This charge, if it were true, would be serious indeed.  It would be serious, because it would take away from the religion of the Quakers one of its greatest and best characters.  For how could any people be spiritually minded, who were the worshippers of lifeless forms?  It would be serious again, because it would shew their religion, like the box of Pandora, to be pregnant with evils within itself.  For people, who place religion in particular forms, must unavoidably become superstitious.  It would be serious again, because if parents were to carry such notions into their families, they would produce mischief.  The young would be dissatisfied, if forced to cultivate particularities, for which they see no just or substantial reason.  Dissentions would arise among them.  Their morality too would be confounded, if they were to see these minutiae idolized at home, but disregarded by persons of known religious character in the world.  Add to which, that they might adopt erroneous notions of religion.  For they might be induced to lay too much stress upon the payment of the anise and cummin, and too little upon the observance of the weightier matters of the law.

As the charge therefore is unquestionably a serious one, I shall not allow it to pass without some comments.  And in the first place it maybe observed that, whether this preciseness, which has been imputed to some Quakers, amounts to an idolizing of forms, can never be positively determined, except we had the power of looking into the hearts of those, who have incurred the charge.  We may form, however, a reasonable conjecture, whether it does or not by presumptive evidence, taken from incontrovertible outward facts.

The first outward fact that presents itself to us, is the fact of the origin of the Quaker-dress, if the early Quakers, when they met in religious union, had met to deliberate and fix upon a form or standard of apparel for the society, in vain could any person have expected to repel this charge.  But no such standard was ever fixed.  The dress of the Quakers has descended from father to son in the way that has been described.  There is reason therefore to suppose, that the Quakers as a religious body, have deviated less than others front the primitive habits of their ancestors, rather from a fear of the effects of unreasonable changes of dress upon the mind, than from an attachment to lifeless forms.

The second outward fact, which may be resorted to as furnishing a ground for reasonable conjecture, is the doctrine of the Quakers upon this subject.  The Quakers profess to follow christianity in all cases, where its doctrines can be clearly ascertained.  I shall state therefore what christianity says upon this point.  I shall shew that what Quakerism says is in unison with it.  And I shall explain more at large the principle, that has given birth to the discipline of the Quakers relative to their dress.