The well-known and often-quoted postscript to the Balby Advices—"given forth at a General Meeting of Friends at Balby in Yorkshire, in the ninth month 1656, from The Spirit of Truth to the Children of Light"—still describes the spirit in which this and all other books of discipline should be written and read:
Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be guided: and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.