a difference of opinion, but it is not advisable to do so for a simple
misunderstanding. Penn and the bishop were actually in accord. The young
author therefore wrote an explanation of his book, entitled "Innocency
with her Open Face." At the same time he addressed a letter to Lord
Arlington, principal secretary of state. In the letter he maintained
that he had "subverted no faith, obedience or good life," and he
insisted on the natural right of liberty of conscience: "To conceit," he
said, "that men must form their faith of things proper to another world
by the prescriptions of mortal men, or else they can have no right to
eat, drink, sleep, walk, trade, or be at liberty and live in this, to me
seems both ridiculous and dangerous." These writings gained him his
liberty. The Duke of York made intercession for him with the king.

Penn had occupied himself while in prison with the composition of a
considerable work, called "No Cross, No Crown." It is partly
controversial, setting forth the reasons for the Quaker faith and
practice, and partly devotional, exalting self-sacrifice, and urging men
to simpler and more spiritual living. Thus the months of his
imprisonment had been of value both to him and to the religious movement
with which he had identified himself. The Quakers, when Penn joined
them, had no adequate literary expression of their thought. They were
most of them intensely earnest but uneducated persons, who spoke great
truths somewhat incoherently. Penn gave Quaker theology a systematic and
dignified statement.

When he came out of the Tower, he went home to his father. The admiral
had now recovered from his first indignation. William was still, he
said, a cross to him, but he had made up his mind to endure it. Indeed,
the world into which he had desired his son to enter was not at that
moment treating the admiral well. He was suffering impeachment and the
gout at the same time. He saw that William's religion was giving him a
serenity in the midst of evil fortune which he himself did not possess.
He could appreciate his heroic spirit. He admired him in spite of
himself.

William then spent nearly a year in Ireland, administering his father's
estates. When he returned, in 1670, he found his Quaker brethren in
greater trouble than before. In that perilous season of plots and
rumors of plots, when Protestants lived in dread of Roman Catholics, and
Churchmen knew not at what moment the Puritans might again repeat