discouraged her. He said that
if she should go into New England with the avowed intention of laboring
among Friends on the subject of slavery in _any_ way, her path would be
completely closed, and she would find herself entirely helpless. He
even went so far as to say that he believed there were Friends who
would destroy her character if she attempted anything of the kind. He
proposed that she should go to his house for the winter, and employ her
time in writing for the Anti-Slavery Society, and doing anything else
she could incidentally. But this plan did not suit her. She felt it
right to offer her services to Friends first, and was glad she had done
so; but if they would not accept them she must take them elsewhere.
Besides, when she communicated her plan to Catherine Morris, Catherine
objected to it very decidedly, and said she _could not_ go without a
certificate and a companion, and these she knew Friends would not grant
her.

"Under all these circumstances," Angelina writes, "I felt a little like
the apostle Paul, who having first offered the Jews the gospel, and
finding they would not receive it, believed it right for him to turn to
the Gentiles. Didst thou ever hear anything so absurd as what Catherine
says about the certificate and a companion? I cannot feel bound by such
unreasonable restrictions if my Heavenly Father opens a door for me,
and I do not mean to submit to them. She knows very well that Arch
Street Meeting would grant me neither, but as the servant of Jesus
Christ I have no right to bow down thus to the authority of man, and I
do not expect ever again to suffer myself to be trammelled as I have
been. It is sinful in any human being to resign his or her conscience
and free agency to any society or individual, if such usurpation can be
resisted by moral power. The course our Society is now determined upon,
of crushing everything which opposes the peculiar views of Friends,
seems to me just like the powerful effort of the Jews to close the lips
of Jesus. They are afraid that the Society will be completely broken up
if they allow any difference of opinion to pass unrebuked, and they are
resolved to put down all who question in any way the doctrines of
Barclay, the soundness of Fox, or the practices which are built on
them. But the time is fast approaching when we shall see who is for
Christ, and who for Fox and Barclay, the Paul and Apollos of our
Society."

Her plan of going to New England frustra