The Quakers also believe, that dramatic exhibitions have a power of vast excitement of the mind.  If they have no such power, they are insipid.  If they have, they are injurious.  A person is all the evening at a play in an excited state.  He goes home, and goes to bed with his imagination heated, and his passions roused.  The next morning he rises.  He remembers what he has seen and heard, the scenery, the language, the sentiments, the action.  He continues in the same excited state for the remainder of the day.  The extravagant passions of distracted lovers, the wanton addresses of actors, are still fresh upon his mind.  Now it is contended by the Quakers, that a person in such an excited state, but particularly if the excitement pleases, must be in a very unfavourable state for the reception of the pure principle, or for the promotion of the practical duties of religion.  It is supposed that if any religious book, or if any part of the sacred writings, were handed to him in these moments, he would be incapable of enjoying them; and of course, that religious retirement, which implies an abstraction from the tilings of the world, would be impracticable at such a season.

The Quakers believe also, that the exhibitions of the drama must, from their own nature, without any other consideration, disqualify for the pleasures of religion.  It was a frequent saying of George Fox, taken from the apostle Peter, that those who indulged in such pleasures were dead, while they were alive; that is, they were active in their bodies; they ran about briskly after their business or their pleasures; they shewed the life of their bodily powers; but they were extinct as to spiritual feeling.  By this he meant that the pleasures of the theatre, and others of a similar nature, were in direct opposition to the pleasures of religion.  The former were from the world worldly.  They were invented according to the dispositions and appetites of men.  But the latter were from the spirit spiritual.  Hence there was no greater difference between life and death, than between these pleasures.  Hence the human mind was made incapable of receiving both at the same time; and hence the deeper it were to get into the enjoyment of the former, the less qualified it must become of course for the enjoyment of the latter.

SECT.  V.

Theatre forbidden—­because injurious to the happiness of man by disqualifying him for domestic enjoyments—­Quakers value these next to the pleasures of religion—­sentiments of Cowper—­theatre has this tendency, by weaning gradually from a love of home—­and has it in a greater degree than any other of the amusements of the world.

The Quakers, ever since the institution of their society, have abandoned the diversions of the world.  They have obtained their pleasures from other quarters.  Some of these they have found in one species of enjoyment, and others in another.  But those, which they particularly prize, they have found in the enjoyment of domestic happiness; and these pleasures they value next to the pleasures of religion.