Suddenly abandoning his servile occupation, he came out in 1647, at the age of twenty-three, as the founder of a new sect; an itinerant preacher, he rebuked the multitudes which he assembled by his fervent words.

Much of his success was due to his earnestness and self-abnegation.

He preached in all parts of England, and visited the American colonies.

The name Quaker is said to have been applied to this sect in 1650, when Fox, arraigned before Judge Bennet, told him to "tremble at the word of the Lord." The establishment of this sect by such a man is one of the strongest illustrations of the eager religious inquiry of the age.
The works of Fox are a very valuable _Journal of his Life and Travels_; _Letters and Testimonies_; _Gospel Truth Demonstrated_,--all of which form the best statement of the origin and tenets of his sect.

Fox was a solemn, reverent, absorbed man; a great reader and fluent expounder of the Scriptures, but fanatical and superstitious; a believer in witchcraft, and in his power to detect witches.