The origin of this trait must be obvious to all.  The Quakers, as we have seen, will neither pay tithes, nor perform military service, nor illuminate their houses, like other people, though they are sure of suffering by their refusal to comply with custom in these cases.  Now, when individuals, few in number, become singular, and differ from the world at large, it is generally considered that the majority are in the right, and that the minority are in the wrong.  But obstinacy may be defined to be a perseverance in that which is generally considered to be wrong.

This epithet has attached, and will attach to those who resist the popular opinion, till men are better educated, or till they lose their prejudices, or have more correct and liberal notions on religion.  The early Christians were themselves accused of obstinacy, and this even by the enlightened Pliny.  He tells, us, that they would not use wine and frankincense before the statues of the emperors; and that “there was no question that for such obstinacy they deserved punishment."[39]

[Footnote 39:  “Pervicaciam certe et inflexibitem obstinationem debere puniri.”]

In judging of the truth of this trait, two queries will arise.  First, whether the Quakers, in adhering rigidly to those singularities which have produced it, are really wrong as a body of Christians?  And, secondly, whether they do not conscientiously believe themselves to be right?

In the case of the early Christians, which has been mentioned, we, who live at this day, have no doubt that Pliny put a false estimate on their character.  We believe them to have done their duty, and we believe also that they considered themselves as doing it, when they refused divine honours to the emperors.  And the action, therefore, which Pliny denominated obstinacy, would, if it had been left to us to name it, have been called inflexible virtue, as arising out of a sense of the obligations imposed upon them by the Christian religion.

In the same manner we may argue with respect to the Quakers.  Who, for example, if he will try to divest himself of the prejudices of custom, and of the policy of the world, feels such a consciousness of his own powers as positively to pronounce, that the notions of the Quakers are utterly false, as to the illicitness of wars under the Christian system?  The arguments of the Quakers on this subject are quite as good, in my apprehension, as any that I have heard advanced on the other side of the question.  These arguments too are unquestionably much more honourable to Christianity, and much more consistent with the nature and design of the Gospel dispensation.  They are supported also by the belief and the practice of the earliest Christians.  They are arguments again, which have suggested themselves to many good men, who were not Quakers, and which have occasioned doubts in some instances, and conviction in others, against the prejudice of education and the dominion of custom.  And if the event should ever come to pass, which most Christians expect, that men will one day or other turn their swords and their spears into ploughshares and pruning-hooks, they, who live in that day, will applaud the perseverance of the Quakers in this case, and weep over the obstinacy and inconsistency of those who combated their opinions.