WILLIAM PENN ON UNDENOMINATIONALISM.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—An appropriate quotation from William Penn which appeared in a recent number of the Spectator leads me to suggest another from a letter addressed by him to the Secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantations, dated Teddington, October 24th, 1688. From a long document in which occurs a noteworthy sentence—" We can never be the better for our religion, if our neighbour be the worse for it I extract the following:— " The second remedy to our present distemper is this : Since
• all of all parties profess to believe in God, Christ, the Spit, and Scripture ; that the soul is immortal ; that there are eternal rewards and punishments ; and that the virtuous shall receive the one and the wicked suffer the other ; I say since this is the common faith of Christendom, let us all resolve with the strength of God to live up to what we agree in, before we fall out so miserably about the rest in which we differ. I am persuaded the charge and Comfort which that pious course would bring us to, would go very far to dispose our nature to compound easily for all the rest, and we might hope yet to see happy days in poor England. for there I would have so good a work begun. And how is it possible for the eminent men of every religious per- suasion, especially the present Ministers of the Parishes of England, to think of giving an account to God at the last day, without using the utmost of their endeavours to moderate the Members of their respective communions towards those that differ from them, is a mystery to me."
—I am, Sir, &c., HOWARD HODGKIN.
Hilicroft, Claygate, Surrey.'
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