in the primitive
Christians to avert from their persons, by whatever lawful means, the
compulsory eating of meats which had been offered unto idols. I dare say
the Roman Prefects and Exarchates had plenty of petitioning in their
days. But what would a Festus or Agrippa have replied to a petition to
that effect, presented to him by some evasive Laodicean, with the very
meat between his teeth, which he had been chewing voluntarily rather
than abide the penalty? Relief for tender consciences means nothing,
where the conscience has previously relieved itself,--that is, has
complied with the injunctions which it seeks preposterously to be rid
of. Relief for conscience there is properly none, but what by better
information makes an act appear innocent and lawful with which the
previous conscience was not satisfied to comply. All else is but relief
from penalties, from scandal incurred by a complying practice, where the
conscience itself is not fully satisfied.

"But, say you, we have hard measure: the Quakers are indulged with the
liberty denied to us. They are; and dearly have they earned it. You have
come in (as a sect, at least) in the cool of the evening, at the
eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened in the fires of
persecution in the seventeenth century,--not quite to the stake and
fagot, but little short of that: they grew up and thrived against
noisome prisons, cruel beatings, whippings, stockings. They have since
endured a century or two of scoffs, contempts; they have been a by-word,
and a nay-word; they have stood unmoved: and the consequence of long
conscientious resistance on one part is invariably, in the end,
remission on the other. The legislature, that denied you the tolerance,
which I do not know that at that time you even asked, gave them the
liberty which, without granting, they would have assumed. No penalties
could have driven them into the churches. This is the consequence of
entire measures. Had the early Quakers consented to take oaths, leaving
a Protest with the clerk of the court against them in the same breath
with which they had taken them, do you in your conscience think that
they would have been indulged at this day in their exclusive privilege
of affirming? Let your people go on for a century or so, marrying in
your own fashion, and I will warrant them, before the end of it, the
legislature will be willing to concede to them more than they at present
demand.

"Either the institution