Friends General Conference

Together we nurture the spiritual vitality of Friends

Adult Education Reading Group: The Journal of George Fox

All of the quotations are from the Journal of George Fox, edited by John L. Nickalls (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, 1985).  We will approach these passages in a modified worship sharing approach.

 

Here are the passages that we will consider:

 

“And the next First-day I went to Tickhill and there the Friends of that side gathered together and there was a meeting; and a mighty brokenness with the power of God there was amongst the people. And when Friends were in the meeting and fresh and full of the power of God I was moved to go to the steeplehouse, and the priest had done. And he and most of the heads of the parish were got up into the chancel, and I went up among them. And when I began to speak, they fell upon me, and the clerk up with his Bible as I was speaking and hit me in the face that my face gushed out with blood, and it run off me in the steeplehouse. And then they cried, `Take him out of the church,’ and they punched me and thrust me out and beat me sore with books, fists and sticks, and threw me over a hedge into a close and there beat me and then threw me over again. And then they beat me into a house, punching me through the entry, and there I lost my hat and never had it again, and after dragged me into the street, stoning and beating me along, sorely blooded and bruised. And the priest beheld a great part of this his people’s doings.

 

And so after a while I got into the meeting again amongst Friends, and the priest and the people coming by the Friend’s house, I went forth with Friends into the yard and there I spoke to the priest and people, they being in the street and I in the Friend’s yard on a wall. My spirit was revived again by the power of God; for, through their bruising, beating, blooding, stoning, and throwing me down, I was almost mazed and my body sore bruised, but by the power of the Lord I was refreshed again, to him be the glory. And the priest scoffed at us and called us Quakers; but I declared to them the word of life and showed to them the fruits of their teachers and how they dishonoured Christianity. And the Lord’s power was so over them all, and the word of life declared in so much power and dread to them, that the priest fell a-trembling himself, so that one said to him, `Look how the priest trembles and shakes, he is turned a Quaker also’” (Fox, p. 99).

Clerked by Stanford Searl

 

Sunday, June 17, 2018 - 8:30am
SMFM Meeting House
United States
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