The moon, when it
eclipses the sun, appears as a blemish in the body of that luminary. So
a public departure from publicly professed principles will always be
noticed, because it will be an excrescence or blemish, too large and
protuberant, to be overlooked in the moral character.
CHAP. V.
_Settlement of differences--Quakers, when they differ, abstain from
violence--No instance of a duel--George For protested against going to
law, and Recommended arbitration-Laws relative to arbitration--Account
of an arbitration-society, at Newcastle upon Tyne, on Quaker-principles
--Its dissolution--Such societies might be usefully promoted._
Men are so constituted by nature, and their mutual intercourse is such,
that circumstances must unavoidably arise, which will occasion
differences. These differences will occasionally rouse the passions;
and, after all, they will still be to be settled. The Quakers, like
other men, have their differences. But you rarely see any disturbance of
the temper on this account. You rarely hear intemperate invectives. You
are witness to no blows. If in the courts of law you have never seen
their characters stained by convictions for a breach of the
marriage-contract, or the crime of adultery; so neither have you seen
them disgraced by convictions for brutal violence, or that most
barbarous of all Gothic customs, the duel.
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