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men, that we do not complain against you because ye are Quakers, but because ye
pretend to be and are not Quakers.
*"Thou hast tasted of prosperity and adversity: thou knowest what it is to be banished
thy native country, to be over-ruled as well as to rule, and set upon the throne; and being
oppressed thou hast reason to know now hateful the oppressor is both to God and man: If
after all these warnings and advertisements, thou dost not turn unto the Lord with all thy
heart, but forget him who remembered thee in thy distress, and give up thyself to follow
lust and vanity, surely great will be thy condemnation. -- Against which snare, as well as
the temptation of those who may or do feed thee, and prompt thee to evil, the most
excellent and prevalent remedy will be, to apply thyself to that light of Christ which
shineth in thy conscience, and which neither can, nor will flatter thee, nor suffer thee to
be at ease in thy sins." -- Barclay's Address to Charles II.
Alas! it seems by the particular tendency of some part of your testimony, and other
parts of your conduct, as if all sin was reduced to, and comprehended in, the act of
bearing arms, and that by the people only. Ye appear to us, to have mistaken party for
conscience; because, the general tenor of your actions wants uniformity: And it is
Common Sense& 36
exceedingly difficult to us to give credit to many of your pretended scruples; because, we
see them made by the same men, who, in the very instant that they are exclaiming against
the mammon of this world, are nevertheless, hunting after it with a step as steady as
Time, and an appetite as keen as Death.
The quotation which ye have made from Proverbs, in the third page of your testimony,
that, "when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with
him"; is very unwisely chosen on your part; because, it amounts to a proof, that the king's
ways (whom ye are so desirous of supporting) do not please the Lord, otherwise, his
reign would be in peace.
I now proceed to the latter part of your testimony, and that, for which all the foregoing
seems only an introduction, viz.
"It hath ever been our judgment and principle, since we were called to profess the light
of Christ Jesus, manifested in our consciences unto this day, that the setting up and
putting down kings and governments, is God's peculiar prerogative; for causes best
known to himself: And that it is not our business to have any hand or contrivance therein;
nor to be busy bodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin, or
overturn any of them, but to pray for the king, and safety of our nation, and good of all
men: That we may live a peaceable and quiet life, in all godliness and honesty; under the
government which God is pleased to set over us." -- If these are really your principles
why do ye not abide by them? Why do ye not leave that, which ye call God's Work, to be
managed by himself? These very principles instruct you to wait with patience and
humility, for the event of all public measures, and to receive that event as the divine will
towards you. Wherefore, what occasion is there for your political testimony if you fully
believe what it contains: And the very publishing it proves, that either, ye do not believe
what ye profess, or have not virtue enough to practise what ye believe.
The principles of Quakerism have a direct tendency to make a man the quiet and
inoffensive subject of any, and every government which is set over him. And if the setting
up and putting down of kings and governments is God's peculiar prerogative, he most
certainly will not be robbed thereof by us; wherefore, the principle itself leads you to
approve of every thing, which ever happened, or may happen to kings as being his work.
Oliver Cromwell thanks you. Charles, then, died not by the hands of man; and should the
present Proud Imitator of him, come to the same untimely end, the writers and publishers
of the Testimony, are bound, by the doctrine it contains, to applaud the fact. Kings are not
taken away by miracles, neither are changes in governments brought about by any other
means than such as are common and human; and such as we are now using. Even the
dispersion of the Jews, though foretold by our Savior, was effected by arms. Wherefore,
as ye refuse to be the means on one side, ye ought not to be meddlers on the other; but to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]