Unlike many of the early Quaker voices, Penington was well educated and respectable, the eldest son of a Lord Mayor of London. He even became William Penn’s father-in-law. But his joining with Quakers led to harsh persecution, including imprisonment six times, as well as intense spiritual experiences he described in various writings, including his letters.

A critical reader will recognize that articulating what is ultimately non-physical or confirmable is a difficult challenge. What Penington achieves remains insightful, personal, yet universal. There’s nothing dogmatic or doctrinaire or theoretical or speculative, not when grounded in personal practice.

His style fascinates me, long sentences that coil around and around as they move toward a core. Pulling a short quotation from them proves difficult without losing the wider field of wonder. As an example, “Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.” Eighty words, in all – typical.

Somehow, I find myself contrasting him to the Muggletonian William Blake a century and a half later, who struggled with similar challenges for a much different result.