George Fox was the father of Quakerism, but to William Penn belongs the distinction of being the first logical expounder of its principles.
William Penn was the son of Admiral Penn. When only twelve years old he began “to listen to the voice of God in his soul:” and when a student at Oxford he suffered fines and expulsion for his incipient Nonconformity. His father, incensed by these religious peculiarities, turned him into the streets, but this did not in the least degree destroy his convictions; and subsequently, European travel, and education, which it might have been expected would dissipate his impressions, left them as deep as ever, combined with an accession of intelligence, and an acquisition of graceful manners which rendered him the admiration of polite society. He had learned to handle the rapier, with all the skill of a French gentleman, yet he remained imbued with “a deep sense of the vanity of the world, and the irreligiousness of its religions.” “Further,” to use his own language, “God, in His everlasting kindness, guided my feet in the flower of my youth, when about two-and-twenty years of age. Religion is my crime, and my innocence,—it makes me a prisoner to malice, but my own freeman.” When the fashionable world laughed at the rumour of the accomplished William Penn becoming a Quaker, such ridicule did not move his purpose, he only showed more steadfastness of conviction, and avowed his adoption of Quaker habits by going to Court with his hat on. When the Bishop of London menaced him with imprisonment, “My prison shall be my grave,” the youth replied. When Charles sent Stillingfleet to talk with him, the youthful Dissenter, through that Divine, returned an answer to every threat—“The Tower is to me the worst argument in the world.” This was in 1668, the year in which he published his Truth Exalted, or a Testimony to Rulers, Priests, and Bishops; and the same year, and in consequence of this same book, he was actually confined as a prisoner within the gloomy walls of the old Norman fortress, where he remained seven months; and where he wrote his No Cross, No Crown, or Several Sober Reasons against Hat Worship, Titular Respect, You to a single person, with the Apparel and Recreations of the Times, in Defence of the poor despised Quakers, against the practice and objections of their adversaries. The title is modified in later editions.
QUAKERS.—WILLIAM PENN.
The old Admiral paid his son’s fines, and on his deathbed, in altered tones, observed to him, “Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching and living, you will make an end of the priests.” Now possessed of his father’s fortune, he surprised people by his religious eccentricities. “You are an ingenious gentleman,” said a magistrate before whom he was brought, “you have a plentiful estate, why should you render yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?” “I prefer,” said he, “the honestly simple to the ingeniously wicked;” this was in 1670, when committed to Newgate, under the Conventicle Act, for preaching to “a riotous and seditious assembly,”—that is to say, for preaching to a company of Friends, who met for worship in the open-air; and from Newgate, he addressed to Parliament and the people of England, a plea for liberty of conscience, saying, if the efforts of the Quakers cannot obtain “the olive branch of toleration, we bless the providence of God, resolving by patience to outweary persecution, and by our constant sufferings, to obtain a victory, more glorious than our adversaries can achieve by their cruelties.”[499]
These incidents in his early life were obviously connected with his religious opinions. Far less imbued with the element of mysticism than was the founder of the sect, this eminent disciple appears no less earnest in the advocacy of his opinions; and he works them out with a facility of reasoning, a compass of knowledge, and a force and glow of diction, in which the reader cannot but recognize, in connection with his natural ability, the fruits of his Oxford culture. A comparison between the writings of Fox and Penn, as it regards mental peculiarities, is interesting and instructive, showing the original and creative genius of the one, and the effect of academical training upon the other: in the enjoyment of a spiritual education, not of this world, they were much alike.
The fundamental principle of Quaker theology is found in the doctrine of the inward light; and to the exposition and establishment of that doctrine, William Penn devotes himself in his work, entitled The Christian a Quaker (1674). He explains the light as being not something metaphorical, nor yet the mere spirit or reason of man, but Christ, “that glorious Sun of Righteousness and heavenly luminary of the intellectual or invisible world, represented of all outward resemblances, most exactly by the great sun of this sensible and visible world; that as this natural light ariseth upon all, and gives light to all about the affairs of this life, so that Divine light ariseth upon all and gives light to all that will receive the manifestations of it about the concerns of the other life.” That light manifests sin, and reveals duty. It saved from Adam’s day, through the holy patriarchs’ and prophets’ time down to Christ; amongst the Jews as proved from Scripture, amongst the Gentiles, as proved from their own literature. Under this division, Penn quotes largely from the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria, adopting his quotations as genuine and trustworthy. The primitive Fathers expressed themselves in accordance with this doctrine; and amongst the heathen there were men of virtuous lives, who taught the indispensableness of virtue to life eternal. The author contends that the latter foresaw the coming of Christ, and curiously adds, that their refusing to swear proves the sufficiency of the inward light.[500] In the support of these opinions, Penn appeals to the authority of Scripture, and employs a large amount of general reasoning.
QUAKERS.—WILLIAM PENN.
Although the inward light be the rule,[501] Holy Scripture is a rule, and one authoritative and binding on those who possess it. Hence, whilst ever appealing to reason in his theological arguments, Penn habitually refers to Scripture as an inspired revelation from God, of great importance in determining religious controversy. The distinction which he makes, and the place which he assigns to the Bible had better be given in his own words:—“A rule, and the rule are two things. By the rule of faith and practice I understand the living, spiritual, immediate, Omnipresent, discovering, ordering Spirit of God; and by a rule I apprehend some instrument, by and through which, this great and universal rule may convey its directions. Such a subordinate, secondary, and declaratory rule, we never said several parts of Scripture were not, yet we confess the reason of our obedience is not merely because they are there written (for that were legal) but because they are the eternal precepts of the Spirit in men’s consciences, there repeated and declared.”[502] This is the key which unlocks Penn’s theological system; and it is remarkable, how the controversy between the old Quakers and their contemporaries, turned mainly upon a question, agitated in the present day by thinkers very unlike the Quakers in many respects.
The two rules thus defined were regarded by this writer as requiring the rejection of the Anglican doctrine of the Trinity, and of the Puritan doctrines respecting Christ’s Atonement, as a satisfaction offered to God, and respecting the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.[503]
In consequence of what he said touching the Trinity, Penn was charged with not believing in the Divinity of Christ, and indeed was sent to prison on that account; but he clearly avows in his apology, entitled, Innocency with her Open Face, that Christ is God; for, he observes, if none can save or be properly styled a Saviour, but God, and yet Christ is said to save, and is properly called a Saviour, it must needs follow that Christ the Saviour is God. The strongest passage I have noticed in the writings of Penn in relation to the atonement is the following:—“That as there was a necessity that ‘One should die for the people,’ so, whoever, then or since, believed in Him, had and have a seal or confirmation of the remission of their sins in His blood; and that blood—alluding to the custom of the Jewish sacrifices—shall be an utter blotting out of former iniquities, carrying them as into a land of forgetfulness.”