People of other religious denominations generally approach nearer to one another in their respective creeds, than the Quakers to either of them.  Most christians agree, for example, in the use of Baptism in some form or other, and also in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  But the Quakers, as will be shown in this volume, consider these ordinances in a spiritual light, admitting no ceremonials in so pure a system as that of the Christian religion.

But these differences, which may thus soon or late take their rise upon these or other subjects, where the parties set a value on their respective religious opinions, cannot fail of being augmented by new circumstances in time.  The parties in question have children.  The education of these is now a subject of the most important concern.  New disputes are engendered on this head, both adhering to their respective tenets as the best to be embraced by their rising offspring.  Unable at length to agree on this point, a sort of compromise takes place.  The boys are denied, while the girls are permitted, baptism.  The boys, again, are brought up to meeting, and the girls to church, or they go to church and meeting alternately.  In the latter case, none of the children can have any fixed principles.  Nor will they be much better off in the former.  There will be frequently an opposition of each other’s religious opinions, and a constant hesitation and doubt about the consistency of these.  There are many points, which the mothers will teach the daughters as right, or essential, but which the fathers will teach the sons as erroneous or unimportant.  Thus disputes will be conveyed to the children.  In their progress through life other circumstances may arise, which may give birth to feelings of an unpleasant nature.  The daughters will be probably instructed in the accomplishments of the world.  They will be also introduced to the card-room, and to assemblies, and to the theatre, in their turn.  The boys will be admitted to neither.  The latter will of course feel their pleasures abridged, and consider their case as hard, and their father as morose and cruel.  Little jealousies may arise upon this difference of their treatment, which may be subversive of filial and fraternal affection.  Nor can religion be called in to correct them; for while the two opposite examples of father and mother, and of sisters and brothers, are held out to be right, there will be considerable doubts as to what are religious truths.

The Quakers urge again in behalf of their law against mixed marriages, that if these were not forbidden, it would be impossible to carry on the discipline of the society.  The truth of this may be judged by the preceding remarks.  For if the family were divided into two parties, as has been just stated, on account of their religion, it would be but in a kind of mongrel-state.  If, for instance, it were thought right, that the Quaker-part of it should preserve the simplicity of the Quaker-dress, and the plainness