individuals, hated him horribly, because he had taken up the cause of the Dissenters. They denounced him as a Papist, a Jesuit, a rogue, and a traitor, wherever they went. Then the Dissenters hated him because they supposed that, under the mask of religious liberty, he had been promoting the schemes of James in behalf of popery and arbitrary power. They therefore propagated the same slanderous charges against him as virulently as the Church. There was, besides, at this time, a numerous class of foreign Protestants in the kingdom, such as had fled from France after the revocation of the edict of Nantz. All these also joined in the cry of his condemnation. They had themselves smarted under the lash of Popery, and had therefore no mercy on the man who would restore James, and thus revive it in the land which was to be now the place of their habitation. Add to this, that he began to fall under the censure of many of his own religious society. This grieved him more than all. He had borne the opprobrium of the world in silence, and made no attempt to counteract it: but he could not be silent under this new wound; hence he addressed a letter to the Friends at large, through their representatives met in their Assembly.

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"My beloved, dear, and honoured brethren," said he, My unchangeable love salutes you. Receive no evil surmisings, neither suffer hard thoughts, through the insinuations of any, to enter your minds against me, your afflicted but not forsaken friend and brother. My enemies are your enemies; and mine for your sake: and that God seeth. My privacy is not because men have sworn truly, but falsely, against me; for wicked men have laid in wait for me, and false witnesses have laid to my charge things which I knew not.' My dear and beloved brethren, leave me not, neither forsake me, but wrestle with him that is able to prevail against the cruel desires of some, that we may yet meet in the congregation of his people, as in days past, to our mutual comfort."

Among the friends who visited him in his retirement,

and administered consolation to him, was his old friend and fellow collegian, John Locke, whose grateful remembrance at this afflicting season was peculiarly gratifying. He had been banished, in effect, for his liberal principles, and had come home in the fleet which had brought the Prince of Orange to England. Finding Penn persecuted, he offered to try to procure a pardon for him from King William. Penn had made a similar offer to Locke, when Locke was in banishment at the Hague. It is worthy of remark that the same answer followed on both occasions. Penn observed, as Locke had observed, that he had not been guilty of crime, and could not therefore accept a mode of liberation, which would imply an acknowledgment of guilt.

We hear nothing more of Penn this year, except that he wrote a preface to the works of the celebrated apologist, Robert Barclay, and another to those of John Burnyeat, an eminent minister of his own religious society, and with whom he had been in habits of friendship for many years.

His affairs in America still went on unpleasantly. Disputes had arisen between the Territories and the Province, respecting the share which the Territories should have in the Government, and the measures adopted to satisfy the Territories had not had the desired effect. The dispute became very complicated, and even Thomas Lloyd, the President, and Colonel Markham, Penn's relation, were led to act in connection with those disputes, in a way not agreeable to Penn's feelings and views. Penn however soon found that Thomas Lloyd had acted worthily, and that it was the Territory men that were to blame. In truth, Penn had been too liberal to the settlers. It would have been better, as it seems to us, if he had claimed his dues from the settlers, and employed the amount in such works as he might think best, instead of leaving his all in the hands of the settlers. Men generally are neither wise enough nor good enough to be so bountifully or trustingly dealt with. It is our duty to be and generous, and such spirits as Penn can be no other;

it is well to be trustful and hopeful too; but it is not a duty, it is not well, for great minds to put little minds in their own places, to transfer to little minds the powers which none but great minds know how to use, or to put little minds in places which none but great minds know how to fill. It is best sometimes, for the great ones in the moral and spiritual world, to act, in the use of their wealth and power, more like fathers, on their own undivided will or authority, than to share their power or authority with others. By dividing their authority, by making others their equals, they both lessen their own opportunities of usefulness, and subject themselves to endless annoyances from the weakness, the selfishness, the ingratitude, and the treachery of those with whom they share their power. Penn's great generosity, his supposing that others were as great, as generous, as disinterested, as noble, as trust-worthy as himself, and his taking them into partnership with himself, was the great cause of his troubles in connexion with Pennsylvania. He did too much for the settlers; he raised them too high; he entrusted to them powers which he alone was qualified to use, and thus made them in some cases into opponents, instead of helpers and friends.

Penn could not help blaming the Territory men for their ingratitude. They had considered it as a great mercy to be united to the Province, and now they were causing divisions. He considered their movements to have sprung from no other source than that of ambition. "This striving," says he " can arise from nothing else." Besides the schism between the Province and the Territories, a religious one had sprung up. George Keith, a man of quick natural parts, and considerable literary attainments, acute in argument, and confident in his own opinions, who had been for some time an acknowledged minister among the Quakers, was the leader in this division. He found fault with the discipline of the society, ridiculed some of its customs, objected to some of its religious tenets, and set at nought the decisions of some of their meetings. Those who followed him he

called Christian Quakers. By his plausible manner and powerful talent of speaking, he had drawn so many after him as to fill one Meeting-house. This was a fresh annoyance to Penn, though we are not prepared to say that Keith was altogether in the wrong.

CHAPTER XXI

A. 1692.

DISPUTES in the Quaker societies in England concerning discipline still continued to exercise Penn's mind, and to occupy his pen. The establishment of a system of discipline, which gave to a meeting authority over the individual, was a terrible blunder; it was a deadly wound to the Quaker reformation. But how slow men are to learn to trust a reformation with God and with men's souls.

Penn lamented, in a work which he published about this time, that they who were one in faith and worship, should be devided as to the mere management of the Church. But he did not see that the authors of this division were the framers and imposers of this discipline; nor did he see, as would appear from his writings, that the establishment of the discipline which he contended for, would be the destruction of the liberty of the individual mind, the very liberty in which all reformations begin. Hence he argued for it with all his might.

In answer to priestly misrepresentations of the Quaker principles, Penn published about this time, "A Key, opening the way to every capacity how to distinguish the religion professed by the people called Quakers, from the perversions and misrepresentations of their adversaries; with a brief exhortation to all sorts of people to examine their ways and their hearts, and turn speedily to the Lord."

He published another work about this time in reply to attacks made on the Quakers in a periodical called "The Atheniam Mercurg," called "The New Athenians no noble Bereans."

At this time the health of his wife began to be seriously impaired. The trials and difficulties under which her husband had laboured so long and continued still to labour, had so much afflicted her mind, as to prostrate her strength, and seriously endanger her life.

The intelligence which he received from America during this period, was more pleasing. The injunctions which he had last sent over, had been favourably received, and had restored tranquillity, and the affairs of the settlement seemed likely to go on more pleasantly and prosperously. At the same time the proceedings of Keith gave him trouble. Keith had been expelled, but had succeeded in forming a number of meetings in various parts of the settlement. He had also found out that, if Quakers regarded war as Anti-Christian, they could not consistently pursue and apprehend criminals. It happened that a man of the name of Babit with some others had stolen a small sloop from a wharf in Philadelphia, and in going down the river with it, had committed other robberies. Intelligence of this having been given to the magistrates, three of them gave out a warrant in the nature of an hue and cry to take them, with a view of bringing them to punishment. The men were taken and brought to justice. Now as the magistrates who granted this warrant were all Quakers, Keith had represented their conduct on this occasion as a violation of their religious principles: for he considered the apprehension of the offenders as a species of war against their persons. Keith was right; but the magistrates were very much displeased with his remarks. Keith published books reflecting on the magistrates in other respects it is said, and the magistrates prosecuted and fined him for his remarks. Yet he still went on, and his followers or sympathisers increased in number.

Intelligence of these things caused Penn very great