authority for universal toleration and charity. On a sudden, on the
accession of James, the friend of himself and his family, he found
himself the most influential untitled citizen in the British realm.
He had free access to the royal ear. Asking nothing for himself or his
relatives, he demanded only that the good people of England should be no
longer despoiled of liberty and estate for their religious opinions.
James, as a Catholic, had in some sort a common interest with his
dissenting subjects, and the declaration was for their common relief.
Penn, conscious of the rectitude of his own motives and thoroughly
convinced of the Christian duty of toleration, welcomed that declaration
as the precursor of the golden age of liberty and love and good-will to
men. He was not the man to distrust the motives of an act so fully in
accordance with his lifelong aspirations and prayers. He was charitable
to a fault: his faith in his fellow-men was often stronger than a clearer
insight of their characters would have justified. He saw the errors of
the king, and deplored them; he denounced Jeffreys as a butcher who had
been let loose by the priests; and pitied the king, who was, he thought,
swayed by evil counsels. He remonstrated against the interference of the
king with Magdalen College; and reproved and rebuked the hopes and aims
of the more zealous and hot-headed Catholics, advising them to be content
with simple toleration. But the constitution of his mind fitted him
rather for the commendation of the good than the denunciation of the bad.
He had little in common with the bold and austere spirit of the Puritan
reformers. He disliked their violence and harshness; while, on the other
hand, he was attracted and pleased by the gentle disposition and mild
counsels of Locke, and Tillotson, and the latitudinarians of the English
Church. He was the intimate personal and political friend of Algernon
Sydney; sympathized with his republican theories, and shared his
abhorrence of tyranny, civil and ecclesiastical. He found in him a man
after his own heart,--genial, generous, and loving; faithful to duty and