kers should
appear to give a doubtful answer, that persons may draw false
conclusions from thence, and therefore may suppose them to have spoken
falsely. These two circumstances of an apparent evasiveness, and
probably of a deduction of conclusions from doubtful or imaginary
premises, have, I apprehend, produced an appearance, which the world has
interpreted into evil.

No trait, however, can be more false than this. I know of no people, who
regard truth more than the Quakers. Their whole system bends and directs
to truth. One of the peculiarities of their language, or their rejection
of many of the words which other people use, because they consider them
as not religiously appropriate to the objects of which they are the
symbols, serves as a constant admonition to them to speak the truth.

Their prohibition of all slanderous reports, as mentioned in a former
volume, has a tendency to produce the same effect; for detraction is
forbidden partly on the idea, that all such rumours on character may be
false.

They reject also the reading of plays and novels, partly under a notion,
that the subjects and circumstances in these are fictitious, and that a
taste therefore, for the reading, of these, if acquired, might
familiarize their youth with fictions, and produce in them a romantic
and lying spirit.

It is a trait, again, in the character of the Quakers, as we have seen,
that they are remarkable for their punctuality in the performance of
their words and engagements. But such punctuality implies neither more
nor less, than that the words spoken by Quakers are generally fulfilled;
and, if they are generally fulfilled, then the inference is, that all
such words have been generally truths.

To this I may add, that the notions of the Quakers on the subject of
oaths, and their ideas of the character which it becomes them to sustain
in life, must have a powerful effect upon them in inducing an attention
to the truth; for they consider Jesus Christ to have abolished civil
oaths, because he wished to introduce a more excellent system than that
of old, that is, because he meant it to be understood by his disciples,
that he laid such an eternal obligation upon them to speak truth, that
oaths were to be rendered unnecessary, where persons make a profession
of his religion.

CHAP. XVIII.

SECT. I.

_Character of the Quaker women--This differs a little from that of the
men--Women share in the virtues of the former--bu