The last charge against the Quakers will be seen in a vulgar expression, which should have had no place in this book, if it had not been a saying in almost every body's mouth. The expression, is, "Though they will not swear, they will lie."
This trait has arisen in part from those different circumstances, which have produced the appearance of evasiveness. For if people are thought evasive, they will always be thought liars. Evasiveness and lying are almost synonimous terms. It is not impossible also, if Quakers should appear to give a doubtful answer, that persons may draw false conclusions from thence, and therefore may suppose them to have spoken falsely. These two circumstances of an apparent evasiveness, and probably of a deduction of conclusions from doubtful or imaginary premises, have, I apprehend, produced an appearance, which the world has interpreted into evil.
No trait, however, can be more false than this. I know of no people, who regard truth more than the Quakers. Their whole system bends and directs to truth. One of the peculiarities of their language, or their rejection of many of the words which other people use, because they consider them as not religiously appropriate to the objects of which they are the symbols, serves as a constant admonition to them to speak the truth.
Their prohibition of all slanderous reports, as mentioned in a former volume, has a tendency to produce the same effect; for detraction is forbidden partly on the idea, that all such rumours on character may be false.
They reject also the reading of plays and novels, partly under a notion, that the subjects and circumstances in these are fictitious, and that a taste therefore, for the reading, of these, if acquired, might familiarize their youth with fictions, and produce in them a romantic and lying spirit.
It is a trait, again, in the character of the Quakers, as we have seen, that they are remarkable for their punctuality in the performance of their words and engagements. But such punctuality implies neither more nor less, than that the words spoken by Quakers are generally fulfilled; and, if they are generally fulfilled, then the inference is, that all such words have been generally truths.
To this I may add, that the notions of the Quakers on the subject of oaths, and their ideas of the character which it becomes them to sustain in life, must have a powerful effect upon them in inducing an attention to the truth; for they consider Jesus Christ to have abolished civil oaths, because he wished to introduce a more excellent system than that of old, that is, because he meant it to be understood by his disciples, that he laid such an eternal obligation upon them to speak truth, that oaths were to be rendered unnecessary, where persons make a profession of his religion.
CHAP. XVIII.
SECT. I.
Character of the Quaker women—This differs a little from that of the men—Women share in the virtues of the former—but do not always partake of all their reputed imperfections—are not chargeable with a want of knowledge—nor with the money-getting spirit—Modesty a feature in their character.