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To sum up the whole. The prohibitions of the Quakers, in the first
place, may become injurious, in the opinion of these philosophical
moralists, by occasioning greater evils, than they were intended to
prevent. They can never, in the second place, be relied upon as
effectual guardians of virtue, because they consider them to be founded
on false principles. And if at any time they can believe them to be
effectual in the office assigned them, they believe them to to be
productive only of a cold or a sluggish virtue.
MORAL EDUCATION.
CHAP. IX.... SECT. I.
_Reply of the Quakers to these objections--they say first, that they are
to be guided by revelation in the education of their children--and that
the education, which they adopt, is sanctioned by revelation, and by the
practice of the early Christians--they maintain again, that the
objections are not applicable to them, for they pre-suppose
circumstances concerning them, which are not true--they allow the system
of filling the mind with virtue to be the most desirable--but they
maintain that it cannot be acted upon abstractedly--and, that if it
could, it would be as dangerous, as the philosophical moralists make
their system of the prohibitions._
To these objections the Quakers would make the following reply.
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