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FRIENDLY LETTERS

TO

THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS,

ON SOME OF THEIR

DISTINGUISHING PRINCIPLES.

BY RALPH WARDLAW, D.D.

GLASGOW,

ARCHIBALD FULLARTON & CO.;

A. & C. BLACK, EDINBURGH; J. ROBERTSON & CO., DUBLIN;
AND WESTLEY & DAVIS, LONDON.

MDCCCXXXVI.

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LETTER I.

INTRODUCTORY, AND MISCELLANEOUS.

FRIENDS,

IN so addressing you, I wish to be understood as using, not merely the distinctive designation by which you have chosen to denominate yourselves as a body of professing Christians, but a designation expressive of personal regard. I have not been an inattentive or uninterested observer of the agitation that has, for some time past, pervaded your society; and I have felt a strong inclination, blending with a hardly less strong repugnance, to "show mine opinion."-The cause of my repugnance may be easily imagined. I may seem to many an officious intermeddler. I may fasten upon myself the unenviable character of a gratuitous and forward disputant, fond of the gauntlet, most unconscionably enamoured of controversy, when I thus, as it will be thought, go so far out of my way to find it,-when I cannot leave

A

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