Note 22 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Isaac Penington has been mentioned before, but only cursorily, in the whole of this Journal; not often meeting with George Fox. But he was one of the most eminent, experienced, and beloved, of the Early Friends. He was well descended as to his worldly parentage, being the eldest son of Alderman Penington, who was two years successively Mayor of London, and a noted member of the Long Parliament. Born about the year 1617, he received a liberal education, having, according to Penn, “all the advantages the schools and universities of his own country could give, joined with the conversation of some of the most learned and considerable men of that time.”
From childhood, Isaac Penington was religiously inclined, and, in a paper written by himself, and found after his death amongst his writings, we have such a living portrait of a deeply-exercised mind, as demonstrates that godliness with him was indeed the “one thing needful.” “In the sense of my lost estate,” he writes, “I sought after the Lord; I read the Scriptures; I watched over mine own heart; and whatever I read in the Scriptures, as the way of God, to my understanding, I gave myself to the faithful practice of.” He became fully convinced of the principles of Friends, and joined that despised people—becoming a faithful sufferer for the cause of Christ.
“Early believers in the light of Truth
Dwelt not at ease in Zion. They endured
Conflicts and trials, and imprisonments.
Even the humble Penington, whose mind
Seemed purged and purified from dross
Of human nature—who appeared as meek
And harmless as an infant—was compelled
To dwell in loathsome prisons.”
He was six times in jail, some of his imprisonments being long, yet borne with great quietness and constancy of mind. His first imprisonment was in Aylesbury jail in 1661 and 1662, being committed there for worshipping God in his own house. He was kept there seventeen weeks, great part of it in winter—in a cold and very incommodious room without a chimney, from which usage he contracted so severe an indisposition, that for several weeks after he was unable to turn himself in his bed.
In the sixty-third year of his age “he died as he lived, in the faith that overcomes the world.”