Sixth day. Attended the funeral of our honest friend Richard Townsend. There was a large collection of Friends and neighbours, he being generally esteemed. A meeting was held on the occasion, which proved a very solemn season. The people’s attention was called to the necessity of a timely preparation for death, in a large arousing testimony; setting forth the great and singular advantages which would redound to the children of men, by their obtaining right ideas and apprehensions of God. The want of these left them to be led away into a belief of many strange and ideal notions concerning him, particularly that of foreordination; the inconsistency of which, my mind was led to unfold to the auditory, by this and other undeniable arguments;--that, as God’s ordination, and God’s creation, and God’s will, are always in perfect unison, and cannot be diverse one from the other; and as all that he wills and creates is immutably good, agreeably to his own declaration in the work of creation; hence, whatever he ordains must likewise be immutably good: therefore, if there is any such thing as sin and iniquity in the world, then God has neither willed it, nor ordained it; as it is impossible for him to will contradictions. And secondly, if he has, previous to man’s creation, willed and determined all his actions, then certainly every man stands in the same state of acceptance with him, and a universal salvation must certainly take place; which I conceive the favourers of foreordination would be as unwilling as myself to believe. And moreover, if man was not vested with the power of free agency, and a liberty of determining his own will, in relation to a choice of good or evil, he could not be an accountable creature; neither would it be in his power to commit sin. It was a time of favour, and the Lord’s blessing on the labours of the day was reverently supplicated. O, saith my soul, may they have the desired effect.