William Law (1686-1761) |
William Law, born in 1686, became a Fellow of Emmanuel College,
Cambridge in 1711, but in 1714, at the death of Queen Anne, he became a non-Juror: that is
to say, he found himself unable to take the required oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian
dynasty (who had replaced the Stuart dynasty) as the lawful rulers of the United Kingdom,
and was accordingly ineligible to serve as a university teacher or parish minister. He
became for ten years a private tutor in the family of the historian, Edward Gibbon (who,
despite his generally cynical attitude toward all things Christian, invariably wrote of
Law with respect and admiration), and then retired to his native King's Cliffe. Forbidden
the use of the pulpit and the lecture-hall, he preached through his books. These include
Christian Perfection, the Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration, Spirit of Prayer,
the Way to Divine Knowledge, Spirit of Love, An Humble ~ Earnest, And Affectionate Address
To The Clergy, The Way to Divine Knowledge. And, best-known of all, A Serious Call To a
Devout and Holy Life, published in 1728.
The thesis of this last book, "AN HUMBLE ~ EARNEST, AND Affectionate ADDRESS TO THE
CLERGY" is that God does not merely forgive our disobedience, he calls us to
obedience, and to a life completely centered in Him. He says: "If you will here stop
and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart
will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but because you never
thoroughly intended it." The immediate influence of the book was considerable.
William Law died in 1761 just a few days before his last book, "AN HUMBLE ~ EARNEST,
AND Affectionate ADDRESS TO THE CLERGY", went to the printers.
Dr. Samuel Johnson said: "I became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did
not think much against it; and this lasted until I went to Oxford, where it would not be
suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call, expecting to find it a dull book
(as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an
overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion
after I became capable of rational inquiry." Gibbon (as mentioned above) said:
"If Mr. Law finds a spark of piety in a reader's mind, he will soon kindle it into a
flame."
John Wesley calls it one of three books which accounted for his first "explicit
resolve to be all devoted to God." Later, when denying, in response to a question,
that Methodism was founded on Law's writings, he added that "Methodists carefully
read these books and were greatly profitted by them." In 1744 Wesley published
extracts from the Serious Call, thereby introducing it to a wider audience than it already
had. About eighteen months before his death, he called it "a treatise which will
hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, either for beauty of expression or for depth of
thought."
Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, William Wilberforce, and Thomas Scott each
described reading the book as a major turning-point in his life. All in all, there were
few leaders of the English Evangelical movement on whom it did not have a profound
influence.
Andrew Murray said of Law's Affectionate Address to the Clergy . . . "I do not know
where to find anywhere else the same clear and powerful statement of the truth which the
Church needs at the present day. I have tried to read or consult every book I knew of,
that treats of the work of the Holy Spirit, and nowhere have I met with anything that
brings the truth of our dependence on the continual leading of the Spirit, and the
assurance that that leading can be enjoyed without interruption, so home to the heart as
this teaching ...which I believe to be entirely scriptural, and to supply what many are
looking for . . ."
Sidney Spencer said, "William Law holds an outstanding position among Protestant, and
among English, mystics. He was influenced by many other mystics - He was familiar with the
work of most noteworthy Christian mystics from the pseudo-Dionysius in the fifth century
to Mme. Guyon in the seventeenth." His encounter with the works of Jacob Boehme
opened in him new heights of inspiration. "In his literary career there is a blank of
nine years - between An Appeal to all that Doubt the Truths of the Gospel (1740) and the
first part of the Spirit of Prayer (1749). It seems to have been during this period that
Law undertook the systematic study of Boehme. Law's mysticism is essentially related to
his understanding of religion as an inward principle, grounded in the deeper nature of the
soul. The inmost centre of our being is for him the 'spark of the soul' which is divine
and which moves us therefore to seek after union with God."
Stephen Hobhouse said of William Law: "He strongly disapproved of critics; he wished
his books to be read 'more with the heart than with the head' and he warns us again and
again against 'that learning, which, robbing us of the true fruits of the Tree of Life,
leaves us nothing to feed upon but the the dust of words'." also "We hear, in
England, Holland and Germany during the 17th and 18th centuries, of various associations
of pious people styled Behmenists, who might perhaps be classified as "Sects".
The most vigorous and interesting of these were the Philadephians. Their ablest member in
England was Francis Lee, M.D., of Cambridge (1661-1719) known personally to J. Boehme's
greatest English disciple, William law and it may have been partly through Lee that Law
became interested in J.B. "
Another View of William Law
Law's writing is so transparently clear that no notes, appear to be either necessary or desirable. In the case of so modern and so English a book.Of the Life of William Law for a much richer account of the Life and Opinions of the William Law, A.M., than can be given here, the student must be referred to the elaborate work of Canon Overton, published by Longmans in 1881. Canon Overton writes with a fulness of knowledge of English religion in the eighteenth century which is possessed by very few; and Law, more than most men, bears the impress of the time in which his lot on earth was cast. Here it will not be possible to do more than sketch the salient features of his remarkable character and history.
William Law was born in 1686, at King's Cliffe, a considerable village near Stamford, in Northamptonshire. His father, Thomas Law, was a grocer and chandler - kept, that is to say, the village shop. It is a position, as all country people know, of some importance in the rustic hierarchy, and in those days was more important than it is now. Both the father and the mother - her name was Margaret - were good, religious people. Some have thought that they were the models for Paternus and Eusebia in the Serious Call. Their son, William - he was the fourth of eight sons, and there were three daughters as well - entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as sizar, or poor scholar, in 1705; took his B.A. degree in 1708; was elected Fellow and ordained in 1711; and graduated as M.A. in 1712. While at Cambridge he drew up a set of "rules for my future conduct." The first rule was "to fix it deep in my mind that I have one business upon my hands - to seek for eternal happiness by doing the will of God."
"Doing the will of God" sums up the earlier part of Law's history, as freedom and peace in the Holy Spirit sums up the later. Through the one he rose to the other, like Origen and many other saints. Yet, when Law was a curate in London - the exact date is unknown, he is said to have courted fashionable society, and to have been "a great beau." It is possible that about 1720 there was a final act of self-renunciation. In 1713 Law was for a time suspended from his degrees for a Tripos speech. Part of the ceremonies attending the Bachelors' commencement at Cambridge was a burlesque oration, delivered in the schools on Ash Wednesday, by a bachelor seated on a three-legged stool, and hence known as Tripos. He was expected to be "witty, but modest withal"; but it was difficult for sprightly young men to hit the golden mean. Some of these licensed jesters indulged in gross personalities, some ventured on political satire, and suspensions were not infrequent. Law could not keep the Pretender out of his tirade. But at the time Law was not Bachelor but Master. If it were safe for an alien to meddle with the arcana of Cambridge life, a suspicion might be expressed that Law was really not Tripos but Praevaricator - a personage who played the same part, as Lord of Misrule or Abbot of Unreason, at the Masters' commencement. However, we learn here three facts about Law: first, that he was a convinced Jacobite; second, that he was not discreet, or, at any rate, not worldly wise; third, that he was regarded at Cambridge as a man who could and would make an amusing speech. Indeed, as we can see from his books, Law had a pretty gift of wit, though he was absolutely devoid of humor. The difference is that wit sees the absurdities of others, while humor is conscious of its own. Shortly afterwards Law testified to the sincerity of his political convictions in a much more serious fashion. On the accession of George I., in 1716, he refused to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and was accordingly deprived of his Fellowship, and of all prospect of employment in the Church. The loss to Law was very great. His conscientiousness cost him not only influence but work, and he was condemned henceforth as a looker-on. Further, he was exposed to the full force of that sour trial which besets the martyr who is not wanted. But affliction tries the righteous man, and very pure reverence is due to those who, like Law, retained their saintliness in a world which had cast them out, and which they could not understand. Almost immediately after the resignation of his Fellowship, Law began to make his mark in the world of literature. The Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor appeared in 1717; the Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees in 1723; and the Case of Reason in 1731. Mandeville was a silly, scoffing creature; but Hoadly, the latitudinarian bishop, and Tindal, the philosophical Deist, were formidable antagonists, and Law showed himself a match for both. In 1726 appeared the treatise on The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments. Of this, we may notice in passing, that it was suggested by a piece that had been acted "almost every night one whole season," in which Venus, Pan, Silenus, Bacchus, and a number of other "filthy demons of the heathen world" were brought upon the stage to talk in keeping with their character, or want of character. But his disgust at "wanton songs and impure rant" was natural enough in days when the Restoration drama held the stage; and there is much that might be said about the morality of the footlights in any age. In 1726 appeared the first of Law's devotional works, the Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection. It is significant that Law uses "perfection" here, to mean obedience. One result of the book was probably that connection with the Gibbon family which shaped the whole of Law's after-life. About this time Mr Edward Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian, was seeking a tutor for his only son. Law was selected for this office, attended the younger Gibbon to Cambridge, and in 1730, when his pupil went abroad to make the grand tour, found a home in that "spacious house with gardens and land at Putney," where his patron resided, "in decent hospitality." Here he lived, "as the much honored friend and spiritual director of the whole family," till the establishment was broken up some little time after Mr Gibbon's death in 1736. In 1729 the publication of the Serious Call had set the seal on Law's reputation, and he was visited and consulted at Putney by a little circle of disciples. Chief among them were Dr Cheyne, the two Wesleys, and Byrom. The Wesleys drifted away from him; but the good and flighty John Byrom, squire of Kersall, near Manchester - poet, mystic, Jacobite, physician - remained his faithful friend through life. But Law was one of those men who have many admirers and few friends. According to other authorities, we find Law settled at King's Cliffe, his birthplace, in a good house known as King John's Palace, or the Hall Yard. Here, in 1744, he was joined by Miss Hester Gibbon, the daughter of his old patron, and Mrs Elizabeth Hutcheson, the widow of a wealthy country gentleman; and here he died in 1761. He seems to have had scarcely any contact with the outside world. The little household was strictly ordered. The Bible and books of theology were the only literature admitted; nor was any form of recreation tolerated beyond conversation, a little music, and an occasional drive or ride. The historian Gibbon, who is oddly divided between dislike of Law's ways and pride in having been, in a sense, the proprietor of so famous a man, speaks of the house at King's Cliffe as "a hermitage," and the term is not inappropriate. The Christian duty most insisted upon by Law was charity. He himself was the soul of generosity. He built and endowed a girls' school at King's Cliffe, possibly with the thousand pounds which had been sent to him anonymously by some person who was grateful for spiritual profit received from the Christian Perfection. In 1745 the foundation was increased by Mrs Hutcheson, till it included also a school for boys, almshouses, and a library, which still exist. Such wise generosity could bear none but good fruits. But the rule of the house was that all surplus income should be given away in alms. As Mrs Hutcheson enjoyed two thousand a year, while Miss Gibbon had inherited half her father's large property, and Law himself possessed some means, the sums thus disposed of must have been very considerable. Law lived just before the iron age of Political Economy set in. Law's heart was fixed on the letter of the Gospel, and the practice of primitive Christianity. Here also, as in his politics, he stood at the parting of the ways. Kings gave pensions; ministers bestowed cushy jobs; noblemen rained showers of guineas on troops of gaping dependants; and so the ideal country parson, as he is painted in Goldsmith's Deserted village, gave all he could to all who asked. Law would never allow his portrait to be taken; but Mr Tighe, who visited King's Cliffe some time before 1813, and received information from "a kind person" there, tells us that he "was in stature rather over than under the middle size; not fat, but stoutly made, with broad shoulders; his visage was round, his eyes grey, his features well-proportioned and not large; his complexion ruddy, and his countenance open and agreeable. He was naturally more inclined to be merry than sad ... He chose to eat his food from a wooden platter, not from an idea of the unnecessary luxury of a plate, but because it appeared to him that a plate spoiled the knives." He was a thorough Englishman in person and mind. In all his numerous controversies he never used a discourteous word or used an insincere argument. He never fought for trifles, nor for any cause that did not lie very near to the heart of religion. He made great sacrifices. He found himself condemned to a life of isolation, yet he never lost heart or temper, or showed the least trace of bitterness, though he was naturally of a masterful and positive disposition; indeed, he grew in sweetness and largeness of view to the very end. And certainly no one could be more consistent or thorough. "He left," says Gibbon the historian, "the reputation of a worthy and a pious man, who believed all that he professed and practised all that he proscribed," and these words are just.
Of the Opinions of William Law some readers possibly may wish to have a brief account of Law's intellectual position. It changed very greatly as his life went on. At Cambridge he wrote a thesis on Malebranche and the Vision of all Things in God. From the first Mysticism had an attraction for him; but he was never a Romanticist. He was one of the keenest and most logical of men. We see his early position best in his controversies with Mandeville and Tindal. In his criticism of the Fable of the Bees he insists on the "eternal fitness of actions." Actions are fit or good when they promote that happiness which is "the perfection of every being." But upon what does happiness depend? We learn this from the Case of Reason, the reply to Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation. Happiness is relative to our condition, and depends on what we are. No action is moral or immoral in itself. "For instance, in the case of Abraham, required to sacrifice his son, the killing of a man is neither good nor bad, considered absolutely in itself." But, when God commanded Abraham to slay Isaac, the act became necessary to Abraham's faith, and therefore right. Let the reader understand, God did not intend for Abraham to slay his son, this command was but a test of obedience for Abraham! God stoped the action before it came to fruition. But it is more important to observe that we have here the key to the tremendous emphasis laid by Law, in the Serious Call, on the virtue of obedience. All duty resolves itself into a command of the Lord God, and we have no course but to submit. Virtue is, as Law expressed it in his Cambridge rule, not likeness to God, but "doing the will of God." Again, "we know," says Law, "our moral and social duties, which have their foundation in the conveniences of this life, and the several relations we bear to one another." But our relation to God we do not know; "this is a question which God alone can resolve. Human reason cannot enter into it." These are the objections that Law had to meet, and he meets them by falling back upon the will of God. Though we do not know beforehand what it will be, we can recognize it when it comes, as Newton recognized the law of motion when he had discovered them, or when they had been revealed to him. Law says, "The credibility of any external divine revelation with regard to human reason, rests wholly upon such external evidence as is a sufficient proof of the divine operation or interposition. I appeal, therefore, to the miracles and prophecies on which Christianity is founded." He never altered his views of Reason; indeed, in his later writings he speaks of it with a passionate scorn. Law was a diligent reader of mystical books. His special favorites appear to have been a Kempis, Ruysbroek, Tauler, and the Theologia Germanica, who all preach the religion of the heart. The French mystics of the seventeenth. But somewhere about 1733 he learned of Behmen, who took him by storm. He became an enthusiast himself. Behmen's works had existed in English since 1641. They gave birth to more than one mystical sect, and, in particular, inspired George Fox. They induced Isaac Newton to suggested the line of inquiry which issued in the discovery of the Laws of Motion. It was the mystic belief in the unity of Nature that guided Newton in either case. In the eighteenth century Behmen was widely read. "In winter evenings," says Rusticus in the Way to Divine Knowledge, "when John the shepherd comes out of the fields, his own eyes being bad, the old woman, his wife, puts on her spectacles, and reads about an hour to him, sometimes out of the Scriptures, and sometimes out of Jacob Behmen. I sat by him one evening, when my old dame, reading Behmen, had much ado to get on. "John," said she, "do you understand all this?" "Ah," said he, "God bless the heart of the dear man, I sometimes understand but little of him; and it may be Betty does not always read aright; but what little which I often do understand does me so much good that I love him even where I do not understand him",
Behmen supplied a fruitful idea to Newton, and it made Law a better, a more lovable, and even a wiser man. In his earlier writings virtue appeared as reasonable self-love; in the later he recognizes that selfishness in any form is not religious. He had made far too much of mechanism and drill: now he insists that goodness must be "a living thing." He believes that there is but "one God, one Good, and one Goodness." The Mystic treatises abound in fine sayings. Let us take a few almost at random. "Faith is the power by which a man gives himself up to anything," whether it be to conduct, to science, to art, or even to politics or business "Truth, my friend, whatever you may think of it, is no less than the Savior and Redeemer of the world." "See that your mind be free, universal, impartial." In fact, a great change had come over Law, and in many ways it was conspicuous. Some readers will think that he gave himself up too unrestrainedly to the worship of Love. "Oh Academicus," we hear Law saying, "forget your Scholarship, give up your Art and Criticism, be a plain man, and then the first rudiments of sense may teach you that where the only place goodness can be, where it comes forth as a Birth of Life, and is the free natural work and fruit of that which lives within us."
Of the Serious Call, The Serious Call was published in 1729, when its author was about forty-three years of age. The world has always regarded it as Law's masterpiece, and with good reason. In it Law describes his own life and principles, with all the force of earnest sincerity. The book is, we may say, a part of himself. Some prefer the more philosophical writings. Others, again, would place the mystical treatises first, and it must be admitted that they contain phrases and passages which, both in style and sentiment, rise above anything that is to be found in the Serious Call. The style of the Serious Call is admirably adapted to its subject. It is grave, lucid, strong. There is never the slightest doubt about Law's meaning; he conveys to the reader the exact idea that is in his own mind. He selects the plainest words, the most homely figures, and is not in the least afraid of repetition. A typical instance is to be found in the parable of the Pond, in the eleventh chapter. The picture is as distinct as possible. Attempts have been made to find real personages behind the characters. Paternus and Eusebia have been identified with Law's own father and mother; and Gibbon persuaded himself that Flavia and Miranda represented his two aunts - "the heathen and the Christian sister" - Katharine and Hester. But of Paternus we are expressly told that "he lived about two hundred years ago," and the characters are all types, suggested, no doubt, by people whom Law had met, yet not drawn from life. Character painting had been for a century a favorite method of conveying moral instruction, and many famous writers, from Earle to Addison, have left us specimens of their skill in this kind of composition. He gives us the foolish country gentleman, the foolish scholar, the foolish man of affairs. The reason is that in Law's view, one good person is exactly like another. It is a splendid protest against the spiritual apathy of the times, and no more strenuous plea for consistency and thoroughness was ever delivered. The book is addressed to Christians, and it is, as its title implies, a Serious Call to be what they profess. The point is inevitable; it is driven home with extraordinary force, and Law's whole life gives weight to every word. The question which he presses upon the reader is, "Are you living the Christian life as you believe it ought to be lived? Are you acting up to your convictions? Are you a sham or not?" Few can face this question, as Law will put it to them, without many qualms of conscience. As in the Imitation we have a pure man describing purity, so here we have a real man insisting on reality. Every syllable is transparently genuine. This is the secret of the Serious Call. It is remarkable that. He would say to the reader, "If you are wiser than I, thank God for it, but beware that you are not less sincere." Let us take a few conspicuous instances of this fertility, this impartiality of the book. For, Law had a truly unprejudiced mind. One of the first and most illustrious of his disciples was John Wesley. "Meeting now," says Wesley, - the time was shortly after his election to the Lincoln Fellowship - "with Mr Law's Christian Perfection and Serious Call, although I was much offended at many parts of both, yet they convinced me more than ever of the exceeding height and breadth and depth of the law of God. The light flowed in so mightily upon my soul that everything appeared in a new light ... I was convinced more than ever of the impossibility of being half a Christian." In 1732 he called upon Law at Putney, consulted him upon religious questions, and took him for "a kind of oracle." But in 1738 the little rift widened into a division. A sharp correspondence ensued between Wesley and Law (it will be found in Overton or Tyerman), and these two excellent men drifted apart. Later on, Wesley became much more sober in many of his views. Yet, within eighteen months of his death, Wesley spoke of the Serious Call as "a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justness and depth of thought." Johnson thought that the Serious Call was "the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language." "When at Oxford," he says in another place, "I took it up expecting to find it a dull book, and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an over-match for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of religious inquiry." Thus Law gave a great impulse to Methodism, and breathed new life into the old-fashioned High Church. But he also affected strongly the rising Evangelical school, though, in this particular, his influence was more distinctly of the Socratic kind: he gave a "torpedo shock," which quickened life, though of a different type from his own. All these instances will help the reader to understand what use he is to make of the book which is here offered to him. Many good men, of widely divergent ways of thinking, have read it with great profit to their souls. But what we are to learn above all things from the Serious Call is that there can be no truth and no wholesome life without perfect sincerity. "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."
Some of the works of William Law
An Humble ~ Earnest, And Affectionate Address To The Clergy
The Spirit of Prayer
The Grounds And Reasons Of Christian Regeneration
The Way To Divine Knowledge
The Self Life By William Law
The Spirit of Love Part the First In a Letter to a Friend by William Law
The Way to Divine Knowledge