George Fox

George Fox left home at nineteen and spent four years walking from town to town, asking ministers questions none of them could answer. He recorded the turn in his journal: when every human help was gone, he heard a voice that said there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition. From 1647 he preached that Christ teaches His people Himself, and the Friends who gathered around him refused to take oaths, refused to remove their hats to social superiors, and let women preach — each of which was, at the time, a crime or close to it. He was jailed eight times, roughly six years in total, beaten by mobs more than once, and traveled to the West Indies, America and Holland. Friends' distinctive teaching on the inward light set them apart from the Puritans around them, but Fox's insistence that faith is a living encounter rather than an inherited form outlasted the quarrel.