reference to the intent and meaning of the thing-and to person, place and circumstances, too!

Shall we do such acts to man, in any case, in the same measure in which we do them to Almighty God? Or, if we so do with a mental reservation of the intent and purpose, thinking thus to preserve to God his honour, can we escape the charge of great dissimulation?

Doctor Johnson quotes Doctor Tillotson, saying, 'The worship of God is an eminent part of religion, and prayer is a chief part of religious worship. Here we have the term made abstract: and prayer, with all the dispositions of mind that should attend it, classed under a word properly denoting the bowing or kneeling, or prostrating of the body, before a superior. Again, he quotes Stillingfleet, thus, 'Since God hath appointed government among men, it is plain that his intention was, that some kind of worship should be given from some to others. For, where there is a power to punish and reward, there is a foundation of worship in those who are under that power: which worship lies in expressing a due regard to that power, by a care not to provoke it, and an endeavour to obtain the favour of it: which among mankind is called civil worship.'

Very well, Master Doctor Stillingfleet! But is not the term worship here also made an abstract one, and the meaning quite separated from the outward acts of kneeling, bowing and the like? And may not the conduct of the quakers (in this view of the subject) be not only excused but justified; if, regarding duly their allegiance to the king and subjection to the laws, they should still say, We dare not shew worship to the Magistrate, in any case, as we would shew it to Almighty God::-nor can we receive such homage from others?

I think the behaviour of Friends has been shewn, in very many parts of this work, to have been eminently that which Dr. Stillingfleet requires, towards 'the powers that be:' bold as some of them may have been found, in the public reproof, in God's behalf, of that which ought never to have been seen in 'the power.' However there is something in his argument for some kind of worship, to be shewn 'from some to others:' that is for some testimony, to them and to beholders, of the inward feeling (if we really have it) of being 'subject to the power.' Rom. xiii. 5.

This is rendering honour to them to whom honour is due, ver. 7; and that, not by reason, or on the supposition, of any peculiar or distinguishing quality requiring it in them, other than their office. And the measure of the signs of this respect (a word denoting, together with regard, the not turning one's back at least upon the person while in his company, the looking to him)—the measure of this must be left, I believe, to every man's conscience and good breeding. magistrate has now, I think, testified in a sufficient number of instances his Christian feeling, in not compelling this from us; as Haman would have done from Mordecai. And I would willingly hope, there is not among us, who profess such discrimination in morals, a disposition that is liable to the gross mistake of putting rudeness for virtue; or

The

mere republican stiffness (if not insubordination) for the gospel of Christ. I know that our American Friends do not adopt the term master, as due from the servant, in addressing the man who employs him; nor dares the master scarce call him servant: but it is 'my help,' when the man is spoken of, and 'my uncle,' or some other lie in form, when he speaks of his master! It would do little credit, methinks, to the men of the mother-country, to copy these escapes of their expatriated great-grandfathers' descendants: and I would have us consider in time, who spoil our religion for others' use by unreasonable mixtures, whether the tradition of not moving the body in the least, in salutation to another, and of keeping on the hat to our own inconvenience, in the presence of our superiors in civil rank, be really worth holding-when their conversion to the faith (as well as profession) of Christ, and acknowledgment of the truth as it is in Jesus, may be obstructed by the difficulty of comprehending the motives of such conduct. To proceed now to the remaining terms in question-respect and regard i have already put into English, the first from the Latin, the second from the French, by stating that we are to look towards a superior, when in his company; to observe him, and not let him observe us in a state of indifference to what he may be saying or doing. This, I think, every well-disposed quaker is 'easy' to shew to the great but there are more serious things to follow.

Reverence is again, from the Latin; and means the being thoroughly possessed with the fear of the person addressed. This might suit the Romans very well, who loved to rule by fear, and had little notion or feeling of the thing we call charity: but does it become a Christian man to exact from another this humiliation in terms, when addressed or approached by him? I think not-and that the title of Reverend will fall, by the prevalence of the light of the gospel among us.

Now for homage; except we are going to court, for honours, we may make ourselves very easy about this! According to Lingard, 'the obligations [of lord and vassal, in this feudal engagement] were reciprocal. The vassal shared with his fellows in the favours of his lord, and lived in security under his protection. It was a contract cemented by oath for the benefit of each. 'By the Lord' said the Inferior, placing his hands between those of his Chief, I promise to be faithful and true: to love all that thou lovest, and shun all that thou shunnest, conformably to the laws of God and man; and never in will or weald [power] in word or work, to do that which thou loathest ; provided thou hold me as I mean to serve, and fulfil the conditions to which we agreed when I subjected myself to thee, and chose thy will.' Hist: England, i. 339.

We

The man who thus chose the will of another in order to serve him was, then, emphatically and rightly said to do him homage (homagium, Low Latin, from homo man, ago I do) or to give him his man. must not talk of homage to the king, therefore, unless we be prepared to become his, in this way. It is the claim of the absolute monarch; and ours (since the days of Magna Charta) is a constitutional and

limited obedience. They may talk of loyalty, who are ready to make a king's will their will; and to serve him according to his likings and dislikings, without regarding in every case the conformity of these to the laws of God and man: but he is truly loyal, yea loyal in the most literal sense, to whom the Law is paramount; and who dares upon occasion remind his Sovereign's self of the necessity of so regarding it. This term is from the French Loy, and the meaning is to be true to duty according to law; as above expressed in the oath.

But I have not quite done with the subject of Civil worship; on which our founder George Fox has left on record as follows: Moreover, when the Lord sent me into the world, he forbad me to put off my hat to any, high or low; and I was required to thee and thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And, as I travelled up and down, I was not to bid people good morrow, or good evening: neither might I bow or scrape with my leg, to any one." Journ: p. 22.

'This,' says Fox, 'made the sects and professions rage!' Plain proof, say I, that they needed it. The sects and professions had come to feed too much on this windy diet; and were puffed up with these worldly nothings, above the humility of the Christian. George did perfectly right in yielding to his conscientious persuasion. He was to bend the crooked stick the contrary way, and endure the consequences in personal inconvenience. But suppose he had taught nothing more (that was new to the age) than the peculiarities of quakerism in these morally indifferent things: would his doctrine have come down to our time? I believe not: it would have sunk beneath the stream of worldly change, and been lost, as to the practice at least, in oblivion. He had much more to declare to his countrymen as the mind of Christ; and of far greater moment. He was to be the leader of a separate people, who were to bear for a time a separate testimony to the Truth of God, in various things pertaining to our state, Civil and Ecclesiastical and to oppose (as it was confessed by many they did) a successful barrier against the licentious and indevout spirit-the practical atheism, of the age. There was the stamp of divine wisdom, then, (place his revelation on the subject as low as we may) even on his negative example as to such practices:-and it was the example that did the business, here; for he preached not these observances, but the doctrine of CHRIST the Light. There was the evidence, I say, of Divine Wisdom in the placing for a season, through his example, of these stumbling blocks in the way of worldly wise professors of religion, as well as of the worldly minded at large; that they might not obtain at too easy a cost the Truth, as by him taught from the New Testament. The cross to be thus taken up by his followers made the separation complete, at once, between them and their former connexions; and dissolved many superficial friendships, which would have impeded their success in the more important struggle for the liberty of their consciences, in God's worship and service.

But times are changed: the offence of the cross in these things has in great measure ceased. There are those now adays who profess to

admire our external peculiarities, while at heart they love not our severe doctrine and moral practice. These would like very well to see us continue, as we have been described-a monastery without walls: a set of Observants, chiefly occupied about plainness of speech, behaviour, and apparel, and certain points of self-denial, as to the enjoyment (or imagined enjoyment) of this present world. While themselves, not seeing, or professing not to see the evidence of Scripture and reason, for what we do and what we refrain, forbear to take example from us in their practice; and are free to live much nearer to the pattern of the age, be it what it may. So near indeed that with many, profession and foppery, performance in religion and the vanity of vanities in life, in all its manifestations-in dress and address, in speech and demeanour-seem to have taken license to join hands and run their course together! These can tolerate the quaker, and encourage him in his external, just so long as they are enabled to pity and despise him: but let the Truth divested of the sackcloth covering shine out in its native brightness, by and bye they are offended'—and then, no more of the quaker for them!

Well, Friends! let us beware how, thus circumstanced, we build on the sand on traditions that have come down to us from our predecessors, rather than on the rock, Christ. Some things are, with us, Religious principle: others no more than moral habits: concerning some of which it may be very justly made a question, whether they be (as to us of this age) of the new birth which all must experience who come to see the kingdom of God; or not, rather, put on from the older professors of our Creed. And whether, on the whole, they do really promote the doctrine of TRUTH; or not rather, by sheltering hypocrites and conferring a spurious reputation on the unworthy, impede its progress.

Let none suppose that I am for setting aside that simplicity of habit and manners, derived from and indicating the renewed mind and a right disposition of things within, which I have ever believed and taught to be Christian practice. I have given my sentiments in favour of our Scriptural and reasonable singular in speech, in place of the corrupt adulatory plural. The lips, it is said, are parcel of the mind, and the speech cannot be separated (as his clothes, furniture and attendance may) from the man himself. Some of those other observances however that are deemned of value by the precise, may not bear to be Scripturally examined: and we must be content to stand or fall, in Religious practice, by that written rule; for no other is constant. I shall have occasion, in my estimate of the character of Geo. Fox, to return to this subject.

To conclude it for the present, we know (I may remark) what sort of people they were of old whom Christ charged with exactness in their tithes, even to the mint, anise and cummin, and neglect at the same time of the weightier matters of the law, judgment, with mercy and good faith and which it was, of the two who had been praying together (or professing and confessing rather) in the Temple, that went down to his house justified rather than the other. Let us strive, in our practice, after entire sincerity and truth! Ed.

ELCOCK, PRINTER, PONTEFRACT.

ART. I.-A Chronological Summary of events and circumstances connected with the origin and progress of the doctrine and practices of the Quakers.

In this year died at his seat at Rushcomb near Twyford, Bucks, WILLIAM PENN, Proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania.

We took leave of William Penn as a public character in 1710, on the point of sailing for England; after having chartered his province, and its capital Philadelphia, and gone through much business with the Settlers, and their Indian neighbours, in a just and amicable man

ner.

He was from this time very much in retirement, and in what may be considered as private life: not however, without a due attention (while capable of business) to the interests and welfare of the Colony : yet doing nothing, save through his deputies in the government, in its behalf. He was in favour with Queen Anne, and about the Court; but seems to have sacrificed, as the price of this indulgence, the free exercise of his talent as a Legislator, and Christian Reformer in Civil affairs. He was, besides, for some years under pecuniary difficulties, and (in 1707) involved in Law with the Executors of his deceased steward; whose demands on his estate he found himself obliged both in justice and in conscience to resist. Advantage was pretty soon taken of his embarassments by the Queen's Ministry, who endeavoured to obtain by purchase what before they were to have seized by the strong hand of power-his province of Pennsylvania. He demanded for it £20,000; and after some discussion had agreed to accept of £12,000,