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
About this time I was sorely exercised in going to their courts to cry
for justice, and in speaking and writing to judges and justices to do
justly; in warning such as kept public-houses for entertainment, that
they should not let people have more drink than would do them good; and
in testifying against their wakes or feasts, may-games, sports, plays,
and shows, which trained up people to vanity and looseness, and led them
from the fear of God; and the days they had set forth for holy-days were
usually the times wherein they most dishonoured God by these things.[7]
In fairs, also, and in markets, I was made to declare against their
deceitful merchandise, cheating, and cozening; warning all to deal
justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea, and their nay be
nay; and to do unto others as they would have others do unto them;
forewarning them of the great and terrible day of the Lord, which would
come upon them all. I was moved also to cry against all sorts of music,
and against the mountebanks playing tricks on their stages, for they
burthened the pure life, and stirred up people’s minds to vanity. I was
much exercised, too, with school-masters and school-mistresses, warning
them to teach their children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they
might not be nursed and trained up in lightness, vanity, and wantonness.
Likewise I was made to warn masters and mistresses, fathers and mothers
in private families, to take care that their children and servants might
be trained up in the fear of the Lord; and that they themselves should
be therein examples and patterns of sobriety and virtue to them. For I
saw that as the Jews were to teach their children the law of God and the
old covenant, and to train them up in it, and their servants, yea, the
very strangers were to keep the Sabbath amongst them, and be
circumcised, before they might eat of their sacrifices; so all
Christians, and all that made a profession of Christianity, ought to
train up their children and servants in the new covenant of light,
Christ Jesus, who is God’s salvation to the ends of the earth, that all
may know their salvation: and they ought to train them up in the law of
life, the law of the Spirit, the law of love and of faith; that they
might be made free from the law of sin and death. And all Christians
ought to be circumcised by the Spirit, which puts off the body of the
sins of the flesh, that they may come to eat of the heavenly sacrifice,
Christ Jesus, that true spiritual food, which none can rightly feed upon
but they that are circumcised by the Spirit. Likewise, I was exercised
about the star-gazers, who drew people’s minds from Christ, the bright
and the morning star; and from the Sun of righteousness, by whom the
sun, and moon, and stars, and all things else were made, who is the
wisdom of God, and from whom the right knowledge of all things is
received.
Footnote 7:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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