“Piety has found
   Friends In the friends of Science, and true pray’r
   Has flow’d from lips wet with Castalian dews. 
   Such was thy wisdom, Newton, childlike sage! 
   Sagacious reader of the works of God,
   And in his word sagacious.  Such too thine,
   Milton, whose genius had angelic wings,
   And fed on manna.  And such thine, in whom
   Our British Themis gloried with just cause,
   Immortal Hale! for deep discernment prais’d
   And sound integrity not more, than fam’d
   For sanctity of manners undefil’d.”  Cowper.

It appears then, if I have reasoned properly, that the arguments usually adduced against the acquisition of human knowledge are but of little weight.  If I have reasoned falsely upon this subject, so have the early Quakers.  As they were friends to virtue, so they were friends to science.  If they have at any time put a low estimate upon the latter, it has been only as a qualification for a minister of the Gospel.  Here they have made a stand.  Here they have made a discrimination.  But I believe it will no where be found, that they have denied, either that learning might contribute to the innocent pleasures of life, or that it might be made a subordinate and auxiliary instrument towards the promotion of virtue.

CHAP.  VII.

Conclusion of the work—­Conclusionary remarks divided into two kinds—­First, as they relate to those who may have had thoughts of leaving the society—­Advantages, which these may have proposed to themselves by such a change—­These advantages either religious or temporal—­The value of them considered.

Having now gone through all the subjects, which I had prescribed to myself at the beginning of this work, I purpose to close it.  But as it should be the wish of every author to render his production useful, I shall add a few observations for this purpose.  My remarks then, which will be thus conclusory, relate to two different sorts of persons.  They will relate, first, to those who may have had thoughts of leaving the society, or, which is the same thing, who persist in a course of irregularities, knowing beforehand, and not regretting it, that they shall be eventually disowned.  It will relate, secondly, to all other persons, or to those who may be called the world.  To the former I shall confine my attention in this chapter.

I have often heard persons of great respectability, and these even in the higher circles of life, express a wish, that they had been brought up as Quakers.  The steady and quiet deportment of the members of this society, the ease with which they appear to get through life, the simplicity and morality of their character, were the causes which produced the expression of such a wish.  “But why then, I have observed, if you feel such a disposition as this wish indicates, do you not become Quakers?” “Because, it has been replied, we are too old to be singular.