William Penn’s The Christian-Quaker, and his Divine Testimony Vindicated belongs to seventeenth-century religious controversy: a sustained, point-by-point defence of the Quaker doctrine of the inward light against Baptist critics, chiefly the minister William Burnet and the pamphleteer Thomas Hicks. Penn wrote the first part; George Whitehead supplied a second, and the two are bound here with related tracts on the light, the resurrection, and the rule of faith. The edition gathers material first printed in London in the 1660s and 1670s, reprinted in Philadelphia in the 1820s by Joseph Rakestraw under the direction of the London Meeting for Sufferings.
“I have a life in peace more than in contests, and a tender respect to the mor^pnscientious of all sorts professing reli- gion, thathaveatenderneS(pd sincerity in them”
The book belongs to a genre that has largely vanished: the public disputation set down in print. Its pages preserve not only arguments but the texture of actual quarrels—meetings broken up, candles put out, a speaker called a knave in the open street, a stick shaken in a man’s face. Penn and Whitehead write as participants, and they expect their readers to weigh the conduct of the disputants as closely as the doctrines.
The Claim Beneath the Quarrel
Everything in the volume turns on a single assertion: that God has placed in every human being a measure of divine light—Christ himself, spiritually present in the conscience—sufficient to convict of sin and, if obeyed, to lead to salvation. The Quakers affirm this; their opponents deny it, calling the light a natural faculty, a creature, or at best the remnant of a broken covenant. From that disagreement flow all the subsidiary fights: over scripture as rule, over silent worship, over water baptism, over the person and blood of Christ, over perfection, over the resurrection of the body.
The 1824 Philadelphia Edition and Its Contents
The volume opens with an Advertisement tracing the print history of Penn’s works: first gathered in 1726 in two folio volumes, reprinted in London in 1782 as Select Works in five octavo volumes, and, once those went out of print, encouraged afresh by the Meeting for Sufferings in London in the fourth month of 1820. Because so large a selection proved too costly for general circulation, three treatises were issued separately—The Sandy Foundation Shaken, Innocency with her Open Face, and The Christian Quaker. The second part of the last, by George Whitehead, had grown extremely scarce, so its republication was judged useful, and a tract of his, The Light and Life of Christ within, was inserted alongside it. The Contents list runs from that tract and a testimony concerning Whitehead through Penn’s Sandy Foundation Shaken and Innocency with her Open Face, to The Christian Quaker in two parts, Lux Exorta Est, several pieces against Baptist and Presbyterian opponents, and a cluster of treatises on the resurrection.
Whitehead’s Preface Against the Baptists
Whitehead’s preface to The Light of Christ within, first printed in London in 1668 and reprinted at Philadelphia by Joseph Rakestraw in 1823, says he would gladly have avoided public controversy, having “a life in peace more than in contests,” but the hardness of certain Baptists in Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and elsewhere forced his hand. Their chief agent, Matthew Caffin, and William Burnet of Chertsey supply the persecutor’s place in this little time of liberty. Burnet’s personal reflections, gathered from reports after the manner of former persecuting priests, could be passed over more easily than his perverting of Quaker principles, since particular falls cannot rationally destroy principles. Whitehead notes the Baptists’ own divisions—particular election against general redemption, Seventh-day-Sabbath impositions, disputes over whether Christ completed the offering on the cross or at his entrance into Heaven, teachers who printed against tythes yet paid them, some swearing themselves out of prison while others suffered. Thomas Tillam and a fellow prisoner escaped Ipswich prison deceitfully; Tombs and Jeyes took priests’ places; Robert Everard and Jo. Attaway of Brantree in Essex turned Papists.
Burnet’s Contradictions
A section headed William Burnet’s Contradictions sets his own pages against each other. He says Paul preached a Christ made of a woman, not a Christ in them, yet admits the fruits of justification show themselves within and without. He says obedience is no cause of justification, yet writes that “we are sealed by an obedience to the Gospel.” He says unregenerate men have no Light in them, yet elsewhere grants the Light in every man convinces of sin, the law written in the heart at creation being the ground of conscience. He calls the Light nature and an uncertain guide, yet calls Christ the Light of the world lighting every man, the Spirit the candle of the Lord. He calls the errors “hell-hatched,” yet wonders where the doctrine of turning to the Light within was coined—Whitehead observes it may then be founded in Heaven.
Answering Burnet Point by Point
The author answers Burnet directly, noting that Burnet confessed the Quakers’ principle against his own intention: that receiving the Spirit is the only means to capacitate a man for obedience, and that nothing gives a soul right to Gospel ordinances but the gift of Christ and his revelation in us by his Spirit. What rule, he asks, did the Scripture penmen have before and while writing—the Spirit, the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith? Did Christ eye the Scriptures as his rule, having the Spirit above measure? On silent meetings, Burnet cites them as proof of “strong delusions”; the author replies that Friends do not appoint meetings to limit them to silence but singly to wait upon God, to learn of Christ or speak as he requires, citing Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, Job, Luke and Acts. They will not run, preach, or pray in men’s will, nor in feigned humility like will-worshippers who put one another on to pray. Their testimony in silence and ministry has stood against the persecuting spirit; many Friends suffered imprisonments, banishments, and death, whereas Baptists suffer little and now cavil in a time of respite. Burnet’s stories about Friends, including Solomon Eccles, are partly falsehoods; the truth of Eccles’ sign appeared against the nakedness of dark professors, and Burnet himself concedes Isaiah went naked for a sign yet not all prophets’ actions are for our example—so Scripture is not his rule, contrary to his assertion.
The Sufficiency of the Light Defended
The second objection holds that the inward Light cannot be sufficient, since it leaves many necessary matters unrevealed—showing perhaps what is reprovable but not all that must be believed or done. The author treats this as a variation on the first objection: men judge the Light insufficient because they themselves fail to obey or to know what is fit for them. He denies outright that the Light withholds anything fit to be known, arguing that things are necessary in reference to their proper times. A schoolmaster is not deficient for refusing to teach a child everything at once; the scholar must first learn to spell, and loading him with matters beyond his capacity would spoil rather than improve him. Scripture supports the point: “If you do my will, you shall know of my doctrine,” and “I have yet many things to say, but you are not able to bear them now.” To charge the gospel Light with insufficiency because it did not reveal to every believer what was shown to an apostle would be false and anti-Christian.
The Reason of Contraries
If the Light manifests all things reprovable, then by the just reason of contraries it is sufficient to discover all things approvable concerning faith, salvation, and duty. If it reproves unbelief, it teaches belief; if it condemns theft, it instructs to honesty; if it checks sin, it teaches holiness. The unfruitful works of darkness are judged by the Light so that the fruits of the Light may appear, and “the reproofs of instruction are the way of life.”
Power to Redeem
The Light does more than expose and condemn sin and incline the soul to purity. As it is adhered to, it carries power and efficacy to redeem from sin and lead to the highest felicity: “I am the Light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Those who believe in Christ as he manifests himself a light in their consciences, and who obediently take up the daily cross to their own lusts, find this Principle able to save them from what it condemns. The same Word called the true Light is also the Life, Power, Wisdom, and Righteousness of the Father. There is a difference, though not in the Principle, between life and light: as the life in the Word became the light in man, so the light, by obedience, becomes the life in man.
Light and Darkness in Romans and John
From Romans xiii the author draws three points: light and darkness stand in absolute opposition, and only light can discover and dispel darkness; in this light there is armour able to defend against and conquer darkness; and putting on the armour of the Light and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ are the same thing. From 1 John i he states the whole case of salvation: God is Light; those who walk in darkness have no fellowship with him; those who walk in the light have fellowship, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses them from all sin. The Light’s leading us out of darkness is the same as Christ’s blood cleansing from sin—cleansing from one and translation from the other are equivalent.
One Principle, Many Names
Scripture gives many names to one and the same thing. Christ is called Word, Light, Way, Truth, Life, Quickening Spirit, Saving Health, Saviour, Emmanuel, Rock, Door, Vine, Shepherd. A state of sin is called darkness, death, disobedience, barrenness, rebellion. Conversion is expressed as purged, refined, washed, sanctified, justified, led by the Spirit, regenerated, redeemed, saved. The primitive saints, feeling the operation of the One Holy Principle, named it accordingly: to men in darkness it was Light; to believers a leader; to those whose lusts were cut down and souls washed, a sword, fire, hammer, water, flesh, blood, bread, seed of life. This variety must not be taken for distinct things in kind. The author adds that the wise men of the world cannot give a right account of scripture without the living, experimental witness of the Holy Spirit, and that those who claim to be in the light while hating their brother are in darkness even until now. He affirms that those who show envious displeasure against a harmless, suffering people—who never yet offended—betray their own condition.
God Imprints Knowledge of Himself on All Minds
The author’s second fundamental assertion is that God manifests himself by enlightening the soul with his own Divine Light, which, when obeyed, leads to blessedness. He produces twelve testimonies from whole societies and particular persons, each compared with scripture. Pythagoras and his disciples held that the mind alone sees the eternal God, and exhorted one another not to divide asunder the God within them. Heraclitus entitled the universal Light in the conscience “a domestic God.” Bias of Priene, fleeing invaders, said “I do carry my goods with me”
The Old Heavens and the New Creature
Penn closes his exhortation by warning religious professors that literal knowledge, historical faith, and outward religion are but old heavens, old wine in old bottles, unfit for God’s kingdom. Such believers may cry “Lord, Lord,” yet envy, wrath, malice, pride, and covetousness prevail under their faith, cloaked from God’s Spirit; when the Lord moves any to decry these shows, they are called rash and censorious, and their opponents plead scripture’s commands while ignoring whether the performance springs from the new creature or the old. True faith, Penn insists, is yielding to God’s Spirit within, in assurance of remission of sins and everlasting life, producing works of holiness—more than assent to a true proposition. The true Christian life stands not in bodily exercise nor imitation of the ancients in shadowy things, but in self-denial and walking in the Spirit; he bids readers examine whether this faith and the Holy Spirit as ruler are theirs, and resist not the light within. Signed “William Penn,” the piece gives way to a title page: The Christian Quaker, and his Divine Testimony against the Adversaries of the True Light, Part IX, by George Whitehead, London 1673, reprinted Philadelphia by Joseph Rakestraw, 1824.
To the Unprejudiced Reader
Had not the Lord been on their side, the adversaries would have swallowed them; God gathered them to witness his truth and opened their eyes to his saving grace extended to all, moving them to call others out of darkness to the true light in their hearts and consciences. Though transgression veiled this light through many ages, it now shines from lesser to greater degrees unto the perfect day. God has placed an unchangeable principle of divine light in man and visits him with living motions of his Spirit for reproof and conviction: the Spirit strove with the old world, gave his good Spirit to rebellious Jews who grieved it, and his sun rises on evil and good. The promise of the woman’s seed bruising the serpent’s head, and the new covenant of light, life, and peace, belong only to those who obey the universal light of the Son within. This is God’s last dispensation in Christ; the holy city New Jerusalem is discovered, the Lamb its light, and the gospel preached again after anti-christ’s long reign. The Anabaptists show themselves Babylonish builders, raging because the light is sprung up; the stone cut without hands shall fill the earth, and truth strikes at satan’s kingdom, bruising the serpent’s head hidden under empty forms.
The Controversy Stated
The dispute turns on whether God gave a divine and sufficient light to every man to direct him out of sin to God—the Quakers affirm, the Dippers deny, especially predestinarians, whose partial doctrine places condemnation on God’s secret decree rather than men’s disobedience. Opponents call this light a creature, natural light, the substance of the law, or blasphemously a misguiding light. H. Grigg’s epistle claims no enmity against Quakers’ persons yet calls their doctrines dangerous and damnable; T. Hicks proclaims their religion “a mere cheat, calculated to the service of the devil,” insinuating their sufferings aim at carnal advantage and questioning whether Romish emissaries act them. The author replies that Quakers have offered up their lives in sufferings, and challenges Hicks to prove the charge, noting some Baptist preachers have turned Papists while none owned among the Quakers have.
Hicks at Alderman-Bury
The author presents Hicks’ doctrines from a dispute at Alderman-Bury, London, the twentieth of the third Month, 1672: he owned the Baptists above other people; did not own water baptism necessary to salvation, contrary to many brethren; charged Quakers with denying Christ’s person and the resurrection—impudent slanders; and claimed the light of John i. 4, 9 is not supernatural because it is the light of the Word as Creator, concluding the light in every man is but natural and insufficient. The author calls this blasphemous inconsistency, since the eternal Word’s light is supernatural and sufficient; to say that life is divine in God but natural in man is blasphemy.
Who Obeys the Light
Answering Hicks’ question who or what obeys the light, the author answers that the light is placed in man’s heart and conscience so the whole soul may understand and obey it and come to salvation in Christ. God has given man a spiritual capacity to obey by the virtue of grace; where the eye is single, the whole body is full of light. Hicks’ doctrine of sin and imperfection during life contradicts his own implication that the whole person is the subject of obedience, and his inference that the light must obey itself is a fiction.
Fox and the Soul
Against the charge that G.
Answering the Chichester Bill of Excommunication
The passage opens on the claim that carnality and grossness of opinion darken the mind from spiritual apprehension of eternal things, which are seen only in the Divine light revealed by the eternal Spirit. The bulk of it is a point-by-point answer to a bill of excommunication issued by the Baptists at Chichester against John Richardson. The Quaker respondent first denies that the Baptists are the church of Christ, accusing them of walking in darkness while claiming fellowship with God, and denies their authority to excommunicate. Against the charge that Richardson withdrew from their assemblies, the answer notes the contradiction that they had already cast him out, so he excommunicated himself. The charge of mixing with the people called Quakers, who hold diabolical heretical opinions in saying all should hearken to a light within and that this light is Christ, draws the longest reply: the respondent defends the doctrine that Christ is the true light enlightening every man, and that in him was life and the life was the light of men. The Baptists call this a twofold lie, arguing that where Christ is the body is dead to sin, and that some are reprobate and without Christ. The answer distinguishes Christ’s revealed, united indwelling in saints from his omnipresent divine nature in all, conceding some Baptists admit Christ’s divine nature is everywhere. To the allegation that hearing the light within preaches down scripture, the answer denies it, cites many scriptures, and argues that without minding the light men cannot understand or fulfil scripture. The Baptists cite Saul sent to Ananias, Cornelius sent to Peter, and converts told to repent and be baptized, as proof the light within was never preached; the answer replies that Paul was converted to the light within and that Peter bore witness to the day-star shining in a dark place. Further charges concern Richardson’s fellowship with a people opposing gospel appointments and his being guided by the light within rather than scripture; the answer insists the light is sufficient to manifest all things reprovable. Christ’s warning to take heed lest the light in thee be darkness is explained as referring to false light. On whether scripture or Christ’s words are the last-day rule, the answer says God judges by Christ and his living Word and law in men. The bill is signed by W. Flecher and W. Claton; the respondent closes by denying the Baptists’ church, authority, and excommunication, and notes that some Baptists upbraided Quakers for excommunicating, though Quakers never did so for owning the light within. A rebuke is then drawn from the Baptists’ own ministers: a bewailing epistle from Twerton dated the 28th of the 7th month, 1657, signed by Thomas Colliar, Nathaniel Strange, and Thomas Glass, confessing reigning abominations, worldliness, coldness, formality, and a Laodicean spirit, and urging days of bewailing and purging of sin. Editorial footnotes repeatedly apply the confession to the Baptists’ present decline.
The Presbyter’s Antidote Tried: Rule, Light, and Scriptures
A new title begins: “The Presbyter’s Antidote Tried,” against Stephen Scandret’s work against Quakerism, opening on the rule, the light, and the scriptures. “Rule” is defined as governing power, and the Divine light as the only rule; “scriptures” are writings that contain rules but are not the only highest rule, since the Spirit that gave them forth is before and higher. The discussion passes through the Assembly’s Confession on the Hebrew and Greek originals, Tindal’s prologue, and disputes over translations and the witch of Endor, arguing that placing infallibility in the letter leaves people in uncertainty, and that priests set their own meanings above scripture for gain.
Satisfaction, Justice, and the Sufferings of Christ
The author then argues that if pardoning transgression on true repentance and being both a just God and a Saviour are not inconsistent with God’s infinite goodness and mercy, then divine justice did not consist in a severity requiring rigid satisfaction—punishing his Son to the full and pouring out wrath on him for mankind’s sins. Where remission is obtained there is both a relaxation of the law’s severity and a manifest effect of Christ’s propitiation as mediator and advocate, not as object of wrath, revenge, and full punishment due to sin. Christ’s being not spared and made a curse was neither equivalent to eternal death nor to the curse sinners deserve. Nor does this absolve man from obedience to the law of the new covenant: it relaxed the law’s bondage and abolished the first covenant and its curse, but did not pardon or justify men in sin against the second—rather it reinforced its terms.
The Dispute Over Sin and Perfection
The author turns to a Presbyterian opponent, S. S., who has inferred from Paul’s confession—”the evil that I do I would not”—that the saints are never wholly free of sin. Penn presses the inference: did Paul then do evil yet no iniquity? Was victory over that evil unattainable in this life? What sin must remain in the apostle until the world’s end? He grants that no man is regenerate who is not perfectly free from sin, distinguishing the long travail of the new birth from the birth itself. On Romans viii. 1 he finds a double error: the notion that guilt is removed while sin remains, as though one could sin and not be guilty, and the confounding of sin with flesh as though inseparable. S. S. perverts Job and John, he says, by adding “with allowance” to “if I sin,” since scripture holds that whoever is born of God does not commit sin; communion with God is never communion in sin. If perfection is our duty, God does not enjoin impossibilities, and the work of sanctifying body, soul, and spirit is finished by degrees before the next life.
Faith, Imperfection, and the Race
Against the plea that faith itself is imperfect—”Lord, I believe, help my unbelief”—the author answers that unbelief is the creature’s defect, while faith is God’s gift and pure in its kind; degrees of growth do not alter a pure nature’s property. The Thessalonians lacked growth, not purity. He accuses S. S. of charging David with failings in old age without proof, and cites the songs of 2 Samuel to show David’s inward warfare was perfect and successful. If we are not to let sin reign, why let its being remain once power is received to subdue it? The Spirit’s operation is always perfect, though the saving work is not yet fulfilled in all degrees; by patient waiting sin is put to an end. S. S.’s gloss on Romans viii. 4—sincere obedience so far as understood—contradicts his own pleading for sin’s continuance. Man cannot obey by his own strength, but through Christ may attain the law’s righteousness; Christ came to condemn sin in the flesh, a state the apostle did not postpone to the other world. The author rejects the gloss “condemned our sin in him,” insisting sin must be destroyed in oneself, and disputes satisfaction as strict payment of full punishment. Told he slanders in saying “You plead for sin,” he answers that he has verified it. S. S.’s parable of two companies of children racing misstates the Quaker doctrine: children are not required to run as fast as men, but may become men, each acting according to ability, running with patience so that the race may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
The Spiritual Resurrection Defended
The treatise closes against Baptist and Anabaptist opponents, W. B. and Thomas Danson, on the resurrection. Christ’s flesh saw no corruption, raised before it could decay, so comparing it to ordinary flesh that turns to dust is an unequal instance; the resurrection was preached for spiritual benefit here and eternal advantage hereafter. Not all flesh goes to the grave—some becomes food for fowls, some is wasted by sickness—so raising “the selfsame flesh” would produce a vast bulk. Against W. B.’s reading of Job xix, the author calls his opponents gross and carnal for making God visible to fleshly eyes: it is “in my flesh,” not “with my flesh,” that Job sees God, a reading he likens to the Anthropomorphites and Muggletonians. Martha’s belief came from Jewish opinion, and Christ diverted her with “I am the resurrection and the life.” The sown grain is not the selfsame grain that springs up; flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. Answering Danson, he denies Quakers question the resurrection: the soul carries its proper vessel out of the earthly house and receives the things done in the body. Christ’s answer about the seven brothers taught that the worthy are equal to the angels, children of the resurrection, and cannot die any more. Danson argues doubtfully from Calvin, Beza, and Diodati, showing more confidence than knowledge. The author denies eternal glory was promised to Abraham’s terrestrial body, asks whether Moses and Elias appeared in human or angelical bodies, and cites Paul’s desire to be with Christ. Such men intrude into things too high and open a gap to atheism. He ends with two resolving questions: whether the righteous, equal to angels and lacking terrestrial bodies, are perfectly happy when separate, and whether the wicked and devils are capable of absolute misery without earthly bodies—scripture’s figurative Tophet still signifying real torment.
What the Light Is Said to Do
The argument’s most striking move is its refusal to treat the light as a mere moral faculty. Whitehead insists it is the same Word that became flesh, “the true Light” of John’s Gospel, and that the many names scripture gives—word, way, truth, life, sword, fire, hammer, bread, seed—describe one principle under different operations. To the man in darkness it appears as condemnation; to the man who yields, as a leader; to the man whose lusts are cut down, as a cleansing blood. The variety is in the experience, not in the thing experienced.
This lets the authors make an audacious historical claim. In the long central chapters on “Gentile divinity,” Penn parades the pagan philosophers—Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca—as witnesses to an inward divine guide, and then lines up the primitive Christian fathers, Justin Martyr, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, to show the same doctrine in the church’s first centuries. The light, on this account, was never absent from any age or people; the gospel is its fullest manifestation, not its first appearance. The distinction between law and gospel becomes a matter of degree, “the law the gospel begun, the gospel the law finished.”
The Man Who Obeys
Against the charge that the light is a vague and uncertain guide, the book offers a portrait rather than a definition. The man taught by the light is “unravelled, unreligioned, and unbottomed” as to his former state—stripped of religion built on letter, form, education, and imagination—brought to abhor himself in dust and ashes, and then led through judgment until the root of sin, not merely its fruit, is destroyed. He sets a watch on his own thoughts; a thought must not pass without the watchword. He waits on God in silence, refusing to offer a sacrifice not of his own preparing, and prefers one sigh begotten from a sense of God’s work to the longest prayers uttered in a state of mere imitation.
This figure is the book’s answer to the accusation of antinomianism. Obedience to the light, Penn argues, produces the sober, righteous, merciful, self-denying life that outward profession so often fails to produce. Faith that “can no more live without works than a body without a spirit” is the only faith that justifies; the fond persuasion of being saved by another’s righteousness while sinning on in confidence is precisely the error the book was written to tear out of people’s hands.
Scripture, Reason, and the Rule of Faith
The quarrel over the rule of faith runs through the whole volume. Burnet holds that scripture is the Christian’s rule; the Quakers answer that the Spirit which gave the scriptures must be the rule by which they are read, and that the letter which kills is dangerous when it is set above the life that inspired it. Whitehead’s most quoted and most attacked sentence—that words spoken from the Spirit of truth are of greater authority than the scriptures—is defended as meaning only that they are greater as proceeding immediately from that Spirit, just as Christ’s words were of greater authority when he spoke than the Pharisees’ reading of the letter.
Reason has its own part to play. The book argues the universality and sufficiency of the light from reason as well as from scripture: if the light convicts of sin, by the plain logic of contraries it teaches holiness; if it is sufficient to condemn, it is sufficient to save. The authors are not mystics who despise argument—they are controversialists who use it relentlessly, and they expect the reader to follow.
A Contested Legacy
The volume is also a document of a movement under pressure. Its pages record the sufferings of Friends—imprisonments, banishments, deaths—and the authors repeatedly contrast that record with the relative ease of their opponents, who “cavil in a time of respite.” Whitehead’s preface catalogues the divisions among the Baptists themselves over election, redemption, the sabbath, the oath, and the soul’s immortality, and turns the catalogue into an argument: personal failings and party splits do not disprove principles, or the Baptists’ own principles would be disproved.
Read today, the book is less a systematic theology than a record of how one persecuted sect argued for the dignity of conscience. Its central conviction—that the divine is not confined to books, offices, or ages, but speaks in the heart of every person—gave the Quakers a basis for toleration that Penn would carry into his later work on behalf of religious liberty. The polemical machinery has dated; the wager behind it has not.
