[Footnote 141:  Gal. 4. 10.]

For the latter reason also they do not assemble for worship on those days which their own government, though they are greatly attached to it, appoint as fasts.  They are influenced also by another reason in this latter case.  They conceive as religion is of a spiritual nature, and must depend upon the spirit of God, that true devotion cannot be excited for given purposes or at a given time.  They are influenced again by the consideration, that the real fast is of a different nature from that required. [142] “Is not this the fast, says Isaiah, that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out, to thy house?  When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thy own flesh?” This the Quakers believe to be the true fast, and not the work of a particular day, but to be the daily work of every real Christian.

[Footnote 142:  Isaiah 58. 6. 7.]

Indeed no one day, in the estimation of the Quakers, can be made by human appointment either more holy or more proper for worship than another.  They do not even believe that the Jewish Sabbath, which was by the appointment of God, continues in Gospel times, or that it has been handed down by divine authority as the true Sabbath for Christians.  All days with the Quakers are equally holy, and all equally proper for the worship of God.  In this opinion they coincide with the ever memorable John Hales.  “For prayer, indeed, says this venerable man, was the Sabbath ordained:  yet prayer itself is Sabbathless, and admits of no rest, no intermission at all.  If our hands be clean, we must, as our Apostle commands us, lift them up every where, at all times, and make every place a church, every day a Sabbath-day, every hour canonical.  As you go to the market; as you stand in the streets; as you walk in the fields—­in all these places, you may pray as well, and with as good acceptance, as in the church:  for you yourselves are temples of the Holy Ghost, if the grace of God be in you, more precious than any of those which are made with hands.”

Though, however, the Quakers believe no one day in the sight of God to be holier than another, and no one capable of being rendered so by human authority, yet they think that Christians ought to assemble for the public worship of God.  They think they ought to bear an outward and public testimony for God; and this can only be done by becoming members of a visible church, where they may be seen to acknowledge him publicly in the face of men.  They think also, that the public worship of God increases, as it were, the fire of devotion, and enlarges the sphere of spiritual life in the souls of men.  “God causes the inward life, says Barclay, the more to abound when his children assemble themselves diligently together,