CHAPTER 2: George Fox on Inwar d ness
2.2. The importance of Inwardness for George Fox Fox roused Friends exhorting them that:
… All friends of the Lord everywhere, whose minds are turned within towards the Lord, take heed and hearken to the light within you, which is the light of Christ and of God, which will call your minds to within (as ye heed it) which were abroad in the creatures; that by it your minds be renewed, and by it turned to God, with that which is pure to worship the Living God, the lord of hosts, over all the creatures
…wait all in that which calls your mind inward … that the mind shall feed upon nothing but the pure light of God ...7
The ministry above links the ‘inward’ to ‘the light within’ and that which ‘is pure’. It indicates the need to wait, suggesting that a focussed, attentive mind, or attentive presence, is necessary for opening to the light ‘in pure worship’. Here Fox is offering a
straightforward set of instructions for a spiritual practice intended to lead to unmediated
5 Fox, G. (Nickalls Ed.) The Journal of George Fox, and Fox, G., Works. Some of the ‘threads’ of Fox’s experience, ministry, and teaching/preaching, as indicative of Conditions and Elements of a spiritual practice that he advocated, are highlighted by underlining in the chapter; this is also the case in relation to Penington and Barclay in chapters 3 and 4 and contemporary references in chapter 5.
6 Ambler. R. A Light to Live By, p. 10 refers to this as ‘passive attention’. Keiser suggests, however, that although the silence entered is ‘formless’ it remains an area of some activity, a creative process, since the worshipper makes a choice as to focus – See ‘Reflecting Theologically from the Gathered Meeting: The Nature and Origin of Quaker Theology’ Quaker Theology, 2, (2000).
7 Fox, G Works, Epistle LV1 pp. 71-72. See also Figures 1 and 2 within the chapter.
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encounters with God.8 The injunction to ‘turn within’ that underpins much of Fox’s teaching rests on the recognition that, ‘God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands … but in people’s hearts … his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them’.9 The teaching here is in accordance with his emphasis on the New Covenant, of which Fox, referring to the ‘blood of Christ’, said: ‘I saw it, the blood of the New Covenant, how it came into the heart’.10
In many references Fox writes of ‘bringing people off’ the outwardness of the world.
He indicates that he was to bring people off ‘the world’s religions, which are vain’: off ‘all the world’s fellowships:11 off ‘Jewish ceremonies and from heathenish fables…’12 off ‘all the world’s ways and teachers’13 i.e. from all that is creaturely and outward. Fox is to bring ‘them [all people] to the Spirit of God in themselves’.14 This move away from out-turned concerns and towards Inwardness was based on Fox’s own experience and is reflected in his teaching and preaching to all people. It is a message of detachment from the ‘creaturely’ in favour of that which is spiritually known and lived, ‘seen’ by Fox to come into the hearts of all people, known in and through Christ.
Gwyn suggests that Fox had ‘a breakthrough experience’ which he wrote about in his Journal, as hearing a voice, saying ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus that can speak to
8 See Table 1 on spiritual practice/Meeting for Worship. Use of the metaphor ‘light’ in speaking of God is by no means the prerogative of Friends. This 17th Century language, and the thinking from which it derives, continues to be used in many texts both of Western and the Eastern Religious traditions. It is only necessary to turn to advices 1, 3, and 5, in the current Advices and Queries (London: The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain (1995, 1997, and 2008)of British Quakerism, to find the emphasis Friends place on Light. Also see Moore, R. Consciences pp. 102-3 in relation to ambiguous use of the term ‘light’ among early Quakers.
9 Fox, Journal, p. 8.
10 Fox , ibid, p. 23.
11 Fox, ibid, p. 35.
12 Fox, ibid. p. 36.
13 Fox, ibid, p. 104.
14 Fox, ibid, p. 85.
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thy condition’.15 This ‘shifted Fox from seeking to what he would later describe as standing still in the light of Christ’.16 Gwyn maintains that, ‘[T]his was a ‘consciousness raising’ experience, opening the way for a new self to be constructed by the direct
guidance of the light and the nurture of others struggling through the same experience’.17 For Fox, ‘standing still’ is ‘standing still in the light’; it is a teaching that is irrevocably tied to recognition that the Lord’s teaching is within people.18 It is in Inwardness that Fox found ‘the unchangeable truth’ which gave him strength19 and which he propagated as ‘the light of Jesus Christ, which would keep their [people’s] minds to the unchangeable, who is the way to the Father…’20
Inwardness and stillness are, then, often interwoven in Fox’s teaching.21 Though not always linked directly in his spoken or written words, these two aspects of dwelling in Christ and being open to the Christ, who dwells within human beings, are found in a totality of experience. Fox says, ‘Christ hath been talked of, but now he is come and possessed … The Son of God hath been talked of, but now he is come, and has given us an understanding. Unity hath been talked of, but now it is come…’22 and, ‘Therefore ye, who know the love of God and the law of his Spirit, and the freedom that is in Jesus Christ, stand fast in him, in that divine faith which he is the author of in you’.23
15 Gwyn, D. in Dandelion, B. P., Gwyn, D. and Peat, T. (eds.), Heaven on Earth-Quakers and the Second Coming (Kelso: Curlew, 1998), referring to, Journal, p. 11.
16 Fox’s Works, Epistle X is discussed in section 2.3.
17 Gwyn et al, ibid, p. 103.
18 Fox, Journal, p. 76, in the sense that God dwelt within the temple of the body; often this notion is tied to inwardness as ‘in people’s hearts’, Journal, p. 8.
19 Fox, ibid, p. 13.
20 Fox, ibid, p. 13.
21 See section 2.3 below.
22 Fox, ibid, p. 204, the significance of unity in Fox’s teaching is discussed elsewhere, see section 2.5 in particular.
23 Fox, ibid, p. 17.
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For Fox it is essential that all people should recognise that in Christ’s coming
something exceptional occurred and that Friends had a role ‘to sound forth the everlasting Gospel’. The expression that Christ is ‘the author’ of humankind is particularly
significant.24 It implies that without Christ humanity is unfinished; what is necessary is that people come to know God by being in the Spirit and having the Spirit in themselves.
Fox says, ‘[T]hough they [people at large] may have his light to condemn them that hate it, yet they can never bring any into unity and fellowship in the Spirit, except they be in it’.25 So Fox speaks of feeling the light and thus feeling Christ in the mind as the means of knowing for oneself that Christ, the Son of God, is now among the people and thus the means to Unity is come.26 The Quaker phrase that ensued concerns ‘that of God’ within the self, and Fox is persistent in urging his followers ‘to turn within’ and to ‘stand still’ in the pure light of God.27