Biography

William Penn (14 October 1644 – 30 July 1718) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Native Americans.

As a pacifist Quaker, Penn considered the problems of war and peace deeply. He developed a forward-looking project and thoughts for a “United States of Europe” through the creation of a European Assembly made of deputies who could discuss and adjudicate controversies peacefully. He is therefore considered the first thinker to suggest the creation of a European Parliament and what would become the modern European Union in the late 20th century.^[3]

A man of deep religious convictions, Penn wrote numerous works in which he exhorted believers to adhere to the spirit of Primitive Christianity.^[4] He was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due to his faith, and his book No Cross, No Crown (1669), which he wrote while in prison, has become a Christian classic of theological literature.^[5]

Source: William Penn. Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply.

No Cross, No Crown (Selections)

V. But the best recreation is to do good: and all Christian customs tend to temperance, and some good and beneficial end; which more or less may be in every action. (1 Pet. i. 15; Heb. x. 25; 1 Pet. iv. 9-11; Matt. xxv. 36, 37; Phil. ii. 4; Ibid. iv. 8.)

For instance, if men and women would be diligent to follow their respective callings; frequent the assemblies of religious people; visit sober neighbors to be edified, and wicked ones to reform them; be careful in the tuition of their children, exemplary to their servants; relieve the necessitous, see the sick, visit the imprisoned; administer to their infirmities and indispositions, endeavor peace amongst neighbors: also, study moderately such commendable and profitable arts, as navigation, arithmetic, geometry, husbandry, gardening, handicraft, medicine; and that women spin, sew, knit, weave, garden, preserve, and the like housewife and honest employments, the practice of the greatest and noblest matrons, and youth, among the very heathens; helping others, who for want are unable to keep servants, to ease them in their necessary affairs; often and private retirements from all worldly objects, to enjoy the Lord: secret and steady meditations on the divine life and heavenly inheritance; which to leave undone and prosecute other things, under the notion of recreations, is impiety; it is most vain in any to object, that they cannot do these always, and therefore why may not they use these common diversions? for I ask, what would such be at? what would they do? and what would they have? They that have trades have not time enough to do the half of what hath been recommended.

And as for those who have nothing to do, and indeed do nothing, which is worse, but sin, which is worst of all, here is variety of pleasant, of profitable, yea, of very honorable employments and diversions[186] for them. Such can with great delight sit at a play, a ball, a masque, at cards, dice, drinking, reveling, feasting, and the like, an entire day; yea turn night into day, and invert the very order of the creation, to humor their lusts; (Amos, vi. 3-8;) and were it not for eating and sleeping, it would be past a doubt, whether they would ever find time to cease from those vain and sinful pastimes, till the hasty calls of death should summon their appearance in another world: yet do they think it intolerable, and hardly possible, for any to sit so long at a profitable or religious exercise.

X. Lastly, supposing we had none of these foregoing reasons justly to reprove the practice of the land in these particulars; however, let it be sufficient for us to say, that when people have first learned to fear, worship, and obey their Creator, to pay their numerous vicious debts, to alleviate and abate their oppressed tenants; but above all outward regards, when the pale faces are more commiserated, when the famished poor, the distressed widow, and helpless orphan, God’s works, and your fellow-creatures, are provided for; then, I say, if then, it will be time enough for you to plead the indifference of your pleasures.[225] But that the sweet and tedious labor of the husbandman, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure, ease, and pastime of a small number of men; that the cart, the plow, the flail, should be in that continual severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land, to feed the inordinate lusts and delicious appetites of the twentieth, is so far from the appointment of the great Governor of the world, and God of the spirits of all flesh, that, to imagine such horrible injustice as the effects of his determinations, and not the intemperance of men, were wretched and blasphemous.

As on the other side, it would be to deserve no pity, no help, no relief from God Almighty, for people to continue that expense in vanity and pleasure, whilst the great necessities of such objects go unanswered; especially since God hath made the sons of men but stewards to each other’s exigencies and relief. Yea, so strict is it enjoined, that on the omission of these things, we find this dreadful sentence partly to be grounded, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,”  (Matt. xxv. 34-41.) As on the contrary, to visit the sick, see the imprisoned, relieve the needy, &c. are such excellent properties in Christ’s account, that thereupon He will pronounce such blessed, saying, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you,” &c. (Matt. xxv. 34-41.) So that the great are not, with the leviathan in the deep, to prey upon the small, much less to make a sport of the lives and labours of the lesser ones, to gratify their inordinate senses.

From: William Penn. (1864). No Cross, No Crown. In the public domain. Project Gutenberg. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online.