[167] The Act of Banishment enforced by Charles II against all dissenters.
[168] This opinion was held and supported by Richard Nisbit, in his "Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West-India Planters." See "Slave-Trade Tracts," Vol. 1, Tract 3. The same opinion was given by John Millar, LL.D., of the University of Glasgow, in his treatise on the "Ranks of Society."
[169] Whittier, "The Journal of John Woolman," 7.
[170] Ibid., 7.
[171] Pa. Mag., IV, 28.
[172] Whittier, "The Journal of John Woolman," 8-9.
[173] Woolman relates this experience in the first chapter of his "Journal," as follows: "My employer, having a Negro woman, sold her, and desired me to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought her. The thing was sudden; and though I felt uneasiness at the thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow creatures, yet I remembered that I was hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a member of our Society, who bought her; so through weakness I gave way and wrote it; but at the executing of it I was so afflicted in mind, that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some degree, abated my uneasiness; yet as often as I reflected seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against my conscience; for such it was." "Journal of John Woolman," Edition Philadelphia, 1845, pp. 30-31.
[174] Concerning this early home training, Woolman writes: "The pious instructions of my parents were often fresh in my mind, when I happened to be among wicked children, and were of use to me. Having a large family of children, they used frequently, on first-days, after meeting, to set us one after another to read the Holy Scriptures, or some religious books, the rest sitting by without much conversation; I have since often thought it was a good practice. From what I had read and heard, I believed there had been, in past ages, people who walked in uprightness before God in a degree exceeding any that I knew or heard of now living." "Journal of John Woolman," 20.
[175] "Journal of John Woolman," 25.
[176] That Woolman had a very lofty conception of his calling will appear in his following reflection: "All the faithful are not called to the public ministry; but whoever are, are called to minister of that which they have tasted and handled spiritually. The outward modes of worship are various; but whenever any are true ministers of Jesus Christ, it is from the operation of his Spirit upon their hearts, first purifying them, and thus giving them a just sense of the conditions of others. This truth was early fixed in my mind, and I was taught to watch the pure opening, and to take heed lest, while I was standing to speak, my own will should get uppermost, and cause me to utter words from worldly wisdom, and depart from the channel of the true gospel ministry." "Journal of John Woolman," 29.