Continuing to post sections of the 1806 Philadelphia YM
Discipline:
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                               LAW

        IF any member is complained of for withholding a just
debt, he or she should be tenderly urged to payment; and if this
is unavailing, be dealt with as in other case of disorderly
conduct.  And if any of our members appears unable to satisfy
their creditors, they should be advised to call them together
without loss of time; and submit the state of their affairs to
their inspection: when, if the creditors apprehend a surrender of
the debtors' effects to assignees for the benefit of the whole to
be necessary, let him or her be earnestly entreated to consent,
and, if they refuse so to do, the monthly meeting should be
informed thereof; when, if the party still persists in refusing,
he or she should be disowned without too long delay.

        But if Friends in such difficult circumstances, manifest
an honest intention, and shall offer their all to their
creditors; let compassion and aid be extended to them as
brethren, and objects of Christian charity: having done what they
can, no more for the present in justly to be expected from them. =

Yet it is the judgment of this meeting, that if persons so
failing in their circumstances, should at any time afterwards be
favoured with full ability to pay off their deficiencies, justice
will require it of them, notwithstanding a composition with, and
legal discharge from their creditors may have been obtained. =

This is however not meant to furnish any with a pretext for
advancing such claims while persons so deficient are honestly
labouring to retrieve their circumstances, nor until it shall
clearly appear to their respective monthly meetings, or to a
solid committee thereof, that a sufficient ability is arrived at;
when, if they are requested to comply, and persist in refusing,
the said meetings should proceed to disown them.

        And it is desired, that no debtors may shelter themselves
under such of our rules, as are designed to guard us against an
unkind treatment of each other, unjustly hoping to be thereby put
out of the reach of the civil authority.

        And it is the sense of this meeting, that if any member
thereof, disregarding the gospel order prescribed by our
discipline, shall arrest or sue at law another member (not being
under such a necessity so to do, as may satisfy the overseers or
other solid and judicious Friends of the meeting to which the
latter belong) he or she in so doing, doth depart from the
peaceable principle we make profession of; and if on being
treated with by the monthly meeting to which they belong, they
cannot be prevailed with to withdraw the suit and pay the costs
thereof, they should be disowned.

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     A later Orthodox discipline omits the first 2 paragraphs
     above.
     Ohio disciplines I have seen include the first 2 and the
     last paragraph but omit the 3rd.
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Next week: MARRIAGES

Licia Kuenning
Friends of Truth/Glenside Friends Meeting/Quaker Heritage Press