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zealot held a high rank amid the Mystics of Orleans. Eager multitudes pressed around the prophetesses Hildegrand and Elizabeth, whose fair hands sustained the banner of inspiration in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth Juliana and Wilhelmina, and the sisters of the Free Spirit, maugre all the weaknesses and infirmities of flesh, raised their fame to the stars. Poretta, the foremost of female bishops, made a figure in the fourteenth century. The female Pietists and fair Rosamond, and mother Pedersen, and aunt Guyon were oracles in the seventeenth. And there was Catherine De Sens whose prophecyings broke a Pope's peace and heart, and rent the church catholic by broils and factions for fifty-one years.*

The Holy Catholic church too, though built on no less than the rock of St. Peter,† and propped up by Him who wears the tripple crown; and by priests; and by friars, white, black, and gray; has yielded to the force of truth, and the necessity of the patronage of the fair. And although sworn, on their legends, to be insensible to the charms of the sex, the Pope and his ghostly court have bought their smiles and their influence to their cause. The spiritual degree of saintship was the price of their hire: there was saint Bridget, and there was saint Teresa, and there was saint Matilda, and a long list of names greater and less, which the infallibility of Rome has blazoned on the roll of the ghostly calendar. And in the unlucky reign of the Stewarts in England, while the bowels of the Holy Father piously yearned over the lost treasures of the apostate realm; while the measures of James VI. had been long putting forth their kindly influences in cherishing popery, though at the same time, indeed, sundry weighty volumes of his black letter writings were hurled by majesty, at its head; while the opinions of the reigning monarch Charles I. and the maxims of his court re-animated the expiring hope that England might be regained; Rome, judging that women might achieve what men had tried in vain, commissioned certain female Jesuits, and bade them go and regenerate apostate England. And it is impossible to conjecture what might have been the ex

*Spencer on Vulg. Proph. p. 20-Mosh. vol. iii. cant. 14, part 2, ch. 2. The Protestant church professes to be built on the rock of ages, Christ.

aaordinary spiritual revolution of that kingdom, under the irresistible influence of these bewitching Jesuits, had not that weak and shuffling Pope Urban, moved, it is shrewdly conjectured, more by jealousy for man's honour, than by zeal for the good ⚫ld cause, actually abolished the new order. Fated kingdom of England! how hast thou to bless the memory of Urban and his papal edict ?*

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But-" Palman qui meruit ferat." The society of Friends can produce a list of heroines and feminine bishops not matched in any age, by Jews or Gentiles-heathens or christians. From those of "the first convincement," through a long line of prophetesses, down to the "angelic minister Sarah Morris," and the fluent Emlyn, and the eloquent Hunt. They can boast of a line of prophetesses by whom all the ancients-aye, and the moderns, are completely thrown into the shade. They have had inspired heroines and orators who spouted cataracts of eloquence against "hirelings," and against "steeple houses," and against "carnal ordinances." And, if we may credit their first journalists, they swept away all opposition, and hurried magistrates, and priests, and people into one common medley of ruin! They had their Anne Wright who, to the extraordinary gifts of preaching, added the rare courage of making processions in sack-cloth and ashes through the metropolis of England, and of Ireland; and who, to give effect to public testimony, stood forth in her consecrated garment of sackcloth and the sprinkling of ashes in the aisle of the great church of St. Patrick. They have had their Mary Fisher, whose zeal, worthy of so grand an enterprise, prompted her to a devout pilgrimage to Adrianople, to convert the Sultan Mahomed IV. and the Turkish nation!§ And the later glory of the society has lighted up to them a Harrison, whose spirit-stirring zeal

* These female Jesuits had monasteries in Italy and Flanders. They followed the Jesuit's rules. They were not confined to the cloister; they went abroad and preached. Father Gerrard set up this order in England. He began with two young women. Nor let John Bull exclaim only two! If the kingdom of Priam fell in ruins by one Helen-what would two female Jesuits not have done? Pope Urban VIII. suppressed this order A. D. 1630. Broughton's Dict. vol. ii. p. 538.

† Evan's Narrat. Philad. p. 82.

Jenner's Quak. p. 162, Penn's Works vol. ii. p. 77, 78. § Gough's Hist. of the Quak. vol. i. p. 421.

made her aspire to higher things than dull domestic concerns, and to rise superior to all the ordinary ties which unite females to husbands, to family, or to country. She made a pilgrimage, for the benefit of Europe, to convert her graceless nations!*

Such has been the state of the female ministry in the society; and what has been, may very readily again be. "There is nothing new under the sun." It requires not the gift of prescience to foretell that the present facilities held out by the society, will secure a succession of conscientious female ministers. Hard though the ordeal be, some will always be found equally prepared to overcome the dull propensities which bind ordinary females to domestic employment, and to rid themselves of the trammels of that modesty which constrains weaker females to shrink back from the stare of man, behind their fathers and husbands; and to throw off the proud yoke of man who lords it over them; and to disdain the tyrannical injunction of the man Paul, who, too severe and too unaccommodating to females, has trenched on woman's sovereignty; and has verily said "Females shall not teach nor usurp authority over man."†

Barclay was too well acquainted with the duties of a polished man, and too happy in a gifted wife,‡ to be silent on this subject. Yet he has said little; and that little he has contrived to partake of obscurity and indecision.§

I do not profess to be able to give any satisfactory reason why he, who is so full even to weariness on all other subjects, should leave this so abruptly, after thrusting it too into the corner of another subject. I have been sometimes induced to ascribe it to

*The following anecdote of this lady, whose virtues and courage were worthy of a better cause, I had from my late friend James Quin, an elder in Walnut street church, Philadelphia. She presented herself at the gates of Valenciennes, during the Revolutionary struggle in France. The governor examined her passport and papers. "To all the spiritually minded-followers of the light within, &c. &c." 'My good woman,' said he, returning her papers, "you have mistaken your way. not such a class of beings in Valenciennes."

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There is

"Paul spoke this in his own spirit"-is their easy way of loosing the gordian knot of a hard text. Evan's" Narrative" shows how common this mode of solution has become in Philadelphia.

That amiable and accomplished woman, dame Barclay, was an eminent speaker in the society, long after the learned Barclay had withered in his early grave.

See Prop. x. sect. 27.

his sharp foresight, (almost equal to a prophetical spirit) that the transcendant succession of female talents in their ministry should always be fully adequate to say enough for themselves. It is certain that no female preacher ever yet needed to make the solemn invocation of worthy and learned Zachary Boyd, in his printed but unpublished version of Job.

"There was a man, and his name was Job;

"And he dwelt in the land of Uz.

"And he had a good gift of the gab

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To bring this subject fairly before my readers, I shall make these preliminary observations.

1. The whole weight of the argument, for female preaching, rests on the assumption that divine inspirations are vouchsafed to the society, and that their females, equally with their males, share in the supernatural endowments; and they appeal to these words of Paul as not only authorizing female preaching, but directing and regulating their deportment when uttering their inspirations. "Every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head."*

2. The term "prophesy" has more than one signification in the sacred volume. These four select passages exhibit it in as many different senses. "Jeremiah prophesied these things." "Shemaiah has prophesied a lie." "He that prophesieth speaketh to men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort." "David separated them to prophesy with harps, to give thanks and praise the Lord." Thus, to prophesy, is-First, to predict future events. Second, to utter pretended revelations. Third, to expound and declare the will of God already revealed. Fourth, to sing the praises of God. Now, of all the senses determined by these quotations, the fourth only is applicable to the whole assembly of the church. Individuals only did predict: individuals only were false prophets : individuals only were expounders of the truth. But every worshipper may be said to prophesy in the sense determined by

*And yet, contrary to the very letter of this same authority, every female preacher lays aside her bonnet, when she begins to utter her inspirations in their meetings.

Jer. xx. 1, xxix. 31. 1 Cor. xiv. 3. 1 Chron. xxv.

the fourth quotation. Every worshipper does sing the praises of God: every worshipper does say amen to the prayers offered up in the church. Hence, every worshipper, male and female, does, in the words of St. Paul, "pray and prophesy.”

Now a very important question arises here. In what sense is the term prophesy to be understood, when women are said "to pray and prophesy ?" No decision can be made on this subject, until this question be disposed of. The Friends have taken no notice of this question: they have not even observed that the term is used in different senses. Hence the obscurity and confusion of their writers on this article.

3. There are certain divine precepts, which, in the most explicit terms, prohibit females from preaching. "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted to them to speak.' "It is a shame for women to speak in the church.” "Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”*

On comparing these precepts with the apostolical directions quoted in favour of female preaching, we perceive a distinction clearly marked out by the highest authority. In the latter, wo men who "pray and prophesy" are enjoined" to have their heads veiled in token of subjection." In the former, females are prohibited from teaching, and even from speaking in the church. Thus, females may "pray and prophesy" on certain conditions. But on no condition may they "teach or speak in the church." The Spirit of inspiration cannot contradict himself. It is evident, therefore, that he speaks of two distinct things. shippers, male and female, “may pray and prophesy." may "teach" in the church of God.

All worMen only

4. It is a truth which we readily admit, that there have been prophetesses who have rendered distinguished services to the church. The names of many are on record in the holy writings, and the memory of their services never can perish. But these were always raised up on extraordinary occasions, and for extraordinary services. Let it be carefully observed, that the regular and ordinary teachers of the Old Testament church

* í Cor. xiv. 14, 34, 35. 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12.

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