George Fox (1624 – 1691) was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. In 1647 Fox began to preach publicly in market-places, fields, appointed meetings of various kinds or even sometimes "steeple-houses" after the service. His powerful preaching began to attract a small following. By 1651 he had gathered other talented preachers around him and continued to roam the country despite a harsh reception from some listeners, who would whip and beat them to drive them away. Fox was imprisoned again for refusing to swear oaths after being captured at Armscote, Worcestershire. After his release he began dictating what would be published after his death as his journal and devoted his time to his written output: letters, both public and private, as well as books and essays.
THE volume of Epistles from which the present selection is made, was published in folio, in the year 1698. It is now extremely scarce. The letters which it contains were written, from about the year 1648 to 1690. They embrace a period of full forty years; and, being composed at such different times, and on such various occasions, they serve materially to illustrate the early history of the Friend's Society, and the real character and views of the chief instrument of its formation. This character and these views are, in the present day of ease, well worthy of our study.
George Fox (1624 - 1691)
Was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. This was a group the Lord started through the ministry of George Fox. God called him apart from all other forms of Christendom in his day because of the lack of Biblical obedience and holiness.The emphasis in George Fox's ministry was firstly prophetic. He called out the people of God to show them that they had the Holy Spirit of God and could be taught of Him and not to solely rely on the teachings of ecclesiastical leaders. Secondly, he spoke directly to many ministers in his day to show them they were hirelings and did not have a true shepherds heart for the people of God rather they were seeking after financial gain.
Founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers). George Fox was born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, England, the son of Puritan parents. Little is known of his early life, apart from what he wrote in his journal: "In my very young years, I had a gravity and stayedness of mind and spirit not usual in young children. Insomuch that, when I saw old men behave lightly and wantonly toward each other, I had a dislike thereof raise in my heart, and I said within myself, `If ever I come to be a man, surely I shall not do so, nor be so wanton.'"
At the age of 19, he gained deep, personal assurance of his salvation and began to travel as an itinerant preacher, seeking a return to the simple practices of the New Testament. He abhorred technical theology, and preached a faith borne of experience, freshly fed and guided by the immediate presence of the Holy Spirit.
Fox was persecuted almost daily, yet his power of endurance was phenomenal. He was beaten with dogwhips, knocked down with fists and stones, brutally struck with pikestaves, hard beset by mobs, incarcerated eight times in the pestilential jails, prisons, castles and dungeons--yet he went straightforward with his mission as though he had discovered some fresh courage which made him impervious to man's inhumanity.
He undertook as far as possible to let the new life in Christ take its own free course of development in his ministry. He shunned rigid forms and static systems, and for that reason he refused to head a new sect or to start a new denomination, or to begin a new church. He would not build an organization of any kind. His followers at first called themselves "Children of the Light," and later adopted the name "The Society (or Fellowship) of Friends."
Fox preached and traveled for 40 years throughout England, Scotland, Holland, and America. His life demonstrated the truth of his famous saying, "One man raised by God's power to stand and live in the same spirit the apostle and prophets were in, can shake the country for ten miles around."
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