Shakers, who I maintain, and can prove, to be true, genuine imitators of the Primitive Christians, and a perfect exemplification of their manners, and modes of thinking.  I adduce them the more confidently, because, being simple, and unlearned, their character has been formed by the spirit of the New Testament, and perfectly represents the effects of its principles fully carried out, and acted upon.  They never heard of Platonism, or of Pythagoras in their lives, and, consequently, the polemic tricks, and evasions, which have been, as hinted just now, resorted to by Protestant divines, to shift from the shoulders of Christianity to those of Plato or Pythagoras, the obnoxious principles we have been considering, are of no use in this case, as, whatever the characters of these Shakers may be, they were formed by the New Testament, and by nothing else; and I believe, that every scholar in ecclesiastical history, who reads Brown’s history of the Shakers, will be immediately and powerfully struck with the resemblance subsisting between them, and the Christians of the two first centuries.

As examples of the effects of those precepts of Christian morality, which command us to hate father, and mother, and sister, and brother, for the Bake of Jesus, take the following extracts from the history referred to.

“According to their faith, natural affection must be eradicated; and they say they must love all equally alike, as brothers, and sisters in the gospel.  It would exceed the limits of this work to give a particular account of the various schemes that have been contrived, to destroy all natural affection and social attachment between man and wife, parent and child, brothers and sisters; especially towards such as have left the society.  Two instances that occurred about this time, as specimens of others, may suffice.  A mother, who had renounced the faith, (i. e. left the society,) come to Niskeuna to see, her daughter.  Eldress Hannah Matterson told the daughter to go into the room to her carnal mother, and say, ’ What do you come here for?  I don’t want you to come and see me with your carnal affections!’ ’The mother being grieved, replied, ’I did not expect that a daughter of mine would ever address me in that manner.’

’The daughter, in obedience to what she was taught, replied again, ’You have come here with your carnal fleshly desires, and I don’t want to see you,’ and left her mother.”

“Some time after, one Duncan Shapley, who had belonged to the society, called to see Abigail, his sister, at Niskeuna, whom he had not seen for six or seven years; but he was not admitted:  he waited some time, being loath to go away without seeing her.  At last she was ordered to go to the window and address him in the language of abuse and scurrility.  The words she made use of, it would be indecent to mention.  For this she was applauded, and that in the author’s hearing, when he belonged to the society.”