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"As our faith, so our devotion should be lively. Cold meat will not serve at these repasts."

"It is a coal from God's altar must kindle our fire; and without fire, true fire, no acceptable sacrifices." "It were better to be of no church than to be bitter for any."

"Zeal dropt in charity is good, without it good for nothing, for it devours all it comes near."

The gathering of such ripe fruits of wisdom was a solace to him in his retirement; but retirement was now coming to an end. He had friends at Court,-the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Somers, Lord Ranelagh, Earl of Rochester, and Lord Sidney; and seizing a favourable opportunity, they determined to use their influence on Penn's behalf. The last three had an audience with William, and represented the injustice of the Quaker's treatment. "There is nothing against him, your Majesty," such was their strong appeal, "but what impostors or those who have fled the country have advanced, or those who, when their crimes are pardoned, cannot verify what they have advanced. We have long known him, some of us thirty years, and we never saw or heard of his doing an ill thing; on the contrary, he has performed many good offices; and if it had not been that going abroad might be thought a defiance of the Government, he would have done it two years ago. But he chose to wait, to go about his business as before, with leave, that he may be the better respected." Having spoken to this effect, these intercessors had the satisfaction to receive His Majesty's reply. "William Penn is my old acquaintance as well as yours; and he may now follow his business as freely as ever. I have nothing to say

against him." They then asked that His Majesty would authorize the communication to be made to the principal Secretary of State. "Certainly," replied the king; and Lord Sidney was commissioned to convey it. The Secretary arranged an interview with Penn. They met on the 30th of November, 1693, when the Secretary told him, in the presence of the Marquis of Winchester, "You are as free as ever; and I doubt not your prudence as to quiet living. I can assure you you shall not be molested or injured in any of your affairs." Penn had in him the same feeling as St. Paul, when the magistrates at Philippi privily dismissed him after an unjust imprisonment: a formal and public acquittal was what he desired. Therefore a Council was held for that purpose, the king and several lords being present, and the accused having been heard in his own defence, he was honourably set at liberty.

Just before he recovered perfect freedom, he wrote "An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe." His object was to prevent war by the establishment of a court of arbitration, to which national quarrels might be referred,-a beautiful dream, as reasonable as it is beautiful; but alas! it was and is far from realization because of men's unreasonableness and their insane love of fighting. He proposed an elaborate scheme for the institution of such a court, "the judgment of which," he says, "should be so binding that if any one Government offering its case for decision did not abide by it, the rest should compel it." How? And if a Government would not offer its case for decision, what then?

her?

H'

CHAPTER XV.

AT LIBERTY AGAIN.

E recovered his freedom at the close of the year 1693, and immediately afterwards he wrote:"From the Secretary I went to our meeting at the Bull and Mouth, thence to visit the sanctuary of my solitude, and after that to see my poor wife and children; the eldest being with me all this while. My wife is yet weakly, but I am not without hopes of her recovery who is one of the best of wives and women."

From this note it appears that his beloved son, Springett, was the companion of his solitude, and that when he was free to go abroad he went, after attending Divine worship, to his beloved Gulielma, who was then sickening for the grave, and ripening for heaven. He had the consolation of her society for three months, and then closed her eyes in the long sleep of the body till the resurrection morn. She died on the 23rd of February, 1694, in the fiftieth year of her age. She was buried in the graveyard of Jordans, near his mother and the children who died before her.

"She would not suffer me," he tells us, "after I recovered my liberty, to neglect any public meeting on her account, saying often, 'Oh! go, my dearest;

I desire thee to go;

do not hinder any good for me. I have cast my care upon the Lord; I shall see thee again.' About three hours before her end, on a relation taking leave of her, she said, 'My dear love to all Friends,' and, lifting up her dying hands and eyes, prayed the Lord to preserve and bless them. About an hour after, causing all to withdraw, we were half an hour together, in which we took our last leave. At her departure our children and most of our family were present. She gently expired in my arms, her head upon my bosom, with a sensible and devout resignation of her soul to Almighty God.

"I hope I may say she was a public as well as a private loss; for she was not only an excellent wife and mother, but an entire and constant friend, of a more than common capacity, and great modesty and humility; yet most equal and undaunted in danger; religious as well as ingenious; without affectation; an easy mistress, and good neighbour, especially to the poor; neither lavish nor penurious; but an example of industry as well as of other virtues: therefore our great loss, though her own eternal gain.” 1

Under the sorrows of bereavement, authorship has in many instances proved a balm, and the biography of Penn furnishes an illustration of this. The religion. of Friends had been the salvation of his soul; the history of them as a part of the Church of Christ was entwined round his personal memories; he had cast in his lot with them in early life; Gulielma, the wife of his youth, had been a gem in the crown of

1 "An Account of the Blessed End of his dear Wife, Gulielma Maria Penn."

that spiritual community; George and Margaret Fox had been bosom friends, the former his companion in German travels, the latter his confidential correspondent, and an object of tender sympathy. What then could be more soothing, when he first became a widower, than to gather up the sacred threads of that history with which his own life was identified? Accordingly he sat down and composed "An Account of the Rise and Progress of the People called Quakers." With the interesting story he interwove an account of the doctrine and discipline of the community, thus supplying what in days of much ignorance and misrepresentation on the subject was most valuable—a manifesto of Quaker principles. After a loving portraiture of his dear friend George, he closed his sketch with an appeal, first to the members of his own fellowship, and next to his countrymen who regarded it with curiosity or dislike.

From a study of the Old Testament at this time, together with the fulfilment of its manifold prophecies of a Messiah in the life of our Blessed Saviour, Penn conceived a more than usual interest in the outcast house of Israel, and yearned for its salvation with that earnest sympathy which has so touched the hearts of spiritually minded Christians. Not with a proud sense of superiority, not in the spirit of cruel reproach, but under the influence of a profound regard for a people of such lofty lineage; and panting for their salvation as the elect of God, he argued with them, as did St. Paul, out of the Scriptures, showing that Jesus of Nazareth is the very Christ.

Contemporaneously with this employment of his pen, he revised and published the narrative he had

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