This arises from
the abruptness or suddenness of transition. For having been shut up
within narrow boundaries for a part of their lives, they go greater
lengths, when once let loose, than others, who have not been equally
curbed and confined."
"But while they are of opinion, that prohibitions are likely to be thus
injurious to Quaker-youth, they are of opinion, that they are never to
be relied upon as effectual guardians of morality, because they consider
them as built upon false principles."
"They are founded, they conceive, on the principle, that ignorance is a
security for innocence, or that vice is so attractive, that we cannot
resist it but by being kept out of the way. In the first case, they
contend that the position is false; for ignorant persons are of all
others the most likely, when they fall into temptations, to be seduced,
and in the second, they contend that there is a distrust of divine
providence in his moral government of the world."
"They are founded, again, they conceive, on false principles, inasmuch
as the Quakers confound causes with sub-causes, or causes with
occasions. If a person, for example, were to get over a hedge, and
receive a thorn in his hand, and die of the wound, this thorn would be
only the occasion, and not the cause of his death.
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