ISAAC PENINGTON

National Gallery

Illustration by Blake to John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress

Christian with the Shield of Faith Taking Leave of His Companions 

  

From The Double Vision, by Northrop Frye:  "What 'the' truth is, is not available to human beings in spiritual matters: the goal of our spiritual life is God, who is spiritual Other, not a spiritual object, much less a conceptual object. That is why the Gospels keep reminding us how many listen and how few hear: the truth of the gospel kind cannot be demonstrated except through personal example. As the seventeenth-century Quaker Isaac Penington said every truth is substantial in its own place, but all truths are shadows except the last. The language which lifts us clear of the merely plausible and the merely credible is the language of the spirit; the language of the spirit is, Paul tells us, the language of love, and the language of love is the only language that we can be sure is spoken and understood by God." (Page 20)

 

Science Quotes by Isaac Penington 

" All truth is a shadow except the last—yet every Truth is true in its kind. It is substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in another place, (for it is but a shadow from an intenser substance;) and the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance."

Thomas Ellwood on Isaac Penington

Hymn by Charles Wesley: Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown