It is upon the excitement of the passions, which must have risen to a
furious height, before such desperate actions as those, which have been
specified, could have commenced, that the Quakers have founded their
second argument for the prohibition of games of chance, or of any
amusements or transactions, connected with a monied stake. It is one of
their principal tenets, as will be diffusively shewn in a future volume,
that the supreme Creator of the universe affords a certain portion of
his own spirit, or a certain emanation of the pure principle, to all his
rational creatures, for the regulation of their spiritual concerns. They
believe, therefore, that stillness and quietness, both of spirit and of
body, are necessary for them, as far as these can be obtained. For how
can a man, whose earthly passions are uppermost, be in a fit state to
receive, or a man of noisy and turbulent habits be in a fit state to
attend to, the spiritual admonitions of this pure influence? Hence one
of the first points in the education of the Quakers is to attend to the
subjugation of the will; to take care that every perverse passion be
checked; and that the creature be rendered calm and passive. Hence
Quaker children are rebuked for all expressions of anger, as tending to
raise those feelings, which ought to be suppressed.
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