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108 PENN, William. No Cross, No Crown: Or several Sober Reasons against Hat-Honour, Titular-Respects, You to a single Person, with the Apparel and Recreations of the Times . . . In Defence of the poor despised Quakers, against the Practice and Objections of their Adversaries. [London:] printed [by Andrew Sowle] in the year, 1669 penn’s controversial guide to practical christianity, bound within a quaker sammelband First edition of the founder of Pennsylvania and Quaker theologian’s “most ambitious and most learned work” (PMM), an eloquent and inflammatory dissertation upon the importance of the Christian duty of self-sacrifice. It is bound here with The Quakers Catechism (1655) by Richard Baxter, a fierce opponent of Penn, and Some Principles of the Elect People of God In Scorn called Quakers (1671) by George Fox, the Quaker founder with whom Penn “created a coherent Quaker philosophy” ( ODNB ). In both his writings and his actions, Penn “devoted his life to securing liberty of conscience as a God-given right beyond the dominion of government. Penn’s aspirations culminated in the founding of Pennsylvania [in 1681], a ‘holy experiment’ dedicated to the idea of religious freedom . . . As the colony’s sole proprietor and the framer of its early constitutions, he was afforded an opportunity to create a utopian society premised on Quakerism” (Adams & Emmerich, p. 58). No Cross, No Crown was composed while Penn (1644–1718) was confined in the Tower of London for nine months for the
“blasphemy” of his unlicensed tract, The Sandy Foundation Shaken (1668), which criticized what were then considered self-evident Christian truths, such as traditional interpretations of the Trinity, the doctrine of justification, and Christ’s atonement. Undeterred by the threat of life imprisonment, and in a deliberate misuse of the writing materials provided for his hoped-for retraction, Penn wrote the present work. Penn argued that external expressions of respect such as titles and clothing – “hat-honour” – were falsehoods in comparison to the true honour gained from simple and unceremonial service to God. It was printed at the author’s expense and distributed free to all interested parties. Bound third in a Sammelband of three works, small quarto (175 × 130 mm). 19th-century polished calf, rebacked to style with red label, gilt- tooled compartments, and raised bands, dated at foot, double fillet and triangle roll border to boards in gilt, board edges and inner dentelles gilt, edges sprinkled red. Roman and italic types. Extremities expertly refurbished, boards slightly splayed with small patch of stripping to rear; endpapers browned from turn-ins, each title page sequentially numbered in a neat early manuscript hand at top right corner (with p. 5 of the Penn numbered “4:”), contents evenly browned throughout (gathering F of the Penn more so, and spotted), a few leaves cropped close in the binding process (in most cases just slightly shaving page numbers or signatures; in the Penn, affecting one or two letters per line of shoulder notes on pp. 36, 68, and 84, sense recoverable), a handful of minor chips and small tears, the latter due to paper flaws, tiny paper infill at lower corner of Penn’s K4. Overall in very good condition. ¶ ESTC R15257; Printing and the Mind of Man 150; Sabin 59721; Smith, Descriptive catalogue of Friends’ books II, p. 284; Wing P1327. Arlin Adams & Charles Emmerich, “William Penn and the American Heritage of Religious Liberty”, Journal of Law and Religion , 8:1/2, 1990, pp. 57–70. £18,750 [158807]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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