Seeds of Truth

“I know your works: Behold! I have set an open door in your sight which no one has the power to shut because you have a little power and have kept my word” (Revelation 3:8 to the Church in Philadelphia, Sinaiticus Codex reading).

— Richard Doctor

“A world totally new, demands a new political science” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835).

The administrative capital building for the newly formed colony of Pennsylvania was the centerpiece of the Delaware River port city of Philadelphia. Philadelphia was a planned city, and the Capitol Building was situated on a broad green mall, which has been preserved to this day. It was far from imposing by 18th century standards. Like most colonial structures, it was constructed of wood with no special ornamentation. The interior was built to be functional. Indeed, it had functioned first as an assembly for the delegates from the 13 British colonies who defied their monarch and declared independence on July 4, 1776. Later, it served as the meeting place in 1787 for the now independent Confederation of American States to draft an improved instrument for their union. The adoption of the document then formed a nation known as the United States of America.

The name Philadelphia means “Brotherly Love.” In 1776, it was one of the fastest growing cities in the English speaking world and has been estimated to be the seventh largest English city of that time. The patent for the British colony of Pennsylvania was assigned to William Penn, the son of the late Sir William Penn. Sir William was knighted for his distinguished naval career, including service as the Admiral of the British Navy. His early death in 1670 at age 49 left his estate to his 26 year old son, also named William. The estate included the crown’s debt to the Penn family of 17,000 £, and this colony was assigned to young William Penn as a full repayment of this debt.

During his working service as an Admiral, tea at the Penn household for the late Sir William and his wife, Lady Margaret Jasper Vanderschuren, William Penn’s mother, may well have proven to be tense. Lady Margaret was the daughter of a Dutch merchant. Both she and her husband personally knew the Dutch fleet captains against whom England now waged a successful naval war. Young William Penn emerged as a non-conformist at an early age and would later become a Christian pacifist, a lawgiver, and a mediator with exceptional skills.¹

In 1661, Penn attended a clandestine meeting conducted by Thomas Loe, the founder of the Quakers, who spoke against religious formalism and of the need for true followers of Christ to “Bear the cross, and stand faithful to God, then he will give thee an everlasting crown of glory, that shall not be taken from thee. There is no other way that shall prosper than that which holy men of old have walked.”²

Penn became openly critical of the Church of England, leading to his expulsion from Christ Church College, Oxford University at age 16. His resourceful but exasperated father decided to send him to Paris to separate him from Quaker influence.

Biblical Studies Predicting the Fall of France’s Monarchy

In Paris young Penn disappeared from the surveillance of the Admiral’s agents who were unable to locate him for over three months. He had enrolled at L’Académie Protestante de Saumur, then a thriving center of Huguenot education. The Huguenots, from the French word for beggars, were protestants who had survived and recovered after the infamous state-sponsored massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572.

Penn spent two years being taught by some of the brightest protestant scholars on the continent. He lived with the distinguished theologian Moise Amyraut, who directed the academy, and likely studied with scholar Pierre Jurieu, a young man himself. There were debates over the chronology of the Days of Daniel, with some of the accurate interpretations coming down to us today, the sequential nature of the Seven Churches of Revelation — the prevalent thought being that the horrors of the 5th church of the Reformation were now to be succeeded by the 6th Philadelphia church of brotherly love. There was much interest at Saumur in the predicted fall of France that was anticipated in the future “great earthquake” closing out the second woe:

“And in that hour there came a great earthquake and the tenth part of the city fell. And seven thousand names of men were killed in the earthquake, and great fear came upon the rest and they gave glory to the God of heaven” (Revelation 11:13, Sinaitic Codex reading).

The following quote from Froom’s Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers³ summarizes the development of prophetic understanding of France’s fall, dating back over 200 years before the event. “Starting with John Napier, in 1593, the reviewer quotes a whole series of statements from Goodwin in 1639, Jurieu in 1686 (with whom Penn studied), an anonymous French writer in 1688, Cressener in 1689, Fleming in 1701, Vitringa in 1719, Daubuz in 1720, Willison in 1745, an anonymous English writer in 1747, and Bishop Newton. All these men, solely through the prophecy, applied the stipulations to yet future developments in France, the tenth part of the city, the street of the city, and the earthquake revolution. Such were the extraordinary forecasts, the reviewer in the Eclectic Review observed, ‘before the event to which they point.’ Such statements were evidently common knowledge.”

Religious Liberty in English Law

After Penn’s return to England and yet further paternal efforts to help him find his calling in life — all of which were training and lessons he would later employ — Penn became a Quaker. Denied access to their place of worship, London Quakers held a meeting outside on the street in August 1667, thereby challenging the prohibition against unlawful religious assemblies. Both Penn and William Mead, the leaders, were arrested for “an unlawful and tumultuous assembly, disturbing the peace.” Since these actions were not actual violations of written laws but rather of societal norms, Penn successfully appealed to the jury, arguing that he was within his rights as an Englishman.

“This is England and not Spain” seemed to be more than enough to sway the jury, which found him not guilty. After each of the twelve jurors announced their decision, “the Bench being unsatisfied with the verdict,”

Penn, William Mead, and the entire twelve man jury, who had found them not guilty, were taken to Newgate Prison until they paid the court imposed fines for contempt of court.⁴ The conduct of the judge and the recorder, as well as the judge’s scatological dismissal of Britain’s foundations for civil liberty in the Magna Carta (1215 AD), reached the royal court. The royal court of Charles II was not pleased and issued a rebuke of the judge and recorder along with a dismissal of all charges and penalties (December 13, 1667).5 In England, at least, dissent from the time worn shackles of magisterial states dictating both politics and state religion was no longer a death warrant.

Charles II remains a complex figure for historical analysis to this day. He was vain, duplicitous, shrewd, “a deeply unsympathetic figure, consumed by selfish impulse and political pleasure.” Yet Charles II was forward looking with liberal policies for the new era that brought stability and peace following a devastating nine year period of civil war in England, which began on August 22, 1642.6 Unwisely, his father and predecessor, Charles I, had attempted to usurp Parliament’s authority and return England to Catholicism. King Charles I was captured by the army of England’s Parliament and executed in 1649, as found guilty by a common court of the people “under the providence of God.” Charles II pursued the civil war until his defeat at Worchester (September 3, 1651) and then narrowly escaped to France with his life.

A scant nine years later, with the Restoration (1660), Charles II now sat on the English throne. There were now Parliamentary limits on Royal prerogative. England’s navy, commerce, and colonization were in full operation. Such a model of statecraft was more than sufficient for Spain in this era as it exploited its gold rich conquests in the Americas for the spectacular embellishment of Spanish churches and palaces. The old world now saw opportunities for expansion in remote sectors of the non-Christian world.

But Charles II was capable of envisioning change beyond this. One notable example is his founding of the Royal Society of London in 1662, which continues to operate to this day. This was the first of Europe’s institutes in the new age dawning, dedicated to investigating natural science as distinct from religion.⁷ While the Royal Society was emulated throughout Protestant Europe, only Catholic France and Orthodox Russia developed their own national versions of this model. Commerce and the resource rich colonies overseas were at the core of statecraft. Still, the development of natural science was seen as the future path forward.

No Cross, No Crown

There was limited tolerance for freedom of conscience in religion, but Penn pushed the boundaries too far. On December 16, 1668, he was arrested. This time, the warrant was serious. He was placed in close confinement in the Tower of London for what the bishop of London termed his “blasphemous” tract, “The Sandy Foundation Shaken,” which not only attacked the Anglican Church but the Trinity doctrine itself.

In more detailed support for his position on the Trinity, Penn cited the historical scholars Paulus Samosata, Macedonius, and Sabellius, writing: “It is manifest then, though I deny the Trinity of Separate Persons in one Godhead, yet consequentially, [I] do not deny the deity of Jesus Christ.”⁸

The close quarters in the Tower were the same house where Sir Walter Raleigh, the founder of Virginia, had been confined 50 years before Penn. Sir Walter Raleigh, before his execution, engaged himself in writing a history of the world. A few short steps from the door of Penn’s close quarters was the private execution block where Sir Walter Raleigh met his end. Penn’s time in confinement was spent in writing, and the fertile product of Penn’s confinement was No Cross, No Crown.

No Cross, No Crown, is a work with interdenominational appeal that echoes down to us wherever the Cross and Crown banner is displayed; “The way of taking up the cross is an entire resignation of soul… The way is narrow indeed, and the gate very strait…they that cannot endure the cross must never have the crown; 2 Timothy 2:12, Romans 8:17.”9 Up to now, for all but a fringe of Christians, salvation through Christ Jesus for both Protestants and Catholics was rooted in accepting the sacraments and doctrinal confession of the state church, attending the state church, and paying the state imposed taxes for the support of the state church. However, as No Cross, No Crown (1669) stated, this was not enough. Christ required full consecration and following in his steps.

Across the ages, mankind has a penchant for closely observing the downturns, distress, disappointments, and disasters that befall the powerful and their children. No Cross, No Crown became a much read and reprinted book whose readership certainly included many who were not seeking a homily on a closer walk with Christ. Since 1669, it has undergone 53 editions, both in English and translation, and has been “frequently republished, extensively read, and universally approved.”¹⁰ The important message of full consecration and the need to follow in Christ’s steps may not seem innovative today, but stating this explicitly and clearly was a theological innovation at the time.

Sir William Penn, now disgraced and in failing health, still had enough friends to extricate his son from prison yet again, a few days after young Penn’s humble letter to him; “Let not this wicked world disturb thy mind, and whatsoever shall come to pass, I hope myself in all conditions, to approve myself, thy obedient son” (September 7, 1670).11 Penn and his father met and were fully reconciled, with his father expiring a few short days later (September 16, 1670).

The Holy Experiment

One thing was clear to Penn: the old world would perish if it resisted reform despite energetic efforts. The best hope was for religious liberty and freedom in the new world. It was an arduous process of nearly 11 years to secure the colony’s charter, which the Royal Commission named Pennsylvania in honor of the late Sir William (March 4, 1681). “Let us see what love can do,” said Penn at the founding of Philadelphia. Privately, to his friend Robert Turner he expressed, “and my God that has given it [the colony] to me through many difficulties will bless and make it the seed of a nation.”¹² These hopes for a new nation born in Philadelphia would be fulfilled in less than a century. Greater hopes for “the present dispensation of truth”¹³ would marvelously emerge once again in Pennsylvania two hundred years in the future.

(1) Additional material: “William Penn, the Cross and Crown,” Herald, September 2021. “The Cross and Crown …,” Beauties of the Truth, February 2000.
(2) Dunn, Mary Maples and Richard Dunn, “The Papers of William Penn,” Volume 1, Record 27, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981, page 82.
(3) Froom, L. E., Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vo. 3, Review and Herald, Wash. DC, 1948, page 362.
(4) Sowle, J. (publisher), A Collection of the Works of William Penn, Volume 1, London, 1726, page 18.
(5) Sowle, J., op. cit., page 35.
(6) Straw, Hannah-Marie, Everybody’s King: Charles II and … Restoration Rule in England, 1660-1679, Master of Research thesis, University of Kent, 2017.
(7) Gregory, Brad S., The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, Belnap Press of Harvard University, 2012, page 341.
(8) Dunn, op. cit., Record 76, page 271.
(9) Penn, William, No Cross, No Crown … the Holy Cross of Christ, 1668, reprint William Sessions Book Trust, York, England, 1981, page 34.
(10) Penn, op. cit., Publisher’s introduction, page xv.
(11) Dunn, op. cit., Record 51, page 180.
(12) Soderlund, Jean R., William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1983, Record 12, page 54.
(13) Dunn, op. cit., Record 119, page 500.