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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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George Fox preaches about the importance of avoiding strife and vanity in our minds, encouraging humility, patience, and love towards one another. He emphasizes the need for servants to work in love as unto God, and for families to lead with the power and love of God. Fox reminds his audience to focus on the pure, guiding light of God within them, leading to spiritual nourishment, strength, and abundance that comes from above.
Be Lowly-Minded
TAKE heed of Strife in your Minds . . for it is the vain Mind, and it is not good. . . . Let none seek for the highest Place, . . . but be Lowly-minded . . . and bear with one another in Patience. . . . And all who are Servants, labour in Love, as unto God. . . . And all who have Families, rule in the Power and Love of God, that that Love may be Head among you; For the time is coming, that it shall be, as with the Servant, so with the Master; and as with the Maid, so with her Mistress. For it is one Seed, that hath raised them up with one Power, out of one Grave, one Death, which Seed all the promises of God are to. . . . . . . Therefore all Friends, mind that which is of God in you, which is pure, which is but One, to guide you to the Father of Life, who gives you Food and Rayment, and Strength, that ye may gather strength and flourish . . . and feed and eat of the Abundance of Riches with him and from him, which filleth all things; and of the daily Bread, which cometh from above, which none can feed upon but who are above the World. . . . Dear Friends, wait upon the Lord, that all of you may grow up in the Inward Man, and be comforted and cherished there, in the things that Eternal.
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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.