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compassion, feeling in much sympathy for the trials and sufferings of his friends; whom he neglected not to visit, and to commiserate in their distress, as opportunity offered to cheer the drooping heart and to administer consolation to the afflicted.

"He was a diligent attender of meetings for worship and discipline at home and abroad, being scarcely ever absent from our general province quarterly, and national meetings. He likewise frequently visited the smaller meetings, and the adjacent meetings of discipline, as also the families of friends in different parts of this province, to good satisfaction; being often therein much favoured to speak applicably to the several states of the visited. And when released from services of this nature abroad, he was careful not to be slothful in business at home; being closely employed for several years during the latter stage of his life, in the weighty and arduous undertaking of compiling a general History of our Society, three volumes of which have been lately published, and the remaining one brought very nearly to a conclusion. Of this work, as it is already well known and pretty generally in Friends' hands, it does not appear needful for us to say much, further than to express our hope that it may be as a memorial to many, of those useful talents wherewith he was gifted, and of his application of them, under the influence of divine aid, with diligence and devotedness of heart, to the cause and service of Truth in his generation.

"About a year before his death, he was attacked with a sudden stroke of the paralytic kind, which gave much cause of apprehension, to his family and friends, that the time of his departure was at hand; from which however he so far recovered, as to undertake the performance of a religious visit to some meetings in the province of Leinster, and to join with sundry friends, nominated by our national meeting, in visiting the meetings of discipline in Munster; and he was furnished with strength and ability to accomplish the service, and to return to his family in peace.

"He was at times concerned in public supplication in our assemblies; on which occasions he appeared weighty and fervent in spirit, as one deeply impressed with a reverent sense of the solemnity of the engagement; and a few weeks previous to his death, being engaged on this wise, after interceding for the general state of the church, he was led by a remarkable transition, as if favoured with a sense of his approaching dissolution, to supplicate on his own behalf, that he might be more and more purified and fitted for his final change; that when the angel of the divine presence should be sent to his habitation, with the solemn message that time to him should be no longer, he might be admitted to join the hundred and forty four thousand who were redeemed from the earth, in singing praises to the Lamb. And as our dear friend continued a zealous and diligent labourer in the vineyard until the conclusion of his days, being willing to spend and to be spent, that so he might finish the work allotted to him therein, as a good and faithful servant, we doubt not but he is now a partaker of the blessed recompense of reward in the joy of his Lord.”

"On the 25th day of the Tenth month 1791, being suddenly seized with another fit, which in a few hours put a period to his existence in this state of mutability, he quietly departed as one falling asleep; and on the 28th he was decently interred in Friends' burying ground at Lisburn, after a solemn meeting." (g)

ART. III.—MYSTERY, the parent of Misrule and Misconduct. [Writ ten, in substance, in a young person's Album several years ago.]

In every age in which Men have suffered for the truth of Christ, their Oppressors have been found the strenuous supporters of Mystery, and advocates of ignorance in the people.

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How emphatical, in this point of view, is the description we have in the Apocalypse of a Usurpation, the mother of harlots and of every abomination of the earth! This power is, first and originally Mystery -a craft engrossed by a set of artizans and merchants who keep it carefully to themselves: then Babylon, a state and polity of great influence in the world; founded in this exclusive privilege (her merchants being princes, her traffickers the honourable of the earth) and upheld by arts and practices, partly invented by the more modern, partly derived from the more ancient adepts in the Craft: Lastly, it is the Mother of harlots of false churches (the true being one, and the chaste spouse of Christ) in which are found rampant every shameless immoralityall things that defile (a so-called) Christian practice, and which may be classed with the abominations of the sensual, earthly nature in the unconverted of mankind. Rev. xvii. 3—6. "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration."

Ver. 18. "And the woman which thou sawest is that great City [of usurped Ecclesiastical dominion, and worldly policy] which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”

Ed.

(g) Gough, iv. Suppl: p. 567.

ELCOCK, PRINTER, PONTEFRACT.

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ART. I.-A Chronological Summary of events and circumstances connected with the origin and progress of the doctrine and practices of the Quakers.

Continued from p. 224.

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It has happened to every attempt to restore Divine truth in principle and in practice, by religious reforms, that the zeal of the human agents in the work has declined, and the strictness of the first Institution been departed from, in the generations presently succeeding that with which it began. Christianity itself underwent a long and dicted Eclipse, in the interval between the Apostolic age and the REFORMATION and the latter was sustained in its march by the full energies of its advocates, only until these became invested with the spoils of their fallen adversaries; and were enabled to take up a worldly rest in the power and wealth they had thus acquired. God alone (who wills our salvation, but requires us to co-work with his Holy Spirit in order to effect it)-God, the author and preserver of all true Religion on earth, alone knows how by his own Word and power to order the times and the seasons,' and pour out (when and where it is most needful, and will avail most to his own purposes in Christ our Lord,) the spirit of REFORMATION. He will perfect, we may be sure, that which he hath begun in behalf of the churches-working by many or by few. And though it be evident, that the foolish things of the world (or those accounted such by it) have been employed in this way to confound

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the wise, and the weak to overthrow the mighty; yea, that base and despised instruments have sufficed, in His hand (things that are not' -mere negative quantities in the reckoning of the College) to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh might glory in His presence, yet have we cause to believe it will not ever be thus in His Church. "I will go before thee (saith the Lord to Cyrus, his anointed one, whose right hand he holds to subdue nations before him) I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut asunder the bars of iron: I will give thee the treasures of darkness, the hidden riches of secret places; that thou mayst know that I, the Lord, who call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.'-Again, to the Church thus ordered and enriched, “Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold, while darkness covers the earth and gross darkness the people, the Lord shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. The Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness of thy rising.-All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory." Isa. xlv.

These, and many other prophecies of like tenour, poured forth in abundance in the Church's behalf in Holy writ, may teach us (if we are willing to learn) that the very means by which, heretofore, the God of this world hath prevailed to obstruct the march of Christ's righteousness, and to put down the Truth (substituting for these human power, human policy, human learning, and the reign of Intolerance in the churches) shall be made subservient, in a day to come, to the spreading and establishment of the Gospel of Christ. To this Light shall the Gentiles come-not be subdued by force and taken in by a mere State-ordinance, the darkness of their hearts yet remaining: kings shall freely own its brightness and walk by it—not be compre hended in the mystery of a wide-spread Ecclesiastical despotism, which can set its foot in the height of spiritual arrogance upon their necks! He must be weak in faith, and imperfect in the knowledge of Christ, who can regard the noon of the Christian day as past already; who looks only for a gloomy evening of trial and endurance, ere the night closes upon Revelation, and nothing but final judgment remains for those on earth!

In whatsoever place in Heaven the modest Instrument shall then be found, whose labours and success have been here recorded, it is freely confessed, that the kind of degeneracy which hath been mentioned came early upon the people gathered by him; and called Quakers by the world. And the greatest degree of this darkness appears to have coincided nearly with the middle of the Eighteenth Century. But as I write chiefly for the use of those not members of our Society, the selection of this matter must be confined to subjects affecting its character and concerns, as connected with the interests of the Christian church at large. Of the many proceedings taken only for the purpose of an oversight of the members by each other, and for the perfecting

of the means by which this end is accomplished, I shall have little here to say. A fifth volume of the useful work of John Gough (should any Friend be found willing and capable to take the charge of continuing that History) would present these in detail and in place; to the great improvement, I doubt not, of the knowledge of many of our members.

A. D.

The case of Francis Hart (which see, p. 223) being reported 1763. to the Yearly Meeting, the measures taken by the Meeting for Sufferings in his behalf are pronounced very satisfactory; and his Expences are allowed him out of the General Stock. (a)

1768.

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The attention of the Yearly Meeting is drawn, at intervals, to to the subject of the encouragement of Schools for the youth: per1778. nicious books are denounced, and more suitable reading provided for our members.

There were left (as we have seen) after the death of George Fox, a number of Friends very capable of exercising Gospel Ministry in the Society, and of taking the oversight of the flock-which they may truly be said to have done not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind.' By the prevalence, however (in this time of ease) of a worldly spirit in many Friends, and the force of evil example in their associates, a proportion of the younger members were drawn into gaiety and dissipation; while their parents were engrossed with business and intent on gain-thus bringing on anew, in measure, the state of things from which our honourable Elder had been withdrawn, by that intimation which he had from above, Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth: thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all and be a stranger unto all.' Jour. p. 2. The Ministry continued indeed to testify against the increasing signs of declension, which too plainly appeared: but declension went on and increased, until the faithful and lively preachers too generally shone, in the midst of congregations of formal professors, as stars in a dark night. The discipline was now required for correction, and there were found

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many who inclined not to let it fall. But even this hedge about us was found insufficient for preservation, while there prevailed within the Church the Epidemic of extreme ignorance-a want, in the multitude of professors of the name of Christ, of the very rudiments of learning; and consequently of all correct knowledge of Christian doctrine, and of the History of the Church at large. The spirit of the Gospel had entered, however by effectual preaching, into the hearts of many: they had begun the warfare, and there was wanted for their further protection 'the whole armour of light.'

In the year 1758 the Yearly Meeting, after repeatedly adverting to the subject in the Epistles by way of advice, appears to have proceeded at length to enquire into the state of the schools existing in the Society. In 1759, we have the following Minute :

(a) See Minutes of the Yearly Meeting; under date.

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