Page:William Penn the Friend of Catholics.pdf/12

6 said in one of the private rooms of the manors of the well-to-do Catholics.

Penn declared, "the first fundamental of the government of my Province to be, that everyone should have and enjoy the free possession of his faith and the exercises of worship, in such way and manner as every such person shall in conscience believe most acceptable to God, and so long as such person useth not his Christian liberty to licentiousness or the destruction of others he shall be protected in the enjoyment of the aforesaid Christian liberty by the civil magistrate." So the few Catholics who were here in Penn's time were visited by Priests. They made no special display; they kept to themselves and quietly performed their religious duties.

But I judge that at Christmas or New Year's 1707-8, the few who were here made special manifestation of their faith on the occasion of two converts being received into the Church. Now, reception into the Catholic Church implies long and serious consideration and instruction, and in this case means that priests had been here frequently, were publicly known and moved among the citizens; else how did one of such prominence as Lionel Britton come to seek admission to the Catholic Church, whose members must have been very few in 1708, as the highest estimate made of the Catholics at the building of St Joseph's Chapel in 1732 is forty!

It was this public ceremony of the reception of the two converts that led Rev. John Talbot, afterwards the first Episcopal Bishop (by non-juring consecration) to write to the secretary of the London Society for the Propagating of the Gospel on January 10, 1708; "Arise, O Lord Jesus Christ, and help us and deliver us for thine honor!There's an Independency at Elizabethtown, Anabantism at Burlington, and the Popish Mass in Philadelphia. I thought that the Quakers would be the first to let it in, particularly Mr. Penn, for if he has any religion 'tis that. But thus to tolerate all without control is to have none at all." This is the earliest direct evidence of the celebration of Mass in Philadelphia.

On February 14, Talbot wrote to Rev. George Keith: "I saw Mr. Bradford in New York. He tells me that Mass is set up and read publically in Philadelphia, and several people are turned to it amongst which Lionel Brittin, the church warden, is one, and his son is another. I thought that Popery would come in amongst Friends, the Quakers, as soon as any way." [From Doc. His. of P. E. Church of U. S. Church Documents. Conn. Vol. I, p. 37. Jas. Pott, publisher, 1863.]

It was this Mass and reception of converts that the Episcopalians so promptly reported to London. Penn was there harrassed with debt and family troubles and battling with "The Hot Church Party" for the retention of his proprietary interest. His enemies and the enemies of his followers were pressing against him that while neither England nor any of the American Colonies gave toleration to Catholics, in Pennsylvania they were not only allowed to live, but were doing an act unlawful in England—publicly celebrating the Mass and receiving converts. Penn simply wrote to Logan to send a true account of the affair. Unfortunately that account, if sent, has not come to us.

Catholics have failed to remember that though Penn was the Founder, and, with the exception of a brief time, the Governor of the Province, he was not always the controller of its affairs. Nor were his own people always able to direct affairs as he and they desired. Not only had he and they personal and financial difficulties to contend against, but religious controversies and Quaker dissentions thwarted many good works.

But as concerns our question, Penn and his followers had the Established Church party to contend with. They strove to have his rights taken from him in order to have the Church of England established,

Religious controversies were rife during Lord Cornbury's time, and others than Catholics, as few as they were, suffered from the attempts to have the Established Church in England made the Church of