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(P.) 90 of this vol. I have set down a quotation out of Mr. Penn's Address to Protestants, which I took out of another print, not having the Address by me to consult. But because I love not to take quota tions upon trust, I procured the book, (though after that sheet was printed off) and found indeed the words exactly as quoted; but (to do Mr. Penn right) they were not set down as his opinion, but rather as one of the grounds of persecution which he finds fault with. Yet the use for which I brought that quotation will suffer nothing for the loss of it: for it was added but by the by, in aid of a larger and more full quotation against liberty of conscience, which I have faithfully transcribed out of Mr. Penn's Brief Examination and State of Liberty Spiritual. For his Address to Protestants upon the (then) present Conjuncture, anno 1679, when the Quakers needed a toleration, run so high for liberty of conscience, and against persecution, that the se parate Quakers took advantage of it against George Fox, and the rest of the high church Quakers, who had excommunicated them for not submitting to their authority and injunction. And this gave no small offence to the Foxonian Quakers, who for this reason were not pleased with Mr. Penn's address: therefore, to mollify them, and to keep up the full authority of their church, though he would throw down ours, he wrote his Examination and State of Liberty Spiritual, an. 1681, which is (in effect) an answer to his Address, and totally overthrows it, and all pretence to liberty of conscience, which he calls a loose plea, even in the smallest matters, as you will see in the quotation which I have set down, p. 90 and 91. And therefore that quotation out of his Address which I have mentioned, p. 92, viz. that holy living is become no test among us, unless against the liver: the tree was once known by its fruits; 'tis not so now: the better liver the more dangerous, if not a conformist: I say, this, though designed by him against the church of Eng land for not giving toleration to the Quaker here sies, because of their innocent lives, as they pretend ed, lies still against Mr. Penn and the other Foxonian Quakers, for their severity (as far as their power reached) against the separate Quakers, as Story, Wilkinson, &c. who differed from them in much smaller matters than the Quakers do from us: and the lives of these separatists were as unexceptionable as any of the Quakers. Yet this was no plea for favour from the church Quakers; holy living was no test with them, &c. as Mr. Penn has said, and it is left to him to answer. And though the use I made of it was in relation to the separate Quakers, (as you will see in the place,) and though it is still, as quoted, a full proof in that point, and therefore I needed not have made any excuse for it; yet, because Mr. Penn, in the place quoted, did not speak it with relation to the sepa rate Quakers, but to the church of England, I thought it was fair to tell so much in this adver tisement. And I have been so careful in my quo tations, that though disproving of them was the only effectual answer could have been given to the Snake, yet G. Whitehead, in all his venomous anti dote against the Snake, has not found one to be false; but generally slides from them, without tak ing any notice of them, because he well knew they could neither be disproved or answered. And all the Quaker books (especially of so great a rabbi as G. Whitehead) being approved by their second day's meeting of their preachers and elders, we must take it for granted that this is the opinion of them all: and therefore that we have all their suffrages to the truth of the quotations in the Snake; which is the very.jugulum causae, and infers all the rest.
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