It was said of the Quakers in George Fox’s time, after their character had been established, that, “if they did not stand, the nation would run into debauchery.”  By this I apprehend it was meant, that it was a desirable thing to have a people to look up to, who, residing in the ’midst of a vicious community, professed to be followers of that which was right, and to resist the current of bad example in their own times; or that such a people might be considered as a leaven, that might leaven the whole lump, but that, if this leaven were lost, the community might lose one of its visible incitements to virtue.  Now in this way the Quakers have had a certain general usefulness in the world.  They have kept more, I apprehend, to first principles, than any other people.  They have afforded a moral example.  This example ought to have been useful to others.  To those who were well inclined, it should have been as a torch to have lighted up their virtue, and it should have been a perpetual monument for reproof to others, who were entering upon a career of vice.

The first particular good, after the general one now stated, which the Quakers have done, has been, that they have shewn to those who have been spectators of their conduct, that all persecution for matters of religion, as it is highly criminal in the eyes of the Supreme Being, so it is inadequate to the end proposed.  This proposition, indeed, seems to be tolerably Well understood at the present day.  At least they whose minds have been well informed, acknowledge it.  The history of martyrdom, by which we learn how religion soars above all suffering, how the torments inflicted on the body are unable to reach the mind, how the moral Governor of the world reigns triumphant upon earth, how tyranny and oppression fall prostrate before virtue, losing their malignant aim, has been one, among other causes, of this knowledge.  But as history is known but to few, and is not remembered by all, the Quakers are particularly useful by holding up the truth of the proposition to our daily sight, that is, by the example they continue to afford us of bearing their testimony in all cases where the civil magistrate is concerned on the one hand, and their consciences on the other.

A second good, which the Quakers have done, is by shewing, as a whole body, the power of Christianity in the subjugation of the will of men, and its influence on their character.

They are living proofs, in the first instance, that human nature is not the stubborn thing, which many have imagined it to be; that, however it may be depraved, it is still corrigible; and that this correction is universally practicable, for that there are as various dispositions in this society as in any other in proportion to its numbers.  They shew, that Christianity can alter the temper, that it can level enmities, and that there is no just occasion for any to despair.  And they are living proofs, in the second, as to what