The words of the apostles Paul and Peter,
have been quoted both by Fox, Penn, Barclay, and others, upon this
subject. But surely, if the Christian religion positively condemns the
use of them in one, it condemns the use of them in another. And how can
any one, professing this religion, sell that, the use of which he
believes it to have forbidden? The Quakers also have rejected all
ornaments of the person, as we find by their own writers, on account of
their immoral tendency; or because they are supposed to be instrumental
in puffing up the creature, or in the generation of vanity and pride.
But if they have rejected the use of them upon this principle, they are
bound, as Christians, to refuse to sell them to others. Christian love,
and the Christian obligation to do as we would wish to be done by,
positively enjoin this conduct. For no man, consistently with this
divine law and obligation, can sow the seeds of moral disease in his
neighbour's mind.
And here I may observe, that though there are trades, which may be
innocent in themselves, yet Quakers may make them objectionable by the
manner in which they may conduct themselves in disposing of the articles
which belong to them. They can never pass them off, as other people do,
by the declaration that they are the fashionable articles of the day.
Such words ought never to come out of Quakers' mouths; not so much
because their own lives are a living protest against the fashions of the
world, as because they cannot knowingly be instrumental in doing a moral
injury to others.
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