The Toll of Quaker Conscience

[Terrance]

Know ye therefore that for the further well being and good Governement
of the said Province and Territories and in pursuance of the Rights and
Powers before mencioned I the said William Penn doe Declare Grant and
Confirme unto all the Freemen Planters and Adventurers and other
Inhabitants of and in the said Province and Territories thereunto
Annexed for ever first. Because noe people can be truly happy though
under the Greatest Enjoyments of Civil Liberties if Abridged of the
Freedom of theire Consciences as to theire Religious Profession and
worship. And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience Father of
Lights and Spirits and the Author as well as Object of all divine
knowledge Faith and Worship who only {[can]} Enlighten the mind and
perswade and Convince the understandings of people. 

The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit
again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is
united to God. 
Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his
eye from a
comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon
any
occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a
piece of himself
out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a
piece of the
continent, a part of the main. 




"Something had happen'd, back in Durham." MD.253 

And just then, out there, like Hounds let loose, the church bells of
America all begin to toll, peculiarly lucid in the fog, a dense Carillon
(compare MD.77), tuned so exotically, they might be playing anything, --
Methodist hymns, Opera-hall Airs, jigs and gigues, work songs of
sailors, Italian serenades, British Ballads, American Marches. 

...has made possible some America no traveler's account has yet
described, because as yet none has returned, tho' many be the mates and
dear ones who bide. 

Did he miss it, with his mind then pich'd so immoderately further East?
Or is this a particular and strong Message concerning America, meant not
for him but for someone else, that he may only have got in the way of?
MD.244-45

...and tha'll go ahead and make the same mistakes, unless tha've brought
along a Remembrancer, as some would say a Conscience...? MD.253