Dunkers (Michael Welfare)

 
Niel Postman, Amusing ourselves to death : public discourse in the age of show business, new introduction by Andrew Postman [2005], [1985]
written by Niel Postman 

pp.30─31
In the  Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, there appears a remarkable quotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of a religious sect known as the Dunkers and a longtime acquaintance of Franklin.  The statement had its origins in Welfare's complaint to Franklin that zealots of other religious persuasions were spreading lies about the Dunkers, accusing them of abominable principles to which, in fact, they were utter strangers.  Franklin suggested that such abuse might be diminished if the Dunkers published the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline.  Welfare replied that this course of action had been discussed among his co-religionists but had been rejected.  He then explained their reasoning in the following works: 

When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlightened our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors,  and that other, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths.  From time to time He had been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing.  Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be someting sacred, never to be departed from.1 
1. Franklin, p.175.

  Franklin describes this sentiment as a singular instance in the history of mankind of modesty in a sect.  Modesty is certainly the word for it, but the statement is extraordinary for other reasons, too.  We have here a criticism of the epistemology of the written word worthy of Plato.  Moses himself might be interested although he could hardly approve.  The Dunkers came close here to formulating a commandment about religious discourse:  Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, less thou shall be entrapped by them for all time.  
‘’•─“”

  (Amusing ourselves to death./ Niel Postman, bibliography: p. 173., includes index., 1. mass media ── influence.,  P94.P63  1986,  302.2'34,  86-9513, A section of this book was supported by a commission from the Annenberg scholars program, Annenberg school of communications, university of southern california.  SPecifically, portions of chapters six and seven formed part of a paper delivered at the scholars conference, “Creating meaning : literacies of our time”, February 1984., [1985] )
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"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devote you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
           - Marcus Aurelius (                     )
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πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα