All of these communications, both pro and con, are presented simply for what they are worth. When it comes to determining what is or is not "unsound doctrine," we are simply dealing with personal opinion, and not with matters of absolute fact. This is especially true of a religious body that had never attempted to define or limit its doctrines in a written creed. The attempt of the Philadelphia elders to deal in a disciplinary way with Elias Hicks on the score of the manner or matter of his preaching was pronounced by his friends a usurpation of authority. It was held that the elders in question had no jurisdiction in the case, in proof of which the following paragraph in the Discipline of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was cited: "And our advice to all our ministers is that they be frequent in reading the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; and if any in the course of their ministry shall misapply or draw unsound inferences or wrong conclusions from the text, or shall misbehave themselves in point of conduct or conversation, let them be admonished in love and tenderness by the elders or overseers where they live."[124] [124] Rules of Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of Friends, held in Philadelphia, 1806, p. 62. It is undoubtedly true that a certain amount of encouragement came to the opponents of Elias Hicks in Philadelphia from some Friends on Long Island, and from three or four residents of Jericho, but they did not at that time at least officially represent any meeting of Friends at Jericho, either real or pretended. This far in the controversy the aggressors were confined to those who at that time were considered the "weight of the meeting," and who at best represented only the so-called "select" meeting and not the Society at large. At the beginning at least the trouble was an affair of the ministers and elders. It later affected the whole Society, by the efforts of the leaders on both sides. Incidents are not wanting to show that up to the very end of the controversy the rank and file of Friends had little vital interest in the matters involved in the trouble. It is related on good authority that two prominent members of Nine Partners Quarterly Meeting in Dutchess County, New York, husband and wife, made a compact before attending the meeting in Eighth month, 1828, feeling that the issue would reach its climax at that time. They agreed that whichever side retained control of the organization and the meeting-house would be considered by them the meeting, and receive their support. We mention this as undoubtedly representing the feeling in more than one case. The fact that it took practically a decade of excitement and manipulation, to create the antagonisms, personal and otherwise, which resulted in an open rupture, shows how little disposed the majority of Friends were to disrupt the Society. CHAPTER XVI. The Time of Unsettlement.