It was free to exclude from the meeting on arbitrary and even on frivolous grounds.

As zeal decayed, the energies of the Society were mainly shown in protesting and excluding and expelling.

God's husbandry does not prosper when his servants are over-earnest in rooting up tares.
The course of the Society of Friends in the eighteenth century was suicidal.

It held a noble opportunity of acting as pastor to a great commonwealth.

It missed this great opportunity, for which it was perhaps constitutionally disqualified, and devoted itself to edifying its own members and guarding its own purity.