William Penn

ere two positive assertions. One was the doctrine of the return to primitive Christianity; the other was the doctrine of the inward light. Let us get back, they said, to those blessed centuries when the teaching of the Apostles was remembered, and the fellowship of the Apostles was faithfully kept,--when Justin Martyr and Irenæus and Ignatius and the other holy fathers lived. And let us listen to the inner voice; let us live in the illumination of the light which lighteth every man, and attend to the counsels of that Holy Spirit whose ministrations did not cease with the departure of the last Apostle. God, they believed, spoke to them directly, and told them what to do.

George Fox, in 1656, had brought this teaching to Oxford; and among the company of Quakers which had thus been gathered under the eaves of the university, Thomas Loe had become a "public Friend," or, as would commonly be said, a minister. When William Penn entered Christ Church College, Loe was probably in the town jail. It is at