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The Quaker Unmasked - 9

LET us impartially next consider Quakers with Respect to Government:---Can it be consistent that a Person who declares that his Conscience by divine Inspiration forbids him to have any Hand in shedding Blood, should be instrumented as a Representative for People who look on themselves to be obliged by the Laws of God, the Laws of Nature and the Laws of their King and Country to take up Arms to defend themselves, and punish those who would deprive them of Life or Property? Nay, it is not an inexpressible Absurdity that a warlike People should be governed by Persons of Quaker Principles, and especially in Time of War.---Yet that great Numbers of such have long been Members of our Assembly is too true, and that they have often spent their Time in debating, whilst our poor Frontier Inhabitants, have been Suffering is also Truth. And tho’ they have at last voted Men and Money for warlike Uses, it was not until they found they could no longer keep their Places of honour and Truth without doing so. But at the same Time they have done every Thing in their Power to prevent any of their own Sect taking up Arms in Defence of their Country; and if at any Time any of their young Men took up Arms against our common Enemy, they were sure to be excommunicated, which they call reading out of Meeting.---And is it not certain, that when their King and Country call them to Arms, they plead Conscience, and will tell thee, with a pious Air, and meek Countenance, “they would rather perish by the Sword than use it against the Enemies of the State.---But if any of their Fellow Subjects become obnoxious to their mild and peaceable Rage, by opposing any of their arbitrary Measures, we then see the Quaker unmask’d, with his Gun upon his Shoulder, and other warlike Habiliments,

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