PREFACE. IN these days of desultory reading, the press is teeming with light and trivial publications. Works of this description have usurped a large portion of the shelves of every bookseller, and our libraries abound with them. Whilst the perusal of such productions has a decided tendency to dissipate the mind, to unfit it for serious meditation, and to destroy the relish for works of a more solid and practical kind; there are others which, though ostensibly of a more religious character, frequently contain sentiments at variance with Scripture truth, calculated to lessen the attachment to our Christian testimonies, and instil opinions adverse to their support. To counteract these tendencies, and to increase a knowledge and love of our Christian principles, is the design of the present publication; which the Compiler has endeavoured to render as interesting as possible, by the introduction of some of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of the Society. The frequent exhibition of singular providences which these Volumes contain, with examples of courage in encountering danger, and fortitude under persecution and suffering, equal to that evinced by any military hero, as well as many other incidents presented in an attractive and pleasing form, must render them an instructive, and at the same time an agreeable and entertaining Miscellany. The Compiler is fully satisfied that the extracts from the journals and historical records of Friends, frequently interspersed among the following pages, instead of leading to a disesteem for the larger volumes, recording more fully the lives, labours, and sufferings, of our predecessors in religious faith, will produce a desire for a more intimate acquaintance with those works; as the specimen of the fruit of Palestine excited in the Israelites a strong desire to possess the country which furnished so exquisite a sample. Were we more fully sensible of what our suffer, we predecessors had to bear and to should be more zealous to follow in their footsteps. Through their faithfulness, the way has been opened for their successors to enjoy unmolested that liberty of conscience, for the exercise of which they endured long and severe persecution. They have transmitted to us, as a precious inheritance, the profession of those Christian doctrines and testimonies, in support of which they nobly contended. It is both our duty and our interest to be conversant with their history and their writings; to imitate their piety and devotedness, and to strive to be imbued with that fervour and heavenlymindedness which so conspicuously marked their example. We have abundant evidence to justify the conclusion, that the work in which the first Friends were engaged, and in which our Society originated, was 'not of man, but of God.' We have such evidence in their belief in the influence of the Divine Spirit on the heart of man, in their steadfast reliance upon its teachings, and in the clear and faithful testimony which they bore to the spirituality of the gospel dispensation, in the midst of so general a departure from its purity and simplicity; in their powerful and consistent maintenance of the great principle, that religion consists not in a confession of the lips, or an assent of the understanding, but in a change of the heart and affections; and the eminent degree in which they enforced, not only by word, but also by example, the necessity of holiness of life and conversation, of spiritual-mindedness, of deadness to the world, of devotedness to Christ and his service, and of the renunciation of whatever is at variance with the truth as it is in Jesus. The like evidence do we find in those views of the nature of true worship, and of the right ground and authority of Christian ministry, which they upheld and practised; and in the efficacy of their labours in gathering multitudes to an experience of that power of godliness to which they themselves had attained. It is further apparent in their testimony against war, oaths, tithes, and whatever else is opposed to the pure and spiritual character of the gospel of Christ; in their willingness to suffer for conscience' sake; in their patience under suffering, |