There were two kinds of service which the devoted leader rendered to Christian truth—he preached it with zeal and unction, and he suffered for its sake. His sufferings were unquestionably often the result of his own unwisdom. Many Friends themselves now lament his want of a conciliatory spirit. He could not put himself in the place of others, so as to see how they viewed himself, his conduct and his claims. Thus he was constantly led to impute dishonest and impure motives to others if they did not agree with him. All but his own unpaid ministers were "priests" and "hirelings" and so on. But nothing can justify the treatment he received, often through the connivance, sometimes from the instigation, of clergymen and magistrates. Whitefield's hootings and peltings were nothing, in comparison with Fox's stonings, and brutal beatings, and horrible imprisonments. As Marsden says, "He rebuked sin with the authority of a prophet, and he met with a prophet's reward."
We must remember in extenuation of his admitted faults that he aimed to be a reformer, appealing afresh to first principles in conduct, and seeking to arouse others to feel their force. He purposely set himself against mere conventionalism, especially when it fostered pride or cloaked some rottenness in society. When persecuted, he never resorted to flattery or depended on wheedling, but appealed to conscience and to the humane or Christian feelings which ought to have been in the breast of the persecutor.
He proved to the full the power of passive endurance. Smitten on the one cheek, he literally turned the other. He believed that a large share of his work for the Master was in the testimony of suffering, and he was more anxious to be obedient than to avoid what seemed to him the pains and penalties of obedience. He would not walk out of prison unless he could do it not only honourably, but conscientiously, satisfied that he was not flinching from his appointed testimony. He truly gloried in afflictions for Christ's sake. While refusing to honour an unchristian statute by keeping it, he bore patiently and unresistingly the legal penalties, unshaken in his loyalty to the government and unsoured in his disposition towards mankind. But further, Fox clearly saw that endurance was sure to end in victory, and he inspired his friends with the same conviction. "The more they imprison me," he writes triumphantly, "the more the truth spreads." In the same spirit said William Penn at a later date, "I will weary out their malice. Neither great nor good things were ever attained without loss and hardship. The man that would reap and not labour must perish in disappointment." No wonder that men grew weary of punishing those who endured in this spirit. No wonder that the lofty conscientiousness of the Quakers was felt to be the salt which had a large share in counteracting the corruption of the Stuart reigns, and in preserving our civil and religious liberties. Says Orme in his Life of Baxter, "The heroic and persevering conduct of the Quakers in withstanding the interferences of government with the rights of conscience, by which they finally secured those peculiar privileges they so richly deserve to enjoy, entitles them to the veneration of all the friends of civil and religious liberty." And again he says, "Had there been more of the same determined spirit among others which the Friends displayed, the sufferings of all parties would sooner have come to an end. The government must have given way, as the spirit of the country would have been effectually roused. The conduct of the Quakers was infinitely to their honour."
Meanwhile Fox abounded in labours, sparing no exertions to make known the truth and to plead for righteousness. He sought a purer life as much as a purer faith. He went into public houses to plead for temperance, and into fairs to plead for uprightness and honesty, and into courts to plead for justice, as well as into churches to plead for spiritual religion. We must not forget that in those fermenting times it was no uncommon thing for questions and remarks to be thrown at the preacher during divine service, and it was considered quite in order for any one to address the people after the clergyman had finished his sermon. Thus when Fox was speaking in the Ulverston Church, Justice Sawrey cried, "Take him away," but Margaret Fell interposed, "Let him alone; why may not he speak as well as any other?" So that these interruptions were not considered so strange and disorderly then as they seem to us now. But public feeling was against the man and against the truths he preached, and to that public feeling he could not and would not yield. He could not take off his hat before the great, for that was an honour which he reserved for God alone. He felt bound to protest against all flattering titles and speeches, which, though the world counts them harmless civilities, seemed to his sober spirit and delicate conscience such as should neither be given nor received by the followers of the lowly Nazarene. His "thee and thou," and plain speaking, and sober dress, and keen rebukes, brought on him a perfect storm of anger and abuse. He felt that he stood in the forefront of the battle against worldliness, and bore the brunt of it; and he was meekly thankful for such an honourable post.
His first imprisonment was at Nottingham, for interrupting divine service; but he had his triumph, the very Sheriff was converted, and compelled by his new-found zeal to go forth into the market-place, and take up the imprisoned preacher's work. His second term soon followed at Derby, on a charge of blasphemy. He believed in the doctrine of perfection, and told those who opposed him that they pleaded for sin. The Derby Magistrates asked him if he was sanctified, and he answered, "Yes." "Then they asked me if I had no sin? I answered 'Christ my Saviour has taken away my sin and in Him there is no sin.' They asked how we knew that Christ did abide in us? I said, 'By His Spirit that he has given us.' They temptingly asked if any of us were Christ? I answered, 'Nay, we were nothing, Christ is all.'" Yet they found him guilty of blasphemy, confounding him with the fanatical, antinomian Ranters. But if he taught perfection, Oh! how he lived! Let those that reject his teaching excel, or at least equal, his living. In Derby, his jailer was converted, to strengthen and comfort him in his sufferings. Whilst in prison his busy pen poured forth many letters of advice to Friends, and "testimonies" against all forms of iniquity, including war and capital punishment.
Before he was 27, Fox had passed through more varied experience than many have in a long life-time. Honour and revilings, converts and imprisonments, love for the gospel's sake and cruel beatings by the mob, nearly ending in death—these had already been his portion. But his work was now bearing much fruit. In one twelve-months, 1650-1, he gained such staunch helpers as Richard Farnsworth, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, Justice Hotham, and Captain Purslow. Soon afterwards the Fells of Swarthmoor were led to Christ by his preaching and became the most devoted of adherents. Soon his followers could be numbered by thousands. It was not the strength of his arguments that gained them; the age was overdone with reasoning. Fox mocked their syllogisms with grim humour. There was a wonderful spiritual power about him. He spoke naturally, with simple, direct earnestness, and overwhelming vehemence, right to the conscience of the hearers. He made people both listen and understand him, and feel the power of the truth in a way which many did not like. He was a wonderful evangelist. What his cultured convert, Isaac Pennington, the Rutherford of Quakerism, said of Friends generally, is applicable to him. They might offend his taste and move him to contempt by their intellectual poverty, but they compelled him to respect their spiritual power and their deep acquaintance with the things of God.
Then again the new Society was a real brotherhood. The members stood shoulder to shoulder as fellow servants of the one Master. Their only emulation was which should do most and suffer most cheerfully. Their great question was "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Where wilt Thou have me to go?" The Jesuit was ready to go at an hour's notice wherever the Pope sent him. The Quaker was as ready in his obedience to the voice within. Not only Great Britain, but Italy, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt heard the truth before 1662. John Stubbs, "a remarkable Oriental scholar," and Henry Fell, who was also "well versed in Arabic and Hebrew," set out for the land of Prester John, but were stopped by the English Consul at Alexandria. Their leader was chief simply through gifts and devotedness. So strongly were Friends attached to him that when he was in Launceston gaol, one of them went to Cromwell and offered to lie in prison in his stead; which made the Protector turn to those around him and ask, "Which of you would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?" And Fox showed himself worthy of such devotion by always seeking the post of danger and the most arduous work. Urgent he might be, for he was tremendously in earnest, but to speak as Hepworth Dixon does of his "imperious instincts" simply shows ignorance of the man.
For centuries no such zealous and noble-spirited evangelism had been seen. No wonder that it won its way. Many who had been rich, like Isaac Pennington, were content to become poor by fines and distraints for "the truth's sake." Most nobly did they help each other. If they did not insist on community of goods as a theory, they carried out the spirit of it in practice.
There are two marked stages in Fox's work; first the Evangelistic Stage, and then the Organising Stage, which was, of course, overlapt by the other. Let us trace the salient points in his evangelistic work. In 1654 he was brought before Cromwell, and made a good impression on that keen judge of men. His sincerity stood testing, his zeal for God was manifestly genuine, and the grand, though not faultless Protector, learnt heartily to respect him. As he was turning to leave him, Cromwell caught him by the hand and said, "Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other." Next year he visited him again, to lay before him the ill-treatment to which Friends were subjected.