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This is done by a distinct document, called a testimony of disownment, in which the nature of the offence, and the means that have been used to reclaim him, are described. A wish is also generally expressed in this document, that he may repent, and be taken into membership again. A copy of this minute is always required to be given to him.
Now it must undoubtedly be confessed, that the Americans have advantages, as far as this fact is concerned, which the English have not. They have no tithes as a cause of disownment. Their families also, I believe, increase more rapidly.
The "quiet, humble habitation" was found at Fort Lee, on the Hudson, and there the happy trio settled down for their first housekeeping. They were scarcely settled amid their new surroundings before the sisters received a formal notice of their disownment by the Society of Friends because of Angelina's marriage.
The New England Yearly Meeting went so far as to advise the closing of meeting-house doors to all anti-slavery lecturers and the disownment the sisters had long expected now became imminent. We can well imagine how terrible all this must have been to their shrinking, sensitive, and proud spirits.
In the first place, disownment is held to be necessary, because it acts as a check upon such marriages, and because, by acting as such a check, it prevents the family-disputes and disagreements which might otherwise arise; for such marriages have been found to be more productive of uneasiness than of enjoyment.
It is almost impossible that he should not feel a diminution of his dignity and importance as a man. Neither can he restore himself to these privileges by going to a distant part of the kingdom and residing among quakers there, on a supposition that his disownment may be concealed.
A third cause of disownment, but this belongs to the original and remote, was shewn to be the pursuit of trade, connected as it is with the peculiar habits of the society and a residence in the towns. I may propose as remedies for this, first, that parents should be careful to exhibit a good example to their children.
One of the reasons, which the Quakers give for the adoption of this law of disownment in the case of mixed marriages, is, that those who engage in them violate some of the most important principles of the society, and such indeed as are distinguishing characteristics of Quakerism from the religion of the world.
Protests and disclaimers against the disownment of these worthy men came from several parts of the country, signed by Friends of high character; and many private letters were addressed to them, expressive of sympathy and approbation. Friend Hopper was always grateful for such marks of respect and friendship; but his own conscience would have sustained him without such aid.
For a person, who is out of the society, cannot be obliged upon pain of disownment, as a Quaker may, to submit to such a mode of decision, being out of the reach of the Quaker-discipline. I shall close my observations upon this subject, by giving an account of an institution for the accommodation of differences, which took place in the year 1793, upon Quaker principles.
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