Thursday, September 06, 2007

From the Journal of John Churchman, 1740

In this journey, travelling in Talbot County, an elderly man asked us if we saw some posts to which he pointed, and added, the first meeting George Fox [the founder of Quakerism] had on this side of the Chesapeake bay, was held in a tobacco house there, which was then new, and those posts were part of it. John Browning rode to them, and sat on his horse very quiet; and returning to us again with more speed than he went, I asked him what he saw amongst those old posts; and he answered, "I would not have missed what I saw for five pounds, for I saw the root and ground of idolatry. Before I went, I thought perhaps I might have felt some secret virtue in the place where George Fox had stood and preached, whom I believe to have been a good man; but whilst I stood there, I was secretly informed, that if George was a good man, he was in heaven, and not there, and virtue is not to be communicated by dead things, whether posts, earth, or curious pictures, but by the power of God, who is the fountain of living virtue." A lesson, which if rightly learned, would wean from the worship of images and adoration of relicks.

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