Page:Memoirs of the Lives.djvu/37

25 yet he always avowed their principles, and was attached to them as a religious community; but he could not endure the idea, that professing as they did, it was proper that any of them should hold their fellow beings in bondage; hence, he appears to have directed the most energetic and unceasing assaults upon them; nor could he be persuaded that it must, from the very nature and constitution of the human mind, be a gradual work, if ever they were cleansed as a people from the practice, which, even at that time, some of them, with himself, considered as an offence in the sight of Divine Purity.

The following facts will shew some of the modes he adopted, to convince the Society of Friends, and others, of the impropriety of their conduct in keeping slaves. During the session of an annual meeting, held at Burlington in New Jersey, Lay proceeded to that city. Having previously prepared a sufficient quantity of the juice of poke-berry (Phytolacca decandra) to fill a bladder, he Rh