Penn and Whitehead went to Vincent's church, which was crowded, and as
they pushed their way forward Vincent denounced them in no measured
words. The two Quakers joined in the wordy warfare, and began a heated
religious argument, while the congregation hissed and flung at them such
names as "blasphemers" and "villains." Vincent himself kept
interrupting, and at length, pretending to be shocked at what the two
men were saying, began to pray for them. The people blew out the candles
that lighted the church and tried to eject the two Quakers. The meeting
ended in uproar, as was usually the case in the religious debates of
those days.
Not in the least daunted by the harsh and unkind criticisms that were
showered on him from all sides, Penn wrote more pamphlets, criticizing
the religious views of some of the older sects, and calling many of
their ideas relics of the ignorance and superstition of the Middle Ages.
He was a clear and powerful writer and showed his satisfaction in
stating in black and white the views that had led him to believe that
truth was to be found in the religion of the Quakers rather than in any
other creed. This was doubtless more satisfactory to him than holding
noisy and hot-tempered arguments with opponents on street corners or in
public halls, and won for him the reputation of being the ablest of all
the early Quaker leaders. Samuel Pepys, of the famous Diary, says thus
frankly of Penn's pamphlet, "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," "I find it so
well writ as I think it is too good for him ever to have writ it; and it
is a serious sort of book and not fit for everybody to read." Pepys is
nothing if not outspoken, and his view was doubtless the same as that
held by many fashionable people who knew the twenty-four-year-old author
and considered him a strange, misguided young man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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