William Penn (1644–1718) was an English Quaker writer and the founder of Pennsylvania. Expelled from Oxford for nonconformity and several times imprisoned for his Quaker preaching and writing, he secured a royal charter in 1681 and established his colony as a refuge of religious toleration, treating the Lenape peoples with unusual fairness. Our library holds his Primitive Christianity Revived and his account of the rise of the Quakers.
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William Penn's appeal for a return to the faith and practice of the earliest Christians, published in 1696. Writing as a Quaker, Penn presents true Christianity as an inward, spiritual religion marked by obedience to the Light of Christ and a holy life, rather than outward forms alone. It is a clear window into the convictions of early Quaker teaching.