SECT.  IV.

Three great principles discoverable in the discipline, as hitherto explained—­these applicable to the discipline of larger societies, or to the criminal codes of states—­lamentable, that as Christian principles, they have not been admitted into our own—­Quakers, as far as they have had influence in legislation, have adopted them—­exertions of William Penn—­Legislature of Pennsylvania as example to other countries in this particular.

I find it almost impossible to proceed to the great courts or meetings of the Quakers, which I had allotted for my next subject, without stopping a while to make a few observations on the principles of that part of the discipline, which I have now explained.

It may be observed, first, that the great object of this part of the discipline is the reformation of the offending person:  secondly, that the means of effecting this object consists of religious instruction or advice:  and thirdly, that no pains are to be spared, and no time to be limited, for the trial of these means, or, in other words, that nothing is to be left undone, while there is a hope that the offender may be reclaimed.  Now these principles the Quakers adopt in the exercise of their discipline, because, as a Christian community, they believe they ought to be guided only by Christian principles, and they know of no other, which the letter, or the spirit of Christianity, can warrant.

I shall trespass upon the patience of the reader in this place, only till I have made an application of these principles, or till I have shewn him how far these might be extended, and extended with advantage to morals, beyond the limits of the Quaker-society, by being received as the basis, upon which a system, of penal laws might be founded, among larger societies, or states.

It is much to be lamented, that nations, professing Christianity, should have lost sight, in their various acts of legislation, of Christian principles:  or that they should not have interwoven some such beautiful principles as those, which we have seen adopted by the Quakers, into the system of their penal laws.  But if this negligence or omission would appear worthy of regret, if reported of any Christian nation, it would appear most so, if reported of our own, where one would have supposed, that the advantages of civil and religious liberty, and those of a reformed religion, would have had their influence is the correction of our judgments, and in the benevolent dispositions of our will.  And yet nothing is more true, than that these good influences have either never been produced, or, if produced, that they have never been attended to, upon this subject.  There seems to be no provision for religions instruction in our numerous prisons.  We seem to make no patient trials of those, who are confined in them, for their reformation.  But, on the other hand, we seem to hurry them off