quaker-dress

Updated: July 1, 2025

If, for instance, it were thought right, that the Quaker-part of it should preserve the simplicity of the Quaker-dress, and the plainness of the Quaker-language, how is this to be done, while the other part daily move in the fashions, and are taught as a right usage, to persist in the phrases of the world?

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends

The custom of using plain furniture has not arisen from the circumstance, that any particular persons in the society, estimable for their lives and characters, have set the example in their families, but from the, principles of the Quaker-constitution itself. It has arisen from principles similar to those, which dictated the continuance of the ancient Quaker-dress.

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends

This precise attention to particularities is considered as little better than the worshipping of lifeless forms, and is usually called by the world the idolatry of the Quaker-dress. This charge, if it were true, would be serious indeed. It would be serious, because it would take away from the religion of the Quakers one of its greatest and best characters.

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends

The first outward fact that presents itself to us, is the fact of the origin of the Quaker-dress, if the early Quakers, when they met in religious union, had met to deliberate and fix upon a form or standard of apparel for the society, in vain could any person have expected to repel this charge. But no such standard was ever fixed.

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends

I should have been glad to have dismissed the subject of the Quaker-dress in the last section, but so many objections are usually made against it, that I thought it right to stop for a while to consider them in the present place. Indeed, if I were to choose a subject, upon which the world had been more than ordinarily severe on the Quakers, I should select that of their dress.

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends

The world usually make objections to the Quaker-dress the charge is that there is a preciseness in it which is equivalent to the worshipping of forms the truth of this charge not to be ascertained but by a knowledge of the heart but outward facts mate against it-such as the origin of the Quaker-dress and the Quaker-doctrine on dress doctrine of christianity on this subject opinion of the early christians upon it reputed advantages of the Quaker-dress.

Thomas Clarkson - A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 1 : Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends