The experience of being gathered by God leads into the experience of being guided by God. This was not just the experience of individuals, important though this is. The key to the development of Quakerism is the understanding of corporate guidance which tests and informs individual leadings. At the heart of this is the meeting for worship where Christ, the Inward Light, is present and is met. Fox often wrote that Christ has come to teach his people himself. From this teaching comes Quaker faith & practice.
The testimonies
Truth
'Truth' is a complex concept; sometimes the word is used for God, sometimes for the conviction that arises from worship, sometimes for the way of life.
Witnessing to Truth involved the keeping up of public meetings for worship, whatever the penalties involved. In 1675, during a time of great persecution, a 'solemn general meeting of many faithful friends and brethren', issued the following advice:
It hath been our care and practice from the beginning that an open testimony for the Lord should be borne and a public standard for truth and righteousness upheld in the power and Spirit of God by our open and known meetings, ... so it is our advice and judgment that all Friends gathered in the name of Jesus keep up these public testimonies in their respective places, and not decline, forsake or remove their public assemblies, because of times of suffering as worldly, fearful and politic professors have done because of informers and the like persecutors; for such practices are not consistent with the nobility of the truth and therefore not to be owned in the Church of Christ.
Next: 19.35
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