III.....SECT.

I.
_Language--Quakers differ in their language from others--the first alteration made by George Fox of thou for you--this change had been suggested by Erasmus and Luther--sufferings of the Quakers in consequence of adapting this change--a work published in their defence--this presented to King Charles and others--other works on the subject by Barclay and Penn--in these the word thou shewn to be proper in all languages--you to be a mark of flattery--the latter idea corroborated by Harwell, Maresius, Godeau, Erasmus._ As the Quakers are distinguishable from their fellow-citizens by their dress, as was amply shewn in a former chapter, so they are no less distinguishable from them by the peculiarities of their language.
George Fox seemed to look at every custom with the eye of a reformer.
The language of the country, as used in his own times, struck him as having many censurable defects.

Many of the expressions, then in use, appeared to him to contain gross flattery, others to be idolatrous, others to be false representatives of the ideas they were intended to convey.

Now he considered that christianity required truth, and he believed therefore that he and his followers, who professed to be christians in word and deed, and to follow the christian pattern in all things, as far as it could be found, were called upon to depart from all the censurable modes of speech, as much as they were from any of the customs of the world, which Christianity had deemed objectionable.

And so weightily did these improprieties in his own language lie upon his mind, that he conceived himself to have had an especial commission to correct them.
The first alteration, which he adopted, was in the use of the pronoun thou.