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NO CROSS NO CROWN Wherein May Be Attained the Way to Salvation The Cross is the Only Way to Salvation
William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and West Jersey, was an English gentleman commoner. He was a highly educated intellectual of his age, who spoke several languages. In settlement of the King's debts to his father, he was granted by the King huge territories in the new world, what is now Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. In Williams's twenty-fourth year he became a Quaker minister, and through a long life, faithfully served his Lord and Master in England, Ireland, Europe, and America. This is a major work of Penn, written while imprisoned in the Tower of London for writing a pamphlet which challenged the prevailing established Anglican Church views; they claimed he denied the divinity of Christ and imprisoned him for heresy. Far from denying the divinity of Christ, his Lord and Master, Penn exalts Christ throughout this book, while pleading with those who call themselves Christians to awaken to the falseness of any salvation that is not based on their suffering on the Cross; and shows how, following in Christ's footsteps, to be truly saved from the sins of lusts, affections, bondages, and emotions - thus to arrive at eternal peace, joy, and rest - in this life.
A biography on his life in available on the side bar. Penn was a giant in the early Quaker movement, serving their cause in the court of James II, founding and governing a colony in America, writing many weighty pamphlets and books, and ministering for thirty years thorughout England, as well as Ireland, America, Holland, and Germany. Penn chose perhaps the most difficult course possible for a Christian man: a Christian and ruler of government. The fewer decisions, the simpler one's life, the easier it is to remain faithful to your God's requirements. With courage that I cannot imagine, Penn plowed through decisions, negotiations, administration, and government of a region the size of England - with faith in his God and actions that remained true to Christian principles. From a wilderness, he carved a colony which quickly surpassed their older colonial neighbors, while creating and maintaining a peace with the Indian that was never equaled. He walked the high wire of secular power with Christian humility; few could even approach his secular accomplishments, and scarce would any be able match his maintaining of Christian virtue all the while. Truly he was of a Christian nobility that we many never again see in history. He was an accomplished ruler with the meekness of the greatest servant, his Lord Jesus Christ. _____________________________ <Go to Chapter 1 >> Table of Contents (Where necessary, the text has been modernized in language and expression) PREFACE - The sole purpose of life is to seek and enter into union with God, which gives glory to God and saves your soul. CHAPTER I- Although the Cross of Christ is the only way to salvation and to true Christianity, it is so little understood, so much neglected, and, what is worse, so bitterly contradicted by the vanity, superstition, and intemperance of professed Christians, that we must either denounce belief in what the Lord Jesus has told us, that whoever does not bear his cross, and come after Him, cannot be his disciple (Luke 14:27); or admit that the great mass of Christendom is miserably deceived in what God expects from us, how to be a Christian, and their own salvation. CHAPTER II- Uncommanded Christian temples have become a cage of unclean birds; and instead of a house of prayer, a den of thieves, a synagogue of Satan, and the receptacle of every defiled spirit. CHAPTER III - What is the Cross of Christ? Where is the Cross of Christ to be taken up? How and manner is to be borne? CHAPTER IV - Man's principal role in the cross - Self-Denial. How self-denial is validated by Abraham, Isaiah, Job, Moses, Paul, Jesus, the disciples, et al. CHAPTER V - True vs. false religious worship. God must be worshiped in Spirit and Truth. No magnificent buildings or ceremonies. The false cross. --The false self-denial of monastic life, be it monasteries, nunneries, or caves.. CHAPTER VI - What is true worship? How a heart is necessarily prepared by the Lord for worship. The key is to: Wait on the Lord! When he comes, he brings conviction and merciful help. Why prayers are not answered. CHAPTER VII - Pride. CHAPTER VIII - Power and ambition. CHAPTER IX - Personal honor and respect for pride. True honor. Giving honor to men. Honor based on appearance. Testimonies of validation. CHAPTER X - Serving pride by bowing, flattering titles. CHAPTER XI - Pride in ancestors and blood. Pride in beauty. CHAPTER XII - Effects of Pride. Pride of religion. The end of pride. CHAPTER XIII - Covetousness of unlawful things, another man's wife or property. Covetousness of lawful things, the love of money. Effects of covetousness. CHAPTER XIV - Gluttony. Rich apparel. CHAPTER XV - Excess in apparel and pleasures forbidden in scripture. Desirable behavior for women. Proper Christian activities. Plays, balls, sonnets, etc. [Today's TV programming and movies, a 24/7 destructive promotion of sexual immorality and violence.] For other pastimes pleasures and sports, wait on the Lord's leading for when to deny them. CHAPTER XVI - Luxury opposed in this discourse should not be allowed among Christians, because the very nature of the Christian religion denies it. CHAPTER XVII - How those customs and fashions, which make up the common attire and conversation of the times, greatly obstruct the inward retirement of people's minds, which is critical to receive the changing power of God by grace that brings salvation. The origin of theater and plays. CHAPTER XVIII - Despite pass-time diversions being destructive, and therefore against God's law, Christians either embrace them to their destruction; or if moderate in their own usage, show indifference to others being harmed by them. By their participation they harm two sets of brothers: 1) those whose addictions are excused by their poor example, and 2) those of another sect, who have denied them, and when seeing a true Christian using them moderately, stumble at hearing the truth. Neither case being: my brother's keeper. <Go to Chapter 1 >>
If, Reader, you are such a person, my counsel to you is to retire to within yourself and take a view of the condition of your soul, for Christ has given you light with which to do it. Search carefully and thoroughly; your life is in it; your soul is at stake. It is but once to be done; if you abuse yourself in it, the loss is irreparable; the world is not price enough to ransom you. Will you then, for such a world, retard yourself, overstay the time of your salvation, and lose your soul? I grant you, this has to be done with great patience; but that also must have an end. Therefore do not provoke God that has made you, to reject you. Do you know what rejection is? It is hell, the eternal anguish of the damned. Oh! Reader, as one knowing the terrors of the Lord, I plead with you to be serious, diligent, and fervent about your own salvation. Yes, and as one knowing the comfort, peace, joy, and pleasure of the ways of righteousness too, I exhort and invite you to embrace the reproofs and convictions of Christ's light and Spirit in your own conscience, and bear the judgment who have wrought the sin. The fire burns but the stubble. The wind blows but the chaff. Yield up your body, soul, and spirit to Him who makes all things new: new heavens, and new earth, new love, new joy, new peace, new works, a new life and conversation. Men have grown corrupt and foul by sin, and they must be saved through fire, which purges it away. Therefore the word God is compared to a fire, and the day of salvation to an oven; and Christ Himself to a refiner and purifier of silver. Come, Reader, listen to me awhile. I seek your salvation, that is my plot, you will forgive me. A Refiner has come near you, his grace has appeared to you. It shows you the world's lusts, and teaches you to deny them. Receive his leaven, and it will change you; his medicine, and it will cure you. He is as infallible as free, without money, and with certainty. A touch of his garment did it of old, and will do it still. His virtue is the same, it cannot be exhausted, for in Him the fullness dwells. Blessed is God for his sufficiency. He laid help upon Him, that He might be mighty to save all that come to God through Him. If you do so, He will change you: yes, your vile body to become like his glorious body. He is the great philosopher indeed; the wisdom of God, that turns lead into gold, vile things into things precious. For He makes saints out of sinners, and almost-gods of men. What remains for us to do, to witness his power and love? This is the Crown, but where is the Cross? Where is the bitter cup and bloody baptism? Come, Reader, be like Him. For this transcendent joy, lift up your head above the world; then your salvation will draw near indeed. Christ's Cross is Christ's way to Christ's Crown. This is the subject of the following discourse, first written during my confinement in the Tower of London, in the year 1668, now reprinted with great enlargements of matter and testimonies, that you, reader, may be won to Christ; and if won already, brought nearer to Him. It is a path that God, in his everlasting kindness, guided my feet into in the flower of my youth, when about twenty-two years of age. Then He took me by the hand, and led me out of the pleasures, vanities, and hopes of the world. I have tasted of Christ's judgments and mercies, and of the world's frowns and reproaches. I rejoice in my experience, and dedicate it to your service in Christ. It is a debt I have long owed, and has been long expected. I have now paid it, and delivered my soul. To my country, and to the world of Christians, I leave it. My God, if He pleases, will make it effective to them all, and turn their [Christians] hearts from that envy, hatred, and bitterness, they have one against another, about worldly things; sacrificing humanity and charity to ambition and covetousness, for which they fill the earth with trouble and oppression; that, receiving the Spirit of Christ into their hearts, the fruits of which are love, peace, joy, temperance, and patience, brotherly kindness, and charity, they may in body, soul, and spirit, make a triple league against the world, the flesh, and the devil, the common enemies of mankind; and having conquered them through a life of self-denial, by the power of the Cross of Jesus, they may at last attain to the eternal rest and kingdom of God. So desire, so pray, Friendly Reader. Your fervent Christian Friend, William Penn Worminghurst in Sussex, the 1st of the 6th Month, 1682 <Go to Chapter 1 >> This web site's purpose is to show how to become |
