Have _I_ pretended power of working miracles?
Have I imagined or desired that miracle would shield me from persecution?
Did Jesus _not_ "publicly denounce the social and political evils" of Judaea?
was he not "summarily dealt with"?
Did he not know that his doctrine would send on earth "not peace, but a sword"?
and was he _mendacious_ in saying, "Peace I leave unto you ?" or were the angels mendacious in proclaiming, "Peace on earth, goodwill among men"?
Was not "every syllable that Jesus uttered" in the discourse of Matth.xxiii., "an incentive to sedition ?" and does this writer judge it to be _mendacity_, that Jesus opened by advising to OBEY the very men, whom he proceeds to vilify at large as immoral, oppressive, hypocritical, blind, and destined to the damnation of hell?
Or have I anywhere blamed the apostles because they did _not_ exasperate wicked men by direct attacks?
It is impossible to answer such a writer as this; for he elaborately misses to touch what I have said.

On the other hand, it is rather too much to require me to defend Jesus from his assault.
Christian preachers did not escape the imputation of turning the world upside down, and at length, in some sense, effected what was imputed.
It is matter of conjecture, whether any greater convulsion would have happened, if the apostles had done as the Quakers in America.

No Quaker holds slaves: why not?
Because the Quakers teach their members that it is an essential immorality.

The slave-holding states are infinitely more alive and jealous to keep up their "peculiar institution," than was the Roman government; yet the Quakers have caused no political convulsion.

I confess, to me it seems, that if Paul, and John, and Peter, and James, had done as these Quakers, the imperial administration would have looked on it as a harmless eccentricity of the sect, and not as an incentive[16] to sedition.