I shall conclude the discipline of the Quakers by making a few remarks
on the subject of disowning.
The Quakers conceive they have a right to excommunicate or disown;
because persons, entering into any society, have a right to make their
own reasonable rules of membership, and so early as the year 1663, this
practice had been adopted by George Fox, and those who were in religious
union with him. Those, who are born in the society, are bound of course,
to abide by these rules, while they continue to be the rules of the
general will, or to leave it. Those who come into it by convincement,
are bound to follow them, or not to sue for admission into membership.
This right of disowning, which arises from the reasonableness of the
thing, the Quakers consider to have been pointed out and established by
the author of the christian religion, who determined that [34]if a
disorderly person, after having received repeated admonitions, should still
continue disorderly, he should be considered as an alien by the church.
[Footnote 34: Matt. 18.v. 17.]
The observations, which I shall make on the subject of disowning, will
be wholly confined to it as it must operate as a source of suffering to
those, who are sentenced to undergo it.
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