In the spring of the year 1806, feeling my mind drawn in gospel love, to pay a religious visit to some of the neighbouring towns and villages on our island, Staten Island and New-York, among those not in profession with us; and opening my concern to our monthly meeting, I received the concurrence and unity of my friends therein. I was from home in this service about twenty days, and had about thirty meetings among those not of our society, generally to good satisfaction, and to the peace of my own mind. Many, in most places, appeared convinced of the truth and propriety of our doctrine and principles, as they were communicated, and divers feelingly expressed their satisfaction therewith, and the heart-felt comfort they witnessed in those opportunities; and I had cause to hope that light was breaking forth in some places, which had long been under the power of great darkness, through the undue force of wrong customs, and a false education, principally propagated by a mercenary, anti-christian ministry. My mind was often affected, in considering the emptiness and fruitless state of many of those professors under different names, who had a form of godliness, and were very zealous in attending to the outside ceremonials, of what they called religion and worship; but in their lives and conduct denied the power thereof, being persuaded by their blind guides, to believe they might be saints, while they were sinners, and stand in a state of justification, without sanctification. But this is a false and very dangerous doctrine. O, saith my spirit, may the light of Israel arise and come forth, and by the brightness of its arising, dispel all those mists and fogs, those works of darkness, which those blind guides have raised up between God and the souls of the people; and deliver the nations out of the hands of all oppressors, that so none, at the awful closing period, may witness verified in themselves, that solemn truth, that “if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”