For people, who place
religion in particular forms, must unavoidably become superstitious. It
would be serious again, because if parents were to carry such notions
into their families, they would produce mischief. The young would be
dissatisfied, if forced to cultivate particularities, for which they see
no just or substantial reason. Dissentions would arise among them. Their
morality too would be confounded, if they were to see these minutiae
idolized at home, but disregarded by persons of known religious
character in the world. Add to which, that they might adopt erroneous
notions of religion. For they might be induced to lay too much stress
upon the payment of the anise and cummin, and too little upon the
observance of the weightier matters of the law.
As the charge therefore is unquestionably a serious one, I shall not
allow it to pass without some comments. And in the first place it maybe
observed that, whether this preciseness, which has been imputed to some
Quakers, amounts to an idolizing of forms, can never be positively
determined, except we had the power of looking into the hearts of those,
who have incurred the charge. We may form, however, a reasonable
conjecture, whether it does or not by presumptive evidence, taken from
incontrovertible outward facts.
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