Benjamin Franklin says, in his Autobiography:
I was acquainted with one of the sect's
founders, Michael Welfare, soon after it
appear'd. He complain'd to me that they were grievously calumniated
by the zealots of other persuasions, and charg'd with abominable
principles and practices to which they were utter strangers. I told
him this had always been the case with new sects, and that, to put a
stop to such abuse, I imagin'd it might be well to publish the
articles of their belief, and the rules of their discipline. He said
that it had been propos'd among them, but not agreed to…
He then quotes M. Welfare as having given
this reason:
When we were first drawn together as a society,
it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that
some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that
others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to
time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our
principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we
are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and
at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear
that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should
feel ourselves as if bound and confin'd by it, and perhaps be
unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still
more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done,
to be something sacred, never to be departed from.
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