George Fox was a very spiritual man. Spirituality guided his life from the moment he quit his job to pursue a higher calling. He claimed to have been led by the Spirit of God, and started exploring religious meetings to search for “illumination from on high.” He studied scripture as well, so much so that people said he knew it all by heart. Eventually he came to the conclusion that every church in England was wrong. Fox challenged the notion of a church building, the paying of pastors, and the workings of a worship service. He thought that hymns, sermons, and even the sacraments were all human hindrances, and were removing the freedom of the Spirit to move and work within an individual. He even said that scripture wasn’t the ultimate authority, that since the Spirit wrote it, the Spirit had authority over scripture. Luther would have cringed at this suggestion. Fox disagreed with Calvinist doctrine, specifically the idea that all humans are totally depraved. Instead, he believed that all humans had an “inner light,” some dim and some bright. If someone follows that inner light, it will lead him or her to God.
Fox stayed quiet about his ideas for a while, before finally speaking out in churches as he felt led by the Spirit. The reaction from people of other Christian groups was rather unfriendly, and often resulted in him being kicked out, beaten, and even stoned on some occasions. However, he did gain a following, and his numbers grew swiftly. They became known as the Quakers and the Friends, and eventually had tens of thousands of members. Their services were silent, allowing people to speak whenever they felt the spirit leading them. The Quaker experience was a spiritual one, denying any human obstacles that would get in the way of the Spirits call on one’s life.
Fox had mystical experiences that he accredits to the Spirit within him. These experiences include a type of ascension to a state of perfection or Christlikeness. He claims to have been at a state like Adam before the fall, a state of innocence and purity that wasn’t condemned with sin. While he speaks of ascension, there is also an inward aspect to these mystical experiences. Fox says he “brought them all to the spirit of God in themselves.” If we all would go to the inner light within us, being led by the spirit toward the truth, that inward reaching into God will ascend us upward to a state of perfection and Christlikeness. It is all very spiritual, and Fox says over and over again that the spirit led him into these states and experiences.
Like stated above, these ideas were not met with open arms. Fox tells of being beaten, whipped, stoned, and hated by many. The people who claimed to be Christians were attacking them violently, proving to Fox that they were in fact not Christians at all. Instead of retaliation, the Quakers chose to endure the suffering and not fight back. They thought it was against the teachings of Christ to repay violence with violence, so instead they suffered and endured.
Fox’s epistles focus on the spiritual life of a Quaker. He talks very little about outward living outside of the context of an inward spiritual life. A common theme is that of a seed. This seed is referring to the “inner light” that all have within them. Focusing on that seed and growing in it and living by it is how to live a spiritual life. Fox’s epistles are very mystical in nature because they all encourage the reader to look within for spiritual growth and success. If God is inside everyone, then the outward actions and practices mean nothing without a focus on the inward relationship with God. Fox still mentions social justice briefly, saying that the Friends need to feed widows and orphans among them. Outside of this short epistle speaking to feeding the poor, the main message is to live life in the Spirit, almost rejecting the outward things of the world. George Fox was by all means a spiritual man, who took it to the extreme by allowing everything he did to be led by and point to the Spirit of God.