The journal of George Fox, vol. 1 of 2 : $b Being an historical account of his life, travels, sufferings, and Christian experiences.Fox, George
Religion
The journal of George Fox, vol. 1 of 2 : $b Being an historical account of his life, travels, sufferings, and Christian experiences.
Fox, George
Fox, George, 1624-1691
“Your noise is gone up to London before the sober people. What
imprisoning, what gagging, what havoc and spoiling of the goods of
people have you made within these few years! Unlike men; as though you
had never read the Scriptures, or had not minded them! Is this the end
of Carlisle’s religion? is this the end of your ministry; and is this
the end of your church, and of your profession of Christianity? You
have shamed it by your folly, your madness, and blind zeal. Was it not
always the work of the blind guides, watchmen, leaders, and false
prophets, to prepare war against them that would not put into their
mouths? And have not you been the priests’ pack-horses, and
executioners? When they spur you up to bear the sword against the
just, do not you run on against the creatures, that cannot hold up
such as the Scriptures did always testify against? Yet will you lift
up your unholy hands, and call upon God with your polluted lips, and
pretend a fast, who are full of strife and debate. Did your hearts
never burn within you? Did you never come to question your conditions?
Are you wholly given up to do the Devil’s lusts, to persecute? Where
is your loving of enemies? Where is your entertaining of strangers?
Where is your overcoming evil with good? Where are your teachers that
can stop the mouths of gainsayers, and can convince gainsayers and
such as oppose themselves? Have you no ministers of the Spirit, no
soldiers with spiritual weapons displaying Christ’s colours? But all
the dragon’s, the murderer’s, the persecutor’s arm of flesh; Cain’s
weapons, chief priests taking counsel; Judas and the multitude with
swords and staves; Sodom’s company raging about Lot’s house; like the
priests and princes against Jeremiah; like the dragon, beast, and
great whore, and the false church, which John saw, should cast into
prison, and kill, and persecute? Whose weapons are you bearing? Doth
not the false church make merchandise of cattle, corn, wine, and oil,
even to the very souls of men? And hath not all this been since the
true church went into the wilderness? Read Revelations the xiith, with
the xviiith: do you not read and see what a spirit you are of, and
what a bottomless pit you are in? And have not you dishonoured the
place of justice and authority? What! turned your sword backward like
madmen, who are a praise to the evil-doer, and would be a terror to
the good, with all force and might to stop the way of justice! Doth
not the Lord, think you, behold your actions? How many have you
wronged? how many have you imprisoned and persecuted, and put out of
your synagogues? Are you they that must fulfil the prophecy of Christ,
Matt. xxiii. John xvi.?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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