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Quakers Yearly Epistle . Sir , The last Epistle from the Yearly Meeting of Friends having been inserted in the Repository for July
l $ st , p . 365 , and some remarks thereon at p . 4 0 , it appears to me an act of justice to that Assembly , briefly to state the usual manner in which its annual Epistles have hitherto been examined
previous to publication , and the mode pursued with respect to the last . The readers of the Repository will thus be enabled to judge for
themselves , how far the Meeting at la ; rge are implicated in a deliberate approval of such parts of that Episde as may be unscriptural and erroneous .
On the presentation of the draft of an annual Epistle to the Yearly Meeting by the Committee appointed to prepare it , the usual , and till this instance the invariable
practice within my memory , and certainly for a number of years past has been , in the first place , lo read the whole through at once ;
and afterwards to read the Epistle again paragraph by paragraph ; making a suitable pause between € ach ^ for the express purpose of examining and discussing such
passages , or expressions , as may be deemed objectionable by any one present * In this manner alterations were frequently suggested , and sometimes , in consequence thereof , important amendments adopted .
These wise precautions against the inadvertent admission of error into so important a Document being disregarded , the last Yearly Epistle ions only read once- in the
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Meeting at large , and that all tom gether , and not paragragh by paragraph * One cause for this departure from the accustomed practice might be , that the Meeting had sat long . Nevertheless , it was strongly opposed , as a dangerous precedent , and several specific
objections to certain passages m it , were urged * But none of them obtained sufficient attention to induce the Clerk , or any other Friend near the Table , to read a single sentence nf it a second time * Nor were they otherwise shewn to be groundless *
It was , however , clearly stated and understood , that any incorrect quotations of Scripture which might be ; found in it , should be rectified by the Committee appointed to correct the Press , as
expressly lying within their proper province * Consequently the Meeting , in its collective capacity , is not responsible for any errors of that kind which may remain uncorrected .
Since writing the above , it occurred to me that it was probable Thos- Clarkson , in his Portraiture of Quakerism , had said something on this subject . On referring to that work , vol . I . p . 244 ,- I find his account of the practice of the Yearly Meeting on such occasions to be as follows :
" When the tetter" ( viz . c the General Epistle ?) " is ready , ? t is cc brought into the public Meetc ing , and the whole of it , with-4 C out interruption , is first read
* audibl y * It is then read over C € againy and canvassed sentence ci by sentence * Every sentence , 44 nay every word , is liable to cc alteration i for any one may
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QuakersYearly Epistle . 21
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1811, page 21, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2412/page/21/
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