5325- FRIENDLY LETTERS TO THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, ON SOME OF THEIR DISTINGUISHING PRINCIPLES. BY RALPH WARDLAW, D.D. GLASGOW, ARCHIBALD FULLARTON & CO.; A. & C. BLACK, EDINBURGH; J. ROBERTSON & CO., DUBLIN; MDCCCXXXVI. LETTER I. INTRODUCTORY, AND MISCELLANEOUS. FRIENDS, IN so addressing you, I wish to be understood as using, not merely the distinctive designation by which you have chosen to denominate yourselves as a body of professing Christians, but a designation expressive of personal regard. I have not been an inattentive or uninterested observer of the agitation that has, for some time past, pervaded your society; and I have felt a strong inclination, blending with a hardly less strong repugnance, to "show mine opinion."-The cause of my repugnance may be easily imagined. I may seem to many an officious intermeddler. I may fasten upon myself the unenviable character of a gratuitous and forward disputant, fond of the gauntlet, most unconscionably enamoured of controversy, when I thus, as it will be thought, go so far out of my way to find it,-when I cannot leave A |