I had thought to go next day to Haarlem; but a fast being appointed to be kept that day, I was stopped in my spirit, and moved to stay at Friends’ meeting that day at Amsterdam. We had a very large meeting, a great concourse of people coming to it, and amongst them many great persons. The Lord’s power was over the meeting; and in the openings thereof I was moved to declare to the people, “that no man, by all his wit and study, nor by reading history in his own will, could declare or know the generation of Christ, who was, not begotten by the will of man, but by the will of God.” After I had largely opened this unto them, “I showed them the difference between the true fast and the false; manifesting, that the professed Christians, Jews, and Turks, were out of the true fast, and fasted for strife and debate, being under the band and fists of iniquity and oppression, wherewith they were smiting one another; but the pure hands were not lifted up to God. And though they did all appear to men to fast, and did hang down their heads for a day like a bulrush, yet that was not the fast which God did accept; but in that state all their bones were dry, and when they called upon the Lord, he did not answer them, neither did their health grow; for they kept their own fast and not the Lord’s. I exhorted them to keep the Lord’s fast, which was to fast from sin and iniquity, from strife and debate, from violence and oppression, and to abstain from every appearance of evil.” These things were opened to the astonishment of the fasters; and the meeting ended peaceably and well. I went to HAARLEM the day following, having before appointed a meeting. Peter Hendricks and Gertrude Dirick Nieson went with me; and a blessed meeting we had. There were professors of several sorts, and a priest of the Lutherans, who sat very attentive for several hours, while I declared the truth amongst them, Gertrude interpreting. When the meeting was done, the priest said, “he had heard nothing but what was according to the Word of God; and desired that the blessing of the Lord might rest upon us, and our assemblies.” Others also confessed to the truth, saying, “they had never heard things so plainly opened to their understandings before.” We stayed that night at Haarlem at a Friend’s house, whose name was Dirick Klassen; and, returning next day to AMSTERDAM, went to Gertrude’s house; where we had not been long, before a priest of great note, who had formerly belonged to the Emperor of Germany, and with him another German priest came, desiring to have some conference with me. I took the opportunity to declare the way of truth unto them, opening unto them “how they might come to know God and Christ, and his law and gospel;” and showing them that “they could never know it by study, nor by philosophy, but by divine revelation through the Spirit of God, opening to them in the stillness of their minds.” The men were tender, and went away well satisfied.