And this evil will be likely to continue with him in
the various changes of his life.
They hold it also to be contrary to the spirit of Christianity. For men
who personate characters in this way, express joy and grief, when in
reality there may be none of these feelings in their hearts. They
express noble sentiments, when their whole lives may have been
remarkable for their meanness, and go often afterwards and wallow in
sensual delights. They personate the virtuous character to day, and
perhaps to-morrow that of the rake, and, in the latter case, they utter
his profligate sentiments, and speak his profane language. Now
Christianity requires simplicity and truth. It allows no man to pretend
to be what he is not. And it requires great circumspection of its
followers with respect to what they may utter, because it makes every
man accountable for his idle words.
The Quakers therefore are of opinion, that they cannot as men, either
professing christian tenets, or christian love, encourage others to
assume false characters, or to [5] personate those which are not their
own.
[Footnote 5: Rousseau condemns the stage upon the same principle. "It
is, says he, the art of dissimulation--of assuming a foreign character,
and of appearing differently from what a man really is--of flying into a
passion without a cause, and of saying what he does not think, as
naturally as if he really did--in a word of forgetting himself to
personate others.
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