To sum up the whole.  The prohibitions of the Quakers, in the first place, may become injurious, in the opinion of these philosophical moralists, by occasioning greater evils, than they were intended to prevent.  They can never, in the second place, be relied upon as effectual guardians of virtue, because they consider them to be founded on false principles.  And if at any time they can believe them to be effectual in the office assigned them, they believe them to to be productive only of a cold or a sluggish virtue.

MORAL EDUCATION.

CHAP.  IX....  SECT.  I.

Reply of the Quakers to these objections—­they say first, that they are to be guided by revelation in the education of their children—­and that the education, which they adopt, is sanctioned by revelation, and by the practice of the early Christians—­they maintain again, that the objections are not applicable to them, for they pre-suppose circumstances concerning them, which are not true—­they allow the system of filling the mind with virtue to be the most desirable—­but they maintain that it cannot be acted upon abstractedly—­and, that if it could, it would be as dangerous, as the philosophical moralists make their system of the prohibitions.

To these objections the Quakers would make the following reply.

They do not look up either to their own imaginations, or to the imaginations of others, for any rule in the education of their children.  As a christian society, they conceive themselves bound to be guided by revelation, and by revelation only, while it has any injunctions to offer, which relate to this subject.

In adverting to the Old Testament, they find that no less than nine, out of the ten commandments of Moses, are of a prohibitory nature, and, in adverting to the new, that many of the doctrines of Jesus Christ and the apostles are delivered in the form of prohibitions.  They believe that revealed religion prohibits them from following all those pursuits, which the objections notice; for though there is no specific prohibition of each, yet there is an implied one in the spirit of christianity, Violent excitements of the passions on sensual subjects must be unfavourable to religious advancement.  Worldly pleasures must hinder those, which are spiritual.  Impure words and spectacles must affect morals.  Not only evil is to be avoided, but even the appearance of evil.  While therefore these sentiments are acknowledged by christianity, it is to be presumed that the customs, which the objections notice, are to be avoided in christian education.  And as the Quakers consider these to be forbidden to themselves, they feel themselves obliged to forbid them to others.  And, in these parcticular prohibitions, they consider themselves as sanctioned both by the writings and the practice of the early christians.