They observe in
them a romantic spirit, a sort of wonder-loving imagination, and a
disposition towards enthusiastic flights of the fancy, which to sober
persons has the appearance of a temporary derangement. As the former
effect must become injurious by producing forwardness, so this must
become so by producing unsteadiness, of character.
A third effect, which the Quakers find to be produced among this
description of readers, is conspicuous in a perverted morality. They
place almost every value in feeling, and in the affectation of
benevolence. They consider these as the true and only sources of good.
They make these equivalent, to moral principle. And actions flowing from
feeling, though feeling itself is not always well founded, and
sometimes runs into compassion even against justice, they class as moral
duties arising from moral principles. They consider also too frequently
the laws of religion as barbarous restraints, and which their new
notions of civilized refinement may relax at will. And they do not
hesitate, in consequence, to give a colour to some fashionable vices,
which no christian painter would admit into any composition, which was
his own.
To this it may be added, that, believing their own knowledge to be
supreme, and their own system of morality to be the only enlightened
one, they fall often into scepticism, and pass easily from thence to
infidelity.
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