Your memorialists are christians and im-
-pressed with a firm conviction that war
is forbidden under the Gosple – they cannot
bear Arms – to require it under legal penalties
is to reduce them to the alternative of refuseing
a compliance with the laws of their country
as of violating what they most solemnly believe
is to them a law of God, clothed with the most
awful sanctions

Your memorialist plead for no new doctrine
the set up no novel pretentions. The ask permissi-
-on only to practice the precepts of Jesus Christ.
To adhere to a principal which prevailed through
the first centuries of the Christian dispensation
which pious men through every subsequent age have
maintained, and which their predecessors from the
time they have been known as a religious society
under various forms of Government and through
suffering imposed by rigorous and persecuting
laws, have uniformly supported.

It is true that in the laps of time the Spirit of
time - the Spirit of persecution has faded before the
light of truth. Our own Country as already
stated has been particularly distinguished for
maintaining the principals of civility and reli-
-gious liberty and for rejecting those of coercive law
and religious intolerance. The very grievance
to which we now solicit your attention has been
acknowledged and redefined. A Legislature composed
of