ess to
the love of truth.

CHAP. XI.

_Second trait is, that they are a superstitious people--Circumstances
that have given birth to this trait--Quakerism, where it is understood,
is seldom chargeable with superstition--Where it is misunderstood, it
leads to it--Subjects in which it may be misunderstood are those of the
province of the Spirit--and of dress and language--Evils to be
misapprehended from a misunderstanding of the former subject._

It may seem wonderful at first sight, that persons, who have discarded
an undue veneration for the saints, and the saints days, and the relics
of the Roman Catholic religion, who have had the resolution to reject
the ceremonials of Protestants, such as baptism and the sacrament of the
supper, and who have broken the terrors of the dominion of the
priesthood, should, of all others, be chargeable with superstition. But
so it is. The world has certainly fixed upon them the character of a
superstitious people. Under this epithet much is included. It is
understood that Quakers are more ready than others to receive mystical
doctrines, more apt to believe in marvellous appearances more willing to
place virtue in circumstances, where many would place imposition; and
that, independently of all this, they are more scrupulous with respect
to the propriety of their ordinary movements, waiting for religious
impulses, when no such impulses are expected by other religious people.

This trait of superstition is an ancient trait in the character of the
Quakers, and has arisen from the following causes.

It has been long imagined, that where a people devote themselves so
exclusively to the influence of the Spirit as the Quakers appear to do,
they will not be sufficiently on their guard to make the proper
distinctions between imagination and revelation, and that they will be
apt to confound impressions, and to bring the divine Spirit out of its
proper sphere into the ordinary occurrences of their lives. And in this
opinion the world considers itself to have been confirmed by an
expression said to have been long in use among Quakers, which is, "that
they will do such and such things if they have liberty to do them." Now
by this expression the Quakers may mean only, that all human things are
so uncertain, and so many unforeseen events may happen, that they dare
make no promises, but they will do the things in question if no obstacle
should arise to prevent them. And this caution in langu