– Edward Burrough 1662

Being orderly come together [you are] not to spend time with needless, unnecessary and fruitless discourses; but to proceed in the wisdom of God, not in the way of the world, as a worldly assembly of men, by hot contests, by seeking to outspeak and overreach one another in discourse as if it were controversy between party and party of men, or two sides violently striving for dominion, not deciding affairs by the greater vote. But in the wisdom, love and fellowship of God, in gravity, patience, meekness, in unity and concord, submitting one to another in lowliness of heart, and in the holy Spirit of truth and righteousness, all things [are] to be carried on; by hearing, and determining every matter coming before you in love, coolness, gentleness and dear unity.

Burrough (1634-63) was one of the leading early Friends known as the Valiant Sixty. On hearing George Fox in 1652 as a teenager he became convinced and quickly became known for his powerful and impassioned preaching. He was arrested for holding an illegal Quaker meeting in 1662 and imprisoned in Newgate Prison in London until his death at age 29