H2         THE DUTCH AND  QUAKER COLONIES
fair and moderate debates, not penalties ratified by imperial decrees, to determine religious differences. . . . But if you are resolved severity shall take its course, in this our case can never change nor happiness abate; for no human edict can possibly deprive us of His glorious presence, who is able to make the dismallest prisons so many receptacles of pleasure, and whose heavenly fellowship doth unspeakably replenish our solitary souls with divine consolation."1
It is interesting to see how Penn's argument partly anticipates that of John Stuart Mill, in his famous " Essay on Liberty." The extent to which the sense of an ever present God replenished his soul with divine consolation is No Cross, shown in one of his most important works, " No no crown cr0SSj no Crown," written in the Tower of London in the year 1668. It is as beautiful as its title, albeit we must make allowance for the peculiar prolixity which English writers of the seventeenth century seldom succeeded in avoiding. In spite of this drawback the book abounds in the eloquence that wins the soul: —
" This made the prophet David say, ' The King's daughter is all glorious within, her clothing is of wrought gold.' What is the glory that is within the true church, and that gold that makes up that inward glory ? Tell me, 0 superstitious man I is it thy stately temples, altars, carpets, tables, tapestries; thy vestments, organs, voices, candles, lamps, censers, plate, and jewels, with the like furniture of thy worldly Religion temples ? No such matter; they bear no propor-u^n^ut* tion wit*1 the divine adornment of the King of ward show heaven's daughter, the blessed and redeemed church of Christ. Miserable apostasy that it is ! and a wretched supplement in the loss and absence of the apostolic life, the spiritual glory of the primitive church.
" But yet some of these admirers of external pomp and
glory in worship would be thought lovers of the Cross, and
to that end have made to themselves many.    But alas ! what
hopes can there be of reconciling that to Christianity, that
1 Penn's Select Works, London, 1825, i. 163-165.