Penn's Holy Experiment - "the seed of a nation."

American Minute ^ | July 30, 2019 | Bill Federer

[Perseverando]

William Penn was arrested and imprisoned several times for sharing his politically incorrect views which were not in agreement with the government's agenda.

Once he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for eight months.

While in London's notorious Newgate Prison, William Penn wrote 1670:

"By Liberty of Conscience, we understand not only a mere Liberty of the Mind ... but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear or favor of any mortal man, we sin, and incur divine wrath."

Penn wrote in England's Present Interest Considered, 1675:

"Force makes hypocrites, 'tis persuasion only that makes converts."

Another dissenter in London's Newgate Prison was an early Baptist leader Thomas Helwys, who wrote in 1612:

"The King is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them."

Thomas Helwys who died in the Newgate Prison in 1616, had written A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity:

"If the Kings people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all humane laws made by the King, our Lord the King can require no more: for men's religion to God is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it, neither may the King be judge between God and man."

Later, Baptist minister John Leland, who helped found Baptist churches in America, wrote in Rights of Conscience Inalienable, 1791:

"Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience.

If government can answer for individuals at