All Friends every where, that are in any sufferings, let your sufferings be gathered up together in every county, ye that have suffered by justices, or constables, or bailiffs; let your names be set to your sufferings, and a name or two to witness them, and the names of them that caused you to suffer. . . . Now these not judging and doing justly, sheriffs, juries, constables not doing justly, righteously, or equally; the sufferings being gathered together, short and true, and their actions that have not been just and righteous, who caused the righteous to suffer and truth to fall in the gates, and in the streets, that equity cannot enter [Isa 59:14], (for equity cannot enter where truth is fallen ; for that which lets in equity is truth.) Gather up such your sufferings in every county, that suffer by the unjust and unrighteous, and deliver them to the judges that they may see it; that they may judge justly and see what is done in the family to whom they give their charge, and what their master's servants have done, justices, sheriff, constables. And if the judge that sits in the gate will not judge righteously, nor plead the cause of the innocent [Prov 31:19], nor help the helpless, nor break the jaws of the wicked [Job 29:17] that tear and rend the innocent, (but is light and vain,) God, who is just, is ready to plead their cause [various, e.g. Psa 35:1], and to judge and cast out the unjust judges [Luke 18:6]. For he that judgeth among the judges, (and relieves the oppressed, and helps the helpless, and strengthens the weak hands and feeble knees [Isa 36:3], and gives righteousness to every one that loves it, to every one whose intents are upright and <136> single,) gives true judgment agreeable to that of himself in every one, and crosses the ends and intents of every one that is from that, and gives judgment upon the unjust. . . .
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."