otherwise, the "hirelings" of the British establishment must be as holy as their vocation, as stainless as their surplice, as unsullied as their lawn. But I know it from actual converse with individuals! with multitudes, preachers of both sexes, as well as their commonalty! and I have yet to learn what is the definition of that INFIDELITY to which Jesus Christ hath pledged himself to award DAMNATION, if they are not legitimately and most awfully in danger of it! When one of their first preachers tells me, in personal conference, that Jesus Christ made nó atonement; that God exacts none except what the sinner makes with his tears; and that the resurrection of the body is a monster of absurdity; when he ridicules "the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" when he doubts the miraculous conception of Christ, thinks it probable that Joseph was his proper father, and at all events considers that to err in this is nothing to the sin of eating West India sugar! When another tells me that Ezekiel bore the sins of his age just as Christ bore ours— being melancholy on account of them! When another takes a little child and pronounces him "without all sin, as holy as an angel," while the scriptures say, "that which is born of the flesh, is flesh; ye must be born again: the wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies: we were by nature children of wrath, even as others ;" and while their whole tenor teaches the "enmity of the carnal mind against God :" when all this, and a million other things in perfect keeping with this, are taught and held by the society,

the known holders and teachers uncensured by their authorities, I am reduced to the fair necessity of contradicting the New Testament, or discrediting the piety of the Quakers, or defiling my conscience with the charity of the world which " rejoiceth [NOT] in the truth," or abandoning the laws of rational thought and evidence.

3. Another reason for my alleged severity is that I believe they have been greatly injured by a luscious and spurious clemency; and that nothing but "great plainness of speech" and uncompromising applications of the truth, can reach the seat of their malady. They are natively just as sinful as other men, and they equally require all the specifics of the gospel for their restoration. But who shall tell them what they are, and what they must become, by "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," as the only alternative of perdition? Their preachers have altered very much since I have heard them, if they will ever do this wisely and faithfully! What then is my office? To apologize for the gospel and flatter them in the name of the Lord? "For we are not as many, who corrupt (dilute, as wine is artfully reduced by dishonest mixtures) THE WORD OF GOD: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ." I know of none who more dilute and enervate the genuine discriminating might of the gospel than the preachers of Quakerism, especially their tuneful female preachers. These are frequently charmers. They sing their inspired fascination, that affects the physical sensibilities, acts rather soothingly or in some

indefinable way on the nervous system, comforts the unregenerate, and instructs nobody.

4. Any other course, than that herein pursued, would do violence to my own convictions of the immutable nature of the gospel and of the contrariety of Quakerism to that nature; would afford no peace to my conscience or pleasure to my memory. My views of the duty of a preacher may be found in the second and third chapters of Ezekiel, in the first of Jeremiah, and in the last four verses of the second of second Corinthians. If I have said any thing that is untrue, let it be demonstrated, and (if need be) I will publicly confess and retract it! Not being inspired or infallible, I may commit errors; and bound to nothing but truth, I can confess them. Nothing else shall move me. And by demonstration I mean a sound argument from scripture against the doctrinal, or from witnesses against the historical, or from self-contradiction against the didactic averments. And let no professor of christianity join the popular outcry against the alleged harshness of this treatise, who is not prepared to show its essential contrariety to the religion of the Bible. There is no people in the world who more deal in softness or are more injured by it, than Friends. It is not at all my primary aim to please them-I expect to make them angry: but this is not my desire; it is rather at once my anticipation and my GRIEF! Tell me how the truth of scripture can be faithfully displayed against its inimical corrupters so as to please them, and that way I would like to adopt: still, if they must be goaded with truth or remain ignorant

of its nature and hostile to its charms, then I say let them feel it!

I have called their preaching, especially that of the feminine department, tuneful; for such it eminently is operating like a charm, as pouring on the soul the freshest tide of heaven's eternal minstrelsy, through them. With all their opposition to singing, which they "cry against" and by profession totally disuse in worship, I know of few denominations who do so much at it, in a sort, as Friends. They sing their preaching, and their praying-which seldom occurs, almost all of it. Their inspiration moves with difficulty when not on a canter. This inspired singing, is mainly what I mean by sorcery, as applied to their ways. Still, it is a fact that the effect of their devout cantation is very considerable. It arrests the attention and enchains the sympathies; and is quite entertaining and agreeable often, while it dispenses with thought-work and conscientious selfapplication. Friends might learn, one would think, that singing is natural to us; that it suits our constitution; that it is founded in principles that never vary; that its powers will become adverse, if not consecrated; that God has incorporated it both in the body and the soul of his worship; that its sanction and its evidence pervade the whole Bible; that it deserves scientific and philosophical cultivation; that it is a delightful and most excellent part of worship; that Jesus Christ practised it; that his apostles established and regulated it; that his church has evermore maintained it; and that Fox and his company nullified the divine constitution when they

professedly exploded it, with "all sorts of music," from their hearts and voices.

A great fault it is in any people which I am now about to expose; and common, wherever the truth is not known and duly honored; yet, more rife among "the religious society," and more embodied in some sense surreptitiously in their religious system, than among any other description of religionists known to me: it is this-SINCERITY IS ALL. The sophism consists in the generic vagueness of the word sincerity, that determines nothing as to the moral qualities of the mind in religion; while it requires us to accord the superlative dignity of christian character to men "who obey not the gospel of God," and who insist on salvation, nevertheless, because they are sincere. This is probably the whole hope, if not the whole creed, and the whole religion, of thousands of ungodly men, especially of the foxian school. There are many such reposing in hope among Friends. They hold to the word, as if it were the thing; or to the thing, as if there were possibly only one way of being sincere and no way of going to perdition with "a lie in the right hand." Hence they are serenely comfortable in their graceless attainments. They apply their minds with no intensity of earnestness and prayer, to ascertain the truth. They live, in numerous instances, more ignorant of the contents of the Bible than many a six-year-old pupil of a well-taught infant school; they are imperturbably satisfied with their own doings; believe in the "effectual operation" of the light