My dear friends, in New Jersey, and you that go to New Jersey, my desire is, that you may all be kept in the fear of God, and that you may have the Lord in your eye, in all your undertakings. For many eyes of other governments or colonies will be upon you; yea, the Indians, to see how you order your lives and conversations. And therefore, let your lives, and words, and conversations be as becomes the gospel [Phil 1:27], that you may adorn the truth, and honour the Lord in all your undertakings. Let that only be in your eye, and then you will have the Lord's blessing and increase, both in basket, and field, and store-house [Deut 28:5]; and at your lyings down you will feel him, and at your goings forth, and comings in [Psa 139:3?]. So that you may answer the light, and the truth, in all people, both by your godly lives and conversations. Serving the Lord, and with a joyful heart, being valiant for his truth, upon the earth [Jer 9:3], and the glorious name, in whom you have salvation.
And keep up your meetings for worship, and your men and women's meetings for the affairs of truth, both Monthly and Quarterly. And, after you are settled, you may join together and build a meeting-house. And do not strive about outward things; but dwell in the love of God, for that will unite you together, and make you kind and gentle one towards another; and to seek one another's good and welfare, and to be helpful one to another; and see that nothing be lacking among you [1 Th 4:12], then all will be well. And let temperance, and patience, and kindness, and brotherly love be exercised among you [2 Pet 1:6f], so that you may abound in virtue, and the true humility; living in peace, showing forth the nature of christianity, that you may all live as a family, and the church of God, holding Christ your heavenly head, and he exercising his offices among you, and in you; and hold him, the head, by his light, power, <132> and spirit; and that will keep your minds over the earthly spirit, up to God; for the earth, and the sea, and all things therein, are his [Psa 24:1], and he gives the increase thereof [1 Cor 3:7]. . . .
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."