George Fox

“ The first I find that was thus immediately reached in his mind, was a young man called George Fox, born at Drayton in Leicestershire, in the month called July, in the year 1624, from parents that were members of the public church, or church of England, as appeareth to me from a paper, in his life-time drawn up by his order, at my request, and sent me. His father was Christopher Fox, a weaver by trade, an honest man, and of such a virtuous life, that his neighbours were used to call him Righteous Christer. ”

“ George Fox says, "It was opened to me," or "at the command of God I did so and so." "Then at the command of God, on the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox being just nineteen) , I left my relations and brake off all familiarity or friendship with young or old." "About the beginning of the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings before the reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English, alike untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary, he was a master. ”

“ All this work of organization was effected while Fox himself was in the saddle, carrying his message to town after town, interrupted by long absences in jail and dungeon, and steadily opposed by the fanatical antinomian elements which had flocked to his standard. It is not the least mark of his genius that in the face of an almost unparalleled persecution he left his fifty thousand followers in Great Britain and Ireland formed into a working and growing body, with equally well-organized meetings in Holland, New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. ”

“ Perhaps no other human headpiece has been the cause of so much stir in society as the hat of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. We have seen the pilgrims at Thonon, in Savoy, kiss the hat which the eager Francis de Sales forgot to put on his head when he started upon his preaching mission against the Calvinists. What would one give to see the far more important hat which George Fox first refused to put off in the presence of the magistrates and ministers of Cromwell's reign? "Proud flesh," says George Fox, "looks for hat-honour." ”

“ James Nayler at any rate decided to become one of Fox's followers, and let the priest do his worst. It [306] may have been at his house that George Fox lodged that night, thankful for its shelter, having slept under a hedge the night before. When Fox left, Nayler did not go with him, but remained quietly at home. Having been a farmer's son before he became a soldier, he quietly returned to his farming when he left the army. ”

“ Fox died at his residence near Auckland, New Zealand, on 23 June 1893, aged 81 (Times, 24 June 1893) . Fox's generous nature and quick impulsive temperament made him an impatient critic alike of Sir George Grey's devious tactics, and of the slow-moving policy of the colonial office. The same qualities caused him to show to better advantage as the fighting leader of an opposition than when on the defensive as minister. But as his colony's strenuous champion and as the far-sighted advocate of peace and temperance, he is remembered with reverence in New Zealand. ”

“ In 1649, while Stephens was conducting a lecture at Market Bosworth, Fox interposed, Stephens cried out that he was mad, and Fox, stoned out of the town by a rabble, set down the 'deceitful priest' as his 'great persecutor.' A discussion between them at Drayton in 1654 is graphically narrated in Fox's 'Journal.' 'Neighbours,' said Stephens, 'this is the business: George Fox is come to the light of the sun, and now he thinks to put out my starlight.' With anabaptists, and with Gerard Winstanley [q. v.] the universalist, Stephens had similar discussions, when they invaded his parish. ”

“ In 1668 he lent assistance to George Fox in his attempt to crush John Perrot, leader of a body of dissentient who insisted on wearing their hats during worship, and he travelled with Fox through the west of England on an organising expedition. ”

“ He visited the Court, for the first time since his father's death, to plead for George Fox's liberty. It was an errand on which for the next fifteen years he was often to go. He seems to have had a wonderful power of drawing out the best side of the royal brothers; and no nobler sight can be pictured than the courtly Friend, hating the court for its worldliness and sin, but frequenting it to speak bold words of truth or gentle pleas for mercy; feeling that his influence there was a [Pg 54] trust not to be neglected, but wielding it with constant watchfulness and wonderful self-control. ”

“ George struggled hard against it; he hated Fox not merely for political reasons, but because he believed that he encouraged the Prince of Wales in evil courses, and in unfilial conduct (ib. i. 269) . The prince was intimate with Fox, and upheld him as a politician, greatly to his father's annoyance. Although the king used every effort to exclude Fox from the administration (Courts and Cabinets, i. 169, 172, 213) , he was beaten by the coalition, and on 2 April Fox took office as foreign secretary with North and under the headship of the Duke of Portland. ”

“ In the summer of 1671, George Fox and some other Friends visited the West Indies and the continent of [Pg 30] America, to push the work of evangelisation and of organising the societies there. They landed in Barbadoes, after a voyage enlivened by constant dangers from the leakiness of the vessel, and once by an almost miraculous escape from capture by a Sallee man-of-war. Fox's son-in-law, John Rous, was in the company, and on landing he was at once taken to the house of Mr. Rous, senior, who was a wealthy sugar planter. ”

“ Some of his friends in the town desired George Fox to visit the sufferer. 'I went up to him in his chamber,' says Fox in his Journal, 'and spake the word of life to him, and was moved to pray by him, and the Lord was entreated and restored him to health. When I was come down the stairs into a lower room and was speaking to the servants, a serving-man of his came raving out of another room, with a naked rapier in his hand, and set it just to my side. I looked steadfastly on him and said "Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt thou do with thy carnal weapon, it is no more to me than a straw." ”

“ The moon, hidden at her rising by a bank of clouds, had now climbed high above them, and shone down, a golden lamp from the clear evening sky. It was already dusk when the Shepherd of Pendle disappeared with his flock into the dewy valley. It was already light again, with the pallid light of the moon, when at length George Fox descended old Pendle Hill. Heavily he trod and slowly. Wrapped in thought was he, as a man who has seen things greater and more mysterious than he can express or comprehend. ”

“ The Author has long believed that a popular sketch of the Life and Work of George Fox was wanted. His noble labours in the Gospel, and the many excellences of his character are not known as they deserve to be. The story of his life is full of dramatic interest, and the author has endeavoured to tell it with sympathy and yet with faithfulness.
Too few outside the Society of Friends are aware of the great and happy change which has lately come over it. ”

“ These little touches of life and character are worth pages of laboured description; they show the spirit of the people; they show the joy with which Fox and his friends were welcomed, when the wife of the chief secretary herself paddled her little canoe to bring them safely on shore. It is a genuine picture of simple primeval life. And not alone did George Fox preach to the white settlers of “the light of the Spirit of God which is in every one,” but 221to the natives of the wilderness also, who approved of what he said, and “received the truth lovingly ”

“ 'Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History,' says Teufelsdröckh, 'is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. ”

“ The wicked jailer, one Hunter, a young fellow, would come behind and give the horse a lash with his whip, and make him skip and leap; so that I, being weak, had much ado to sit on him; then he would come and look me in the face and say, "How do you, Mr. Fox?" I told him it was not civil in him to do so. The Lord cut him off soon after.
When we were come to Bentham, in Yorkshire, there met us many troopers and a marshal; and many [438] of the gentry of the country were come in, and abundance of people to take a view of me. ”

“ This is the central teaching of George Fox. Everything else comes out of this elemental truth. It is, as he says, clearly enough taught in the Scriptures, but he now saw the truth as an immediate revelation—as a primary fact of experience.
[33] The soul's own assurance of salvation was well proclaimed by Luther, but the high and joyous experience was well-nigh lost in Calvinistic England. Fox reaffirms the privilege of this experience. He proclaims no man's infallibility, but rather the infallibility of the Spirit, in union with which a man may know that he pleases God. ”

“ The Quaker religion which he (George Fox) founded is something which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in England. So far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for a moment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. ”

“ This is Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale.
[175] It will be noticed that Fox is set at liberty on the errors in his indictment, and not on a judicial decision that it is illegal to imprison on a præmunire.
[176] George Fox was now only fifty-one years old, but he was prematurely broken by the sufferings and exposures which only such an iron constitution as he possessed could have endured for thirty years. He still had fourteen years to live, but from now on a decided change appears. There is no cessation of activity, but it is activity of a quieter sort. ”

“ For in all things he acquitted himself like a man, yea, a strong man, a new and heavenly-minded man; a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making." [F]
[46]
THE TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM PENN CONCERNING THAT FAITHFUL SERVANT GEORGE FOX.
The blessed instrument of and in this day of God, and of whom I am now about to write, was George Fox, distinguished from another of that name, by that other's addition of younger to his name in all his writings; not that he was so in years, but that he was so in the truth; but he was also a worthy man, witness and servant of God in his time. ”

“ From this time till 1689 she resided at Swarthmore, and was several times fined for permitting meetings to take place at her house. Towards the end of the year she spent some months in or near London with her husband, and then returned home. In January 1691 George Fox died, and from this time his widow, although she continued to take great interest in the affairs of the Society of Friends, does not appear to have been actively employed. ”

“ FOX, SIR WILLIAM (1812-1893) , New Zealand statesman, third son of George Townshend Fox, deputy-lieutenant for Durham county, was born in England on the 9th of June 1812, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1832. Called to the bar in 1842, he emigrated immediately thereafter to New Zealand, where, on the death of Captain Arthur Wakefield, killed in 1843 in the Wairau massacre, he became the New Zealand Company’s agent for the South Island. ”

“ But Fox approached the high game of politics in the same spirit in which he approached the faro table at Brooks. [16] Not a year was gone by since he had apostrophized the Administration of his rival in the following terms: "From the moment," he said, "when I shall make any terms with one of them, I will rest satisfied to be called the most infamous of mankind. I would not for an instant think of a coalition with men who in every public and private transaction as ministers, have shown themselves void of every principle of honour and honesty. ”

“ Murray was a Scot, and too lately been the object of clamour on the worst species of Scotch principles. The Chancellor was already jealous of him; and both Fox and Pitt would have concurred for his exclusion. He was timid himself, and always waving what he was always courting. This Gordian Knot was soon cut; and the world that had pretended to look out for a genius worthy to govern them, in six days descended from their ambition, and submitted to be ruled by no abilities at all.
Fox acted reserve and retirement, and expected to be wooed. His enemies indulged this humour, and deceived him. ”

“ Does he understand his place, either as a soldier or a justice of the peace? For he tells you here that I went aside with him, and told him what a design I had in hand, and how serviceable he might be for my design: that I could raise forty [252] thousand men in an hour's time, bring in King Charles, and involve the nation in blood. He saith, moreover, that he would have aided me out of the country, but I would not go; and therefore he committed me to prison for want of sureties for the good behaviour, as the mittimus declares. ”

“ Mr. Fox was most unaccountably afraid of it, insomuch that he could not conceal it from anybody, and was very imprudent in his opposition to it in the House of Commons, where he was left almost single, being deserted by Grenville, Elliot, and most of the second people. He deprecated it in vain with Lord Bute. It ended without doing him any publick harm, however, and has left in the world the impression of the most useless, contemptible, ridiculous, childish, and absurd measure ever proposed by Government, as attempts of that sort usually do, having failed. ”