The prominence which this Quaker Divine justly gave to the truth, that Christ saves from sin, is not associated with such ideas of justification as accord with Puritan standards. According to his own view, holiness is an integral part of that justification, which he seems to identify with man’s entire salvation.[504]
Penn, no doubt, misunderstood both Anglicans and Puritans, and in some cases his disputes turned very much upon the meaning of words, yet no one who attentively studies his works, can help seeing that there were real and momentous differences between the Quakers and their fellow Christians. Quakers, absorbed by their inward experiences, did not attach the importance which is due to the historical and dogmatic instructions of the sacred volume. Not that Quakers denied what is historical, but they often, like early mystical expositors—Origen, for example—overlaid it with fanciful meanings. Not that they neglected all dogmatic teaching, but they failed to bring out clearly some of the truths revealed in the New Testament, especially in the writings of the Apostle Paul. The bright side of Quakerism lies in the marked elevation of the moral above the intellectual, of the spiritual above the formal, of the Divine above the human, of the work of God above the work of man: and it is as a corollary from the master principle of the whole system, the principle of the inner light, rather than as a deduction from reason or from expediency, or even from Scripture, that there is contained in Quaker literature such a distinct enunciation of men’s right, universally, to the freedom of religious speech and of religious worship.[505]
QUAKERS.—WILLIAM PENN.
Liberty, in William Penn’s estimation, was identical with Christianity. Persecution he held to be thoroughly anti-Christian. Judging people by their conduct, not by their creed, esteeming meekness and charity as fruits of the Spirit, inseparable from true religion, he looked upon all persecutors, whether Churchmen or Separatists, whether sound or heterodox, as alienated from their Maker, and as enemies to their race.[506]
William Penn had an opportunity such as no other person amongst the authors we are now describing ever possessed, of testing his theory of religion and morals.
After travelling with George Fox over the Continent upon religious service, and after finding all hopes of liberty crushed at home, Penn in 1681 resolved to cross the Atlantic, and in America to realize the bright dreams which had entertained his imagination from a boy—dreams of “a free Colony for all mankind.” He landed on the banks of the Delaware, to try “the holy experiment.” Tradition tells of his receiving the enfeoffment of the territory, by delivery of earth and water to him, as he stood surrounded by Swedes, Dutch, and English, in the Court House of the Colonial town of Newcastle; and of his ascending the river, fringed with pine trees, to the spot where was to rise the City of Philadelphia, and of his treaty with the Indians under the autumn-tinted elm tree of Shakamaxon. “We meet,” he said to his new neighbours, the red-complexioned children of the forest, “on the broad pathway of good faith and good will, no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. I will not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely; nor brothers only, for brothers differ. The friendship between you and me, I will not compare to a chain, for that the rains might rust, or the falling tree might break. We are the same, as if one man’s body were to be divided into two parts, we are all one flesh and blood.” Never had there been in the wild regions of the earth such colonizing as that before. “We will live,” said the red men, “in love with William Penn and his children, as long as the moon and the sun shall endure.” God was the sole witness of that covenant. Its only memorials were the strings of wampun which these covenanters hung up in their huts, and the shells they counted over upon a piece of bark; yet whilst other treaties amongst civilized Europeans have been torn into shreds as soon as they have been sealed, this has remained inviolate. “We have done better,” could the Colonists say, “than if, with the proud Spaniards, we had gained the mines of Potosi. We may make the ambitious heroes whom the world admires, blush for their shameful victories. To the poor dark souls round about us we teach their rights as men.” Penn visited the natives in their cabins, partook of their roasted acorns, laughed and played with the frolicksome, and spoke to them of God. “The poor savage people believed in God, and the soul, without the aid of metaphysics.”
The infant city, the Philadelphia, which in 1683 “consisted of three or four little cottages,” grew and spread, hollow trees were succeeded by houses. The chestnut, the walnut, and the ash were cut down for the use of the emigrants, roads were made, boys and girls played in the streets of this new Jerusalem, and the kindly-hearted Quaker, with his genial good-humoured face, with his broad-brimmed hat, his long neckcloth, and his drab attire, might be seen patting their heads with fatherly love.
William Penn, as a theologian, wrote books. William Penn, as a Christian philanthropist and statesman, did a work which surpassed his books. “How happy must be a community instituted on their principles,” said Peter the Great, speaking of the Quakers. “Beautiful,” cried Frederic the Great; “it is perfect, if it can endure.” It has endured.
QUAKERS.—BARCLAY.
Robert Barclay, a Scotch Friend, the son of Colonel David Barclay, of an ancient family, and of Catherine Gordon, of the ducal house of that name, published his famous Apology in 1676, two years after Penn had published The Christian a Quaker. With nothing like the flowing style of his English contemporary, he had a more robust understanding, a keener conception of what he meant to say, a still more logical method of treatment, and, without any show of learning, perhaps he had a deeper amount of scholarship, obtained during his education and residence in France. Barclay affords the student a great advantage wanting in Penn; whereas, in the case of Penn, we have to search through several treatises, extending to five volumes, in order to ascertain the beliefs which he inculcated, in Barclay they are brought together in their proper relation and proportions, and are compactly yet fully expressed. A remarkable coincidence of opinion appears between the two writers, although the intimacy between them does not seem to have commenced until after Barclay had written his Apology.