My mind was deeply baptized into the weak state of society, and I laboured in the ability received to stimulate and encourage Friends to faithfulness and perseverance, that so all our precious testimonies for the Prince of Peace might be held up and exalted as a standard to the nations.
First day, the 30th. A silent meeting. The rest of this week spent in my family cares, except attending our fifth day meeting, which I sat in silence.
First day, the 7th of 5th month. I sat our meeting again in silence. The repeated seasons of rest that I have witnessed, since returning from my arduous labour in New-York, have brought to my remembrance the saying of the dear Master to his disciples, when they returned from the service they had been sent about, in visiting and preaching repentance to the Israelites, and healing their sick, &c.: “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.” I accounted it a favour, for which I was thankful to the bountiful Author of all our blessings.
No particular call to any religious service during this week, except in attention to our preparative meeting. Silent in the meeting for worship.
First day, the 14th. Indisposition of body prevented my attending meeting. I therefore spent the day quietly at home; and in reading a portion of Moshiem’s Ecclesiastical History of the Fifth Century, and which is indeed enough to astonish any sensible, considerate man, to think how the professors of that day could be hardy enough to call themselves Christians, while using every artifice that their human wisdom could invent to raise themselves to power and opulence, and endeavouring to crush down their opposers by almost every cruelty that power, envy and malice could inflict, to the entire scandal of the Christian name; and changing the pure, meek, merciful, and undefiled religion of Jesus, into an impure, unmerciful, cruel, bloody, and persecuting religion. For each of those varied sects of professed Christians, in their turn, as they got the power of the civil magistrate on their side, would endeavour, by the sword, and severe edicts, followed by banishment, to reduce and destroy all those who dissented from them, although their opinions were not a whit more friendly to real genuine Christianity, than the tenets of their opposers; for all were, in great measure, if not entirely, adulterated and apostatized from the true spirit of Christianity, which breathes peace on earth, and good will to man.