pension was introduced into the meetings and division and discord into families. In a quiet and peaceable way the warfare was waged very bitterly and many harsh things were said softly. Dirck op den Graeff adhered to the cause of the Friends, but Abraham and Hermann were among the disaffected, and the three brothers seem to have become more deeply involved in the controversy than any of the other Germans. The numerous public discussions which were held only served to confirm each faction in the correctness of its own rendering of the Scriptures; the Friends who were sent to deal with George privately and to indicate to him whither he was tending made little progress; and the difficulty having become too great to be appeased, twenty-eight ministers presented a paper of condemnation against him at the monthly meeting at Frankford. Dirck op den Graeff, a magistrate in the right of his position as a burgess of Germantown, was present at the meeting and must in some way have shown an interest in the proceedings, since Keith called him publicly “an impudent Rascal.” Most unfortunate words! Uttered in a moment of thoughtless wrath, and repeated in the numerous pamphlets and broadsides which the occasion called forth, they returned again and again to plague their author. Beaten out in the fervor of religious and polemic zeal, they were construed to impliedly attack the civil government in the person of one of its trusted officers. Ere long, in reply to the testimony against Keith, the celebrated William Bradford printed “An appeal from the twenty-eight Judges to the Spirit of Truth and true Judgment in all faithful Friends called Quakers that meet at this yearly meeting at Burlington, 7 mo., '92,” signed by George Keith, George Hutcheson, Thomas Budd, John Hart, Richard Dungwoody and Abraham op den Graeff. The
