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Untitled Article
the Quakers Vvas very strong , and whose happiness , although persons of great moral worth ,-was materially impaired by being thus severed from their brethren . Persons are also frequently disowned for other causes not of an
immoral nature , such as the payment of tithes , &c , in mere obedience to the law of the land
who are strongly attached to the general and more important doctrines of the society , and are far from approving the system of tithes as a Christian institution .
If such persons must still be disowned ^ I cannot understand why they might not , on request - ing leave , be allowed the privi - lege of being married in the . society ; the only other legal form of
marriage in this country , for professed Christians , being that of the established church , to a compliance with which , it is highly probable they may have a conscientious objection .
The refusal of the Quakers to permit the marriage of persons amongst them , one of whom has been disowned , has occasioned the parties to live single for many
years , and even for life , when their affections were mutually engaged to each other , and no other impediment to their union existed , except their repugnance to the adoption of the ceremony of the church of England .
Such have been , and may be , the consequences ef continuing and enforcing the present rules of the society respecting marriage
and the payment of tithes . On one branch of the latter subject , impropriate tithes , there is an interesting letter by Mr . Clarkson , the author of the Portrature of Quakerism , in your 3 d . vol . p *
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476 ; highly deserving of the serious attention of such zealous disciplinariam as are advocates for disowning their brethren IVr c uch causes as these .- This-writer has
fuhy established , in my apprehension , tlie impropriety and inconsistency of 'Hibowning . those who pay or receive inpropiiate tithes . And aitncui » h . h ; - mrm nts
that the society . " should Rut have made , long a ^ o a . proper distinction bc $ w ( en ecclesiastical
and impropriate tithes / ' I sec no reason to conclude he would approve disowning c * a virtuous man and a good Christian" for
the payment of either . The letter , on the contrary , shews how strongly his mind was impressed with the ' ^ many evils ' which may arise from unnecessary disownment .
u Members , " says he , " may occasionally be - turned out of such a society , who may be men of a more amiable spirit than others who may remain in it . The hearts of the upright may also be grieved . And there may be laid inevitably in the cone : ti- « tution of such a society , the seeds of its own dissolution . " An extension of the privilege of bt : ing married in the torjrn prescribed by the Quakers , to those who are from education or otherwise of the same persuasion , or to those who may have been disowned , and ) et profVs * a conscientious objection to complying with the marriage ceremony of
the church of . Kngland , would be only treating such persons- with , the same kind of liberality as magistrates usually extend towards them by the acceptance of their affirmation instead of &it oath .
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* 0 On the Consistency of Quakers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1810, page 80, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2401/page/32/
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