able, who, for above forty years, have been exceeding great sufferers for their profession.

Besides these general doctrines, as the larger branches, there sprang forth several particular doctrines, that did exemplify and farther explain the truth and efficacy of the general doctrine before observed, in their lives and examples; as, Communion and loving one another. To love enemies. The sufficiency of truth-speaking, according to Christ's own form of sound words, of yea, yea, and nay, nay, among Christians, without swearing. Not fighting, but suffering, because all wars and fightings come of men's own hearts' lusts, and not of the meek Spirit of Christ Jesus. Refusing to pay tithes or maintenance to a national ministry; believing all compelled maintenance to be unlawful. Not to respect persons; affirming it to be sinful to give flattering titles, or to use vain gestures and compliments of respect. They used the plain language of thee and thou to a single person, whatever was his degree among men. They recommended silence by their example. They were at a word in dealing; and, when in company, they would neither use, nor willingly hear unnecessary or unlawful discourses; whereby they preserved their minds pure and undisturbed from unprofitable thoughts and diversions. For the same reason they forebore drinking to people, or pledging of They say that

them, as the manner of the world is. marriage is an ordinance of God, and that God only can rightly join man and woman in marriage; therefore they use neither priest nor magistrate; but the man and woman concerned take each other as husband and wife, in the presence of divers credible witnesses, promising to

each other, with God's assistance, to be loving and faithful in that relation, till death shall separate them; their care and checks being so many, and such, as that no clandestine marriages can be performed among them. Their burials are performed with simplicity; the corpse being in a plain coffin; at the ground, they pause some time before they put the body into its grave, that if any there should have anything upon them to exhort the people, they may not be disappointed, and that the relations may the more retiredly and solemnly take their last leave of the body of their departed kindred, and the spectators have a sense of mortality. Otherwise, they have no set rites or ceremonies on these occasions; neither do the kindred of the deceased ever wear mourning, deeming that what mourning is fit for a Christian to have at the departure of a beloved relation or friend, should be worn in the mind, and the love they had to them and remembrance of them be outwardly expressed by a respect to their advice and care of those they have left behind them and their love of that they loved.

These and such like practices of theirs were not the result of humor, but a fruit of inward sense, which God, through his holy fear, had begotten in them. They did not consider how to contradict the world, or distinguish themselves as a party from others. But God having given them a sight of themselves, they saw the whole world in the same glass of Truth, and sensibly discerned the affections and passions of men, and the rise and tendency of things; what it was that gratified the "lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which are not of the Father, but of the world."

They were changed men themselves before they went about to change others. Their hearts were rent as well as their garments; and they knew the power and work of God upon them.

They went not forth, or preached in their own time or will, but in the will of God; and spoke not their own studied matter, but as they were opened and moved of his Spirit. And as they freely received what they had to say from the Lord, so they freely administered it to others.

The bent and stress of their ministry was conversion to God; regeneration and holiness. Not schemes of doctrines and verbal creeds, or new forms of worship; but a leaving off, in religion, the superfluous, and reducing the ceremonious and formal part, and pressing earnestly the substantial, the necessary and profitable part to the soul.

They directed people to a principle in themselves, though not of themselves, by which all that they asserted, preached, and exhorted others to, might be wrought in them, and known to them, through experience, to be true; which is an high and distinguishing mark of the truth of their ministry, both that they knew what they said, and were not afraid of coming to the test. For as they were bold from certainty, so they required conformity upon no human authority, but upon conviction, and the conviction of this principle, which they asserted was in them that they preached unto; and unto that they directed them, that they might examine and prove the reality of those things which they had affirmed of it, as to its manifestation and work in man.

They reached to the inward state and condition of people, which is an evidence of the virtue of their principle, and of their ministering from it, and not from their

own imaginations, glosses, or comments upon Scripture. The very thoughts and purposes of the hearts of many have been so plainly detected, that they have, like Nathaniel, cried out of this inward appearance of Christ: "Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel."

They came forth low, and despised, and hated, as the primitive Christians did, and not by the help of worldly wisdom or power, as former reformations, in part, have done. But in all things it may be said, this people were brought forth in the cross; in a contradiction to the ways, worships, fashions, and customs of this world; yea, against wind and tide, that so no flesh might glory before God.

They could have no design to themselves in this work, thus to expose themselves to scorn and abuse; to spend and be spent; leaving wife and children, house and land, and all that can be accounted dear to men, with their lives in their hands, being daily in jeopardy, to declare this primitive message, revived in their spirits by the good Spirit and power of God: That God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all; and that He has sent his Son a light into the world, to enlighten all men in order to salvation; and that they that say they have fellowship with God, and are his children and people, and yet walk in darkness (viz., in disobedience to the light in their consciences) and after the vanity of this world, they lie, and do not the truth. But that all such as love the light, and bring their deeds to it, and walk in the light, as God is light, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, should cleanse them from all sin.

This people increasing daily both in town and country,

an holy care fell upon some of the elders among them, for the benefit and service of the church. And the first business in their view, after the example of the primitive saints, was the exercise of charity; to supply the necessities of the poor, and answer the like occasions. They were also very careful that every one that belonged to them answered their profession in their behavior among men, upon all occasions; that they lived peaceably, and were in all things good examples. In case of marriage, they took care that all things were clear between the parties and all others.

But because the charge of the poor, the number of orphans, marriages, sufferings, and other matters multiplied, and that it was good that the churches were in some way and method of proceeding in such affairs among them, it pleased the Lord, in his wisdom and goodness, to open the understanding of the first instrument of this dispensation of life, about a good and orderly way of proceeding. This godly elder, in every country where he travelled, exhorted them, that some out of every meeting for worship should meet together once in the month, to confer about the wants and occasions of the church. And that these Monthly Meetings should, in each county, make up one Quarterly Meeting, where the most zealous and eminent Friends of the county should assemble to communicate, advise, and help one another. Also that these several Quarterly Meetings should digest the reports of their Monthly Meetings, and prepare one for each respective county against the Yearly Meeting, in which all Quarterly Meetings resolve.

At these meetings any of the members of the churches