O friends! do not die from the good through the wantonness of fleshly lusts [2 Pet 2:18], neither be choked with the cares of this life [Mat 13:22], nor fear the shearers [Isa 53:7], neither let the heat scorch your green blade [Mat 13:6]; but dwell under the shadow of the Almighty [Psa 91:1], who will shade you from the heat and cold. Neither be cumbered nor surfeited with the riches of this world [Rom 11:12], nor bound, nor straitened with them, nor married to them; but be free and loose from them, and be married to the Lord [Rom 7:4]. The sufferings in all ages, of the righteous and just, were, because they could not join to the nations' vain worships [Mat 15:9], evil customs, rudiments, traditions [Col 2:8], and carnal inventions, but joined to the Lord [Jer 50:5, 1 Cor 6:17, etc], and not to them; and therefore they suffered, and kept single to the Lord God [Mat 6:22,24] in following him and his truth, and living in it, the amen, [Rev 3:14] the crown, life, virtue, and righteousness [Rev 2:10/2 Tim 4:8], that floweth over all [Amos 5:24], in which the righteous have peace.
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."