You call

instead of

pose; wherefore how very intemperate have all my adversaries been in their revilings, slannames at me ders, and defamations! using the most using argu- opprobrious terms of seducer, heretic, ment. blasphemer, deceiver, Socinian, Pelagian, Simon Magus, impiously robbing Christ of his divinity, for whom the vengeance of the great day is reserved, etc. Nor have these things been whispered, but in one book and pulpit after another have been thundered out against me, as if some bull had lately been arrived from Rome; and all this acted under the foul pretence of zeal and love to Jesus Christ, whose meek and gentle example always taught it for a principal mark of true Christianity to suffer the most outrageous injuries, but never to return any. . . . Tell me, I pray, did Luther, that grand reformer whom you so much reverence, justly demand from the emperor at the Diet of Worms that none should sit upon his doctrines but the scripture; and in case they should be cast, that no other sentence should be passed upon him than what Gamaliel offered to the Jewish council, If it were not of God it would not stand; and if you will not censure him who first arraigned the Christian world (so called) at the bar of his private judgment (that had so many hundred years soundly slept, without so much as giving one considerable shrug or turn during that tedious winter-night of dark apostasy), but justify his proceedings, can you so furiously

If you do not blame Luther for asserting the right of private judgment, why blame me?

assault others?

"But above all you, who refuse conformity to

others, you

assume your own infalli

bility, as Papists do.

much as the

others, and that have been writing these eight years for liberty of conscience, . . . what pregnant testimonies do you give of your unwillingness to grant that to others you so earnestly when you beg for yourselves? Doth it not dis- persecute cover your injustice, and plainly express that only want of power hinders you to act? But of all Protestants in general I demand, do you believe that persecution to be Christian in yourselves that you condemned for antichristian in the Papists? You judged it a weakness in their religion, and is it a cogent argument in yours? Nay, is it not the readiest way to enhance and propagate the reputation of what you would depress? If you were displeased at their assuming an infallibility, will you believe it impossible in yourselves to err? Have Whitaker, Reynolds, Laud, Owen, Baxter, Stillingfleet, Poole, etc., disarmed the Romanists of these inhuman weapons, that you might employ them against your inoffensive countrymen? Let the example and holy precepts of Christ dissuade you, who came not to destroy but save; and soberly reflect upon his equal law of doing as you would be done unto. . . Have a care you are not upon one of Saul's errands to Damascus, and helping the mighty against God and his anointed; and rather choose by fair and moderate debates, not penalties ratified by imperial decrees, to cannot hurt determine religious differences. . . . But God is with

if

But you

us, for if

us, who can

you are resolved severity shall take its be against course, in this our case can never change

us?

nor happiness abate; for no human edict can pos

sibly deprive us of His glorious presence, who is able to make the dismallest prisons so many receptacles of pleasure, and whose heavenly fellowship doth unspeakably replenish our solitary souls with divine consolation." 1

No Cross, no Crown.

It is interesting to see how Penn's argument partly anticipates that of John Stuart Mill, in his famous "Essay on Liberty." The extent to which the sense of an ever present God replenished his soul with divine consolation is shown in one of his most important works, "No Cross, no Crown," written in the Tower of London in the year 1668. It is as beautiful as its title, albeit we must make allowance for the peculiar prolixity which English writers of the seventeenth century seldom succeeded in avoiding. In spite of this drawback the book abounds in the eloquence that wins the soul:

"This made the prophet David say, 'The King's daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.' What is the glory that is within the true church, and that gold that makes up that inward glory? Tell me, O superstitious man! is it thy stately temples, altars, carpets, tables, tapestries; thy vestments, organs, voices, candles, lamps, censers, plate, and jewels, with the like furniture of thy worldly temples? No such matter; they bear no proportion with the thrives not divine adornment of the King of heaven's daughter, the blessed and redeemed church of Christ. Miserable apostasy that it is! and a wretched supplement in the loss 1 Penn's Select Works, London, 1825, i. 163–165.

Religion

upon outward

show.

and absence of the apostolic life, the spiritual glory of the primitive church.

got a

It is but a

"But yet some of these admirers of external pomp and glory in worship would be thought lovers of the Cross, and to that end have made to themselves many. But alas! what hopes can there be of reconciling that to Christianity, that the nearer it comes to its resemblance, the farther off it is in reality? . . . It is true, they have cross, but it seems to be in the room of the true one; and so mannerly, that will do as they will have it that wear it; for instead of mortifying their wills by indulgence. it, they made it and use it according to them; so that the cross is become their ensign that do nothing but what they list. Yet by that they would be thought his disciples, that never did his own will but the will of his heavenly Father.

it

false cross with self

that comports

Religion is

"This is such a cross as flesh and blood can carry, for flesh and blood invented it; therefore not the cross of Christ that is to crucify flesh and blood. Thousands of them have no more virtue than a chip; poor empty shadows, not so much as images of the true one. Some carry them for charms about them, but never repel one evil with them. They sin with them upon their backs; and though they them in their bosoms, their beloved lusts lie there too without the least disquiet. They are as dumb as Elijah's mock-gods; no life nor power in them (1 Kings xviii. 27). Is it possible that such crosses should mend their makers? Surely

put

not a fetish,

but a disci

pline.

Better resist temptation than flee from it.

"Nor is a recluse life (the boasted righteousness of some) much more commendable, or one whit nearer to the nature of the true cross; for if it be not unlawful as other things are, it is unnatural, which true religion teaches not. The Christian convent and monastery are within, where the soul is encloistered from sin. And this religious house the true followers of Christ carry about with them, who exempt not themselves from the conversation of the world, though they keep themselves from the evil of the world in their conversation. That is a lazy, rusty, unprofitable self-denial, burdensome to others to feed their idleness; religious bedlams, where people are kept up lest they should do mischief abroad. . . . No thanks if they commit not what they are not tempted to commit. What the eye views not, the heart craves not, as well as rues not. The cross of Christ is of another nature; it truly overcomes the world, and leads a life of purity in the face of its allurements. They that bear it are not thus chained up for fear they should bite, nor locked up lest they should be stole away; no, they receive power from Christ their captain, to resist the evil and do that which is good in the sight of God. . . . What a world should we have if everybody, for fear of transgressing, should mew himself up within four walls! ..

"Not that I would be thought to slight a true retirement; for I do not only acknowledge but admire solitude. Christ himself was an example of it; he loved and chose to frequent mountains, gardens, seasides. They are requisite to the