Dear friends,—With my love to you in the holy peaceable truth that never changes [Heb 13:8], nor admits of evil, but makes all free [John 8:32] that receive it, and that walk in it [3 Jn 1:4], and is over all the clouds without rain, and wells without water, and trees without fruit [Jude 1:12/2 Pet 1:17]. And from the truth floweth justice, equity, righteousness [1 Esd 4:39f], and godliness, mercy, and tenderness, that brings a man's heart, mind, soul, and spirit to the infinite and incomprehensible God, and from it a love flows to all the universal creation, and would have all to come to the knowledge of the truth [1 Tim 2:4]; and it bends every one to their utmost ability to serve God and his truth, and to spread it abroad, and it brings their minds out of the earth, which makes them brittle, and changeable, and uncertain; for it doth not change, neither doth it touch with that which does change. As to unity, it makes all like itself, that do obey it. Universal, to live out of narrowness and self, and deny it. So it brings all into oneness, and answereth the good principle of God in all people, and brings into humility, and the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of his wisdom [Psa 111:10]; and it brings all to have a care of God's glory and his honour; and watches over all the professors of it for their good, to keep within its bounds, and walk within its order; which he that is out of truth, leads into all disorder, in whom there is no truth [John 8:44]; and the truth makes all its children free from him, and in it to reign over him. Thanks, glory, and honour to the Lord God of truth over all for ever. Amen.
The Lord, who is the God of all peace and order [1 Cor 14:33], alone protects and preserves his people with his eternal power; for the devil's power is not eternal, it had a beginning, and must have an ending; for the eternal power limits that devourer and destroyer. And therefore, friends, patience must be exercised in the truth; and keep to the word of patience [Rev 3:10], which word was before the world was [John 1:1], and abides and endures for ever [1 Pet 1:23]; and it will keep Friends over and out of all the snares of the world, and its temptations.
So with my love in the seed of life, that reigns over all, and in it the Lord God Almighty preserve and keep you all to his glory. Amen.
G. F.
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George Fox (1624 - 1691)
Was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. This was a group the Lord started through the ministry of George Fox. God called him apart from all other forms of Christendom in his day because of the lack of Biblical obedience and holiness.The emphasis in George Fox's ministry was firstly prophetic. He called out the people of God to show them that they had the Holy Spirit of God and could be taught of Him and not to solely rely on the teachings of ecclesiastical leaders. Secondly, he spoke directly to many ministers in his day to show them they were hirelings and did not have a true shepherds heart for the people of God rather they were seeking after financial gain.
Founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers). George Fox was born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, England, the son of Puritan parents. Little is known of his early life, apart from what he wrote in his journal: "In my very young years, I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in young children. Insomuch that, when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly toward each other, I had a dislike thereof raise in my heart, and I said within myself, `If ever I come to be a man, surely I shall not do so, nor be so wanton.'"
At the age of 19, he gained deep, personal assurance of his salvation and began to travel as an itinerant preacher, seeking a return to the simple practices of the New Testament. He abhorred technical theology, and preached a faith borne of experience, freshly fed and guided by the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit.
Fox was persecuted almost daily, yet his power of endurance was phenomenal. He was beaten with dogwhips, knocked down with fists and stones, brutally struck with pikestaves, hard beset by mobs, incarcerated eight times in the pestilential jails, prisons, castles and dungeons--yet he went straightforward with his mission as though he had discovered some fresh courage which made him impervious to man's inhumanity.
He undertook as far as possible to let the new life in Christ take its own free course of development in his ministry. He shunned rigid forms and static systems, and for that reason he refused to head a new sect or to start a new denomination, or to begin a new church. He would not build an organization of any kind. His followers at first called themselves "Children of the Light," and later adopted the name "The Society (or Fellowship) of Friends."
Fox preached and traveled for 40 years throughout England, Scotland, Holland, and America. His life demonstrated the truth of his famous saying, "One man raised by God's power to stand and live in the same spirit the apostle and prophets were in, can shake the country for ten miles around."