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"Ben Franklin"
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography: Page 101
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a match for their wheat or other grain."
These embarrassments that the Quakers suffer'd from having establish'd and
published it as one of their principles that no kind of war was lawful, and
which, being once published, they could not afterwards, however they might
change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me of what I think a more prudent
conduct in another sect among us, that of the Dunkers. I was acquainted with one
of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after it appear'd. He complain'd to me
that they were grievously calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions, and
charg'd with abominable principles and practices, to which they were utter
strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new sects, and that, to
put a stop to such abuse, I imagin'd it might be well to publish the articles of
their belief, and the rules of their discipline. He said that it had been
propos'd among them, but not agreed to, for this reason: "When we were first
drawn together as a society," says he, "it had pleased God to enlighten our
minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were
errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From
time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles
have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are
arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or
theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession
of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and perhaps
be unwilling to receive farther improvement, and our successors still more so,
as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something
sacred, never to be departed from."
This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind,
every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who
differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at
some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as
those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him
all appears clear, tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them. To
avoid this kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have of late years been gradually
declining the public service in the Assembly and in the magistracy, choosing
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