not tell you how many and how powerful they are: nor can I tell you either how far, or by what ways and means, they may endeavour to execute their revenge. But this, however, I must needs tell you, that in your present circumstances, there is sufficient ground for so much jealousy, at least, as ought to excite you to use the precaution of some public vindication. This the tenderness of friendship prompts your friends to desire of you; and this the just sense of your honour, which true religion does not extinguish, requires you to execute.

'Pardon, I intreat you, Sir, the earnestness of these expressions; nay, suffer me, without offence, to expostulate with you yet a little farther. I am fearful lest these personal considerations should not have their due weight with you, and therefore I cannot omit to reflect also upon some more general consequences of your particular reproach. I have said it already, that the king, his honour, his government, and even the peace and settlement of this whole nation, either are, or have been, concerned in this matter: your reputation, as you are said to have meddled in public affairs, has been of public concernment. The promoting a general liberty of conscience having been your particular province; the aspersion of popery and jesuitism, that has been cast upon you, has reflected upon his Majesty, for having made use, in that affair, of so disguised a personage as you are supposed to have been. It has weakened the force of all your endeavours, obstructed their effect, and contributed greatly to disappoint this poor nation of that inestimable happiness, and secure establishment, which I am persuaded you designed, and which all good and wise men agree, that a just and inviolable liberty of conscience would infallibly produce. I heartily wish this consideration had been sooner laid to heart, and that some demonstrative evidence of your sincerity in the profession you make, had accompanied all your endeavours for liberty.

'But what do I say, or what do I wish for? I confess that I am now struck with astonishment at that abundant evidence which I know you have constantly given, of the opposition of your principles to those of the Romish church, and at the little regard there has been had to it. If an open profession of the directest opposition against popery, that has ever appeared in the world, since popery was first distinguished from common Christianity, would serve the turn, this cannot be denied to all those of that society, with which you are joined in the duties of religious worship. If to have maintained the principles of that society, by frequent and fervent discourses, by many elaborate writings,

by suffering ignominy, imprisonment, and other manifold disadvantages in defence thereof, can be admitted as any proof of your sincere adherence thereunto; this, it is evident to the world, you have done already : nay farther, if to have enquired as far as was possible for you into the particular stories that have been framed against you, and to have sought all means of rectifying the mistakes upon which they were grounded, could in any measure avail to the settling a true character of you in men's judgments; this also I know you have done. For I have seen under the hand of a* reverend dean of our English church, a full acknowledgment of satisfaction received from you, in a suspicion he had entertained upon one of those stories, and to which his report had procured too great credit. And though I know you are averse to the publishing of his letter without his express leave, and perhaps may not now think fit to ask it; yet I am so thoroughly assured of his sincerity and candour, that I cannot doubt but he has already vindicated you in that matter, and will (according to his promise) be still ready to do it upon all occasions. Nay I have seen also your justification from another calumny of common fame, about your having kidnapped one who had formerly been a monk, out of your American province, to deliver him here into the hands of his enemies; I say, I have seen your justification from that story under that person's own hand and his return to Pennsylvania, where he now resides, may be an irrefragable confutation of it, to any that will take the pains to enquire thereinto.

Really it afflicts me very much to consider that all this does not suffice. If I had not that particular respect for you which I sincerely profess; yet I could not but be much affected, that any man who had so deservedly acquired so fair a reputation as you have formerly had, whose integrity and veracity had always been reputed spotless, and whose charity had been continually exercised in serving others, at the dear expence of his time, his strength, and his estate, without any other recompence than what results from the consciousness of doing good; I say, I could not but be much affected, to see any such person fall innocently and undeservedly under such unjust reproaches as you have done. It is an hard case; and I think no man, that has any bowels of humanity, can reflect upon it, without great relentings.

'Since therefore it is so, and that something remains yet to be done; something more express, and especially more public, than has yet been done for your vindication, I beg of you, dear Sir, by all the tender efficacy that friendship,

Dr. Tillotson.

either mine, or that of your friends and relations together, can have upon you; by the due regard which humanity, and even Christianity, obliges you to have to your reputation; by the duty you owe unto the king; by your love to the land of your nativity; and by the cause of universal religion, and eternal truth; let not the scandal of insincerity, that I have hinted at, lie any longer upon you; but let the sense of all these obligations persuade you to gratify your friends and relations, and to serve your king, your country, and your religion, by such a public vindication of your honour, as your own prudence, upon these suggestions, will now shew you to be most necessary, and most expedient. I am, with unfeigned and most respectful affection, honoured Sir, your most humble, and most obedient Servant.'

• London, October the 20th, 1688.'

W. Penn's Answer to the foregoing Letter. "Worthy Friend,

"It is now about twenty years, I thank God, that I have not been very solicitous what the world thought of me. For since I had the knowledge of religion from a principle in myself, the first and main point with me has been, to approve myself in the sight of God, through patience and well-doing so that the world has not had weight enough with me, to suffer its good opinion to raise me, or its ill opinion to deject me. And if that had been the only motive or consideration, and not the desire of a good friend, in the name of many others, I had been as silent to thy letter, as I use to be to the idle and malicious shams of the times: but as the laws of friendship are sacred, with those that value that relation, so I confess this to be a principal one with me, not to deny a friend the satisfaction he desires, when it may be done without offence to a good conscience.

The business chiefly insisted upon, is my popery, and endeavours to promote it. I do say then, and that with all sincerity, that I am not only no jesuit, but no Papist. And, which is more, I never had any temptation upon me to be it, either from doubts in my own mind about the way I profess, or from the discourses or writings of any of that religion. And, in the presence of Almighty God, I do declare, that the king did never once, directly or indirectly, attack me, or tempt me, upon that subject, the many years that I have had the advantage of a free access to him; so unjust, as well as sordidly false, are all those stories of the town.

'The only reason, that I can apprehend, they have to repute me a Roman Catholic, is, my frequent going to Whitehall, a place no more forbid to me than to the rest of

the world, who, it seems, find much fairer quarter. I have almost continually had one business or other there for our friends, whom I ever served with a steady solicitation, through all times, since I was of their communion. I had also a great many personal good offices to do, upon a principle of charity, for people of all persuasions, thinking it a duty to improve the little interest I had for the good of those that needed it, especially the poor. I might add something of my own affairs too; though I must own (if I may without vanity) that they have ever had the least share of my thoughts or pains, or else they would not have still depended as they yet do.

But because some people are so unjust, as to render instances for my popery, (or rather hypocrisy, for so it would be in me) it is fit I contradict them as particularly as they accuse me. I say then solemnly, that I am so far from having been bred at St. Omer's, and having received orders at Rome, that I never was at either place, nor do I know any body there; nor had I ever a correspondency with any body in those places; which is another story invented against me. And as for my officiating in the king's chapel, or any other, it is so ridiculous, as well as untrue, that besides that nobody can do it but a priest, and that Í have been married to a woman of some condition above sixteen years, which no priest can be, by any dispensation whatever; I have not so much as looked into any chapel of the Roman religion, and consequently not the king's, though a common curiosity warrants it daily to people of all persuasions.

And once for all, I do say, that I am a protestant dissenter, and to that degree such, that I challenge the most celebrated protestant of the English church, or any other, on that head, be he layman or clergyman, in public or in private. For I would have such people know, it is not impossible for a true protestant dissenter to be dutiful, thankful, and serviceable to the king, though he be of the Roman Catholic communion. We hold not our property or protection from him by our persuasion; and therefore his persuasion should not be the measure of our allegiance. I am sorry to see so many that seem fond of the reformed religion, by their disaffection to him recommend it so ill. Whatever practices of Roman Catholics we might reasonably object against, (and no doubt but such there are) yet he has disclaimed and reprehended those ill things by his declared opinion against persecution; by the ease in which he actually indulges all dissenters: and by the confirmation he offers in parliament, for the security of the protestant religion and

liberty of conscience. And in his honour, as well as in my own defence, I am obliged in conscience to say, that he has ever declared to me, it was his opinion; and on all occasions, when duke, he never refused me the repeated proofs of it, as often as I had any poor sufferers for conscience-sake to solicit his help for.

But some may be apt to say, "Why not any body else' as well as I? Why must I have the preferable access to other dissenters, if not a papist?' I answer, I know not that it is so. But this I know, that I have made it my province and business; I have followed and pressed it; I took it for my calling and station, and have kept it above these sixteen years; and, which is more, (if I may say it without vanity or reproach) wholly at my own charges too. To this let me add the relation my father had to this king's' service, his particular favour in getting me released out of the Tower of London in 1669, my father's humble request to him, upon his death-bed, to protect me from the inconveniences and troubles my persuasion might expose me to, and his friendly promise to do it, and exact performance of it, from the moment I addressed myself to him: I say, when all this is considered, any body, that has the least pretence to good-nature, gratitude, or generosity, must needs know how to interpret my access to the king. Perhaps some will be ready to say, 'This is not all, nor is this yet a fault, but that I have been an adviser in other matters disgustful to the kingdom, and which tend to the overthrow of the protestant religion, and the liberties of the people.' A likely thing indeed, that a protestant dissenter, who from fifteen years old has been (at times) a sufferer in his father's family, in the university, and by the government, for being so, should design the destruction of the protestant religion. This is just as probable as it is true, that I died a jesuit six years ago in America. Will men still suffer such stuff to pass upon them? Is any thing more foolish, as well as false, than that because I am often at Whitehall, therefore I must be the author of all that is done there, that does not please abroad? But supposing some such things to have been done, pray tell me, if I am bound to oppose any thing that I am not called to do? I never was a member of council, cabinet, or committee, where the affairs of the kingdom are transacted. I have had no office, or trust, and consequently, nothing can be said to be done by me; nor, for that reason, could I lie under any test or obligation to discover my opinion of public acts of state; and therefore neither can any such acts, nor my silence about them, in justice be made my crime. Volunteers are blanks and cyphers in all goVOL. I.

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