Selected quad for the lemma: friend_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
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A55471
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A letter to Mr. Penn with his answer
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Popple, William, d. 1708.; Penn, William, 1644-1718.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing P2964; ESTC R19135
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11,796
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8
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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 publick Affairs has been of publick Concernment The promoting a General Liberty of Conscience having been your particular Province The Aspersion of Popery and Iesuitism 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 also weakned 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 perswaded 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 unto 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 joyned in the Duties of Religious Worship If to have maintained the Principle 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 further 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 setting a true Character of you in mens 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 tho 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 Candor 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 Kidnapp'd one who had been formerly 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 Persons 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 deservedly acquired so fair a Reputation as you have formerly had whose integrity and Veracity had alwaies 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 a hard case and I thâ—nk 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 publick than has yet been done for your Vindication I beg of you Dear Sir by all the tender Efficacy that Friendship either mine or that of all 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 unto 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 perswade you to gratifie your Friends and Relations and to serve your King your Country and your Religion by such a publick 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 20 th 1688. Mr. Penn's Answer to the foregoing Letter Worthy Friend IT is now above twenty Years I thank God that I have not been very solicitous what the World thought of me For since I have had the Knowledge of Religion from a Principle in my Self the first and main Point with me has been to approve my Self 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 Malitious 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 Principle 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 Iesuit 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 Almghty 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