For having been shut up within narrow boundaries for a part of their lives, they go greater lengths, when once let loose, than others, who have not been equally curbed and confined." "But while they are of opinion, that prohibitions are likely to be thus injurious to Quaker-youth, they are of opinion, that they are never to be relied upon as effectual guardians of morality, because they consider them as built upon false principles." "They are founded, they conceive, on the principle, that ignorance is a security for innocence, or that vice is so attractive, that we cannot resist it but by being kept out of the way.

In the first case, they contend that the position is false; for ignorant persons are of all others the most likely, when they fall into temptations, to be seduced, and in the second, they contend that there is a distrust of divine providence in his moral government of the world." "They are founded, again, they conceive, on false principles, inasmuch as the Quakers confound causes with sub-causes, or causes with occasions.

If a person, for example, were to get over a hedge, and receive a thorn in his hand, and die of the wound, this thorn would be only the occasion, and not the cause of his death.

The bad state in which his body must have been, to have made this wound fatal, would have been the original cause.

In like manner neither the theatre, nor the ball-room are the causes of the bad passions, that are to be found there.