"But thou, who boastest thy coming to extirpate robbers, thou thyself art the greatest robber upon earth."——
"Thou hast possessed thyself of Lydia, invaded Syria, Persia, and Bactriana. Thou art forming a design to march as far as India, and thou now contest hither, to seize upon our herds of cattle. The great possessions which thou hast, only make thee covet more eagerly what thou hast not."——
"We are informed that the Greeks speak jestingly of our Scythian deserts, and that they are even become a proverb; but we are fonder of our solitudes, than of thy great cities."——
"If thou art a god, thou oughtest to do good to mortals, and not to deprive them of their possessions. If thou art a mere man, reflect on what thou art."——
"Do not fancy that the Scythians will take an oath in their concluding of an alliance with thee. The only oath among them is to keep their word without swearing. Such cautions as these do indeed become Greeks, who sign their treaties, and call upon the Gods to witness them. But, with regard to us, our religion consists in being sincere, and in keeping the promises we have made. That man, who is not ashamed to break his word with men, is not ashamed of deceiving the Gods."
To the account contained in these extracts, it may be added, that the Scythians are described by Herodotus, Justin, Horace, and others, as a moral people. They had the character of maintaining justice. Theft or robbery was severely punished among them. They believed infidelity after the marriage-engagement to be deserving of death. They coveted neither silver nor gold. They refused to give the name of goods or riches to any but estimable things, such as health, courage, liberty, strength, sincerity, innocence, and the like. They received friends as relations, or considered friendship as so sacred an alliance, that it differed but little from alliance by blood.
These principles of the Scythians, as far as they are well founded, the Quakers believe to have originated in their more than ordinary attention to that divine principle which was given to them, equally with the rest of mankind, for their instruction in moral good; to that same principle, which Socrates describes as having suggested to his mind that which was good and virtuous, or which Seneca describes to reside in men as an observer of good and evil. For the Scythians, living in solitary and desert places, had but little communication for many ages with the rest of mankind, and did not obtain their system of morality from other quarters. From the Greeks and Romans, who were the most enlightened, they derived no moral benefit. For Strabo informs us, that their morals had been wholly corrupted in his time, and that this wretched change had taken place in consequence of their intercourse with these nations. That they had no scripture or written law of God is equally evident. Neither did they collect their morality from the perusal or observance of any particular laws that had been left them by their ancestors; for the same author, who gives them the high character just mentioned, says that they were found in the practice of justice,[37] not on account of any laws, but on account of their own natural genius or disposition. Neither were they found in this practice, because they had exerted their reason in discovering that virtue was so much more desirable than vice; for the same author declares, that nature, and not reason, had made them a moral people: for[38] "it seems surprising, says he, that nature should have given to them what the Greeks have never been able to attain either in consequence of the long succession of doctrines of their wise men, or of the precepts of their philosophers; and that the manners of a barbarous, should be preferable to those of a refined people."
[Footnote 37: Justitia gentis Ingeniis culta, non Legibus.]
[Footnote 38: Prorsus ut admirabile videatur, hoc illis naturam dare, quod Graeci longá sapientium doctriná praeceptisque philosophorum consequi nequeunt, cultosque mores incultae barbariae collatione soperari.]
This opinion, that the spirit of God was afforded as a light to lighten the Gentiles of the ancient world, the Quakers derive from the authorities which I have now mentioned; that is, from the evidence which history has afforded, and from the sentiments which the Gentiles have discovered themselves upon this subject. But they conceive that the question is put out of all doubt by these remarkable words of the Apostle Paul. "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written on their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another." And here it may be observed, that the Quakers believe also, that in the same manner as the spirit of God enlightened the different Gentile nations previously to the time of the apostle, so it continues to enlighten those, which have been discovered since; for no nation has been found so ignorant, as not to make an acknowledgment of superior spirit, and to know the difference between good and evil. Hence it may be considered as illuminating those nations, where the scriptures have never reached, even at the present day.