A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3: 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 3: 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 great system of equality, which their discipline daily teaches and
enforces, will make them look with an equal eye towards all of the human
race. Who can be less than a man in the Quaker society, when the rich
and poor have an equal voice in the exercise of its discipline, and when
they fill equally the important offices that belong to it? And who is
there out of the society, whom the Quakers esteem more than human? They
bow their knees or, their bodies, as I have before noticed, to no man.
They flatter no man on account of his riches or his station. They pay
homage to no man on account of his rank or title. Stripped of all
trappings, they view the creature man. If then they view him in this
abstracted light, they can view him only as an equal. Bit in what other
society is it, that a similar estimate is made of him? The world are
apt in general to make too much of those in an elevated station, and
those again in this station are apt to make less of others beneath them
than they ought. Thus an under or an over valuation of individuals
generally takes place in society; from whence it will unavoidably
happen, that if some men are classed a little below gods, others will be
classed but a little above the brutes of the field. Their discipline,
again, has a tendency to produce in them an anxious concern for the good
of their fellow-creatures. Man is considered, in the theory of this
discipline, as a being, for whose spiritual welfare the members are
bound to watch. They are to take an interest in his character and his
happiness. If he be overtaken in a fault, he is not to be deserted, but
reclaimed. No endeavour is to be spared for his restoration. He is
considered, in short, as a creature, worthy of all the pains and efforts
that can be bestowed upon him.
The religion of the Quakers furnishes also a cause, which occasions them
to consider man in an elevated light. They view him, as may be collected
from the preceding volume, as a temple of the Spirit of God. There is no
man, so mean in station, who is not made capable by the Quakers of
feeling the presence of the Divinity within him. Neither sect, nor
country, nor colour, excludes him, in their opinion, from this
presence. But it is impossible to view man as a tabernacle, in which the
Divinity may reside, without viewing him in a dignified manner. And
though this doctrine of the agency of the Spirit dwelling in man belongs
to many other Christian societies, yet it is no where so systematically
acted upon as by that of the Quakers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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