Page:Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy vol XXXIII.djvu/563

 Murray — Unpublished Letters of William Penn. 239 that it constitutes a claim to infallibility, and that only the operation of God's Spirit can beget faith.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