The Hanscom Family Weblog

657 St Vitalian begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1629 The Puritans of Salem, Mass. appointed Francis Higginson as their teacher and Samuel Skelton as their pastor. The church covenant, composed afterward by these two men, allowed into communion only those who could prove a sound doctrinal knowledge and anexperience of grace in their lives.

1718 Death of William Penn, 74, English Quaker and founder of American colony of Pennsylvania. Penn permitted in his colony all forms of public worship compatible with monotheism and religious liberty.

1822 Pioneer church founder James Varick, 72, was consecrated the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

1942 German SS kills 25,000 Jews in Minsk, Belorussia

1956 US motto “In God We Trust” authorized. By an act of Congress, signed by President Eisenhower, ‘In God We Trust’ becamethe official U.S. motto.

1976 Death of Rudolf Bultmann, 92, German Bible scholar and one of the three major pioneers of modern form ‘criticism’ (i.e., ‘analysis’) of the New Testament Gospels.
Religious Observances

Christian : Commemoration of SS Abdon & Sennen, martyrs
RC : Memorial of Peter Chrysologus, bishop & doctor
Ang : Commemoration of William Wilberforce

July 30

On this day in 1726, priest and Anglican Divine William Jones was born in Lowick, Northamptonshire.

July 30

Abdon and Sennen, martyrs [common]
Helena (of Skoefde), widow, martyr [GTZ: Skara only]
Julitta, martyr [BLS]
Peter Chrysologus, bishop, Doctor of the Church [MR]
Thomas Abel, Edward Powell, and Richard Featherstone, martyrs [BLS]
Ursus, bishop (of Auxerre), confessor [GTZ: Auxerre]

Tisha B’Av Judaism

Feast Day:

Saints Abdon and Sennen, martyrs, 250.
St. Julitta, martyr, about 303.

WILLIAM PENN

William Penn was born on Tower Hill, London, 14th October 1644. His father was Sir William Penn, an admiral who had fought with distinction the fleets of Holland and Spain. His mother was a Dutchwoman, the daughter of a rich Rotterdam merchant. Penn received an excellent education, and whilst at Oxford he was tempted to go and hear one Thomas Loe, a Quaker, preach. Quakerism, in our time the meekest of faiths, was in those days regarded by churchmen and dissenters alike, as an active spirit of evil deserving no mercy or forbearance: there was contamination and disgrace in everything connected with it. Loe’s ministry so affected Penn, that he began to think of becoming a Quaker himself. His father heard of the impending metamorphosis with horror, and sent him off to France, to avert the change. The policy was successful. Penn soon forgot the Quaker in the gaiety of Paris, and returned, to his father’s delight, a fine gentleman, with all the airs and accomplishments of a courtier.

The terrors of the plague of London in 1665, however, revived the youth’s pious tendencies, and again his father tried change of scene, and sent him to Ireland. There he distinguished himself in subduing an insurrection; and it is a curious fact, that the only authentic portrait of the great apostle of peace existing, represents him at this period a young man armed and accoutred as a soldier. It so happened, that the Quakers were growing numerous in the larger Irish cities, and one day Penn strolled into their meeting in Cork. To his surprise, Thomas Loe, from Oxford, arose and spoke from the text, ‘There is a faith that overcomes the world, and there is a faith that is overcome by the world.’ From that meeting is dated Penn’s thorough conversion to Quakerism. His father heard of his relapse with dismay, and ordered him back to London. They had a long and painful discussion, but the young man was immovable; neither the hope of honour nor the prospect of degradation had any effect on his resolution; and the admiral, after exhausting his whole armory of persuasion, ended by turning his son out of doors.

This conduct threw Penn completely over to the Quakers. He began to preach at their meetings, to write numerous pamphlets in defence of their doctrines, to hold public debates with their adversaries, and to make propagandist tours over England and the continent, sometimes alone, and sometimes in company with George Fox, Robert Barclay, and others. Of persecution and imprisonment he had his share. A tract, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, in which he set forth Unitarian opinions, so excited the bishop of London, that he had him committed to the Tower, where he lay for nearly nine months. King Charles sent Stillingfleet to talk him out of his errors; but, said Penn, ‘The Tower is to me the worst argument in the world.’ During this confinement he wrote, No Cross, no Crown, the most popular of his works. ‘Tell my father, who I know will ask thee,’ said he one day to his servant, ‘that my prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot: for I owe my conscience to no mortal man. Actuated by a spirit as patient as it was resolute, Penn and his brethren fairly wore out the malice of their persecutors, so that in sheer despair intolerance abandoned Quakerism to its own devices.

Happily, the admiral had the good sense to reconcile himself to his son. It is said that, in spite of his irritation, he came to admire the steady front William shewed to an adverse and mocking world. The admiral’s disappointment was indeed severe. He stood high in favour with Charles II and the Duke of York, and had his son co-operated with him, there was no telling what eminence they might not have attained. ‘Son William,’ said the veteran, only a day or two before his death, ‘I am weary of the world: I would not live my days over again, if I could command them with a wish; for the snares of life are greater than the fears of death.’ Almost the last words he uttered were, ‘Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and also keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of priests to the end of the world.’

Penn, by his learning and logic, did more than any man, excepting Barclay, author of the Apology, to shape Quaker sentiment into formal theology; but the service by which the world will remember him, was his settlement of Pennsylvania. His father had bequeathed him a claim on the government of £16,000 for arrears of pay and cash advanced to the navy. Penn very well knew that such a sum was irrecoverable from Charles II; he had long dreamed of founding a colony where peace and righteousness might dwell together; and he decided to compound his debt for a tract of country in North America. The block of land he selected lay to the north of the Catholic province of Maryland, owned by Lord Baltimore; its length was nearly 300 miles, its width about 160, and its area little less than the whole of England. Objections were raised; but Charles was only too glad to get rid of a debt on such easy terms. At the council, where the charter was granted, Penn stood in the royal presence, it is said, with his hat on. The king thereupon took off his; at which Penn observed, ‘Friend Charles, why dost thou not keep on thy hat?’ to which his majesty replied, laughing: ‘It is the custom of this place for only one person to remain covered at a time.’ The name which Penn had fixed on for his province was New Wales; but Secretary Blathwayte, a Welshman, objected to have the Quaker-country called after his land. He then proposed Sylvania, and to this the king added Penn, in honour of the admiral.

The fine country thus secured became the resort of large numbers of Quakers, who, to their desire for the free profession of their faith, united a spirit of enterprise; and very quickly Pennsylvania rose to high importance among the American plantations. Its political constitution was drawn up by Penn, aided by Algernon Sidney, on extreme democratic principles. Perfect toleration to all sects was accorded. ‘Whoever is right,’ Penn used to say, ‘the persecutor must be wrong.’ The world thought him a visionary; but his resolution to treat the Indians as friends, and not as vermin to be extirpated, seemed that of a madman. So far as he could prevent, no instrument of war was allowed to appear in Pennsylvania. He met the Indians, spoke kindly to them, promised to pay a fair price for whatever land he and his friends might occupy, and assured them of his good-will. If offences should unhappily arise, a jury of six Indians and six Englishmen should decide upon them.

The Indians met Penn in his own spirit. No oaths, no seals, no official mummeries were used; the treaty was ratified on both sides with a yea, yea—the only one, says Voltaire, that the world has known, never sworn to, and never broken.’ A strong evidence of Penn’s sagacity is the fact, that not one drop of Quaker blood was ever shed by an Indian; and forty years elapsed from the date of the treaty, ere a red man was slain by a white in Pennsylvania. The murder was an atrocious one, but the Indians themselves prayed that the murderer’s life might be spared. It was spared; but he died in a very short time, and they then said, the Great Spirit had avenged their brother.

It will be thought that Penn made a capital bargain, in the purchase of Pennsylvania for £16,000; but in his lifetime, he drew little but trouble from his investment. The settlers withheld his dues, disobeyed his orders, and invaded his rights; and he was kept in constant disquiet by intrigues for the nullification of his charter. Distracted by these cares, he left his English property to the care of a steward, who plundered him mercilessly; and his later years were saddened with severe pecuniary distress. He was twice married, and in both cases to admirable women. His eldest son, a promising youth, he lost just as he verged on manhood; and a second son, by riotous living, brought himself to an early grave, trying Penn’s fatherly heart with many sorrows. Multiplied afflictions did not, however, sour his noble nature, nor weaken his settled faith in truth and goodness.

Penn’s intimacy with James II exposed him, in his own day, to much suspicion, which yet survives. It ought to be remembered, that Admiral Penn and James were friends; that the admiral, at death, consigned his son William to his guardianship; and that between James and his ward there sprung up feelings apparently amounting to affection. While James was king, Penn sometimes visited him daily, and persuaded him to acts of clemency, otherwise unattainable. Penn scorned as a Quaker, James hated as a Catholic, could sympathise as brothers in adversity. Penn, by nature, was kindly, and abounding in that charity which thinketh no evil; and taking the worst view of James’s character, it is in nowise surprising that Penn should have been the victim of his duplicity. It is well known that rogues could do little mischief, if it were not so easy to make good men their tools.

There was very little of that asceticism about Penn which is thought to belong to—at least early —Quakerism. The furniture of his houses was equal in ornament and comfort to that of any gentleman of his time. His table abounded in every real luxury. He was fond of fine horses, and had a passion for boating. The ladies of his household dressed like gentlewomen—wore caps and buckles, silk gowns and golden ornaments. Penn had no less than four wigs in America, all purchased the same year, at a cost of nearly £20. To innocent dances and country fairs he not only made no objection, but patronised them with his own and his family’s presence.