Notes on Penn's Fruits of Solitude

An authoritative guide or handbook.

Penn can be credited with popularizing, if not originating, this expression. Penn experienced several periods of solitude, or at least isolation, during his life.

• In 1667 he was in Ireland on business for his father, Sir William Penn. It was during this time that he became a Quaker.
• He was jailed for his pamphlet

The first part of the Fruits was probably written in the period 1690-93 and published anonymously in 1693. During this time Penn was under suspicion of treason because of his close relationship with the deposed King James II. The second part was published in 1702 after Penn's final return from Pennsylvania and during the period when he was trying to recover money embezzled by Philip Ford and keep the colony as a family possession.

In 1682 at the age of 38, William Penn was granted proprietary rights over a territory extending from the banks of the Delaware River (including three counties on the east side) indefinitely to the west. The grant was in payment of a loan made to King Charles II by Penn's father, also William Penn, the admiral. Because the grant gave him titular control of a manor of immense size, Penn was (on paper) rich. But he is said never to have realized a profit on Pennsylvania. Certainly at the time the first part of the Fruits was written, he was in financial difficulties because he was suspected of disloyalty. In 1701 he had to return to England to seek repayment of the moneys stolen by his steward, Philip Ford. Penn died almost penniless in 1718.

Pennsylvania was not named for this Penn, though, but for his father.

The idea of the return of Christ marking the end of time itself comes from Revelation 10:1-6.

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire:
And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth,
And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices.
And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.
And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,
And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer

At the time Penn wrote, Windsor Castle was the largest castle and best-known palace in England. It is today the largest inhabited castle in the world. The first of the fortifications that became Windsor Castle were begun by William the Conqueror around 1070.

A favorite royal palace from the reign of Henry VII through George II. The present building was built on the site of a 14th-century manor house during the reign of Henry VIII.

Romans 1, verse 20:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.

The idea that "the world is a book" goes back at least to Saint Augustine, who is quoted "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page."

Canting is something like hypocricy, but differs in that the speaker may sincerely believe what he says — but he doesn't practice it. In Penn's time, "cant" was closely associated with the Presbyterian faction in religion. See Butler's Hudibras. Curtis Page's translation of Moliere's Tartuffe has the lines:

There are too many of this canting kind.
Still, the sincere are easy to distinguish;

"To the rational animal the same act is according to nature and according to reason." — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations VII (George Long translation).

The belief that science, or knowledge gained by rigorous observation, can reveal the secrets of God and nature is fundamental to American thought. Some may be surprised to see it so plainly stated by a 17th-century Quaker. But the basis for this belief was set at the beginning of that century in the writings of Sir Francis Bacon, and supporting evidence was increasingly frequent by its end.

The various ideas of stewardship, over creation, wealth and men, are central to Western thought. The gospel basis is 1st Peter 4:10 — "As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace "

Penn obviously means something a little less abstract than Newton's Pricipia Mathematica, which had been published in 1687.

Tenant at will is a form of land rental under which the lessee can be evicted by the landlord at any time, for any reason. The lessor is also free to abandon the lease at any time.

William Harvey published An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals in 1628. Antony van Leeuwenhoek by 1680 was demonstrating the flow of blood through capillaries.

Revelation 1:8 &mdash "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord." Also Jeremiah 44:6 — I am the first and I am the last; Besides Me there is no God."

Matthew 10 verses 29-31:

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Proverbs 8:18 — "Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness. "

Penn's opinion here has not become part of the American tradition. It is still (as recently as this morning's Wall Street Journal) common to attribute poverty and misfortune to low morals. Just as in 1692, Americans today believe that if you're poor—personally or as a nation—you deserve it.

Matthew 7:4 — "how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam [is] in thine own eye?"

Galatians 6:1 — "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."

"In order to prove a friend to one’s guests, frugality must reign in one’s meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat." — Molier, The Miser, 3.i.

John 6:12 — "When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost."

Psalm 45:13 — "The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold."

1 Timothy 2 —

8. I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.

9. In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;

10. But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works."

2 Kings 9:30 — "And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window."

This is the idea of "natural" love which has it's roots in part in first Thessalonian 4:9 — FIXME

These lines are attributed to Petronius Arbiter. My translation, a poor one, follows:

foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas
et taedet Veneris statim peractae.
non ergo ut pecudes libidinosae
caeci protinus irruamus illuc
(nam languescit amor peritque flamma);
sed sic sic sine fine feriati
et tecum iaceamus osculantes.
hic nullus labor est ruborque nullus:
hoc iuvit, iuvat et diu iuvabit;
hoc non deficit incipitque semper.

The delites of lust are brief
And we quickly repent when we're done.
We should not rush into it like animals,
For we will lose the fire.
But like this, like this let us lie long together and kiss,
With no labor, no shame,
So that what has pleased us will please us again.

Compare the first part of this sentiment to Shakespeare's Sonnet 129:

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
      Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
   Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner, but despised straight;
   Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,
   On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
   Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof,—and prov'd, a very woe;
   Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream:
      All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
      To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Isaiah 40:4-5: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it. . .

In his Song for St Cecelia's Day (1687) John Dryden has Cecelia sing, and

An angel heard, and straight appear'd
   Mistaking Earth for Heaven.

1 Timothy 6:10 — "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

"Felo de se" is literally "a felon of himself" — a self-murderer. Penn felt very strongly about this sin, but he did not believe that the sinner's heirs should suffer, as they did under English law at that time. The charter of privileges he granted the citizens of Pennsylvania specified "If any person, through temptation or melancholy, shall destroy himself, his estate, real and personal, shall notwithstanding, descend to his wife and children, or relations, as if he had died a natural death.".

The Minimi were a Catholic religious order whose rule specified perpetual abstinence from both red and white meat. A "lay Minim", then would be a non-monk who followed such a practice. There is an irony that Penn apparantly did not see in that the Minimi took their name from Matthew 25:40 — "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.".

Genesis 40:17-21:

17. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of the river:

18. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favored; and they fed in a meadow: kine

19. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favored and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:

20. And the lean and the ill favored kine did eat up the first seven fat kine:

21. And when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; b ut they were still ill favored, as at the beginning. So I awoke.

This is an innovation that has been largely but not universally adopted in the United States. Most men today will find little to argue with in Penn's sentiments about marriage, and it seems in perfect accord with Paul's statement in his letter to the Ephesians (5:23) "For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church". Some have taken this verse as justification for absolute domination of a wife by her husband, however.

By the time Penn wrote, there were few penalties on white indentured servants who married during their servitude, but marriage itself was expensive. It was unlikely that an indentured servant, who worked for essentially no net pay, could afford the fees and bonds required for a legal marriage. The man would have to wait until the expiration of his indenture to earn the kind of money needed.

A fine of three time actual damages was levied for certain egregious crimes such as deliberate non-payment of rent. The concept was extended to anti-trust damages in the 20th century.

The idea is ancient. In the first century before Christ, Publilus Syrus had the maxim "I have often regretted my speech, never my silence." Unfortunately, I can't find the Latin.

"Think before you speak" is also certainly ancient. The oldest citation I know, however, is Cervantes, Don Quixote book IV, chapter 3.

Surely this phrase originates in the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21. (Sarah was barren; she gave Hagar, an Egyptian servant, to Abraham and Hagar conceived Ishmael; later Sarah conceived Isaac.) But I don't know by what path. There is a phrase sometimes used by lawyers "x is the handmaid of the law, not the mistress", where x is procedure, justice, technology or some other noun.

Francis Bacon in De Augmentis Scientiarum has the maxim "Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress."

This is one of many points on which Penn and Gandhi expressed similar sentiments. It would be interesting to document parallel "fruits" from the two men.

"O what authority and show of truth/Can cunning sin cover itself withal": Much Ado About Nothing, IV:i.

"We take cunning for a sinister or crooked wisdom." Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and Moral, "On Cunning".

"And certainly there is a great difference, between a cunning man, and a wise man; not only in point of honesty, but in point of ability." Bacon, ibid.

As many have pointed out since Penn, self-interest is the basis of a market economy and therefore the central idea of American culture. Penn seems to recognize this and worry about it.

Colossians 2:2-3 — "Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

Psalm 106:3 — "Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times."

". . where wit is wanting, it is not fancy that is wanting, but discretion. Judgement, therefore, without fancy is wit, but fancy without judgement, not." — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan viii (1651).

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 — If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. . . .

1 Samuel 15:23 — For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.

Exodus 20:2-3 — "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

Penn was himself rebellious in the matter of religion. He was expelled from Oxford for his extreme expression of Quaker views and defied his father's attempts to wean him from this fanaticism. His father told him that he could forgive all the strange tenets of the Society of Friends if only William would agree to remove his hat in the presence of his father, the King and the Duke of York; William refused and never reconciled with his father.

This is one of the principles the Quakers took from earlier radicals of the 17th century. The "Levelling principle" was naturally very disturbing to the hereditary and commercial aristrocracies.

The theme of the "Master" and "Servant" sections is from Ephesian 6:5-9:

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;

With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:

Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, a Thessalonican man named Jason allows Paul to preach in his house. The reaction of the Jews of the city are described in verses 5 and 6:

the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also;

Christian zealots are said to "turn the world upside down" to this day.

This was a common sentiment in 17th-century Protestantism, and its influence is traceable in the Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th. Here is a passage from Stephen Chamock's Discourse on the Wisdom of God. Chamock was a Puritan Independent and chaplain to Henry Cromwell, Oliver's brother.

The contemplation of the reason of God in his works, is a noble and suitable employment for a rational creature: we have not only sense to perceive them, but souls to mind them. The soul is not to be without its operation: where the operation of sense ends, the work of the soul ought to begin. We travel over them by our senses, as brutes; but we must pierce further by our understandings, as men, and perceive and praise Him that lies invisible in his visible manufactures. Our senses are given us as servants to the soul, and our souls bestowed upon us for the knowledge and praise of their and our common Creator.

For an example of the extension of this notion into the Romantic movement, compare Keats' sonnet:

To one who has been long in city pent,
   'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
   And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
   Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
   Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
   Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
   He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
   That falls through the clear ether silently.

If there was one idea in the 17th century that guided and informed the subsequent years (and continues to do so), it is that man can through observation of nature both understand it and more closely fulfil the divine purpose in creating it.

Socrates had a reputation as the philosopher who introduced philosophy in practical matters. Cicero (Tusculanae Disputationes 5.4.10) wrote

Socrates autem primus philosophiam devocavit e caelo et in urbibus conlocavit et in domus etiam introduxit et coegit de vita et moribus rebusque bonis et malis quaerere.

Socrates . . . was the first to call down philosophy from the heavens and set her in the cities of men and bring her also into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and morality and things good and evil.

Lump is used here in the same sense as in the term "lump sum" — "in aggregate" or "as a whole".

The 17th and 18th century were a great age for mountebanks and, to a lesser extent, universalists. The great Quaker George Foxe noted in 1694 "I was moved to cry . . . against the Mountebanks playing tricks on their Stages, for they burdened the pure Life, and stirred up people's minds to Vanity."

Those seeking a unversal explnation of phenomena were (and remain) dismayed by the indications of complexity that came careful observations and deductions thereon in the early scientific era.

This is from the parable in Matthew 17 where the disciples are unable to cast out a demon from a boy. The father comes to Jesus, Who casts out the demon and explains wny the disciples failed:

Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.

And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.

And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.

Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?

And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Although Penn was no Aristotilian, this maxim brings to mind Aristotle's position on the self-sufficiency of happiness (Nichmachean Ethics, X.6). In W.D. Ross's translation:

Now that we have spoken of the virtues, the forms of friendship, and the varieties of pleasure, what remains is to discuss in outline the nature of happiness, since this is what we state the end of human nature to be. Our discussion will be the more concise if we first sum up what we have said already. We said, then, that it is not a disposition; for if it were it might belong to some one who was asleep throughout his life, living the life of a plant, or, again, to some one who was suffering the greatest misfortunes. If these implications are unacceptable, and we must rather class happiness as an activity, as we have said before, and if some activities are necessary, and desirable for the sake of something else, while others are so in themselves, evidently happiness must be placed among those desirable in themselves, not among those desirable for the sake of something else; for happiness does not lack anything, but is self-sufficient. Now those activities are desirable in themselves from which nothing is sought beyond the activity. And of this nature virtuous actions are thought to be; for to do noble and good deeds is a thing desirable for its own sake.

Penn believed that happiness is a secondary aim of life, but that God intended our happiness.

This sentiment was a constant in American thought until recently. The contrast to current attitudes is starker when you consider that to Penn, "prosperous" meant "able to afford meat several days a week."

This suggests the teleological argument, to which Penn probably subscribed at least in part. As Harry Fosdick explained it, "There was a time when God’s immediate presence in our lives was not readily pictured. When men argued about God they said that the world was like a watch. It presupposed somebody who made it." This is a discredited idea in modern theology, but it still influences everyday thinking.

Is this the earliest instance of the phrase in print? It probably was not original with Penn, but the Great Plague of London was well within his memory.

The expression "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is known in Norman English as early as 1268.

Penn does not use "probability" in the mathematical sense, but he was probably familiar with the basics. Pascal and Fermat had established the basic principles, and Huygens published them in 1657. The subject did not advance far beyond calcualation of the odds in games of chance until the 18th century, however.

This advice has seldom if ever been followed in America, but a more recent phenomenon is the elimination of distinction between the words "dislike" and "hate". Over the last 30 years or so, it seems to m"And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window."e, people have increasingly used them as synonyms or, at best, gradations of the same quality. A web search for the string "'dislike hate'" finds thousands of instances where the words are used simultaneously to describe the same feeling.

A Moslem once told me that this is an essential precept of Islam. Most of the behavioral restrictions—banning of alcohol, stimulants, secular music and dance—are based on the principle that the passions are a disordering of the mind.

I have not found a source for this. I suspect that it is contemporary (within 100 years) with Penn. Much of the history and theology (even Protestant theology) of the 17th century was written in Latin. Pepys read Latin for leisure, and Penn certainly could read and write the language.

To Penn and the Quakers, there was no mystery in teleology. First causes were perfectly clear. Confusing the causes of things with their results was not only foolish, but sinful. In this maxim Penn may also have in mind the 17th century Protestant view of the Jesuits, which was that their pragmatism was often a case of the ends sanctifying the means.

This is enscribed on the grave of René Descartes. It is a phrase from Ovid's Tristia, Book III, part IV, around line 25:

Crede mihi, bene qui latuit bene uixit, et intra
fortunam debet quisque manere suam.

This maxim is a summary of English history. Penn certainly has in mind Charles I and the civil wars that resulted from him straining "Points too high".

I cannot parse this, nor can I offer an explanation of what a prince is supposed to observe about the effect of his loving.

This is another difficult maxim to parse. St. Maximus was a Ephesian Christian of the third century. He was tried before the magistrate Optimus for violating the law of Decius who forbade the practice of Christianity. Optimus ordered the saint beaten, tortured and finally stoned, but he would not yield. I think this maxim means that the Romans learned from cruel treatment by their leaders that it is better for leaders to incline the people to obedience than to compel them.

When Moses and Aaron asked Pharoah to "let my people go" (Exodus 5), the king, rather than give the Israelites the three days' holiday they requested to make a sacrifice, instead increased their work load by makeing them gather the straw they used to make bricks.

Psalm 36:5 — "Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens".

This idea, which seems so natural to us today, was an innovation in the 17th century. Gain was a primary motive for seeking place, and flattery was expected. There is no doubt Penn is sincere in this maxim, but he had recently lost a place of gain and power on the fall of James II.

This is directed against chief ministers and those that directly carry out their wills. There was not yet a serious bureaucracy in the western world.

Wealthy but qualified non-nobles were frequently employed in government from the time of Henry VII. They formed the government during the Interregnum. There was a reaction after the Restoration, but even under Charles II the secretaries of state were commoners and a menn like Edward Hyde and Anthony Ashley Cooper, sons of wealthy gentry, to rise to high offices and Earldoms. Nevertheless, kings in Penn's time mainly chose among at most a few hundred nobles for their closest advisors. And it was clear that those few hundreds were increasingly not among the best-educated and most qualified in the kingdom.

2 Samuel 24, verses 1-3:

Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said,

The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue.

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

Alienation was not unknown in the 17th century, but it seems not have counted for much to Penn. To resolve this maxim with ones like number 350 above one must assume that God will take care of rulers who simply ignore the people. Or maybe that is an affront.

As far as I know, Penn never had a public post before he became proprietor of Pennsylvania. This maxim sounds more like conventional wisdom than conviction or experience.

In 2 Kings, chapter 4, a woman of Shunam the town of Shunem takes in the prophet Elisha. He asks here what she want in return: did she want him to put in a good word for her to the king or the authorities? "And she answered, 'I dwell among mine own people.'"

To server during pleasure is to be employed as long as your master wishes to have you. In the United States, members of the cabinet server during the pleasure of the President; by contrast, Federal judges server for life.

Samuel Pepys, who undoubtedly knew Penn when Pepys served with his father on the Navy Board, would disagree with much of the Fruits, but not with maxim. Pepys found personal satisfaction in service to the King and makes that plain in his journal.

Pepys found this out for himself. When he first came to the office of Clerk of the Acts of the Navy, he knew little about sea matters and spent many of his afternoons at the theatre. An attack of conscience made him learn and pay attention to his business, which gave him at least as much pleasure as did society. He never lost his covetousness, though.

Penn describes here the corruption that has most prevailed among government officials since his time. Clean hands and capacity are commonly enforced. A little bit on the side to speed up the process, though, is expected in many offices. Ask anyone who regularly applies for building permits.

And fundamental law it is. Magna Carta guarantees the king will not sell or delay justice.

I am again reminded of Pepys who, in his early thirties, would go home after work and study his multiplication tables so that he could better do his job as an officer of the Navy Department. It is one thing to learn by rote that 7 * 8 == 56 when you are a child; quite another when you are a man.

Exodus 23:2-3 says "Thou shat not follow a multitude to do evil, neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.

Also of interest is Psalm 72, which begins

Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king's son.
He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.
The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.
He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

The representation of justice embodied in the goddess Thetis, holding a scale and a sword, goes back to Roman times. In the 16th century, artists began to depict the clear-sighted goddess blindfold to show her impartiality.

This was current enough for Nathan Bailey to include it in his Dictionary of Proverbs (1721). In the paragraph headed "Every Man thinks his own Geese Swans", he includes 'every Crow thinks her own Bird fairest, though never so black and ugly.'

By Penn's time it had been known for 300 years how dangerous it is to apply reason to religion. And from the section above it is clear that partiality is to be avoided mainly because it clouds reason. The Scholastics were, and remain with occasional revivals, in disgrace; religion is a matter of faith and governments ignore that at their peril.

This seems an odd lapse from someone of Penn's intellect. Surely he knows many cases where men and magistrates are called on to choose between two causes which differ only in the degree of wrong.

Non nobis tantum nati. It is a motto for several English families. Cicero quotes Cato citing Plato in De Officiis: ut praeclare scriptum est a Platone, non nobis solum nati sumus — "as was notably written by Plato, we are not born for ourselves only".

Wearing one's piety on one's sleeve was an error the Quakers try to avoid. They speak when they think they are moved to speak, and otherwise follow an Inner Light inwardly. This is in contrast to some other Dissenters

The parable is found in Matthew 25. Verses 34-40 are

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

This expression is proberbial, going back at least to Cervantes, who used it in Spanish.

This echoes St Thomas who found "vainglory (pride), avarice, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, anger" to be capital vices because they lead to the commission of so many sins.

This is a fundamental belief of Quakers and it is the principal behind many of their practices. Recall that John Woolman will spend much of his life finding and trusting in that inner light.

John 20 deals with the Resurrection and is therefore one of the most studied and controverted chapters of scripture. In verses 21 and 22, Jesus says "as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, "Recieve ye the Holy Ghost."

Penn was writing some 50 years before the American Great Awakening, driven mainly by itinerant preachers in New England, transformed American religious thought.

This is a rare case of Penn making a hash of a sentence written much more elegantly 100 years before: "Godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6).

From the Liturgy of St James:

For those who bear fruit, and labour honourably in the holy churches of God; for those who remember the poor, the widows and the orphans, the strangers and needy ones; and for those who have requested us to mention them in our prayers; Let us beseech the Lord.

John 4:24, "God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

This is the justification for the Quaker form of worship. Anti-ritualism was an important element in dissent from Angiicanism, and the Quakers took it to it's logical extreme.

This is the law as God gave it to Moses (Leviticus 6:9-13), saying

Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.

And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire hath consumed with the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar.

And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place.

And the fire upon the altar shall be burning in it; it shall not be put out: and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order upon it; and he shall burn thereon the fat of the peace offerings.

The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.

This is from the the beautiful and complex 51st Psalm of David (the "Royal Prophet"). I quote it in full because it shows the subtlety in the way Penn intertwines the discussion of burnt offering and the Quaker practice of waiting for the spirit to move before speaking in meeting, with this psalm.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

I think this means that men trust a Council of the Church to give them their religion, but would not give them a small loan without some surety.

This was, I believe the basis of religious settlement in the United States from Penn's time to the end of the 20th century. There was a rough common understanding of what is "unlike him" that transended sect.

This is an interesting phrase. It is proverbial and means "difficult things that are also beautiful". It translates a Greek phrase that is also proverbial: chalepa ta kala.

Galatians 5:6 —

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

1 John 4:15-16 —

Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

Two paragraphs further on, Penn paraphrases verse 18:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

This is of course a paraphrase of the beautiful 13th chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, that begins Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. . . . In particular verse 8 is

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

This chapter, as much as any in the New Testament, shows the superiority of the Authorized Version if not in sense then in poetry. See Note 140.

1 John 14:15

The second part was published in 1702. In retrospect, the years when the second Fruits must have been written do not seem particularly contentious. There was no immediate concern about the succession: Anne, the daughter of James II, would reign on the death of William III. Parliament in 1701 passed the Act of Settlement, which ensured a Protestant succession in the line of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. The war of the Spanish Succession begain in 1701, but, as usual, that was a unifying rather than a dividing event. Penn probably had in mind his financial difficulties which were made worse by factionalism in the court and government.

Since before Penn's time, there has been two ideas of Moralism. One is prescriptive and deals primarily with the morals of people other than the Moralist. The other is philosophical and deals with the idea of morals and moral living. Penn lives in the middle of this divide, but on the philosophical slope. He is worried both about the nature of morality and the morality of his tenants. His "Right Moralist" straddles the distinction.

Penn's idea is that we are always in debt to our circumstances, and that our circumstances are a gift (or result) of God. This idea has to strike a chord with many people who realize that where they are, what they enjoy, how they live, depends much more on what has happened around them than on what they have done.

One of the difficulties and beauties of Quakerism is the tension between the Moral Law, as encompassed in the 10 commandments and the scriptures in general, and the moral imperative—the obligation to live as guided by the inner light. In this section Penn finds no major conflict between them.

In comparing the Moral Man to the Able Man, Penn intends to contrast the man of faith to the man of the world. In a way he is contrasting two aspects of his own nature: the Quaker and the politician. [FIXME]

This is a difficult distinction. To be free seems to be to be generous with hospitality, conversation, perhaps advice; but to be open is to give insight into one's own business and family. It seems that Penn must think it right to be both free and open about religion.

Remote places like Shetland, the Orkneys and Lapland were thought to be filled with witches because of the igonrance of the inhabitants. The witches of Lapland were said to sell winds to sailors. Milton incorporated Lapland witches in Paradise Lost. He compares the Fiend to

       the Night-Hag, when call'd
In secret, riding through the air she comes
Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland Witches . . . .

The comment about conjurors refers to the mountebanks of the age (see note 57 above).

Lurchers are a type of dog, usually a cross between a hunting hound (greyhound, whippet, etc.) and a collie or a terrier. They were bred by Gypsies in Engand and Ireland for poaching.

This was a common phrase describing someone who is able to take advantage of any circumstance. It is possible that Penn has in mind a song from an old Elizabethan play, Contention Between Liberality and Prodigality, which contains the lines

Sweet Money, the minion that sails with all winds,
Sweet Money, the minstrel that makes merry all minds . . . .

This term for a private man-of-war or its commander, was not very old (no more than 40 years) when Penn used it. It then conveyed the idea of any efficient and implacable enemy looking after his own good, rather than particularly a pirate.

A common means of fraud was to shave or clip the edges of gold and silver coins. A hopefully imperceptible amount of metal was removed from a large number of coins, and the recovered metal was melted and sold. The issue of clipping was important at the end of the 17th century when all the old, non-milled silver coins (that is, coins minted before 1662) were demonetized. They had to be turned in to be melted and recoined as milled pieces. The failure of the Mint, under the wardenship of Sir Isaac Newton, to turn out the new coins fast enough contributed to a financial panic. Clipping and forgery were considered equivalent crimes.

Abbreviation for the Latin videlicet meaning literally "as it pleases him". The term was used, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries to mean "more exactly" or "more appropriately". We might use "i.e." today.

I think that Penn has in mind Philip Ford in this paragraph, or that the extended diatribe of the first 51 paragraphs stem from Penn's experience in trying to get what he thought was a just resolution to the financial problems which he blamed on Ford. The facts as I understand them are that Ford, Penn's London agent, speculated with Penn's money and used it to enrich himself. To get ready cash, Penn signed an agreement to sell Pensylvania to Ford and lease it back from him for three years until he could buy it back. After three years he offered £10,500, but Ford claimed the contract called for more. The courts found for Ford, but Queen Anne refused to give him title. Ford died in 1707, and the family of Penn eventually regained possession.

To compound for something means to come to some agreement concerning that things. It is usually, but not always some crime, failure or debt that is compounded for, although I've also seen it used in another sense. "He compounded for his estates" (found in Aubrey) seems to mean that the person came to some compromise (probably involving payment of a fine) that allowed him to keep his estates.

This usage of "bowel" brings a smile to modern readers, but 17th-century writers used the term where we would use "heart". The meaning is "the seat of pity, tenderness, or courage". Cromwell famously wrote to the Presbyterians in Scotland, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

This is two proverbs. "Patience perforce" is a Scottish saying; "thank you for nothing" first appears in Don Quixote. I confess I do not see how the second applies here.

The comments in this section apply directly to Penn's agent, Philip Ford.

To cark is to burden oneself with trouble, to worry.

The sumtuary laws of ancient Rome appear to have been aimed at limiting outlandish entertainments. The cost of banquets, for example, was limited. Under Henry VIII in England, laws were passed limiting the luxury that could be displayed by citizens not of noble rank—no cloth-of-gold for commoners, for example. The difference between the ancient and early modern laws apparantly is that the Tudors wanted to maintain the distinctions between classes, while the Romans wanted to maintain the morals of the patricians.

From Bailey's Dictionary of Proverbs, 1721:

Every Man thinks his own Geese Swans. This Proverb intimates that an inbred Philauty runs through the whole Race of Flesh and Blood, and that Self-love is the mother of Vanity, Pride and Mistake. It turns Man's Geese into Swans, his Dunghill Poultry into Pheasants, and his Lambs into Venison. It blinds the Understanding, perverts the Judgment, depraves the Reason of the otherwise most modest Distinguishers of Truth and Falsity. It makes a Man so fondly conceited of hemself, that he prefers his own Art for its Excellency, his own Skill for its Perfection, his own Compositions for their Wit, and his own Productions for their Beauty. It makes even his Vices seem to him Virtues, and his Deformities Beauties; for so "evey Crow thinks her own Bird fairest", though never so black and ugly. Suum cuique Pulchrum, say the Latins.

Ecclesiastes 9:13-15 —

This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me:
there was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it.
15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.

Earlier in the 17th century, Latitudinarians ("men of latitude") were members of the Anglican communion who taught that it was fruitless to quibble over a few variances in opinion about Church government or ceremony. At some point, the term also came to mean men who are lax with regard to morals or religion. From Penn's comments, I guess that both definitions were current in his time.

Act 19:24-26 —

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;