1133. Some of the excellent Society of Friends may, as respects war, have been obedient to the precepts of Christ, and probably in other respects deviate from them less than most other sects; but as to wealth their course is the inverse of giving away their money. They are rationally among the most active and successful in the honest acquisition of money. In this they would act morally, excepting the violation of their recognised obligation to obey the precepts of Christ. 1134. Does not experience show that nothing is more injurious to morals than unreasonable restraint? This has been seen in the profligacy of the children of puritanical sectarians. To disobey an unreasonable restriction always appears comparatively a trivial offence. Going to a play, in the opinion of the mass of the world, is not sinful; but for a minor to go to a play in disobedience of parental authority, by stealth, deception, or lying, becomes sinful delinquency, and introduces a habit which may lead to crime as wicked as that of the conduct of Jacob to Esau. Lying and deceiving for venial purposes will soon induce the habit. The restriction from eating pork or drinking wine has no doubt induced much deception and falsehood among the followers of Mohammed, and thus made a crime where none would have existed. In like manner, the putting a rich man on a footing with a felon, as respects access to heaven, forbidding the resistance to blows or spoliation, makes almost every professed Christian practically unfaithful to his professions, and of course an infidel of the worst kind. More or less of this infidelity is involved in various ways, as above admitted by “Bosanquet.” 1135. If the history of Christianity, so called, be reviewed, it will be found that the deviations from the precepts of Christ during the present age are quite venial, compared with those which took place during the thousand years or more in which Romanism had the ascendency. 1136. A painful picture of the morals of the clergy during that period may be found in a recent work by Bishop Hopkins of Vermont. It would seem as if the crimes and indecency displayed during the Middle Ages, exceed even those of Abraham, Moses, Jacob, and David, and Samuel, the cruel, despotic pope of Judea. The deposition of Saul for not killing Agag, and his hewing his royal prisoner down with a sword in cold blood, may have been looked to as a justification of pontifical cruelty and despotism. _No one would believe that a capable farmer would make such a mistake as to sow garlic instead of wheat. Yet God, while represented as having intended to sow Protestantism, is considered as having caused, throughout Christendom, a crop of Catholicism, in the Roman or Grecian form, for more than a thousand years; those weeds still occupying more than half of the whole soil._