We cannot
but approve of these salutary endeavours, and earnestly entreat they may be
continued, that, through the favour of divine Providence, a traffic so
unmerciful and unjust in its nature to a part of our own species, made,
equally with ourselves, for immortality, may come to be considered by all
in its proper light, and be utterly abolished as a reproach to the
Christian name."
I must beg leave to stop here for a moment, just to pay the Quakers a due
tribute of respect for the proper estimation, in which they have uniformly
held the miserable outcasts of society, who have been the subject of these
minutes. What a contrast does it afford to the sentiments of many others
concerning them! How have we been compelled to prove by a long chain of
evidence, that they had the same feelings and capacities as ourselves! How
many, professing themselves enlightened, even now view them as of a
different species! But in the minutes, which have been cited, we have seen
them uniformly represented as persons "ransomed by one and the same
Saviour"--"as visited by one and the same light for salvation"--and "as
made equally for immortality as others.
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