THE ANCIENT TESTIMONY AND PRINCIPLES OF THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS, RENEWED, WITH RESPECT TO THE KING AND GOVERNMENT; AND TOUCHING THE COMMOTIONS NOW PREVAILING IN THESE AND OTHER PARTS OF AMERICA. ...

$9,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE ANCIENT TESTIMONY AND PRINCIPLES OF THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS, RENEWED, WITH RESPECT TO THE KING AND GOVERNMENT; AND TOUCHING THE COMMOTIONS NOW PREVAILING IN THESE AND OTHER PARTS OF AMERICA. ... A pacifist manifesto issued by John Pemberton as clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, addressing the "commotions now prevailing," a reference to the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which had appeared just ten days earlier. The statement concludes: "May we therefore firmly unite in abhorrence of all such writings, and measures as evidence a desire and design to break off the happy connection we have heretofore enjoyed with the kingdom of Great Britain, and our just and necessary subordination to the king." "As rumblings of war and revolution increased in the 1770s the Friends drew more and more into their earlier position of passive resistance. By 1776, they had become thoroughly alarmed at the now warlike atmosphere of the colonies....[The publication of The Ancient Testimony] put the Quakers (in the minds of most of the extremists) squarely on the Tory side....It was against this that Tom Paine wrote his Epistle to the Quakers in which he accused that 'factional and fractional' part of the 'whole body of Quakers,' which had been responsible for the publication of the testimony, of being traitors to their own principles" - Falk.The Ancient Testimony would be republished within Large Additions to Common Sense, but the present first separate printing is quite rare

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.