Among Them, Every One May Expound The Scriptures, Who
Thinks He Is Called So To Do; Beside, As They Admit Of Neither
Sacrament, Baptism, Nor Any Other Outward Forms Whatever, Such A Man
Would Be Useless.
Most of these people are continually at sea, and
have often the most urgent reasons to worship the Parent of Nature
in the midst of the storms which they encounter.
These two sects
live in perfect peace and harmony with each other; those ancient
times of religious discords are now gone (I hope never to return)
when each thought it meritorious, not only to damn the other, which
would have been nothing, but to persecute and murther one another,
for the glory of that Being, who requires no more of us, than that
we should love one another and live! Every one goes to that place of
worship which he likes best, and thinks not that his neighbour does
wrong by not following him; each busily employed in their temporal
affairs, is less vehement about spiritual ones, and fortunately you
will find at Nantucket neither idle drones, voluptuous devotees,
ranting enthusiasts, nor sour demagogues. I wish I had it in my
power to send the most persecuting bigot I could find in - - to the
whale fisheries; in less than three or four years you would find him
a much more tractable man, and therefore a better Christian.
Singular as it may appear to you, there are but two medical
professors on the island; for of what service can physic be in a
primitive society, where the excesses of inebriation are so rare?
What need of galenical medicines, where fevers, and stomachs loaded
by the loss of the digestive powers, are so few?
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