He soon wrote another hard-hitting controversial pamphlet called "The Guide Mistaken;" and about the same time, or soon after, two Presbyterians of the congregation of Thomas Vincent, at Spittlefields, London, became Quakers. The enraged Vincent stormed against the "damnable doctrines" that had seduced them, and called Penn a Jesuit. Penn and George Whitehead immediately challenged him to an open debate before his own congregation. These debates were common at that time, and usually very uproarious affairs.

When Penn and Whitehead arrived, they had to push their way through the crowded congregation, while Vincent, who was waiting for them all prepared, kept up a running fire of denunciation. Penn and Whitehead, however, plunged into the wordy war, and amid hisses and calls of Jesuit, blasphemer, damnable villain, maintained for a long time an argument on the doctrine of the Trinity, while Vincent kept interrupting them with savage questions. He affected to be shocked at their arguments, and fell suddenly to prayer, charging them with blasphemy. The congregation blew out the candles and tried to pull down the Quakers. Nobody was satisfied with the result, and they tried to no purpose to arrange for another debate.

This induced Penn to write a pamphlet, and a very famous one, called "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," which set forth his rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity as commonly stated. At the same time it attacked the doctrine of the atonement for the sins of the world by the death of Christ, and

the doctrine of imputative righteousness. That was certainly enough to get a young man, or any one, into trouble in that age.

He assailed the doctrine of the Trinity as a scholastic invention of the Middle Ages, and, after dealing with the old-fashioned metaphysical subtleties, described it as "conceived in ignorance, brought forth and maintained by cruelty." It was a mere human invention, unknown to the primitive church, "neither was it believed by the primitive saints or thus stated by any I have read of in the first, second, or third centuries." God, he said, was "not to be divided, but [was] one pure, entire, and eternal being, who in the fulness of time sent forth his Son as the true light." Afterwards, at the close of the pamphlet, he added, "Mistake me not; we never have disowned a Father, Word, and Spirit, which are one, but [we disown] men's inventions."

This was in a general way what the Quakers believed on this subject. They held that although the three persons were mentioned in the Scriptures and declared to be one, yet the complicated doctrine of the Trinity, as stated in the Athanasian creed, was never heard of until three hundred years after Christ. They preferred, they said, the statement of the Scriptures to the statement of the school-men. They accepted the simple account in the New Testament that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were one; but they rejected the scholastic doctrine that the three were each separate and distinct persons and substances, and yet also one. Such idle metaphysics, they said, tended not to

righteousness, and were unknown to the primitive Christians.

In the second part of the "Sandy Foundation" Penn attacked the commonly received doctrine of the atonement, which held that mankind had been saved from the infinite and unforgiving wrath of God only by the infliction of all that wrath and vengeance on Christ, who in his death wholly paid for the unforgivable sins of man, past, present, and to come. Penn ridiculed this doctrine as inconsistent with numerous passages of Scripture which describe God as merciful, loving, and righteous, and as in itself absurd and contrary to reason; for remission of sins and salvation came by faith, obedience, and good works.

This was another fundamental doctrine of the early Quakers. They carried their belief in the inner light so far as to hold that the appearance of Christ on the earth was solely to confer his spiritthat is, the inner light-on all men. The only Christ they worshipped was the spiritual Christ in each heart. His sufferings and death as man were simply incidents of his earthly life, and not fit subjects for worship. They held that it was his spirit that would save mankind, and not the shedding of his blood or any mere act or event of his life; that he came to save men by giving them a spiritual principle that would change their hearts; that the idea of it being necessary, in order to save mankind, that Christ should be sacrificed and tortured was a mere material and vulgar notion, unworthy of belief and inconsistent with any sense of justice on the part of God.

This opinion seems to have been held by the majority of Quakers for over a hundred and fifty years without any serious dissent from it. But a party was slowly growing up among them which inclined to return to the old form of the doctrine of the atonement, and by the year 1827, this party had become a majority of all the Quakers in England and America. There was a great controversy over the question, and a separation followed. The majority became known as the Orthodox Quakers, while those who held to the doctrine of Penn and the early leaders of the sect were called Hicksites.*

The last part of Penn's "Sandy Foundation" assailed that familiar doctrine of the time that men could be justified in the sight of God, not by their good works, but only by the righteousness of Christ being imputed to them. This was a much worn subject of controversy, and the numerous small and radical sects which were being absorbed by the Quakers were very strenuous in maintaining that imputed righteousness was an absurdity, and that a man could be justified or sanctified only by his own acts of righteousness or innocency.

Penn had now attained what must have been a considerable part of his youthful ambition. He had succeeded in stating, with fully detailed arguments, some of the most fundamental principles of the new faith which had aroused his enthusiasm. As an educated man he must have felt the need of such a

* Janney's History of the Friends, vol. iv. chaps. vi., viii., xiv.; The Making of Pennsylvania, p. 50.

printed statement,-something that would be more durable and more of a record than street- or fieldpreaching, or a furious verbal controversy with Presbyterians amid hisses, mockery, and violence. He had become, in fact, the first Quaker theologian. As we read the "Sandy Foundation," it is easy to see that it was written with thoroughness and care. Pepys says, "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."† Its youthful author must have been a diligent student of theology, and familiar with all the abstruseness of the religious controversies of the time. But he was very young to be doing such a thing, for he was only twenty-four years old.

We must remember, however, that in the fluid state of religious opinion, and in the strange religious excitement which had set everybody rushing to and fro, it was easy for youthful ardor, if backed by any ability at all, to produce an impression.

The arguments of his pamphlet are now the accepted belief of millions. The substance of the faith of the early Quakers was that they liked to believe that Christ was divine without being obliged to state his divinity in the form of a metaphysical subtlety. They liked to believe that he came to save the world, but in a spiritual sense, and not merely by means of death and suffering. This general spiritual idea of his divinity has now spread to every division of Christendom, and is the most sin

† Vol. viii. p. 227.