No cross, no crown

by William Penn

XIX. And yet there seems a limitation to the command, Honour all men, in that passage of godly David, "Who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? he in whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord." (Psalm xv. 1, 4.) Here honour is confined and affixed to godly persons; and dishonour made the duty of the righteous to the wicked, and a mark of their being righteous, that they dishonour, that is, slight or disregard them. To conclude this Scripture inquiry after honour, I shall contract the subject of it under three capacities, superiors, equals, and inferiors: honour, to superiors is obedience; to equals, love; to inferiors, countenance and help: that is honour after God's mind, and the holy people's fashion of old.

XX. But how little of all this is to be seen or had in a poor empty hat, bow, cringe, or gaudy, flattering title, let the truth-speaking witness of God in all mankind judge. For I must not appeal to corrupt, proud, and self-speaking man, of the good or evil of those customs; that as little as he would render them, are loved and sought by him, and he is out of humour and angry if he has them not.

This is our second reason why we refuse to practise the accustomed ceremonies of honour and respect; because we find no such notion or expression of honour and respect, recommended to us by the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures of truth.

XXI. Our third reason for not using them as testimonies of honour and respect is, because there is no discovery of honour or respect to be made by them: it is rather eluding and equivocating it; cheating people of the honour and respect that is due to them; giving them nothing in the show of something. There is in them no obedience to superiors, no love to equals, no help or countenance to inferiors.

XXII. We are, we declare to the whole world, for true honour and respect; we honour the king, our parents, our masters, our magistrates, our landlords, one another; yea, all men, after God's way, used by holy men and women of old time: but we refuse these customs as vain and deceitful; not answering the end they are used for.

XXIII. But, fourthly, there is yet more to be said: we find that vain, loose, and worldly people are the great lovers and practisers of them, and most deride our simplicity of behaviour. Now we assuredly know, from the sacred testimonies, that those people cannot give true honour that live in a dishonourable spirit; they understand it not; but they can give the hat and knee, and that they are very liberal of, nor are any more expert at it. This is to us a proof that no true honour can be testified by those customs, which vanity and looseness love and use.

XXIV. Next to them I will add hypocrisy, and revenge too. For how little do many care for each other! Nay, what spite, envy, animosity, secret backbiting, and plotting one against another, under the use of these idle respects; till passion, too strong for cunning, breaks through hypocrisy into open affront and revenge! It cannot be so with the Scripture honour: to obey, or prefer a man, out of spite, is not usually done: and to love, help, serve, and countenance a person, in order to deceive and be revenged of him, is a thing never heard of: these admit of no hypocrisy nor revenge. Men do not these things to palliate ill-will, which are the testimonies of quite the contrary. It is absurd to imagine it, because impossible to be done.

XXV. Our sixth reason is, that honour was from the beginning: but hat-respects and most titles are of late: therefore there was true honour before hats or titles; and consequently true honour stands not in them. And that which ever was the way to express true honour is the best way still; and this the Scripture teaches better than dancing-masters can do.

XXVI. Seventhly, if honour consists in such-like ceremonies, then will it follow, that they are most capable of showing honour who perform it most exactly, according to the mode or fashion of the times; consequently, that man hath not the measure of true honour, from a just and reasonable principle in himself, but by the means and skill of the fantastic dancing-masters of the times: and for this cause it is we see that many give much money to have their children learn their honours, falsely so called. And what doth this but totally exclude the poor country people; who, though they plough, till, sow, reap, go to market, and in all things obey their justices, landlords, fathers, and masters, with sincerity and sobriety, rarely use those ceremonies; but if they do it is so awkwardly and meanly, that they are esteemed by a court critic so ill favoured as only fit to make a jest of and be laughed at: but what sober man will not deem their obedience beyond the others' vanity and hypocrisy? This base notion of honour turns out of doors the true, and sets the false in its place. Let it be further considered, that the way or fashion of doing it is much more in the design of its performers, as well as view of its spectators, than the respect itself. Whence it is commonly said, He is a man of good mien; or, She is a woman of exact behaviour. And what is this behaviour but fantastic, cramped postures and cringings, unnatural to their shape; and, if it were not fashionable, ridiculous to the view of all people; and is therefore to the Eastern countries a proverb.