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George Fox
George Fox (1624 - 1691). English Dissenter, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire. Apprenticed as a shoemaker, he left home at 19, seeking spiritual truth amid Puritan and Anglican tensions. In 1647, after visions and direct experiences of God, he began preaching an “inner light” accessible to all, rejecting clergy and formal worship. By 1652, he gathered followers in northern England, forming the Quakers, known for pacifism and simplicity. Fox traveled across England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and America, enduring eight imprisonments for his beliefs, including at Lancaster Castle. He wrote Journal (1694) and numerous letters, shaping Quaker theology with calls for equality and justice. Married to Margaret Fell in 1669, a key Quaker leader, they had no children, but she had eight from her prior marriage. His 1660 Declaration rejected violence, influencing conscientious objection. Fox’s emphasis on personal revelation transformed Protestantism, and his writings remain central to Quaker thought.
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Sermon Summary
George Fox emphasizes the importance of unity among believers, urging them to avoid worldly wisdom that creates division. He advocates for innocence, truth, and simplicity as the foundation for genuine unity, where love prevails over evil thoughts. Fox expresses his grief over anything that hinders this unity and encourages friends to focus on the Seed of God within themselves, which has the power to heal and bring peace. He calls for believers to keep their earthly weaknesses under control and to elevate the Seed of God above all enmity, as it is the source of true unity and eternal good.
In Which Seed Shine
AND Friends, keep out of the Worldly-Wise Part, for that will never let People joyn and unite together (in Truth) which enters into the Earth and the Apprehensions of Words; but let Innocency be the Garment, and Truth and Simplicity the Covering. Then in the Innocency ye will have Unity, where there is no Evil Thought, but Love, that thinks no Evil. . . . And let the Weight and Preciousness of Truth be . . . esteemed above all things by you. For here is my Grief, when I hear anything among Friends that hinders their Unity, and makes a Breach, (whereby the Wrong gets Ground) who should love in the Seed, which breaks the Bond of Iniquity, and makes up all Breaches; in the Seed shine, answer the Witness of God in every one, which bruises the Earthly Part under, that brings forth Briars and Thorns, and spreads over the World, and all the contrary. Therefore all ye, which have known the Power of the Lord God, and have tasted of the Seed of God, Live in that, in which ye come to have Unity; that that Part may be kept down: And the Wrong Eye, that looks out at one anothers Weaknesses, that must be kept under, even that, where the Heat, and the Burnings and the Enmity is; the Seed of God a-top of all that must be set, in which is the Unity. Therefore . . . come all to the Seed of God in your own selves; for in that is the Vertue to heal, yea all Nations, Slaughterings, Wounds and Cuttings are the other Weapons in the other Part, which is out of the Seed of God, whose End is Peace; in which is the Unity, which is the Top-stone over all the Enmity, and a-top of it is laid, and bruiseth it all down. I am a Lover of your Soul's Eternal Good, Peace and Unity, in the Kingdom, that stands in the Power, which hath no end. G.F.
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George Fox (1624 - 1691). English Dissenter, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire. Apprenticed as a shoemaker, he left home at 19, seeking spiritual truth amid Puritan and Anglican tensions. In 1647, after visions and direct experiences of God, he began preaching an “inner light” accessible to all, rejecting clergy and formal worship. By 1652, he gathered followers in northern England, forming the Quakers, known for pacifism and simplicity. Fox traveled across England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and America, enduring eight imprisonments for his beliefs, including at Lancaster Castle. He wrote Journal (1694) and numerous letters, shaping Quaker theology with calls for equality and justice. Married to Margaret Fell in 1669, a key Quaker leader, they had no children, but she had eight from her prior marriage. His 1660 Declaration rejected violence, influencing conscientious objection. Fox’s emphasis on personal revelation transformed Protestantism, and his writings remain central to Quaker thought.