Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History

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I. EPISTLE FROM THE YEARLY MEETING OF FRIENDS

Extracts

To the yearly meeting of friends held in London.

Dear Friends:—

On looking over the annals of our religious society, it is pleasing to perceive that for more than one hundred and forty years the Yearly Meeting of London and that of Pennsylvania preserved the most cordial relations. During this time an affectionate interchange of their views and sentiments was maintained, to their mutual edification and comfort, binding them more firmly together in the bonds of gospel fellowship. Greatly desiring to preserve such an intercourse uninterrupted, this meeting, in the fourth month, 1828, addressed to you an affectionate epistle, in which we adverted to the division which had taken place in the Yearly Meeting of Philadelphia, and stated our views of the causes which had led to that event. We did this in the hope that by making you acquainted with our case as we understood it ourselves, you might be preserved from any improper bias, and be induced to suspend your decision on the subject, until time and a further investigation of circumstances might enable you to form an impartial judgment. By your answer to this friendly effort for the preservation of harmony between us, we perceive, that on the ex parte evidence of a committee, acting as the representatives of a small minority of Friends in this section of our country, you have pronounced us ’separatists,’ and have declared it the judgment of your meeting, ’neither to read, nor accept the communication’ we sent you!

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We are aware, dear friends, that our opponents have pronounced us infidels and deists! They have said we have departed from the Christian faith, and renounced the religion of our worthy predecessors in the Truth. Nothing is easier than to make such charges as these; but, in the present case, we are happily assured that nothing is harder than to prove them. We are not sensible of any dereliction on our part from the principles laid down by our blessed Lord. The history of the birth, life, acts, death, and resurrection of the holy Jesus, as in the volume of the book it is written of him, we reverently believe. ’We are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is the power of God unto salvation to all them that believe.’ Neither do we hesitate to acknowledge the divinity of its author; because we know from living experience that he is the power of God and the wisdom of God; that, under the present glorious dispensation, he is the one holy principle of Divine life and light—the unlimited word of grace and truth, which only can build us up in the true faith, and give us an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

Neither are we sensible of any departure from the faith or principles of our primitive Friends. We are not ignorant that on some points of a speculative nature, they had different views, and expressed themselves diversely; but notwithstanding this was the case, such were the aboundings of the love of God and of one another, that these differences did not interrupt the excellent harmony that existed among them. In the fundamental principle of the Christian faith, ’the light of Christ within, as God’s gift for man’s salvation,’ and which, as William Penn delcares, ’is as the root of the goodly tree of doctrines, which grew and branched out from it,’ they were all united. And in that which united them we are united with them; believing in the same fundamental principle, and in all the blessed doctrines which grow from it as their root, both as they are laid down in the Scriptures of Truth, and in their writings; desiring above all things the growth and advancement of this principle in ourselves, and in the world at large.

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The charges brought against us by our opposers, to injure and invalidate our character as a Christian people, are the same that were preferred against our primitive Friends; and, we apprehend, upon the same grounds . . . We do not believe that the dissensions which have appeared among us, had their origin so much in differences of opinion on doctrinal points, as in a disposition, apparent in some, to exercise an oppressive authority in the church. These, in our meetings for discipline, although a small minority of the whole, assumed the power to direct a course of measures, painful to the feelings and contrary to the deliberate judgment of their brethren. Thus the few usurped a power over the many, subversive of our established order, and destructive to the peace and harmony of society. After long and patient forbearance, in the hope that our opposing brethren might see the impropriety of such a course, the great body of the Yearly Meeting saw no way to regain a state of tranquillity, but by a disconnection with those who had produced, and were promoting such disorders among us.

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Signed by direction, and on behalf of said meeting, by

JOHN COMLY,

Clerk to the Men’s Meeting

LUCRETIA MOTT,

Clerk to the Women’s Meeting.

Text—Journal of the Life and Religious Labours of John Comly, published by his children, pp. 638–641.

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Chicago: "Extracts," Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History in Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History 582–584. Original Sources, accessed March 28, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KSP3WZS7KVGY1IR.

MLA: . "Extracts." Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, in Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, pp. 582–584. Original Sources. 28 Mar. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KSP3WZS7KVGY1IR.

Harvard: , 'Extracts' in Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History. cited in , Source Book and Bibliographical Guide for American Church History, pp.582–584. Original Sources, retrieved 28 March 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=KSP3WZS7KVGY1IR.