O dear friends! mind every one your habitation in the power of the Lord God, that first convinced you, and keep your possession in it, in the sense of God's love and mercy to your souls; for your unity and fellowship lie in the spotless power, truth, and life of the everlasting God of life and power; and herein to you the springs of life will be opened, through which you may be daily refreshed up to the God of life. Oh! be tender of the spotless truth and life, through which you may come to answer it in all Friends, that they may have unity with you in the same life and power, through which you may be a good savour to God, and a blessing to him in your generations, serving the Lord God in the newness of life [Rom 6:4/7:6], as a chaste spouse and bride to him [2 Cor 11:2], in body, soul, and spirit, having an esteem of your bodies, which are for the Lord, and to be his temple [1 Cor 6:19], not for adultery or fornication [1 Cor 6:13], nor idolatry. Oh! therefore mind and keep in the holy life, and feel the moving and counselling power and spirit of the Almighty in you, directing you into the ways of truth and righteousness, peace and holiness, without which none shall see God [Heb 12:14]. Live in the peaceable life, and love it; eye that which makes for peace [Rom 14:19], for God is the author of peace, and not of confusion [1 Cor 14:33]. So live all in the precious truth of God, feeling it in its operation; through which unity and the peaceable life may be preserved amongst you in righteousness and peace; for wars, and strifes, and troubles, and fightings, come by unrighteous actions, which are below truth and righteousness; for truth leads into the modest, decent, and comely life, which is honourable and estimable to God, and in the hearts of all his people. So live in the truth and the power of it, that you may all come to be heirs of the power of an endless life [Heb 7:16], and to inherit and possess the endless life, the power of a world that hath no end. And so keep your eyes to your possessions, and to the life that hath no end; and herein you will increase in the truth, in the righteousness and holiness, and the power and virtue of the holy life; and so sit down in your possessions, that you may all serve the Lord in a pure mind, soul, and spirit, and none to defile your bodies, but have esteem of them, as vessels of honour, and vessels fitted to receive the treasures of the Lord [Rom 9:21-23].
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."