harsh prejudiced mind resolved before hand in a heady will to break the Order and thwart the Proceeding of the Meeting but Friends have found any measure of tenderness in the Persons concerned though not come to so clear an understanding as with satisfaction to comply with what was proposed the Meeting has condescended to their weakness not desiring any should act without Sight or without muchless against Faith. Of which I could give many Instances But those who have been justly noted for dark Spirits have been such as have declared they did not see and yet have set themselves to oppose revile and vilifie that which themselves confessed they had not a sight whether it was of God or not To what I. R. and C. H. say concerning Endeavours to bury them alive and take away their good Name and destroy their Labours and Services for God and his Truth little need I think be said plain it is and too apparent that their Labour and Service of latter years have not been for but against God and his Truth And more their Friends than they are aware of have some been who have endeavoured to destroy those Labours and Services of theirs which unless they repent of and forsake will assuredly destroy them But for their being buried alive I am and always was so far from desiring they should be so that I wish at least they were now capable of being so Ah what Savour of Life can any of you taste What fresh Spring can any of you find What green Leaf can any of you see throughout their whole Account The Lord give every one of you who are in any degree Favourers of them or inclining towards them a true Savour of Life in your selves that ye may forsake the Tombs and and not seek the Living among the Dead They speak Page 1. Of what several Friends have suffered from such who have been contentious for the Form and have made it the Measuring-Line And Page 4. they mention Formality being made the measuring-Line of Fellowship and Vnity That any Friends have made the Form the measuring-Line I neither know nor believe but take it for a Slander But if these Men think the Form ought not to be contended for they are Ignorant If they cannot distinguish between Form and Formality they are Weak In every Dispensation Truth hath always appeared in some Form and that Form which God appoints for Truth to appear in ought to be contended for if any rise up to contend against it so long as the Dispensation continues to which that Form is adapted Would these Men have a Religion without Form Or would they have a Form not worth contending for Consider I intreat you ye who have been at their Separate Meetings Have they no Form Do they pretend to none Are they slid back into such a Choas of Confusion that they are or would be as the Earth was while Darkness was upon the face of the Deep without Form If they have no Form they have no Order and how then is the God of Order their God If they have a Form but such an one as they think not worth contending for they had as good have none If they have a Form which they do think worth contending for nay if they have contended even unto Separation that they might impose a Form of their own invention upon us how can they without the greatest Injustice blame us for contending for the Form which we believe the Power of Truth has led us into But making the Form the measuring-Line is a Phrase of their own not of Friends by which they endeavour to cloud your understandings and prejudice your minds against Friends The Spiritual measuring-Line is the Spirit of God by which the Spiritual-minded measure Spiritual things And by this measuring-Line They that oppose the Form of Truth are certainly known and discovered not to be acted and guided by the Power of Truth And yet the Form is not made the measuring Line Is there not a Form of sound Words 2. Tim. 1 13 And if any who profess Truth should not only depart from the Form of sound Words but should reject despise oppose contend against it would ye not blame reprove condemn such persons But would ye have it from hence infer'd that ye make the Form the measuring-Line They say When the Womens Meetings were set up the People were told that was set up to keep things sweet and clean forgetting the fear of the Lord which can only effect that work Thus they pretend to exalt the Fear of the Lord but it is that they might debase and destroy those means which the Lord hath made useful in his Church for the stirring up of the pure Mind and keeping in a Watchful state of Subjection to the Lord in his Fear and reclaiming or calling back to the Fear of the Lord those that by the Wiles of the Enemy may at any time be drawn from it and for the denying and testifying against such as harden themselves against the Lord's Reproof such as oasting his Fear behind their Backs persist in Evil and will not be reformed who by the judgment of Truth arising in the heavenly Power in the Hearts of the Faithful are to be swept out of the Family of God as by the Besoom of the Lord. And is not that a proper way and means to keep things sweet and clean Did Paul think ye forget the fear of the Lord or knew he not as well as these men the vertuous Efficacy of it to keep sweet and clean when he took so great Care and Pains to watch over the Churches for that end When he gave particular direction for the aged Women to instruct and teach the younger Tit. 2. 3 4 5. Was not the end of this to keep things sweet and clean And might'not Hymenaes or Alexander or some other Apostate in that day have cavilled with as much Reason as these men now do and have said the Apostle forgot the Fear of God which can only effect that work But the Children of Light who abide in the Light do in and by the Light see through and over all these empty Cavils And in true and tender Pitty and Christian Compassion to your Souls are these things briefly opened unto you that ye may see and seeing may believe and believing may be saved from the snare the Enemy hath laid to catch you And whereas I. R. and C. H. complain of some crying Make no Bargain with that Spirit and feed it with Iudgment c. And of Sitting with Hats on in the time of their Prayer as a Testimony before all sorts of People against their Spirits with much more of like kind which ye may see in pag. 2. of their Account This I say is deceitfully written by them to beguile the simple and make the Ignorant believe that these Carriages towards them were the Cause and Occasion of the Differences between Friends and them in these parts for they immediately add
Now these things are repeated that none may be so ignorant as to think we begun these Quarrels with our Neighbours and Friends Now the God of Heaven knows and they know in their own Consciences that in this they deal deceitfully For the plain and naked Truth is that these things appeared not in any of our Meetings in this Country not a Hat kept on in the time of their Prayer nor any open shew of dis-union with or dislke to their Testimony how much so ever some of us were then grieved and burdened by them until they had first joyned themselves to the chief Authors and Fomenters of Division and Separation in other parts abetting their Cause espousing their Quarrel and having made a Party for them amongst Friends in this Country brake forth into an open Opposition to the way and order of Truth and by their continual Strife and Contention had done their endeavours to break our Meetings to pieces and by their unruly and turbulent behaviour had given unquestionable proofs that they were departed from the Fellowship of the Gospel of Peace and of Friends were become Enemies to Truth And surely they had no reason to expect to be owned by Friends in their Preaching and Praying after they or their party had published Friends to the World to be Apostates Innovators Introducers of Popery and the like As for the Papers they mention advising Friends to make no Bargain with that Spirit and feed it with Iudgment c. Those Papers declare what Spirit that was that was not to be bargained with but fed with Judgment namely that which was gone out of Truth and had led into Division and Separation and if these men had not known themselves guilty and That they were joyned to that Spirit and to those that by that Spirit were led into Division and Separation in other parts what need it have troubled them to hear such Papers read amongst Friends for a warning and caution to Friends to beware that they were not entangled by that Spirit Why should these men have taken offence at the reading of such a Paper any more than any other Friend in the Meeting where it was read if they had not then been in the Strife Contention and work of Division and so felt a stroke reach them in the reading of these Papers that were designed as a Caution to all Their charging Friends pag. 2. with endeavouring to leaven the Minds of convinced People from House to House to increase then Party and to defame such as were not of it is so exact a description of their own Courses that I am perswaded there are few Families of Friends in this Country but can convict them of it And I dare appeal to many of you if ye have not found it so your selves Nay does not I. R. still continue to draw some Patients of his to come to speak with him at his separate Meeting-place that so he may engage them who else would not come there to help increase his number But their charging Friends with writing approving and printing Books against several whom they call antient Friends by Name wherein they say are several Falshoods and Scandals is so notoriously known and has been so openly and unanswerably proved to be the guilt of their own party that it argues an extream degree of hardness and impudence in them to mention it Let them produce if they can any one Book to justifie their Charge before W. R. writ his foul Invective against Friends under the Title of The Christian Quaker distinguished from the Apostate and Innovator in five Parts Which infamous piece if my Memory fail me not I have heard I. R. say remained some considerable time in his hand before it was printed so that he could not be ignorant of it Nay he was a Promoter and Spreader of it after it came abroad Judge ye now how great a piece of Deceit it is in them to blame Friends for that which their own party first went into and necessitated Friends to answer in Defence and Vindication of the Truth and themselves After the same manner they cry out of Envious Reflections pag. 2. Base Reflections and. Hellish Names pag. 3. When as besides what they utter by Word of Mouth in their Preaching and Discoursing what Reflection that is envious and base is not to be found in their printed Books and Pamphlets against Friends How full is that Book of W. Rogers and other Books writ since by him of abusive Language bitter Words and base Reflections What is there else in Bug's and Bullock's Writings And for envious Reflections and Hellish Names what Sheet of Paper ever contained more than those of Susan Aldridge in forming of which how great an hand these very men had is not unknown to some But if ye look no further than the Account they have now published there ye shall find they say When the Womens-Meetings were first set up many was so elevated with it that they ran like Gehazi c. Gehazi ye know was Servant to the Prophet that cured Naaman the Assyrian of his Leprosie and when the Prophet had refused to take a Reward from Naaman for the Cure Gehazi ran after him in the Prophet's Name with Lyes of his own inventing in his Mouth on purpose and to no other end but to get Money and Clothes of him 2 Kings 5. Now for these men to say of any Friends that they were so elevated with the Womens-Meeting that they run like Gehazi what baser Reflection could they have cast yet here ye fee they caft this base and envious Reflection upon many What more foul as well as false Slander could they have vented or invented Yet these men ye see in that very Paper wherein they have thus basely reflected on others are not ashamed to tax others with envious and base Reflections whose Injustice here'in I represent to your view and serious consideration that ye may weigh and duly consider what Spirit it is they were guided by in writing that Account That so ye may not give your selves up through an affectionate fondness to an implicit belief of what they say or write but may examine and try them by the true measuring-Line the Spirit of Truth which uncovers their Deceit They reject Truth 's order upon pretence pag. 2. that Several things proposed have not proved a Blessing to the Church in such things they were pretenended for viz. to keep things sweet and clean The truly-sensible Ones the faithful and honest-hearted know the contrary not-withstanding the pains these men have taken by their Oppositions to prevent the Blessing and make things unsavoury and unclean But I pray consider what hath their Disorder done how sweet and clean have things been kept amongst them So far has their Division and Separation been from being a Blessing to the Church that it hath proved a grievous Curse to many of them that have run into it And hath led some of them utterly to part from
thither Judge you then of their Sincerity in making this Cavil And as to their other Cavil about Youths and Girls filling up our Meetings if thereby they mean that the Meetings consist of such ' its false If they mean not so but only that some young ones are sometimes there present 't is idle The Meetings it is well known consist of the most antient grave weighty Friends of either Sex in the Country And if any young people or old either that have been little amongst us at our other Meetings and whose deportment and behaviour hath not ansuered their Profession have stept in such have been taken out and desired to withdraw But if they except against all that are young in Years meerly because they are young their exception is to be excepted against as not according to Truth And I question whether they obseve their own methods in the separate Meetings they have set up But if they do not it is then without question that they urge these things not from a conscientious tenderness and with a sincere mind but as a ground of Contention and occasion of Quarrel So also they say they desired that our Meetings might consist of qualified chosen Friends from each particular Meeting But I pray now do their separate Meetings consist of such qualified chosen persons Ye that have been amongst them deal faithfully with your selves and if ye find them false in these particulars urging those things in pretence which they do not practice in reality suffer not your selves to be deceived by them As for our Meetings they do consist of qualified Friends from each particular Meeting such as are chosen by him who best knows their Qualifications God who qualifies them for the service he engages them in and enagages their Spirits in an holy Concern to undertake the work he qualifies them for But is it not strange that these men who seem ready to startle at the very Name of Form and cry out so fearfully against Imposition should on a sudden so far forget themselves as thus to contend for Form in choosing the Members of their Meeting and impose upon all others that should not be chosen and qualified as they think fit to absent themselves from those Meetings What Confusion do these Men run into Now having told us what they desired they go on to tell us what they have disliked as that when Persons have declared that they could not go to the Womens Meeting with their Marriage for Conscience sake several have declared to this effect That the authority of Iudgment concerning such Consciences belong'd to them and that they had power to judge Spirits and Consciences and that they had not only power to desire but to require Marriages before the Womens Meeting and that they could have no Vnity with neither stand Witness to any Marriage but what went first to a distinct Womans Meeting and that such ought not to proceed in Marriage but wait till the Cloud was over telling them it was not Conscience but Stubbornness and Wilfulness and would say They knew it by an inward Sence without any outward Demonstration Thus they fill your Ears with noise and endeavour to prejudice your minds with Reports of what they say others have said whose Sayings perhaps they may have mis-reported or perverted their meanings in giving their own Sence of others words for if ye observe it they do not say several have declared these very words which they have there set down but this in Effect which depends upon their Construction of the words spoken the true Sence of which too cannot be so clearly understood without knowing the Occasions and Circumstances of the Discourse Yet even as these Men have related them they will not sind upon a due Examination any great advantage accrue unto their Cause not will you I hope find cause of Offence from any of these fore-going Expressions As for the authority of judging concerning Conscience which I take to be the main thing here they carp at before it can be rightly understood with relation to be the present Case the occasion and intention of the Words must be considered A Couple that profess Truth lay their Intention of Marriage before a Meeting of Friends The intent of their doing this is not barely and only that their Intention may be made known but that the Friends of that Meeting if no just cause of Obstruction appear may own them joyn with them Act for them and stand by them in the carrying on and consummating of their Marriage Now if this Couple shall refuse to proceed in that Method for the accomplishing their Marriage which the Meeting uses on the like Occasions and shall pretend a Conscientious scruple for such Refusal hath not that Meeting Authority to inquire into the Grounds and Reasons of such a pretence and upon that Inquiry power also to judge of the Sincerity or Insincerity of such a Pretence or Plea of Conscience so far as concerns their own Satisfaction in order to their owning or not owning acting for or not acting for joyning with or not joyning with standing by or not standing by such Persons in their present Procceedings How else shall a Meeting be capable to act with Iudgment and Safety shall a Meeting of Friends be obliged to acquiesse and submit to every bare Plea of Conscience from others contrary to the firm Perswasion of their own Consciences and not be allowed a Liberty Ability Capacity Authority to Examine Try Judge a Plea of Conscience whether it be sincere or no especially in a Case wherein themselves are to be concerned Worse then would the Condition of a Meeting be than that of a single Person We have been told indeed by some of them when we have asked of the Parties refusing a reason of their refusing to let their Proceedings be lookt into by the Womens Meeting that we ought not to ask them such Questions but that when they have declared it to be matter of Conscience to them we ought to be satisfied with that Answer without inquiring further But this has not answered our Consciences nor our Understandings We believed that in a Case wherein they desired us to be concerned we might reasonably desire to be further satisfied thâ—â— so Their excepting against any Friends saying if any did say they had power to judge Spirits shews how short they are of the state of the Spiritual Man who the Apostle testifies Iudges all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. Consider I intreat you wherefore was the Gift of Discerning Spirits given to the Church as we read it was 1 Cor. 12. 10. If it was not to be used in the Church And wherefore were the Saints exhorted 1 Iohn 4. 1. To try the Spirits whether they were of God or no if they have not received from God ability to Try and power upon Tryal to Iudge whether those Spirits are of God or not at least so far as relates to their own satisfaction in receiving or not receiving
joyning or not joyning or not joyning with them If any Friend being sensible that a Couple was clouded and muddled in their minds as some have been in our Meeting by the Oppositions and Gain-sayings of these Men and their Party and thereby made uncapable at present of seeing what the Lord required of them should advise them not hastily to proceed in Marriage but wait till the Cloud was over what hurt was there in that to any If it were said to some that their Refusal proceeded not from Conscience but from stubbornness and willfulness What then was that impossible to be true Or impossible to be known or being true and being known was it unfit to be spoken If any knew it by an inward sence they had the better ground to speak it on And though it is not probable any Friends exprest themselves as these Men have set it down viz. by an inward sence without any outward Demonstration yet I do not believe that to be impossible And if these Men hold otherwise ye would do well to put them to speak plainly that you and all may see how far they are degenerated However this is certain that in those controverted Cases which came before the Meeting in this Country during this Disturbances that these Men made there whatever inward sence any Friends had of the Stubbornness wilfulness and insincere Pleas of Conscience made by any whom they abbetted the Lord never suffered us to want Outward Demonstration thereof also sufficient to confirm that inward sence and convict the Opposers They proceed in discovering their Dislike saying Also we have not liked to send Men from the Country to the Yearly-Meeting to sign Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity For my part I never knew any sent for that purpose nor any Papers signed at the yearly-Meeting against any Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity These are but false Insinuations by which they endeavour to fill your minds with prejudice against Friends that thereby they may bind you the faster to themselves But the Lord I hope will break their Bands of Iniquity and open your Understandings to see and discern between Truth and Falshood that ye may reject the one and cleave to the other Therefore take not their Stories upon trust but examine and try them Here ye see they suggest as if Friends of the Country were sent to the Yearly-Meeting to sign Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity This is false Those Friends that go from the Countries to the Yearly-Meeting go as in the general Love of God so on the general Service of Truth to communicate the general state and condition of Friends in the several Counties they go from and to consider and advise together in the openings of Life and heavenly Counsel from God how to be servicable one to another and to the whole body in procuring Liberty Ease Relief to those Members that are in Sufferings by Persecution or Labour under Necessities and Wants whether in this Nation or any other And to be Instrumentally helpful to open the way as the Lord opens their Hearts and Understandings thereunto that Truth may have a free and open passage to be propogated and spread in other Nations either by Books or Preaching as the Lord shall stir up the Spirits of his Servants thereunto whereby the Body edefies it self in Love. But these Meetings I know this sort of Opposers have long disliked and reproached nor are they in reality for any settled Meetings for Business either Monthly Quarterly or Yearly but such as themselves may direct and govern Now as for what they suggest of signing Papers against Ministers of the Gospel for Non-Conformity as I know of none such ever signed there so there having been but one Paper that I remember signed at the Yearly-Meeting against any that pretended to be Ministers I suppose in this Cavil they aim at that That was a Testimony signed in the year 1677. against I. S. and I. W. who were gone from the Vnity of Friends into a Separate Spirit and had countenanced an open Separation in the North long before And having been charged by Friends in the North with many things contrary to the Testimony of Truth after many Meetings had between Friends and them thereupon a Meeting was at length by joynt consent of both Parties appointed to be held at Draw-Well in York-shire in the 2 d. Month 1676. which Meeting lasted four days and thereupon a full hearing of the Charge against them and their Defence they were found faulty in the most material things laid to their Charge as by the Narrative of the Proceedings of that Meeting signed by above twenty Friends that were present doth appear And after a deep Travel of Spirit for them that they might be brought to a sence of their Guilt they seemed at length in some degree bowed and produced a Paper in order to give Satisfaction to Friends containing a Condemnaiion of themselves and of that Spirit by which they had been mis-led But quickly after being blaimed as was said by some of their own Party and encouraged to persist in their former Opposition they denyed their own Paper of Condemnation using Falshoods and Equivocations to avoid the force of it as with relation to I. S. I my self from a personal Conferrence which I had with him at I. R's House do certainly know and their great Agent W. R. who not only was one of that Meeting at Draw-Well but was said to have assisted them in drawing up that Paper of Condemnation for them did afterwards expresly say It was but a Rattle to please Children which evidenced the Naughtiness of their hearts and the insincerity of their dealings who afterwards concerning their work of Opposition Division and Separation they were tenderly admonished thereof in an Epistle from several Friends at London in the 3 d. Month 1676. But they rejecting the tender Love of Friends towards them and hardening themselves against the good advice in that Epistle given them went on in their dividing Work I. S. Travelling the Countries and spreading the Division and Separation further Whereupon Friends felt a necessity upon their Spirits at the Yearly-Meeting 1677. above a year after to give forth a publick Testimony against them and against that dividing Spirit they were then led by That all Friends might be warned of them that no more might be deceived by them and that the Meeting might be clear in the sight of God who had laid that concern weightily upon it For your sakes it is O ye beguiled ones whom my Soul both pitties and seeks that I have given this short but plain account of this matter that ye may have a right understanding of things and not to be mis-led by mis-reports and mis-representations of matters to the hardening of you against the Work of the Lord and the hurting of your own Souls They express their Dislike also of Contentious Books sent as they say on the Countries
they are not really and indeed Lovers of Peace but seekers of occasions of Strife and Contention not willing to let others enjoy that quiet which themselves pretend they seperated for Having opened I think the most or most material Passages which in their Account they assign for the Grounds of their Offence and Reasons of their Separation and thereby answered the End of my present Undertaking which was to undeceive you by exposing their Falsness and Folly to your views that none of you may be further betrayed by them for want of sufficent Information and warning I shall not at present take much notice of the remaining Fragments of their Pamphlet as perhaps but for your sakes I had not now concern'd my self with it at all What they talk of their desire that all that is amiss might be forgiven removed and buried while they omit the inseparable Condition of Forgiveness viz. Confessing and Forsaking shews rather their want of Forgiveness than their desert of 〈◊〉 or fitness for it And when they say they are as ready to forgive as to be forgiven it is a sign they are conscious that themselves are guilty of those Vngodly Reproaching they mention just before and would fain perswade the Innocent to make themselves guilty too that without further reckoning they might discount one with another But the work is weightier then they are aware of And they are gone far inded from a right sense if they do not understand that Who go out by Transgression must come in by Iudgment If they are sensible they need Forgiveness from others they ought to seek it in the right way and proper course whether those others who they think need forgiveness from them are sensible of any such need on their parts and desire it or not For if they apprehend others fall short of doing their duty that will not justifie nor excuse these men from falling short of doing theirs Now as the right way of seeking Forgiveness is a true Repentance of the Evils desired to be forgiven so the proper Evidences of the Truth of such a Repentance are a free and sincere Acknowledgement of those Evils an hearty and godly Sorrow for them and an utter forsaking of them And now that these men have thus intimated their desire of being forgiven if they shall not pursue these right and proper means thereto it will thence the more plainly appear to all that in this as well as in the rest of their work they are void of Sncerity Truth and Honesty But till they and their Party have given Evidence of their Repentance they have no reason to expect any other Answer to their feigned offers of Peace than that which they say hath been frequently given them viz. That they are joyned to a wrong Spirit and no peace is to be made with them while they remain joyned to that wrong Spirit From which as I heartily desire they might be disjoyned so I certainly know that whosoever makes Peace with them in that wrong Spirit and while they continue joyned to it will certainly break his peace with God. T. E. In the 5th Page of their Account they have printed a Letter sent to the second dayes Meeting in London on the 13th of the 5th Month 1687. signed by Joshua Kinch c. requiring an Answer by the 26th of that Month. To which an Answer was returned from the same Meeting on the 25th of the same Month. But since they had not Ingenuity or Plainness enough to publish the Answer together with the Letter pretending they had no satisfying Answer the Answer it self is herewith now published for the satisfaction of such as from their dark Insinuation might think there had been no Answer at all given thereto Friends Iohn Barnard Isac Hemings Ioshua Kinch WE have read a Paper signed by you which you directed to this Meeting for an Accommodation reconciling Differences preventing separate Meetings and Re-uniting those to us that are separated from us in the Country c. And we having well weighed the Contents and considered from whom it comes viz. from and on behalf of such as have rendered us to the World to bee Apostatized from the Truth Innovaters and Setters up of a Lordly Dominion in our own wills over the People of God Introducers of Popery and but one Step from it c. It gives cause of Marvel that after making spreading such Charges against us and before you have taken them off again you should make Propositions of a more strict Unity and Correspondency with us then is at present If you had come forth with an Acknowledgment that we were not such and had come to unfeigned Repentance for your falsely charging us to be such it had appeared Rational But to desire reconcilliation with us before this be done by you seems very unreasonable and unsafe for you and for us For if we are defacto such as you have rendered us it 's not fit for you to declare an Unity with us while such If we are not such as you have rendred us it s fit you should take off the approby cast upon us and acknowledge your just Condemnation before we can with safety declare Unity with you and for your saying if the Separation proceeds to be Publick it will lye at our Doors what do you mean the Evil of it will lye at our Doors if so it seems there is an Evilinit and therefore you ought to avoid it for provocation to an evil is no excuse for an evil in the sight of God if you think the work be good as our separation from the World's Worships because of Apostacy and Innovations was why then do you seem to make terms to evade and prevent it As to your complaint of Reflections Exclusions in our publick Meetings we say when you have condemned all those Slanderous abusive Reports which you have publickly cast upon us in the face of the World and manifested the Love of God dwelling in your Hearts towards us as Brethren you shall find us as ready in the same Love to receive you as Brethren without any reflecting upon you for what is past and be very glad to appear as Sheep of one Sheep-fold under our own Shepherd Christ Jesus for which end we were called But while yon do retain those Sentiments of us which you have helped to spread and publish against us it is not possible for you to have a Christian Unity with us or that Love and Life can freely flow forth from the one to the other in the fellowship of the Gospel Nor have we reason to Judge that you are sincere in your inclination to such an Unity as in the Truth can be received For that you seek to impose upon us a subjecting our selves to the Ministry of some Men who are known to us by good evidence to be men of evil and vitious Practices whom we could not for that reason receive as Preachers among us And there are among us have had experience how some of you have been so far from Concurring to detect some of those Men when sufficient evidence hath been produced against them That you have rather seemed to covet them And as we never could admit the pretended Ministry of such among us who lie under those Scandals so since you seem to have owned this Separation to be an ill thing which we do readily agree to and therefore neither can we admit the Authors and Abettors of such Separation from our Friends and Brethren elsewhere so as to Receive their Testimony here else we should become partakers of that evil which we justly condemn and you yourselves would appear to avoid And we are well satisfied that you cannot justly charge Friends with excluding or preventing any who have been owned Ministers among us who are not of the one or other sort above-mentioned which are the true Reasons why they could not be admitted of and not because of any meer Non-conformity to any outward orders or Impositions as is unjustly and untruely affirmed by you Signed on behalf of the Second Dayes Morning Meeting by Richard Richardson 25th of the 5th Month 1687. THE END