Thus has George Fox, by means
of the advice he gave upon this subject, and the general discipline
which he introduced into the society, kept up for a hundred and fifty
years, against the powerful attacks of the varying fashions of the
world, one steady, and uniform, external appearance among his
descendants; an event, which neither the clergy by means of their
sermons, nor other writers, whether grave or gay, were able to
accomplish during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and which none
of their successors have been able to accomplish from that time to the
present.
SECT III.
_The world usually make objections to the Quaker-dress--the charge is
that there is a preciseness in it which is equivalent to the worshipping
of forms--the truth of this charge not to be ascertained but by a
knowledge of the heart--but outward facts mate against it-such as the
origin of the Quaker-dress--and the Quaker-doctrine on dress--doctrine
of christianity on this subject--opinion of the early christians upon
it--reputed advantages of the Quaker-dress._
I should have been glad to have dismissed the subject of the
Quaker-dress in the last section, but so many objections are usually
made against it, that I thought it right to stop for a while to consider
them in the present place.
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