George Fox (1624-1691)

Epistle 296
1673

“Concerning Womens Meetings”

FRIENDS, All keep your Meetings in the Power of the Lord GOd, that hath gathered you; and none to quench the Spirit, nor despise Prophesying; and so keep up your Testimony in publick and private.

Concerning your Womens-Meetings; encourage all the Women of Families that are convinced, and minds Vertue, and loves the Truth, and walks in it, that they may come up into God’s Service, that they may be serviceable in their Generation an din the Creation, and come into the Practice of the pure Religion, which you have received from God fro above, that every one may know their Duty in it, and their Service, in the Power and Wisdom of God; for now the Practick Part is called for: People must not always be talking and hearing, but they must come into Obedience to the Great Power of the Great God of Heaven and Earth.

. . . Therefore train up your young Women to know their Duty . . . that they may be in their Services and Places, which they are to do in the Power and Wisdom of God; by which you are kept open to the Lord, to receive of his Gifts, and Graces, and of his Life, through which you are to minister one to another: And all keeping in it there is none to lett or stop its flowing, but through it you all are to be watered as a Garden of Plants, by which they are nourished; and so all be faithful and diligent in the Lord’s Business, and make all the sober Women, professing Truth in the Country about you, acquainted with this thing, and when you have them together at the Monthly Meeting, read this among them. So no more but my Love.

G.F.