William Penn, delivered by himself to Thomas Harvey, who reports it thus:

"He said, while he was but a child, living at Cork with his father, Thomas Loe came thither. When it was rumoured a Quaker was come from England, his father proposed to some others to be like the noble Bereans, to hear him before they judged him. He accordingly sent to Thomas Loe to come to his house, where he had a meeting in the family. Though William was very young, he observed what effect Thomas Loe's preaching had on the hearers. A black servant of his father's could not contain himself from weeping aloud; and, looking on his father, he saw the tears running down his cheeks also. He (little William) then thought within himself, ' What if they would all be Quakers?' This opportunity he never quite forgot, the remembrance of it still recurring at times. He afterwards went to Oxford, where he continued till he was expelled for writing a book which the priests and masters of the college did not like. Then he was sent to France, further to prosecute his learning, and after he returned he was sent to Ireland."

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The MS. goes on to say that, on his second coming to Cork, being the only one of the family there, and requiring some articles of clothing, he went to the shop of a woman Friend in the city to procure them. He expected she would have known him, but she did not. He was too much altered from the days of his boyhood, when the Friend had seen him, to be now recognised by her. However, he told her who he was, and he spoke to her of Thomas Loe, and of the meeting at his father's house ten or twelve years

before. The manuscript says: "She admired at his remembering, but he told her he should never forget it; also, if he only knew where that person was, if 'twere a hundred miles off, he would go to hear him again. She said he need not go so far, for the Friend had lately come thither, and would be at meeting the next day. So he went to the meeting, and when Thomas Loe stood up to preach, he was exceedingly reached, and wept much."1

That William Penn visited Ireland as a boy with his father is not incredible; but that Thomas Loe was invited to his house by the Admiral seems improbable, still more so that the Admiral wept on hearing him. An unlikely statement made on the strength of a hearsay story, told after a lapse of thirty years so long a period elapsed before it was written down is hardly reliable; still it may be to some extent accurate. If the beginning of the account be believed, what follows can be accepted without difficulty. At any rate, William Penn did hear Thomas Loe in Cork, and it is reported that he preached from the following text: "There is a faith which overcometh the world, and there is a faith which is overcome by the world." Quakers commonly do not take texts, and there is no such text as this in the Bible; we must therefore suppose, either that the quotation is a confused recollection of the passage, 66 This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith," or that the preacher's words were a motto with which he commenced his address.

Penn's conversion was now completed in Ireland.

1 "The Penns and the Penningtons," by Maria Webb, p. 174.

That conversion must not be regarded simply as a change of opinion. It was much more than exchanging Episcopacy or Puritanism for the adoption of tenets held by Friends. It penetrated his moral nature. It made him a new man. As in the case of St. Paul, the world was crucified unto him, and he unto the world, so William Penn could say exactly the same thing. Revealed religion, the Church of Christ, God's dealings with mankind, came to be apprehended under under new aspects. He rose into another sphere of spiritual life and consciousness. What he thought and felt took a tinge from peculiarities in his mental constitution, and from the discipline through which the Divine Teacher had been leading him for years. His subsequent apprehensions might not unaptly be expressed in these glowing words :—

"That which is the pure, spiritual, comprehensive principle of a Christian is this: That all outward administration, whether as to religion, or to natural, civil, and moral things, are only the visible appearances of God, as to the world, or in this creation; or the clothing of God, being such forms and dispensations as God puts on amongst men to appear to them in this is the garment the Son of God was clothed with down to the feet, or to His lowest appearance. And God doth not fix Himself upon any one form or outward dispensation, but at His own will and pleasure comes forth in such and such an administration, and goes out of it, and leaves it, and takes up another. And this is clear in all God's proceedings with the world, both in the Jewish Church and State, and Christians now. And when God is gone out, and hath left such an administration, of what kind

soever it is, be it religious, moral, or civil, such an administration is a desolate house, a temple whose veil is rent, a sun whose light is darkened; and to worship it then, is to worship an idol, an image, a form, without God, or any manifestation of God in it, save to him, who (as Paul saith), knows an idol to be nothing. The pure, spiritual, comprehensive Christian, is one who grows up with God from administration to administration, and so walks with God in all his removes and spiritual increasings and flowings; and such are weak in the flesh who tarry behind, worshipping that form or administration out of which God is departed." 1

These are not Penn's words they are the words of Saltmarsh, buried at Chigwell; and as I ponder them, I feel more and more persuaded that the supposed fanatic and madman had something to do with the Quaker's spiritual education. The sentiment conveyed in this quotation was cherished by many ignorant of such people as the Friends, and had they known them they would probably have avoided their fellowship. It pervaded the minds of Tauler and other Germans; of Valdes and other Spaniards, and Italians. As I read the wonderful works of the last-mentioned reformer,2 I could fancy myself perusing books written by Quakers. And in that world where they all are now, controversies about visible forms of doctrine, discipline, and worship have lost their interest, the substance of truth alone remains; they agree that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

1 "Sparkles of Glory," by Saltmarsh.

2 See "XVII. Opuscules" of Valdes, translated by Mr. Betts.

CHAPTER IV.

PERSECUTION.

HE third of September was a noted date in the

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life of Oliver Cromwell. So it was in the life of William Penn; but in another way. Then for the first time he had publicly to carry a "martyr's palm.” He attended that day a meeting of Friends in the city of Cork. The assembly was violently broken up. A soldier entered and "made a great disturbance, on which William Penn goes to him and takes him by the collar, and would have thrown him downstairs, but for the interference of a Friend or two, who requested William to let him alone, telling him the Friends were a peaceable people, and would not have any disturbance made. Then he became very much concerned that he had caused them to be uneasy by his roughness. The soldier whom William Penn had expelled went to the magistrates, and brought officers and men, who broke up the meeting and took several of them prisoners, and Penn amongst the rest. They were brought before the magistrate, who, knowing W. P., said he did not think he was a Quaker, so would not send him to jail. But William told him, whether he thought it or not, he was one, and if he sent his