After I had finished my service for the Lord in that city, I departed thence into GLOUCESTERSHIRE, where we had many large and precious meetings; and the Lord’s everlasting power flowed over all. From Gloucestershire I passed into WILTSHIRE, where also we had many blessed meetings. At SLAUGHTERFORD, in Wiltshire, we had a very good meeting, though we met there with much opposition from some who had set themselves against WOMEN’S MEETINGS; which I was moved of the Lord to recommend to Friends, for the benefit and advantage of the Church of Christ. “That faithful women, who were called to the belief of the truth, being made partakers of the same precious faith, and heirs of the same everlasting gospel of life and salvation that men are, might in like manner come into the possession and practice of the gospel order, and therein be meet-helps unto the men in the restoration, in the service of truth, in the affairs of the church, as they are outwardly in civil, or temporal things. That so all the family of God, women as well as men, might know, possess, perform, and discharge their offices and services in the house of God, whereby the poor might be better taken care of, the younger instructed, informed, and taught in the way of God; the loose and disorderly reproved and admonished in the fear of the Lord; the clearness of persons proposing marriage more closely and strictly inquired into in the wisdom of God; and all the members of the spiritual body, the church, might watch over and be helpful to each other in love.” But after these opposers had run into much contention and wrangling, the power of the Lord struck down one of the chief of them, so that his spirit sunk, and he came to be sensible of the evil he had done in opposing God’s heavenly power, and confessed his error before Friends; and afterwards gave forth a paper of condemnation, wherein he declared, “that he did wilfully oppose (although I often warned him to take heed,) until the fire of the Lord did burn within him; and he saw the angel of the Lord with his sword drawn in his hand, ready to cut him off,” &c. Notwithstanding the opposition at the meeting at Slaughterford, yet a very good and serviceable one it was; for occasion was thereby administered to answer their objections and cavils, and to open the services of women in and for the church. At this the women’s meetings, for that county, were established in the blessed power of God.