about two years since, concerning their severity towards the people called Quakers? The burgomaster said he had. W. Penn then replied,

Quakers, hath reached these parts, and filled several with compassion and surprise: compassion, to hear of the† miseries of men innocent and upright, against whom you have nothing to object, but the pure exercise of their conscience to God: surprise, that you a Protestant state, should employ your civil power to deter, punish and grievously afflict men for answering the convictions of their consciences, and acting according to the best of their understanding. Methinks you should not be oblivious of your own condition in the loins of your ancestors who, you think, with great reason and justice strenuously advocated the cause of liberty of conscience against the Popes' bulls and the Spanish inquisition; how did they antichristian all force on conscience or punishment for nonconformity? Their own many and large apologies, and particularly their demands at the diets of Norimburgh and Spire, are pregnant proofs in that case; and your practice doth not lessen the weight of their reasons; on the contrary, it aggravates your unkindness, let me say, injustice.

Protestants (and such you glory to be thought) got their name by protesting against imposition; and will you turn imposers? They condemned it; and will you practise it? They thought it a mark peculiar to the beast; and can you repute it the care of a Christian magistracy? I mean, that persons must not live under

+ Our account says, some were cruelly beaten by order; others banished; some put in a dungeon, and fed with bread and water only; several fined greater sums of money, it is thought, than they had to pay.

"I am that man, and am constrained in conscience to visit thee on their behalf, &c. The burgomaster deported himself with more kind

your government, unless they receive your mark in their forehead or right hand? which in plainer terms is, to submit their consciences to your edicts, and to ask your leave what religion they should be of. Remember that faith is the gift of God; and that, what is not of faith is sin; nothing can be more unreasonable, than to compel men to believe against their belief, or to trouble them for practising what they believe, when it thwarts not the moral law of God.

You doubtless take yourselves to be Christians, and esteem it no little injury to be otherwise represented; yet what more unchristian, than to use external force to sway the consciences of men about the exercise of religious worship.

Christ Jesus, the Lord and author of the Christian religion, censured his own disciples, that would have had fire from heaven to destroy those that conformed not to what their blessed Master taught: are you surer of your religion? Are you better Christians? Or, have you more Christian authority, than they that were the chosen witnesses of Jesus? However, remember, they called but for fire from heaven, and can you kindle fire on earth to devour them? Them, I say, that are of your own people, merely for their religious dissent from you? Doubtless, if that was then thought no fit argument to induce men to conformity by him that was wiser than Solomon ; it reflects greatly upon your modesty and prudence, that you should find out new ways, or rather old exploded ones to effect so ill a design. Besides, you do not say you know all you ought to know, or that there is nothing farther to be revealed; have a care, therefore, that you

ness than was expected, and gave some faint hope of alteration; but it appeared sufficiently that the senate was not as yet so disposed, for

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persecute not angels, by being harsh to that which you call strange think not ill, much less speak, and least of all act, that which is so against what you do not perfectly understand. I am well persuaded, that those you inflicted such severe penalties upon, mean well in what they believe (to be sure much better than you think they do, or else you are extremely to blame) and that the reason of their present distance from you, is not to introduce or insinuate dangerous or exotick opinions, but to live a life of more holiness, purity, and self denial than before they do not think that you walk up to your own principles; and have reason to believe the power of godliness is much lost among you; and having long lain under a decay and languishing of soul for want of true spiritual nourishment, they have now betaken themselves to that heavenly gift and grace of God in themselves for divine satisfaction, even that holy anointing that is able to teach them all things necessary for them to know, as the blessed apostle speaks; and they find the joys of the Holy Ghost in so doing; and I am persuaded they are not less peaceable, sober, just, and neighbourly than formerly, and altogether as consistent with the prosperity of civil society; and I am sure it is both sound and confessed among us here by some men of quality, learning, and virtue. Farther, be pleased to consider with yourselves, that you justify the ancient persecutions of the Christians and first reformers, whose superiors thought as ill of them, as you do of these men; nay, you shew the Papists what to do in their dominions to your own brethren. Do as you would be done by if you would have liberty, give it; you know that God's witness

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persecution continued there yet a long while. After W. Penn had staid sometime at Embden, he took a turn again to Herford, where he

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in your hearts dictates this to you as an immutable law. Could you give faith, it were more excusable for you to punish such as should resist; but since that is impossible, the other is unreasonable; for it is to afflict men for not being what they cannot be unless they turn hypocrites: that is the highest pitch your coercive power can arrive at; for never did it convert or preserve one soul to God; instead thereof it offers violence unto conscience, and puts a man either upon the denial of his faith and reason, or being destroyed for acting according to them but what greater disproportion can there be, than what leth between the intellect of man, and prisons, fines, and banishments? These inform no man's judgment, resolve no doubts, convince no understanding the power of persuasion is not to be found in any such barbarous actions, no more than the doctrine of Christianity. This course destroys the bodies and estates of men, instead of saving their souls were they in the wrong, it would become you to use God's weapons, his sword of the Spirit, that saveth the creature; and slayeth the evil in him; this course tends to heart burnings and destruction; I am sure it is no gospel argument.

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I beseech you for the sake of that Lord Jesus Christ, that suffered so patiently for his own religion, and so sharply prohibited making other men to suffer for theirs, that you would have a care how you exercise power over men's consciences. My friends, conscience is God's throne in man, and the power of it his prerogative: it is to usurp his authority, and boldly ascend his throne, to set lords over it. Were their conversation scandalous, and destructive to the good of your state, you were to be held

was received very kindly by the princess Elizabeth, and the countess of Hornes; and more than once he had a meeting in her chamber;

excusable but verily, no man of mercy and conscience, can defend your practice upon poor men so peaceable and inoffensive. Gamaliel will rise up in judgment against you, if you persevere in this course. Do not you help to fill the catalogue of persecutors, in much love I intreat you; but as becomes Christian men and true Protestants, leave men to their particular persuasions of affairs relative to the other world which have no ill aspect on the affairs of this but vice hath an evil consequence as to both: therefore punish vice, and affect truth and righteousness, and bend not your civil power to torment religious dissenters, but to retrieve good life, lamentably lost amidst the great pretences that are made to religion. Doubtless magistracy was both ordained of God, and elected by men, to be a terror to evil doers, and not to them that do well, though of different judgments. You oppugn the Roman church for assuming infallibility to herself, and yet your own practice maketh you guilty of the same presumption or worse: either you do exercise that severity upon an infallible knowledge, or you do not; if you do, you take that to yourselves your principles deny to any church whatever, which is a contradiction; if you do not, you punish people for not conforming to what you yourselves deny any certainty about and how do you know but you compel them to that which is false, as well as that which is true? Verily, this dilemma is not easily avoided, as well as that this inhuman practice will stain your profession, infame your government, and bring a blot upon your posterity.

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for

Remember that they are men, as well as yourselves,