Murray — Unpublished Letters of William Penn. 239 



that it constitutes a claim to infallibility, and that only the operation of 

 God's Spirit can beget faith. Revealed religion thus helps the claims of 

 conscience : so too does natural religion. With Grotius and the Cambridge 

 Platonists he maintains that toleration is a natural right. In a state 

 of nature men perceive that there is a God, b\;t obviously no form of 

 worship is prescribed. Penn quotes that great master of the sentences, 

 Dominicus a Soto, " That eveiy man hath a natural right to instruct others 

 in things that are good, and he may teach the Gospel truths also ; but he 

 cannot compel any to believe them, he may explain them." 



The survey from history is illuminating. The dicta of the fathers are 

 invoked. Lactantius, Hilary, Jerome, and Chrysostom all yield evidence that 

 they understood the blessings of liberty of conscience. Nor are modern times 

 forgotten. The precepts of James I and Charles I are set forth. Moreover, 

 did not Stephen, King of Poland, say : " I am king of men, not of con- 

 sciences ; a commander of bodies, not of souls " ? Did not the King of 

 Bohemia affirm, " That men's consciences ought in no sort to be violated, 

 urged, or constrained " ? It is clear that Penn has taken heed to the advice 

 of Hobbes, viz., that predominance should not be given to classical parallels. 

 Eepublican as he was, Penn saw the force of the objections of the philosopher 

 of Malmesbury, and used illustrations from his own day. He is on strong 

 ground when he uses in his " Persuasion to Moderation to Church 

 Dissenters " the success of the measures of toleration granted in the 

 Netherlands, France, Bohemia, Geimany, and the plantations. Even Eussia 

 furnishes an example for Penn. " Strifes about religion," said Grotius, " are 

 the most pernicious and destructive; where provision is not made for the 

 Dissenters : the contrary most happy, as in Muscovy." 



From this view Penn never wavered. In 1687 he published another of 

 his many pamjihlets, " Good Advice to the Church of England, Roman 

 Catholic, and Protestant Dissenter." Now he considers a national church 

 highly inadvisable. Of course, he supported the Declaiation of Indulgence. 

 That it was unconstitutional did not move him in the least. Was not the 

 constitution of man more fundamental than that of England ? There was a 

 natural right to follow reason and conscience, and no human law ought to 

 infringe such sacred rights. 



The belief in inherent right is no discoveiy of William Penn. It lies 

 implicit in the English tendency to look to the past as the age in which its 

 liberties were preserved undefiled from more modern developments. "To 

 recover our birthrights and privileges as Englishmen," " to purchase our 

 inheritances which have been lost," — such are the reasons Cromwell's men 



