Fox's Religious Thinking...

A bit more of Fox's religious thinking (according to Rufus Jones)

Names Fox used for the "Inner Light": "The Christ Within"; "the Spirit of God
within us"; "the Light within"
Fox did not believe in predestination. Every person comes into the world from
the creative hand of God with the divine possibility of coming into the
condition of Adam before he fell. The individual himself must no doubt first
come up through the flaming sword, through struggle, temptation and suffering,
but the possibility of that victorious attainment lies within the sphere of the
will of everyone who is born. Nobody is doomed to go wrong. No one is fated for
evil in advance. No person's destiny is rolled off without the consent of his
own will. The key to all doors that open into life or into death for man is in
his own hands.
It is the guiding principle of the light within that makes a man able to choose
rightly. He cannot be religiously effective unless there is a seed of spiritual
life within him. On this Fox rests his claim that man is the only possible type
of temple that really has a true holy place in it. Outward buildings and, books
and priests are insufficient. Scripture texts do not work by magic, nor as
fetishes. They can be used effectively only as they are spiritually applied.
Spiritual authority, though, is not infallible. Fox was humble about the quality
and range of his own revelations. He does not claim that they are on a level
with the revelations given in Scripture. But he did insist that God spoke to him
and through him and he is confidently certain that God sends him forth to speak
prophetic messages to the world.
The Friends' form of worship then was designed as an outgrowth of Fox's belief
in and his experience of this close, intimate inward relation between God and
man. The problem is never one of going somewhere to find a distant or a hidden
God. The problem rather is one of human preparation for meeting and communing
with a God who is always near at hand but cannot be found and enjoyed until the
soul is ready for such an exalted experience.
Similar to the personality of George Fox, the Friends religion is both an inward
religion and a call to action. George Fox spoke out against slavery, for women
in the ministry, he saw the Light within the Indians and Africans, and wanted
both boys and girls to study everything practical and useful under creation. He
was against war, and refused to fight. He believed in treating all men as
deserving equal respect, be they king or beggar, since all have that of God in
them.