Now this answer would comprise the
effect, which the Quakers attach to the comic performances of the stage.
They consider them as drawing the mind from serious reflection, and
disposing it to levity. But they believe that a mind, gradually
accustomed to light thoughts, and placing its best gratification in
light objects, must be disqualified in time for the gravity of religious
exercise, and be thus hindered from partaking of the pleasures which
such an exercise must produce.
They are of opinion also, that such exhibitions, having, as was lately
mentioned, a tendency to weaken the moral character, must have a
similarly injurious effect. For what innovations can be made on the
human heart, so as to seduce it from innocence, that will not
successively wean it both from the love and the enjoyment of the
Christian virtues?
The Quakers also believe, that dramatic exhibitions have a power of vast
excitement of the mind. If they have no such power, they are insipid. If
they have, they are injurious. A person is all the evening at a play in
an excited state. He goes home, and goes to bed with his imagination
heated, and his passions roused. The next morning he rises. He remembers
what he has seen and heard, the scenery, the language, the sentiments,
the action.
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