The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers: Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrencs.Sewel, William
History
The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers: Intermixed with Several Remarkable Occurrencs.
Sewel, William
Society of Friends -- History -- Early works to 1800
George Fox was now come up to quite another state than formerly he
had lived in; for he knew not only a renewing of the heart, and a
restoration of the mind, but the virtues of the creatures were also
opened to him; so that he began to deliberate whether he should
practise physic for the good of mankind. But God had another service
for him; and it was showed him, that he was to enter into a spiritual
labour; and also that those who continued faithful to the Lord,
might attain to a state in which the sinful inclination was subdued.
Moreover, the three great professions in the world, viz. physic,
divinity, (so called,) and law, were opened to him, whereby he saw that
the physicians wanting the wisdom of God, by which the creatures were
made, knew not their virtues: that the lawyers generally were void of
equity and justice, and so out of the law of God, which went over the
first transgression, and over all sin, and answered the Spirit of God
that was oppressed in man: and that the priests, for the most part,
were out of the true faith, which Christ is the author of, and which
purifies the heart, and brings man to have access to God. So that these
physicians, lawyers, and priests, who pretended to cure the body, to
establish the property of the people, and to cure the soul, were all
without the true knowledge and wisdom they ought to possess. Yet he
felt there was a divine power, by which all might be reformed, if
they would receive, and bow unto it. And he saw also, that though the
priests did err, yet they were not the greatest deceivers spoken of in
the Scriptures; but that these great deceivers were such, who, as Cain,
had heard the voice of God, and who, as Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, and
their company, were come out of Egypt, and through the Red Sea, and had
praised God on the banks of the sea shore; and who being come as far as
Balaam, could speak the word of the Lord, as having heard his voice,
and known his Spirit, so that they could see the star of Jacob, and
the goodliness of Israel’s tents, which no enchantment could prevail
against: these that could speak so much of their divine experience,
and yet turned from the Spirit of God, and went into the gainsaying,
these he saw would be the great deceivers, far beyond the priests. He
saw also that people generally did read the Scriptures, without having
a true sense of them; for some cried out much against Cain, Ishmael,
Esau, Corah, Balaam, Judas, &c. not regarding that the nature of these
was yet alive in themselves; whereby they always applied to others that
nature, in which they themselves lived.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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