Selected quad for the lemma: friend_n
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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
A LETTER TO M r. PENN WITH His Answer To the Honorable William Penn Esq Proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania Honoured Sir THO the Friendship with which you are pleased to honour me doth afford me sufficient opportunities of Discoursing with you upon any Subject yet I chuse rather at this time to offer unto you in Writing some reflections which have occur'd to my thoughts in a matter of no common Importance The Importance of it doth primarily and directly respect your self and your own private Concernments But it also consequentially and effectually regards the King His Government and even the peace and settlement of this whole Nation I entreat you therefore to bear with me if I endeavour in this manner to give somewhat more weight unto my words than would be in a transient Discourse and leave them with you as a Subject that requires your retired Consideration You are not ignorant that the part you are supposed to have had of late Years in publick Affairs tho without either the Title or Honour or Profit of any Publick Office and that especially your avowed endeavours to introduce amongst us a general and inviolable Liberty of Conscience in matters of Meer Religion have occasioned the mistakes of some men provoked the malice of others and in the end have raised against you a multitude of Enemies who have unworthily defamed you with such Imputations as I am sure you abhor This I know you have been sufficiently informed of tho I doubt you have not made sufficient reflection upon it The Consciousness of your own Innocence seems to me to have given you too great a contempt of such unjust and ill grounded Slanders For however glorious it is and reasonable for a truly Vertuous Mind whose inward Peace is founded upon that Rock of Innocence to despise the empty noise of popular Reproach yet even that Sublimity of Spirit may sometimes swell to a reprovable Excess To be steady and immovable in the prosecution of wise and honest Resolutions by all honest and prudent means is indeed a Duty that admits of no exception But nevertheless it ought not to hinder that at the same time there be also a due care taken of preserving a fair Reputation A good Name says the Wise Man is better than a precious Oyntment It is a Persume that recommends the Person whom it accompanies that procures him every where an easie Acceptance and that facilitates the Success of all his Enterprises And for that reason tho there were no other I entreat you to observe that the care of a Man's Reputation is an essential part of that very same Duty that engages him in the pursuit of any worthy Design But I must not entertain you with a Declamation upon this general Theme My business is to represent to you more particularly those very Imputations which are cast upon your self together with some of their evident Consequences that if possible I may thereby move you to labour after a Remedy The Source of all arises from the ordinary Access you have unto the King the Credit you are supposed to have with Him and the deep Jealousie that some People have conceived of His intentions in reference to Religion Their Jealousie is that his Aim has been to settle Popery in this Nation not only in a fair and secure Liberty but even in a predominating Superiority over all other Professions And from hence the inference follows that Whosoever has any part in the Councels of this Reign must needs be Popishly affected But that to have so great a part in them as you are said to have had can happen to none but an absolute Papist That is the direct Charge But that is not enough Your Post is too considerable for a Papist of an ordinary form and therefore you must be a Jesuit Nay to confirm that Suggestion it must be accompanied with all the circumstances that may best give it an air of Probability as that you have been bred at St. Omers in the Jesuits College that you have taken Orders at Rome and there obtained a Dispensation to Marry and that you have since then frequently officiated as a Priest in the Celebration of the Mass at White-Hall St. Iames's and other Places And this being admitted nothing can be too black to cast upon you Whatsoever is thought amiss either in Church or Staâ—e tho never so contrary to your Advice is boldly attributed to it And if other Proofs fail the Scripture it self must be brought in to confirm That whosoever offends in one Point in a Point especially so essential as that of our too-much-affected Uniformity is guilty of the Breach of all our Laws Thus the Charge of Popery draws after it a Tail like the Et caetera Oath and by endless Inuendo's prejudicates you as guilty of whatso ever Malice can invent or Folly believe But that Charge therefore being removed the Inferences that are drawn from it will vanish and your Reputation will easily return to its former Brightness Now that I may the more effectually perswade you to apply some Remedy to this Disease I beseech you Sir suffer me to lay before you some of its pernitious Consequences It is no trifling matter for a Person raised as you are above the common level to lie under the prejudice of so general a Mistake in so important a Matter The general and the long prevalency of any Opinion gives it a strength especially amongst the Vulgar that is not easily shaken And as it happens that you have also Enemies of a higher Rank who will be ready to improve such popular Mistakes by all sorts of malicious Artifices It must be taken for granted that those Errors will be thereby still more confirmed and the inconveniences that may arise from thence no less increased This Sir I assure you is a melancholy prospect to your Friends For we know you have such Enemies The Design of so Vniversal a Liberty of Conscience as your principles have lead you to promote has offended many of those whose interest it is to cross it I need not tell you how many and how powerful they are Nor can I tell you either how far or by what waies and means they may endeavor to execute their Revenge But this however I must needs tell you That in your present Circumstances there is sufficient ground for so much Jealousie at least as ought to excite you to use the Precaution of some publick 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 entreat 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