found so heterodox as represented, it will be then but time enough to inflict these heavy penalties upon us.

"And as this medium seems the fairest and most reasonable, so can you never do yourselves greater justice either in the vindication of your proceedings against us, if we be criminal, or, if innocent, in disengaging your service of such as have been the authors of so much misinformation.

"But could we once obtain the favour of such debate, we doubt not to evince a clear consistency of our life and doctrine with the English government; and that an indulging of Dissenters in the sense defended is not only most Christian and rational, but prudent also; and the contrary, however plausibly insinuated, the most injurious to the peace, and destructive of that discreet balance, which the best and wisest states have ever carefully observed.

"But if this fair and equal offer find not a place with you on which to rest its foot, much less that it should bring us back the olive-branch of Toleration, we heartily embrace and bless the Providence of God, and in his strength resolve by patience to outweary persecution, and by our constant sufferings seek to obtain a victory more glorious than any our adversaries can achieve by all their cruelties."

This excellent address was followed by a preface. He began the latter by observing, that, if the friends of persecution were men of as much reason as they counted themselves to be, it would be unnecessary for him to inform them, that no external coercive power could convince the understanding, neither could fines and imprisonments be judged fit and adequate penalties for faults purely intellectual. He maintained the folly of coercive measures on such occasions on another account; for the enaction of such laws as restrained persons from the free exercise of their consciences in matters of religion was but the knotting of whipcord on the part of the enactors to lash their own posterity, whom they could never promise to be conformed for ages to come to a national religion. He then defined liberty of conscience to be "the free and uninterrupted exercise of our consciences in that way of worship we were most clearly persuaded God required of us to serve him in, without endangering our undoubted birthright of English freedoms, which, being matter of faith, we sinned if we omitted, and they could not do less who should endeavour it.” After this he showed how this liberty of conscience had been invaded by the plundering and oppressing of those who had used it; and concluded by pronouncing that, if such desolation were allowed to continue, the state must inevitably proceed to its own decay.

Having finished the preface, he went to the body of the work, which consisted of six chapters. But here I find it impossible for want of room to detail the contents of these. The reader, therefore, must be satisfied with the following account. He coincided, he said, with many, in considering the urion (for the oppressive bill in question) "to be very ominous and unhappy, which made the first discovery of itself by a John Baptist's head

in a charger, by a feast to be made upon the liberties and properties of freeborn Englishmen; for to cut off the entail of their undoubted hereditary rights, on account of matters purely relative to another world, was a severe beheading in the law." He then maintained that they who imposed fetters upon the conscience and persecuted for conscience sake defeated God's work of grace, or the invisible operation of his holy Spirit, which could alone beget faith; that they claimed infallibility, which all good Protestants rejected; and that they usurped the divine prerogative, assuming the judgment of the Great Tribunal, and thereby robbing the Almighty of a right which belonged exclusively to himself that they overthrew the Christian religion in the very nature of it, for it was spiritual, and not of this world; in the very practice of it, for this consisted of meekness; in the promotion of it, for it was clear that they never designed to be better themselves, and they discouraged others in their religious growth; and in the rewards of it, for where men were religious out of fear, and this out of the fear of men, their religion was condemnation, and not peace--that they opposed the plainest testimonies of divine writ, which concurred in condemning all force upon the conscience-that they waged war against the privileges of nature, by exalting themselves and enslaving their fellowcreatures; by rendering null and void the divine instinct or principle in man, which was so natural to him, that he could be no more without it and be, than he could be without the most essential part of himself (for where would be the use of this principle, if it were regulated by arbitrary power?) and by destroying all natural affection-that they were enemies to the noble principle of reason- -that they acted contrary to all true notions of government, first, as to the nature of it, which was justice; secondly, as to the execution of it, which was prudence; and, thirdly, as to the end of it, which was happinesss. Having discussed these several points, he proceeded to answer certain objections, which he supposed might be made to some of the positions he had advanced, and concluded by attempting to show, by means of a copious appeal to history, that they who fettered the consciences of others and punished for conscience sake reflected upon the sense and practice of the wisest, greatest, and best of men, both of ancient and modern times.

When he had finished the above works the time for his liberation from prison approached. This having taken place, he travelled into Holland and Germany. His object was to spread the doctrines of his own religious society in these parts. Of the particulars of his travels we have no detailed account. We know only that he was reported to have been successful, and that he continued employed on the same errand during the remainder of the year.

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CHAPTER VIII.

A. 1672-RETURNS TO ENGLAND-MARRIES-SETTLES AT RICKMANSWORTH-TRAVELS AS A PREACHER-WRITES "THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH VINDICATED"-" THE NEW WITNESSES PROVED OLD HERETICS"-" PLAIN DEALING WITH A TRADUCING ANABAPTIST"-"A WINDING SHEET FOR THE CONTROVERSY ENDED"-" QUAKERISM A NEW NICK-NAME FOR OLD CHRISTIANITY"-LETTER TO DR. HASBERT.

WILLIAM PENN, after his return from the Continent, entered into the married state. He was then in the twenty-eighth year of his age. He took for his wife Gulielma Maria Springett, daughter of Sir William Springett, of Darling in Sussex, who had fallen at the siege of Bamber, during the civil wars, in the service of the Parliament. She was esteemed an extraordinary woman, and not more lovely on account of the beauty of her person than of the sweetness of her disposition. After their marriage they took up their residence at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire.

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It must be obvious that William Penn, now married and settled, and in the possession of an abundant fortune, might have led the life of a gentleman of leisure. But he had entered upon the important office of a minister of the Gospel. This, therefore, kept him in no inconsiderable employ; for meetings for worship were then held at one place or another (many ministers travelling) almost every day in the week. The disputes too in the religious world, which obtained in these times, and in which the Quakers were engaged, called him frequently forth as an author. Of these disputes the following were conjoint and fruitful causes. In the preceding year Charles the Second had issued a declaration of indulgence to tender consciences in matters of religion, in consequence of which not less than five hundred Quakers had been released from prison. This indulgence was extended also to Dissenters at large. Now one would have thought that the leaders of the different religious sects, all of which had felt the iron hand of persecution, would have enjoyed this respite in solacing each other, and enlarging the boundaries of love between them. But far otherwise was the fact. Enjoying the sunshine of the King's indulgence, and feeling a liberty to which they had not been accustomed, many of them began to grow bold, and to have a longing to venture out into controversy. Thus, when man has been lorded over, he feels too generally a disposition to play the tyrant himself. In this situation, however, they did not dare to attack the Church. Now it happened at this time that the great body of the Dissenters were well affected towards the Quakers; for, first, the Quakers never sculking under persecution, but worshiping at regular times, and this openly in their own meeting-houses, and on the very ruins of the same when they were

destroyed, were always to be found by the civil magistrate; and, secondly, the number to be so found was sufficient to glut the most insatiable executioners of the laws. From these two causes the Quakers helped to bear off the blow, or to keep the great force of the stroke, from the other Dissenters. Hence the latter, and particularly the Baptists, began to be attached to them; and this attachment became at length such, that many left their own particular societies and joined them. The leaders then of several of the religious sects, finding their congregations growing less by such defections, and feeling that the fetters were in some measure taken from their arras by the King's indulgence, thought they could not use their liberty better than by trying to crush the Quakers. Hence many publications appeared against the latter, which had been otherwise unknown. Placed, then, as William Penn was in one or other of the occupations which have been mentioned, that is, either in that of a public preacher or a controversial writer in behalf of his own society, he had but little time left him for repose during the present year.

The first instance of industry which we find in him as a minister of the Gospel, after his marriage, was on the Midsummer following, when he traversed three counties in that capacity, Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and this with such rapidity, that he preached to no less than twenty-one different congregations of people, and some of these at considerable distances the one from the other, in twenty-one days. This must have been no easy performance, considering the comparative paucity and state of the roads at this period.

As an author we find him equally indefatigable. An anonymous writer had published "The Spirit of the Quakers Tried." This was one of the works alluded to which first roused him, and he answered it by "The Spirit of Truth Vindicated."

John Morse, a preacher at Watford, having written against him in particular, and the Quakers in general, he repelled the attack by "Plain Dealing with a Traducing Anabaptist."

Controversy Ended" soon followed, which was the production of Henry Hedworth, another preacher, and which was of a similar stamp with the former. His answer to this paper was contained in "A Winding Sheet for Controversy Ended."

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John Faldo, an Independent preacher near Barnet, finding that some of his hearers had gone over to the Quakers, was greatly incensed, and gave vent to his anger by writing a book, which he called Quakerism no Christianity." This very soon attracted the notice of William Penn, and, as a reply to it, "Quakerism a new Nickname for Old Christianity" followed. About this time Reeve and Muggleton made a great noise in the religious world, by pretending to wonderful revelations received immediately from Heaven. Reeve, who compared himself to Moses, asserted that he was ordered to communicate his new system to Muggleton, whom he likened to

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Aaron. William Penn, to expose the doctrines of these, published "The New Witnesses proved Old Heretics."

There is a letter extant, which he wrote this year to Dr. Hasbert, a physician at Embden in Germany, whom he had found, on his late tour to the Continent, ready to embrace the religious principles of the Quakers. This letter was merely to encourage and strengthen him to pursue the path he had thus taken.

CHAPTER IX.

A, 1673-TRAVELS AS A MINISTER-WRITES "THE CHRISTIAN QUAKER" -ALSO "REASON AGAINST RAILING AND TRUTH AGAINST FICTION" -ALSO "THE COUNTERFEIT CHRISTIAN DETECTED"-HOLDS A PUBLIC CONTROVERSY WITH THE BAPTISTS AT BARBICAN-HIS ACCOUNT OF IT TO G. FOX-WRITES "THE INVALIDITY OF JOHN FALDO'S VINDICATION”—ALSO “ A RETURN TO J. FALDO'S REPLY" -ALSO "A JUST REBUKE TO ONE-AND-TWENTY LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINES"-ENCOMIUM OF DR. MOORE ON THE LATTERWRITES "WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN," AND "URIM AND THUMMIM "—AND AGAINST JOHN PERROT-AND "ON THE GENERAL RULE OF FAITH," AND ON "THE PROPOSED COMPREHENSION "--ALSO SIX LETTERS-EXTRACT FROM THAT TO JUSTICE FLEMING. WILLIAM PENN continued to be employed as in the preceding year. As the spring advanced he undertook a journey to the western parts of the kingdom, in which he was joined by George Whitehead. Travelling as ministers of the Gospel, they spread their principles as they went along. Gulielma Maria Penn accompanied her husband on this occasion. When they came to Bristol, it was the time of the great fair. It happened, unexpectedly, that they were joined by George Fox, the founder of their religious society. He had just landed from a vessel, which had brought him from Maryland in America, whither he had gone some months before on a religious errand. All the parties staid at Bristol during the fair, and, uniting their religious labours, they brought over many to their persuasion.

As a writer, there was no end of his employment this year. The first who called him forth was Thomas Hicks, a Baptist preacher in London. Alarmed, like those mentioned in the preceding chapter, at the defection of many of his congregation, this person began his attack upon the Quakers by writing a dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker, which he forged so well, that many considered it not as a fiction, but as a discourse which had actually taken place between the parties described. By making, too, his Quaker say every thing that was weak and silly, he paved the way for such answers from his Christian as ensured the victory on his own side. This publication being such, William Penn could not but notice it; and he