November 9, 1849
Referring to his visit with the Mott’s, while in Philadelphia, Garrison acknowledges a special debt to them. Remembering their early work with Benjamin Lundy, and abolition, he then comments on their effect on his views of religion. He refers to his own early Calvanistic sentiments…. “..a believer in the clerical order and the organized church as divinely instituted , — a strict sabbatarian, so that I could strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, in regard to that observance, with as much facility as any Jew that ever lived, —yet they manifested a most kind, tolerant, catholic spirit, and allowed none of these considerations to deter them from giving me their cordial approbation and cheering countenance as an advocate of the slave. If my mind has since become liberalized in any degree—– I am largely indebted to them for the change.”
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