From Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman Quote
In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, there appears a remarkablequotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of areligious sect known as the Dunkers and a longtime acquaintance ofFranklin. the statement had its origins in Welfare's complaint toFranklin that zealots of other religious persuasions were spreading liesabout the Dunkers, accusing them of abominable principles to which, infact, they were utter strangers. Franklin suggested that such abusemight be diminished if the Dunkers published the articles of theirbelief and the rules of their discipline. Welfare replied that thiscourse of action had been discussed among his co-religionists but hadbeen rejected. He then explained their reasoning in the followingwords:When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God toenlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we onceesteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemederrors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased toafford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and ourerrors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the endof this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theologicalknowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound andconfined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement,and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders andfounders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.
In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, there appears a remarkablequotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of areligious sect known as the Dunkers and a longtime acquaintance ofFranklin. the statement had its origins in Welfare's complaint toFranklin that zealots of other religious persuasions were spreading liesabout the Dunkers, accusing them of abominable principles to which, infact, they were utter strangers. Franklin suggested that such abusemight be diminished if the Dunkers published the articles of theirbelief and the rules of their discipline. Welfare replied that thiscourse of action had been discussed among his co-religionists but hadbeen rejected. He then explained their reasoning in the followingwords:When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God toenlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we onceesteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemederrors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased toafford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and ourerrors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the endof this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theologicalknowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound andconfined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement,and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders andfounders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.