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The way to God’s Life, Light and Love is, for Penington, in sensing and feeling the Presence. The most direct way to this experience is worship and it is a matter of dying ‘to your own wisdom, if ever ye will be born of, and walk in the wisdom of God’.⁵¹

Penington said:

For man is to come into the poverty of self, into the abasedness, into nothingness, into the silence in his spirit before the Lord; into the putting off of all his

45 When the veil is removed, Barclay, Apology, p. 49 and section 4.2.2.

46 Penington, The Light Within, p. 32; See also 1 Cor. 12:13.

47 Penington, ibid, p. 33.

48 Penington, ibid, p. 22.

49 Penington, ibid, p. 23.

50 Penington, ibid, p. 35.

51 Penington, Letters, p. 345. Also, personal communications by e mail, on letting go of the ego Rex Ambler, 1/2/12 and Mel Keiser, 3/2/12.

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knowledge, wisdom, understanding, abilities, all that he is, hath done, or can do, out of this measure of life, into which he is to travel, that he may be clothed and filled with the nature, Spirit and power of the Lord.⁵²

This kind of worship is the wordless prayer that gives away, or gives up, everything for God: divestment of self allows investment in God the Spirit and the in-grafting of the human being in the Divine Being. As expressed by both Fox (see chapter 2) and Barclay (see chapter 4) this is a process, a spiritual practice which facilitates transformation; so also it is for Penington, who described it in the following manner:

After the mind is in some measure turned to the Lord, his quickening felt, his seed beginning to arise and spring up in the heart, then the flesh is to be silent before him, and the soul to wait upon him (and for his further appearing) in that measure of life that is already revealed. Now, this is a great thing to know flesh silenced, to feel the reasoning thoughts and discourses of the fleshly mind stilled, and the wisdom, light, and guidance of God’s spirit waited for.⁵³

Penington is arguably the most thorough in explaining that the process of silent worship, and also of living in God’s Presence at all times, is a matter of sensed experience.⁵⁴ His approach is not conceptual, not reasoned, not sought with an active mind. One of Penington’s favoured terms is ‘getting’ or ‘lying low’; this is about ‘silent waiting on the Lord in subjection, till the life speak and make things manifest’.⁵⁵

Again and again Penington emphasises ‘sink[ing]’ into the feeling and ‘dwelling’ in the feeling and watching ‘to feel the savour of life in the heart day by day...’⁵⁶ It is the savour or taste of the Life that is accessed by dwelling in the Silent Presence during worship. The means is to transcend the obvious phenomenal level of the relativities of physical existence; and even the ideas, thoughts and imaginings that refer to this level of manifestation. Keiser explains that for Penington ‘God ... is not something experienced

52 Penington, Works, iv, p. 47.

53 Penington, ibid, p. 47.

54 Fox, chapter 2, and Barclay, chapter 4, (Tables 2 and 4) indicate compatible concerns in their consideration of process.

55 Penington, Works ii, pp. 239-240.

56 Penington, ibid. pp. 395-7.

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yet mysterious like the sunrise. Rather God is mystery itself’.⁵⁷ Thus, the movement of mind that transcends to felt and sensed Inwardness is at one and the same time a

movement to the transcendental God, who is both within and beyond manifestation. This is the very grounding of all living, Being itself that is, for Penington, God regarded as

‘mystery’.⁵⁸

Of significance is the discernment that arises:

…If thou come to know God’s Spirit and to receive it, and feel it work in thee, and its pure light shine from the fountain and spring of life, thou wilt have a quicker sense and discerning therefrom, than can arise either from words written or from thoughts: that is the Lord will show thee the way, whereof thou doubtest quicker than a thought can arise in thee, and the Lord will show thee evil in a pure sense of the new nature, quicker than thou canst think or consider of anything.⁵⁹

Penington acknowledges that although fathoming the Inward is the key experience, once the individual is opened to the ‘inward parts’ the rest of life is illuminated also; and in ‘the inward and spiritual appearance of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ [is] revealing his power inwardly’ everything, even the outward and the literal, is known afresh.⁶⁰ As Penington suggested, in his The Flesh and Blood of Christ in the Mystery, and in the Outward, it is through the inward opening that the outward is fully appreciated.

For by the inward life and teachings of God’s Spirit, am I taught and made able to value that glorious outward appearance and manifestation of the life and power of God in that heavenly flesh (as in my heart I have often called it), for the life so dwelt in it, that it was even one with it.⁶¹

It is, then, through intimate knowing of the inward that the outward gains its full status in awareness.

57 Keiser and Moore, Knowing the Mystery, p. 180.

58 Penington, Works iv, p. 176. Also Keiser and Moore p. 180. According to Keiser, Penington never removed the notion of ‘Being’ from God, (Keiser and Moore, p. 179).

59 Penington, Works, iii, pp. 443-44.

60 Penington, ibid, pp. 357-359.

61 Penington, ibid, p. 359. See Figure 4, indicating porosity between inner and outer.

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The perception of the inward in the outward and the outward in its full value in the inward is what Creasey emphasises as lacking in his discussion and criticism of ‘early Quaker language’. Keiser, in turn, explains that Inwardness is the dimension of the depth of the outward. In this thesis it is maintained that whilst it is possible to conceptualise this reality, as Penington asserts ‘there is a great difference between the truth held in the reasoning part, and truth held in its own principle.’⁶² ‘Held in its own principle’ truth is held in the Life, which is Light and Love in Unity.

Penington’s account of Unity is discussed next.