ebauchery." By this I apprehend it was meant, that it was a
desirable thing to have a people to look up to, who, residing in the
'midst of a vicious community, professed to be followers of that which
was right, and to resist the current of bad example in their own times;
or that such a people might be considered as a leaven, that might leaven
the whole lump, but that, if this leaven were lost, the community might
lose one of its visible incitements to virtue. Now in this way the
Quakers have had a certain general usefulness in the world. They have
kept more, I apprehend, to first principles, than any other people. They
have afforded a moral example. This example ought to have been useful to
others. To those who were well inclined, it should have been as a torch
to have lighted up their virtue, and it should have been a perpetual
monument for reproof to others, who were entering upon a career of vice.

The first particular good, after the general one now stated, which the
Quakers have done, has been, that they have shewn to those who have been
spectators of their conduct, that all persecution for matters of
religion, as it is highly criminal in the eyes of the Supreme Being, so
it is inadequate to the end proposed. This proposition, indeed, seems to
be tolerably Well understood at the present day. At least they whose
minds have been well informed, acknowledge it. The history of martyrdom,
by which we learn how religion soars above all suffering, how the
torments inflicted on the body are unable to reach the mind, how the
moral Governor of the world reigns triumphant upon earth, how tyranny
and oppression fall prostrate before virtue, losing their malignant aim,
has been one, among other causes, of this knowledge. But as history is
known but to few, and is not remembered by all, the Quakers are
particularly useful by holding up the truth of the proposition to our
daily sight, that is, by the example they continue to afford us of
bearing their testimony in all cases where the civil magistrate is
concerned on the one hand, and their consciences on the other.

A second good, which the Quakers have done, is by shewing, as a whole
body, the power of Christianity in the subjugation of the will of men,
and its influence on their character.

They are living proofs, in the first instance, that human nature is not
the stubborn thing, which many have imagined it to be; that, however it
may be depraved, it is still corrigible; and t