Italians are esteemed a soft and effeminate, but they are generally
reputed a depraved people. Music, in short, though it breathes soft
influences, cannot yet breathe morality into the mind. It may do to
soften savages, but a christian community, in the opinion of the
Quakers, can admit of no better civilization, than that which the spirit
of the supreme being, and an observance of the pure precepts of
christianity, can produce.

Music, again, does not appear to the Quakers to be the foundation of any
solid comfort in life. It may give spirits for the moment as strong
liquor does, but when the effect of the liquor is over, the spirits
flag, and the mind is again torpid. It can give no solid encouragement
nor hope, nor prospects. It can afford no anchorage ground, which shall
hold the mind in a storm. The early christians, imprisoned, beaten and
persecuted even to death, would have had but poor consolation, if they
had not had a better friend than music to have relied upon in the hour
of their distress. And here I think the Quakers would particularly
condemn music, if they thought it could be resorted to in the hour of
affliction, in as much as it would then have a tendency to divert the
mind from its true and only support.

Music, again, does not appear to them to be productive of elevated
thoughts, that is, of such thoughts as raise the mind to sublime and
spiritual things, abstracted from the inclinations, the temper, and the
prejudices of the world. The most melodious sounds that human
instruments can make, are from the earth earthly. But nothing can rise
higher than its own origin. All true elevation therefore can only come,
in the opinion of the Quakers, from the divine source.

The Quakers therefore, seeing no moral utility in music, cannot make it