Now, Christ has founded honour on suffering; the devil has founded it on the refusal to suffer.  Christ has taught those who receive a blow to offer the other cheek; but the devil has taught those who are in danger of a blow to kill the enemy who threatens them.

Consider, therefore, fathers, to which of these two kingdoms you belong.  You have heard the language of the city of peace, which is called the mystical Jerusalem, and you have heard the language of the city of turmoil, which is called in the Scriptures the spiritual Sodom.  Which of these two languages do you understand?  According to St. Paul, those who belong to Christ act and speak on his principles; and, according to the words of Christ, those who are the children of the devil, who has been a murderer from the beginning of the world, follow his maxims.  We listen, therefore, to the language of your teachers, and ask of them whether when a blow is threatened, we ought to suffer it rather than slay the offender, or whether we may kill him in order to escape the affront?

Lessius, Molina, Escobar, and other Jesuits say that it is lawful to kill the man who threatens a blow.  Is that the language of Jesus Christ?

* * * * *

WILLIAM PENN

SOME FRUITS OF SOLITUDE

William Penn was born in London on October 14, 1644.  In early life he joined the Quakers, and while still a young man underwent imprisonment for the expression of his religious views.  For “A Sandy Foundation Shaken,” an attack on the Athanasian Creed, he was in 1668 sent to the Tower, where he wrote, “No Cross, No Crown.”  Under James II., however, he was high in the favour of the court, and received a grant of the region afterwards known as Pennsylvania, whither he went with a number of his co-religionists in 1682.  After his return to England, he suffered by the fall of James II., but under William III. was acquitted of treason, and spent his later years in retirement.  He died at Ruscombe, in Berkshire, on July 30, 1718.  “Some Fruits of Solitude, or the Maxims of William Penn,” evidently the result of one of his sojourns in prison, was licensed in 1693.  It was followed by “More Fruits of Solitude.”  The whole forms a collection of maxims which are shrewd, wise, and charitable, informed with a good courage for life, and a contempt for mean ends, if in their variety they do not always escape the touch of the commonplace.  The book has become known as a favourite of R.L.  Stevenson, who said of it that “there is not the man living—­no, nor recently dead—­that could put, with so lovely a spirit, so much honest, kind wisdom into words.”

TO THE READER

Reader, this Enchiridion I present thee which is the fruit of solitude; a school few care to learn in, though none instructs us better.  Some parts of it are the result of serious reflection; others the flashings of lucid intervals.  Writ for private satisfaction, and now published for an help to human conduct.