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REFLECTIONS AND MAXIMS

OF

WILLIAM PENN.

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IGNORANCE.

1. Ir is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves, and of the world they have lived in.

2. If one went to see Windsor-castle, or Hampton-court, it would be strange not to observe and remember the situation, the building, the gardens, fountains, &c., that make up the beauty and pleasure of such a seat. And yet few people know themselves: no, not their own bodies, the houses of their minds, the most curious structure in the world; a living, walking tabernacle; nor the world of which it was made, and out of which it is fed; which would be so much our benefit, as well as our pleasure, to know. We cannot doubt of this when we are told that the "invisible things of God are brought to light by the things that are seen ;" and consequently we read our duty in them, as often as we look upon them, to Him that is the great and wise author of them, if we look as we should do.

3. The world is certainly a great and stately volume of natural things, and may be not improperly styled the hieroglyphics of a better; but, alas, how very few leaves of it do we seriously turn over! This ought to be the subject of the education of our youth; who, at twenty, when they should be fit for business, know little or nothing of it.

EDUCATION.

4. We are in pain to make them scholars, but not men; to talk, rather than to know; which is true canting.

5. The first thing obvious to children is what is sensible; and that we make no part of their rudiments.

6. We press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain,

and load them with words and rules to know grammar and rhetoric, and a strange tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leaving their natural genius to mechanical, and physical or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected; which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their lives.

7. To be sure languages are not to be despised or neglected; but, things are still to be preferred.

8. Children had rather be making tools and instruments of play: shaping, drawing, framing, and building, &c., than getting some rules of propriety of speech by heart: and those also would follow with more judgment, and less trouble and time.

9. It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature: whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable.

10. Let us begin where she begins, go her pace, and close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good naturalists.

11. The creation would not be longer a riddle to us. The heavens, earth, and waters, with their respective, various, and numerous inhabitants, their productions, natures, seasons, sympathies, and antipathies, their use, benefit, and pleasure, would be better understood by us; and an eternal wisdom, power, majesty, and goodness, very conspicuous to us, through those sensible and passing forms: the world wearing the mark of its Maker, whose stamp is everywhere visible, and the characters very legible to the children of wisdom.

12. And it would go a great way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and known in the creation of it.

13. For how could men find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great Creator stare them in the face, in all and every part thereof?

14. Their ignorance makes them insensible; and to that insensibility may be ascribed their hard usage of several parts of this noble creation: that has the stamp and voice of a Deity every where, and in everything, to the observing.

15. It is a pity therefore that books have not been composed for youth, by some curious and careful naturalists,

and also mechanics, in the Latin tongue, to be used in schools, that they might learn things with words; things obvious and familiar to them, and which would make the tongue easier to be obtained by them.

16. Many able gardeners and husbandmen are ignorant of the reason of their calling; as most artificers are of the reason of their own rules that govern their excellent workmanship. But a naturalist and mechanic of this sort is master of the reason of both; and might be of the practice too, if his industry kept pace with his speculation; which were very commendable; and without which he cannot be said to be a complete naturalist or mechanic.

17. Finally, if man be the index or epitome of the world, as philosophers tell us, we have only to read ourselves well, to be learned in it. But because there is nothing we less regard than the characters of the Power that made us, which are so clearly written upon us, and the world he has given us, and can best tell us what we are and should be, we are even strangers to our own genius: the glass in which we should see that true, instructing, and agreeable variety, which is to be observed in nature, to the admiration of that wisdom, and adoration of that Power, which made us all.

PRIDE.

18. And yet we are very apt to be full of ourselves, instead of him that made what we much value: and but for whom we can have no reason to value ourselves. For we have nothing that we can call our own; no, not ourselves; for we are all but tenants, at will too, of the great Lord of ourselves, and the rest of this great farm, the world that we live upon.

19. But, methinks, we cannot answer it to ourselves, as well as our Maker, that we should live and die ignorant of ourselves, and thereby of him, and the obligations we are under to him for ourselves.

20. If the worth of a gift sets the obligation, and directs the return of the party that receives it, he that is ignorant of it, will be at a loss to value it, and the giver for it.

21. Here is a man in his ignorance of himself: he knows not how to estimate his Creator, because he knows not how

so value his creation. If we consider his make, and lovely compositure, the several stories of his wonderful structure, his divers members, their order, function, and dependency; the instruments of food, the vessels of digestion, the several transmutations it passes, and how nourishment is carried and diffused throughout the whole body, by most intricate and imperceptible passages; how the animal spirit is thereby refreshed, and, with an unspeakable dexterity and motion, sets all parts at work to feed themselves; and, last of all, how the rational soul is seated in the animal, as its proper house, as is the animal in the body; I say, if this rare fabric alone were but considered by us, with all the rest by which it is fed and comforted, surely man would have a more reverent sense of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, and of that duty he owes to him for it. But if he would be acquainted with his own soul, its noble faculties, its union with the body, its nature and end, and the providence by which the whole frame of humanity is preserved, he would admire and adore his good and great God. But man has become a strange contradiction to himself; but it is of himself; not being by constitution, but corruption, such.

22. He would have others obey him, even his own kind; but he will not obey God, that is so much above him, and who made him.

23. He will lose none of his authority; no, not abate an ace of it. He is humorsome to his wife, beats his children, is angry with his servants, strict with his neighbors, revenges all affronts to the extremity; but, alas! forgets all the while that he is the man; and is more in arrear to God that is so very patient with him than they are to him, with whom he is so strict and impatient.

24. He is curious to wash, dress, and perfume his body, but careless of his soul; the one shall have many hours, the other not so many minutes; this shall have three or four new suits a year, but that must wear its old clothes still.

25. If he be to receive or see a great man, how nice and anxious is he that all things be in order; and with what respect and address does he approach and make his court? But to God, how dry and formal, and constrained in his devotion.

26. In his prayers he says, "Thy will be done;" but means his own: at least acts so.

27. It is too frequent to begin with God, and end with the world. But he is the good man's beginning and end, he is Alpha and Omega.

LUXURY.

28. Such is now become our delicacy, that we will not eat ordinary meat, nor drink small, palled liquor; we must have the best, and the best cooked for our bodies, while our souls feed on empty or corrupted things.

29. In short, man is spending all upon a bare house, and hath little or no furniture within to recommend it; which is preferring the cabinet to the jewel, a lease of seven years before an inheritance. So absurd a thing is man, after all his proud pretences to wit and understanding.

INCONSIDERATION.

30. The want of due consideration is the cause of all the unhappiness man brings upon himself. For his second thoughts rarely agree with the first; which pass not without a considerable retrenchment or correction. And yet that sensible warning is, too frequently, not precaution enough for his future conduct.

31. Well may we say, "Our infelicity is of ourselves; since there is nothing we do that we should not do, but we know it, and yet do it.

DISAPPOINTMENT AND RESIGNATION.

32. For disappointments, that come not by our own folly, they are the trials or corrections of Heaven: and it is our own fault, if they prove not to our advantage.

33. To repine at them does not mend the matter: it is only to grumble at our Creator. But to see the hand of God in them, with an humble submission to his will, is the way to turn our water into wine, and engage the greatest love and mercy on our side.

34. We must needs disorder ourselves, if we only look at our losses. But if we consider how little we deserve

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