After this, finding his health shattered by his long imprisonment and arduous labours, he settled down in London, quietly, though not uselessly, awaiting the end. His correspondence was most extensive, and he wrote many tracts and pamphlets as was his habit. One of his last letters was written to the lately-bereaved widow of Barclay, the Apologist, and is a model of Christian consolation. He tells her:--"Thou and thy family may rejoice that thou hadst such an offering to offer up unto the Lord as thy dear husband; who, I know is well in the Lord in whom he died, and is at rest from his labours, and his works do follow him." He signs himself one "who had a great love and respect for thy dear husband, for his work and service in the Lord, who is content in the will of God, and all things that he doeth--and so thou must be." But besides this literary work, he laboured zealously in the pastoral work, visiting the sick and afflicted, and endeavouring to "bring into the way of truth such as had erred."
He watched the passing of the Toleration Act with the deepest interest. It was a most welcome relief to Friends, especially those in Ireland. The losses sustained by the Irish Quakers were enormous. In one year (1689) they were estimated at £100,000, many being stripped of all they had (see Besse's Sufferings). George Fox not only collected such facts as these for publication, but, even in his last days of suffering and prostration, attended at the House of Commons to interest the members in the sufferings of his brethren, and to see that the Toleration Act was "done comprehensively and effectually."
He was equally zealous in his attendance on public worship. When so infirm that he could hardly sit through a service, he would not desist, and often afterwards had to lie down on a bed until recruited. He was determined, if possible, to die in harness, and God gave him his heart's desire.
He was especially anxious lest spiritual religion should decline, now that persecution had ceased, and Friends began to prosper in business. He wrote them an epistle of loving, but earnest expostulation, warning the young against the fashions of the world, and the old against the deceitfulness of riches. To the latter he pointedly says, "Take heed that you are not _making your graves_ while you are alive outwardly." To some ministers who had gone to America he writes similar stirring words of counsel:--"And all grow in the faith and grace of Christ, _that ye may not be like dwarfs_; for a dwarf shall not come near to offer upon God's altar, though he may eat of God's bread that he may grow by it."