by the sacrifice of Christ) is pleased to accept as sufficient, or as the most pure state at which man, under the disadvantages of the frailty of his nature, can arrive. And is not this the practicable perfection, which Jesus himself taught in these words, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father, which is in heaven is perfect." Not that he supposed it possible, that any human being could be as perfect as the Divine Nature. But he proposed, by these expressions, the highest conceivable model of human excellence, of which our natures were capable, well knowing that the higher our aspirations the higher we should ascend, and the sooner we should reach that best state of humanity that was attainable. And here it is, that Christianity, as a