ng was broken in a
division did doctrinal questions come to discussion on the Hill.

The moral bearing of the one cardinal doctrine of Quakerism is well
expressed in the following quotation from a Friend qualified to speak
with authority:

"The Friends have been consistent in all their peculiarities with one
central principle, the presence and inspiration of the Divine Spirit in
the human soul. This has been the reason for their opposition to
slavery. They felt, You cannot hold in slavery GOD! And God is in this
black man's life, therefore you cannot enslave God in him. So you must
not inflict capital punishment upon this man in whom is God.

"The same argument dignified woman, who was made the equal of man. The
same argument applies to the impossibility of war. You cannot think of
God fighting against God. The Quaker had no sentimental idea of
suffering; but he believed that you cannot take life, in which is God.

"The same argument applied to weights and measures; the Quakers early
demanded that they be officially sealed. So they believed in only one
standard of truth, rather than one for conversation and one for a court
of justice. No oaths were necessary for those who spoke for God all the
time."[12]

In this belief one sees the principle on which were selected the reforms
in which the Quaker Preacher was interested. "He appears to have had ...
his mind strongly influenced to an active protest against the evils of
slavery, war, capital punishment and intemperance."[13] Each of these
reforms was inspired by reverence for human life, which was thought to
be desecrated or abused.

This simple code expressed itself in abstinence from practices believed
to defile the body. Members of the Meeting early adopted a strict rule
against the use of intoxicating liquors. It is said of the ancestors of
Richard Osborn that: "Of these six generations not a man has ever been
known to use spirituous liquors, or tobacco, to indulge in profanity, or
to be guilty of a dishonest action."[14]

A sense of personal degradation underlay their opposition to poverty
among members. There is record of an order of the Meeting, in 1775, for
the purchase of a cow "to loan to Joseph ----." The practice thus early
observed has since then been unbroken. The member of the community who
comes to want is at this day taken care of by popular subscription.
Through the early century the Meeting accomplished this end, sometimes
by formal, sometimes b