George Fox’s Journal V1

This volume begins with Appreciations of Fox by his wife and Thomas Ellwood. It is the record of his life and ministry. Fox developed strong opinions about religion and rebelled against the state control of the Church of England. In 1643 he began touring the country giving sermons where he argued that consecrated buildings and ordained ministers were irrelevant to the individual seeking God. After the formation of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1652, Fox and his associates suffered under brutal persecution from the English government. His journal was initially dictated to his stepson-in-law when they were both imprisoned in the mid-1670s. It reads with the burning rage against social injustice and a visionary sense of God that came from Fox’s own persecution and suffering.