In reading Boehme, it must not be
forgotten
that he has a
living intuition of the eternal forces which lie at the root of all
things.
living intuition of the eternal forces which lie at the root of all
things.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
Law is a prominent example of this
latter and smaller class, the second generation of nonjurors.
Feeling naturally ran very high when, in answer to the posthumous
? See Walton's Notes, p. 499. The duty on which Law most insisted was charity; see
his defence of indiscriminate giving, in A Serious Call, Works, vol. 1v, pp. 114-18.
For an excellent illustration of the principles and arguments on both sides,
compare Law's letter from Cambridge, written to his brother at the time, with that of
bis future friend Byrom at the same date. Both are quoted by Overton, J. H. , William
Law, Nonjuror and Mystic, 1881, pp. 13-16.
## p. 310 (#334) ############################################
310
William Law and the Mystics
papers of George Hickes? , the nonjuring bishop, who charged the
church with schism, Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, the king's
chaplain, came forward as champion of the crown and church.
Hoadly was an able thinker and writer, and, in his Preservative
against the Principles and Practices of the Non-Jurors, he
attempts to justify the civil power by reducing to a minimum the
idea of church authority and even that of creeds. He tells
Christians to depend upon Christ alone for their religion, and not
upon His ministers, and he urges sincerity as the sole test of truth.
On this last point he dwells more fully and exclusively in his
famous sermon, The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ, preached
before the king on 31 March 1717. Hoadly's pamphlet and sermon
raised a cloud of controversy? ; but by far the ablest answer he
received on the part of the nonjurors was that contained in Law's
Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717–19). The bishop
never replied to Law, and, indeed, he gave strong proof of his acute-
ness by leaving his brilliant young opponent severely alone.
Law instantly detected that Hoadly's arguments tended to do
away altogether with the conception of the church as a living
spiritual society, and his answer is mainly directed against the
danger of this tendency". He begins by pointing out that there
are no libertines or loose thinkers in England who are not pleased
with the bishop, for they imagine that he intends to dissolve the
church as a society; and, indeed, they seem to have good grounds
for their assumption, since the bishop leaves neither authorised
ministers, nor sacraments, nor church, and intimates that 'if a
man be not a Hypocrite, it matters not what Religion he
is of
Law deals with church authority, and shows that if, as Hoadly
says, regularity of ordination and uninterrupted succession be
mere niceties and dreams, there is no difference between the
episcopalian communion and any other lay body of teachers. He
demolishes Hoadly's remarks on the exclusion of the papist
1 The Constitution of the Catholick Church, and the Nature and Consequences of
Schism. 1716.
In the course of July 1717, 74 pamphlets appeared on the subject, and, at one
crisis, for a day or two, the business of the city was at a standstill, little was done on
the Exchange and many shops were shut. See Hoadly's Works, vol. 11, pp. 385, 429;
also Sir Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the 18th Century, vol. II, p. 156.
3 See Hoadly's Works, vol. 11, pp. 694–5, where he gives his reasons for not answer.
ing Law.
. For some of the side issues which were vehemently discussed by other writers,
Bee Leslie Stephen, vol. 11, p. 157.
o Works, vol. 1, Letter 1, pp. 6, 7.
6 Ibid. pp. 14, 15.
8
## p. 311 (#335) ############################################
Law and the Deists
311
succession, and he ends the first letter by refuting the bishop's
definition of prayer, as a 'calm, undisturbed address to God',' in a
passage which is one of the finest pleas in our language for the
right use of passion, and which admirably sums up the funda-
mental difference of outlook between the mystic and the rationalist
temper in the things of the spirit.
Law's next work, Remarks on the Fable of the Bees (1723),
is an answer to Mandeville's poem? , the moral of which is that
private vices are public benefits,' and Law, characteristically
seizing on the fallacy underlying Mandeville's clever paradoxes,
deals with his definition of the nature of man and of virtue in a
style at once buoyant, witty and caustic.
The Case of Reason (1731) is Law's answer to the deists, and,
more especially, to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation
(1730). To reply to such arguments as those of Tindal and the
deists in general was, to a man of Law's insight and intellect, an
easy task. He brings out well the fundamental difference between
his and their points of view. Deists saw a universe governed
by fixed laws, a scheme of creation which was 'plain and per-
spicuous,' capable of accurate investigation, and they believed in
a magnified man God outside the universe, whose nature, methods
and aims were, or should be, perfectly clear to the minds of his
creatures. Law saw a living universe, wrapped in impenetrable
mystery, and believed in a God who was so infinitely greater than
man, that, of His nature, or of the reason or fitness of his actions,
men can know nothing whatsoever. Why complain of mysteries in
revelation, he says, when ‘no revealed mysteries can more exceed
the comprehension of man, than the state of human life itself"'?
Tindal asserts that the 'fitness of things' must be the sole rule
of God's actions. 'I readily grant this,' says Law, but what judges
are we of the fitness of things? ' We can no more judge the divine
nature than we can raise ourselves to a state of infinite wisdom;
and the rule by which God acts ‘must in many instances be
entirely inconceivable by us. . . and in no instances fully known or
perfectly comprehended. '
In short, the fundamental assumption of the deists, that human
all-sufficient to guide us to truth, is the great error which
1 So defined by Hoadly in his sermon The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of
Christ, p. 7.
* The Grumbling Hive, first printed 1705, republished with explanatory notes
under the title The Fable of the Bees, 1714.
3 Christianity as old as the Creation, p. 20.
* The Case of Reason, Works, vol. 11, p. 9.
* Ibid. p. 7.
reason
## p. 312 (#336) ############################################
312
William Law and the Mystics
Law, in his later writings especially, set himself to combat; in his
opinion, it is devilish pride, the sin by which the angels fell? .
In the further development of his position in The Case of
Reason, we can see many indications of the future mystic; for the
crudely material thought of his opponent seems to have called into
expression, for the first time, many of Law's more characteristic
beliefs. There is, throughout, a strong sense of man's capacity for
spiritual development, and a settled belief that the human mind can-
not possibly know anything as it really is, but can only know things
in so far as it is able to apprehend them through symbol or analogy.
Things supernatural or divine, he says, cannot be revealed to us in
their own nature, for the simple reason that we are not capable of
knowing them. If an angel were to appear to us, he would have
to appear, not as he really is, but in some human bodily form, so
that his appearance might be suited to our capacities. Thus, with
any supernatural or divine matter, it can only be represented to
as by its likeness to something that we already naturally know.
This is the way in which revelation teaches us, and it is only able
to teach so much outward knowledge of a great mystery as human
language can represents; reason is impotent in face of it, and only
by the spiritual faculty that exists in us can the things of the spirit
be even dimly apprehended.
Law's practical and ethical works, A Practical Treatise upon
Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Call (1728), have been
more read and are better known than any other of his writings;
moreover, they explain themselves, being independent both of local
controversies and of any special metaphysic. For these reasons,
comparatively little need be said about them here. Both treatises
are concerned with the practical question of how to live in accord-
ance with the teachings of Christ, and they point out with peculiar
force that the way consists, not in performing this or that act
of devotion or ceremony, but in a new principle of life, an entire
change of temper and of aspiration.
Christian Perfection, though somewhat gloomy and austere in
tone, has much charm and beauty; but it was quite overshadowed
by the wider popularity of what many consider Law's greatest
work, A Serious Call, a book of extraordinary power, delightful
and persuasive style, racy wit and unanswerable logic. Never have
the inconsistency between Christian precept and practice been
80 ruthlessly exposed and the secret springs of men's hearts so
1 The Case of Reason, p. 3.
3 Ibid. p. 37.
3 Ibid. p. 39.
* Ibid. pp. 16, 17.
## p. 313 (#337) ############################################
A Serious Call
313
uncompromisingly laid bare. Never has the ideal of the Christian
life been painted by one who lived more literally in accordance
with every word he preached. That is the secret of A Serious
Call; it is written from the heart, by a man in deep earnest; and
in an age distinguished for its mediocrity and easygoing laxness,
Law's lofty ideals acted as an electric current, setting aflame the
hearts of all who came under their power.
Few books in English have wielded such an influence. John
Wesley himself acknowledged that A Serious Call sowed the seed
of methodism? , and, undoubtedly, next to the Bible, it contributed
more than any other book to the spread of evangelicalism. It made
the deepest impression on Wesley himself; he preached after its
model? ; he used it as a text-book for the highest class at Kings-
wood school; and, a few months before his death, he spoke of it as
'a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the
English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justice and
depth of thought. ' Charles Wesley, Henry Whitfield, Henry Venn,
Thomas Scott, Thomas Adam and James Stillingfleet are among
other great methodists and evangelicals who have recorded how
profoundly it affected them. But it did not appeal only to this
type of mind. Dr Johnson, who praised it in no measured terms,
attributes his first serious thoughts to the reading of it. 'I became,
he says, 'a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much
think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford' When
there,
I took op Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life, expecting to find it a dull
book (as such books generally are). . . . But I found Law quite an over-match
for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion.
Gibbont and the first Lord Lyttelton (who, taking it up at bedtime,
was forced to read it through before he could go to rest), are two
among many other diverse characters who felt its force.
Such, very briefly, were Law's views and writings until middle
age. Although, before that time, they do not show any marked
mystical tendency, yet we know that, from his undergraduateship
onwards, Law was a 'diligent reader' of mystical books, and,
when at Cambridge, he wrote a thesis entitled Malebranche, and
6
1 Sermon cvii, Wesley's Works, 11th ed. , 1856, vol. VII, p. 194.
2 Letter to Law of 1738, quoted by Overton, p. 33.
* Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck, 1887, vol. 1, p. 68, also vol. II,
p. 122.
• Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. B. , 1900, p. 23.
5 Byrom's Journal, vol. 11, part 2, p. 634.
o See Some Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's late Reply, Works, vol. vi, p. 319.
## p. 314 (#338) ############################################
314
William Law and the Mystics
the Vision of AU Things in God. There is no question that he
was strongly attracted to, and probably influenced by, Malebranche's
view that all true knowledge is but the measure of the extent to
which the individual can participate in the universal life; that,
unless we see God in some measure, we do not see anything; and
that it is only by union with God we are capable of knowing what
we do know? On the other hand, there are points in Malebranche's
philosophy—which curiously stops short of its logical conclusion-
quite opposed to Law's later thought: more especially the belief,
which Malebranche shared with Descartes on the one side and
Locke on the other, that body and spirit are separate and contrary
existences; whereas, in Law's view, body and spirit are but inward
and outward expressions of the same being? . Among other mystics
studied by Law were Dionysius the Areopagite, the Belgian and
German writers Johannes Ruysbroek, Johann Tauler, Heinrich
Suso and others, and the seventeenth century quietists, Fénelon,
Madame Guyon and Antoinette Bourignon. The last two were
much admired by Byrom, who loved to recur to them in writing and
in talk; but they were not altogether congenial to Law; they were
too diffuse, sentimental and even hysterical to please his essentially
robust and manly temper. When, however, he was about forty-six
(c. 1733), he came across the work of the seer who supplied just what
he needed, and who set his whole nature aglow with mystical fervour.
Jacob Boehme (or Behmen, as he has usually been called in
England), the peasant shoemaker of Görlitz, is one of the most
amazing phenomena in an amazing age. He was the son of a
herdsman, and, as a boy, helped his father to tend cattle; he
was taught how to write and read, was apprenticed to a shoe-
maker, married the daughter of a butcher and lived quietly and
humbly, troubled only by years of bitter persecution from his
pastor, who stirred up the civil authorities against him. This
was his outer life, sober and hardworking, like that of his fellow-
seer, William Blake, but, like him also, he lived in a glory of
inner illumination, by the light of which he caught glimpses of
mysteries and of splendours which, even in Boehme's broken and
faltering syllables, dazzle and blind the ordinary reader. He saw
with the eye of his mind into the heart of things, and he wrote
down so much of it as he could understand with his reason. He
had a quick and supple intelligence, and an intense power of
See Recherche de la Vérité, specially livre m, chap. vi, Que nous voyons toutes
choses en Dieu.
See The Spirit of Love, Works, vol. VIII, pp. 31 and 33.
## p. 315 (#339) ############################################
a
Jacob Boehme
315
visualizing. Everything appears to him as an image, and, with him,
a logical process expresses itself in a series of pictures. Although
illiterate and untrained, Boehme was in touch with the thought of
his time, and the form of his work, at any rate, owes a good deal to
it. The older speculative mysticism which rather despised nature,
and sought for light from within, coming down from Plotinus
through Meister Eckhart and Tauler, had, in Germany, been carried
on and developed by Caspar von Schwenckfeld and Sebastian
Franck; while a revival of the still older practical or 'perceptive
a
mysticism of the east, based on a study of the natural sciences (in
which were included astrology, alchemy and magic), had been
brought about by Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, both of whom
owed much to the Jewish Cabbala. These two mystical traditions,
the one starting from within, the other from without, were, to some
extent, reconciled into one system by the Lutheran pastor Valentin
Weigel, with whose mysticism Boehme has much in common.
The older mystics— eastern and western alike—had laid supreme
stress on unity as seen in the nature of God and all things. No
one more fully believed in ultimate unity than did Boehme; but
he lays peculiar stress on the duality, or, more accurately, the
trinity in unity, and the central point of his philosophy is the
fundamental postulate that all manifestation necessitates oppo-
sition. He asserted the uniformity of law throughout all existence,
physical and spiritual, and this law, which applies throughout
nature, divine and human alike, is that nothing can reveal itself
without resistance, good can only be known through evil, and
weakness through strength, just as light is only visible when
reflected by a dark body?
Thus, when God, the triune principle, or will under three
aspects, desires to become manifest, He divides the will into two,
the 'yes' and the ‘no,' and so founds an eternal contrast to Himself
out of His own hidden nature, in order to enter into a struggle
with it, and, finally, to discipline and assimilate it. The object of
all manifested nature is the transforming of the will which says
'no' into the will which says 'yes,' and this is brought about by
seven organizing spirits or forms. The first three of these bring
nature out of the dark element to the point where contact with
light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness, attraction and
anguish, which, in modern terms, are contraction, expansion, and
rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and, being
1 • Without contraries is no progression,' as Blake puts it in his development of the
same thesis in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
6
6
## p. 316 (#340) ############################################
316
William Law and the Mystics
forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These
two forces, with their resultant effect, are to be found all through
manifested nature, within man and without, and are called by
different names: good, evil and life; God, the devil and the world;
homogeneity, heterogeneity, strain, or the three laws of motion,
centripetal and centrifugal force, resulting in rotation. They are
the outcome of the 'nature' or 'no will,' and are the basis of
all manifestation. They are the power of God, apart from the
'love,' hence, their conflict is terrible. At this point, spirit
and nature approach and meet, and, from the shock, a new form
is liberated, lightning or fire, which is the fourth moment or
essence; in the spark of the lightning, all that is dark, gross and
selfish in nature is consumed; the flash brings the rotating
wheel of anguish to a standstill, and it becomes a cross. A divine
law is accomplished; for all life has a double birth, suffering is
the condition of joy and only in going through fire or the Cross
can man reach light. With the lightning ends the development
of the negative triad, and the evolution of the three higher forms
then begins ; Boehme calls them light or love, sound and sub-
stance; they are of the spirit, and, in them, contraction, expansion
and rotation are repeated in a new sense? The first three forms
give the stuff or strength of being ; the last three manifest the
quality of being, good or bad; and evolution can proceed in either
direction.
These principles of nature can be looked at in another way.
If they are resolved into two sets of three, in the first three the
dark principle which Boehme calls fire is manifested, while the
last three form the principle of light. These two are eternally
distinct, and, whichever is manifested, the other remains hidden.
This doctrine of the hidden and manifest is peculiar to Boehme,
and lies at the root of his explanation of evil. A spiritual principle
becomes manifest by taking on a form or quality. The 'dark' or
harsh principle in God is not evil in itself when in its right place,
i. e. , when hidden, and forming the necessary basis for the light or
good. But, through the fall of man, the divine order has been
transgressed, and the dark side has become manifest and appears
to us as evil. Many chemical processes help to give a crude
illustration of Boehme's thought. Suppose water' stands for
complete good or reality as God sees it. Of the two different gases,
1 Boehme refers to these seven forces in all his writings, but see his Threefold
Life of Man, chap. 1, $$ 23–32; chap. II, 88 27—36, 73; chap. II, § 1; chap. xv, $$ 5, 12;
or Signatura Rerum, chap. xiv, SS 10–15.
6
## p. 317 (#341) ############################################
-
Essence of Boehme's Mysticism 317
hydrogen (=evil) and oxygen (=good) each is manifested separately,
with peculiar qualities of its own, but, when they combine, their
original form goes 'into hiddenness,' and we get a new body
water. Neither of them alone is water, and yet water could not
'
be if either were lacking.
In reading Boehme, it must not be forgotten that he has a
living intuition of the eternal forces which lie at the root of all
things. He is struggling to express the stupendous world-drama
which is ever being enacted, in the universe without and in the soul
of man within; and, to this end, he presses into his service sym-
bolical, biblical and alchemical terms, although he fully realizes
their inadequacy. 'I speak thus,' he says, “in bodily fashion, for
the sake of my readers' lack of understanding. ' Unless this be
remembered, Boehme's work, in common with that of all mystics,
is liable to the gravest misunderstanding. He is never weary of
explaining that, although he is forced to describe things in a series
of images, there is no such thing as historical succession, 'for the
eternal dwells not in time 1. ' He has to speak of the generation of
God as though it were an act in time, although to do so is to use
'diabolical' (i. cw, knowingly untrue) language, for God hath no
beginning. Everything he describes is going on always and simul-
taneously, even as all the qualities he names are in everything
which is manifested. “The birth of nature takes place today, just
as it did in the beginning. '
It would be impossible to give here any adequate account of
Boehme's vision; but the four fundamental principles which he
enunciated and emphasized may be thus summarized: will or desire
as the original force; contrast or duality as the condition of all
manifestation; the relation of the hidden and the manifest; de-
velopment as a progressive unfolding of difference, with a final
resolution into unity. The practical and ethical result of this living
unity of nature is simple. Boehme's philosophy is one which can
only be apprehended by living it. Will, or desire, is the root-force
in man as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and, until this
is turned towards the light, any purely historical or intellectual
knowledge of these things is as useless as if hydrogen were to study
all the qualities of oxygen, expecting thus to become water;
whereas, what is needed is the actual union of the elements.
The whole of Boehme's practical teaching, as, also, that of Law,
might be summed up in the story told of an Indian sage who was
importuned by a young man as to how he could find God. For
Mysterium Magnum, part I, chap. vin.
6
1
## p. 318 (#342) ############################################
318
William Law and the Mystics
some time, the sage did not give any answer; but, one evening, he
bade the youth come and bathe with him in the river, and, while
there, he gripped him suddenly and held his head under the water
until he was nearly drowned. When he had released him, the sage
asked, “What did you want most when your head was under
water? ' and the youth replied, 'A breath of air. ' To which the
sage answered, “When you want God as you wanted that breath
of air you will find Him. '
This realization of the momentous quality of the will is the
secret of every religious mystic? ; the hunger of the soul, as Law
calls it? , is the first necessity, and all else will follow. Such was
the thought of the writer who, spiritually, was closely akin to our
two greatest English mystics. William Blake saw visions and
spoke a tongue like that of the illuminated cobbler ; and of
Law, who was not a seer, we learn that, when he first read
Boehme's works, they put him into 'a perfect sweat. ' Only those
who combine intense mystical aspiration with a clear and imperious
intellect can fully realize what the experience must have been.
The two most important of Law's mystical treatises are An
Appeal to all that Doubt (1740), and The Way to Divine Knowo-
ledge (1752). The first of these should be read by anyone desirous
of knowing Law's later thought, for it is a clear and fine exposition
of his attitude with regard more especially to the nature of man,
the unity of all nature and the quality of fire or desire. The
later book is an account of the main principles of Boehme,
with a warning as to the right way to apply them, and it was
written as an introduction to the new edition of Boehme's works
which Law contemplated publishing. Law's later, are but an
expansion of his earlier, views; the main difference being that,
whereas, in the practical treatises (Christian Perfection and
A Serious Call), he urges certain temper and conduct because
it is our duty to obey God, or because it is right or lawful, in his
later writings-Boehme having furnished the clue--he adds not only
the reason for this conduct being right, but the means of attaining
it, by expounding the working of the law itself. The following
aspect, then, of Boehme's teaching is that which Law most con-
sistently emphasizes.
1 Cf. St Augustine, • To will God entirely is to have Him,' The City of God, book XI,
chap. Iv; or Ruysbroek's answer to the priests from Paris who came to consult him on
the state of their souls : 'You are as you desire to be. '
• Hunger is all, and in all worlds everything lives in it, and by it. ' See Law's
letter to Langcake, 7 September 1751, printed in Walton's Notes and Materials, p. 541.
3 See Law's letter to W. Walker, Byrom's Journal, vol. I, part 2, p. 559.
1
## p. 319 (#343) ############################################
a
a
Boehme and Law
319
Man was made out of the breath of God; his soul is a spark of)
the Deity. It, therefore, cannot die, for it ‘has the unbeginning
unending life of God in it. ' Man has fallen from his high estate
through ignorance and inexperience, through seeking separation,
taking the part for the whole, desiring the knowledge of good and
evil as separate things. The assertion of self is, thus, the root of
all evil; for, so soon as the will of man turns to itself, and would,
as it were, have a sound of its own, it breaks off from the divine
harmony, and falls into the misery of its own discord. ' For it is the
state of our will that makes the state of our life. Hence, by 'the
fall,' man's standpoint has been dislocated from the centre to the
circumference, and he lives in a false imagination. Every quality
is equally good, for there is nothing evil in God, from whom all
comes; but evil appears to be through separation. Thus, strength
and desire in the divine nature are necessary and magnificent
qualities, but when, as in the creature, they are separated from
love, they appear as evil. The analogy of the fruit is, in this con-
nection, a favourite one with both Law and Boehme. When a fruit
is unripe (i. e. incomplete), it is sour, bitter, astringent, unwholesome;
but, when it has been longer exposed to the sun and air, it becomes
sweet, luscious and good to eat. Yet it is the same fruit, and the
astringent qualities are not lost or destroyed, but transmuted and
enriched, and are thus the main cause of its goodness? . The only
way to pass from this condition of 'bitterness' to ripeness, from
this false imagination to the true one, is the way of death. We
must die to what we are before we can be born anew? ; we must
die to the things of this world to which we cling, and for which we
desire and hope, and we must turn towards God. This should be
the daily, hourly exercise of the mind, until the whole turn and
bent of our spirit 'points as constantly to God as the needle
touched with the loadstone does to the north: To be alive in
God, before you are dead to your own nature, is 'a thing as
impossible in itself, as for a grain of wheat to be alive before
it dies'
The root of all, then, is the will or desire. It is the seed of
.
everything that can grow in us; 'it is the only workman in nature,
and everything is its work’; it is the true magic power. And this
will or desire is always active; every man's life is a continual state
1 An Appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, Works, vol. vi,
pp. 27–8.
· The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, p. 24. 8 Ibid. p. 23. * Ibid. p. 20.
The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. VII, pp. 138_9.
## p. 320 (#344) ############################################
320
William Law and the Mystics
of prayer, and, if we are not praying for the things of God, we are
praying for something else! For prayer is but the desire of the
soul. Our imaginations and desires are, therefore, the greatest
realities we have, and we should look closely to what they are? .
It is essential to the understanding of Law, as of Boehme, to
remember his belief in the reality and actuality of the oneness of
nature and of law: Nature is God's great book of revelation, for it
is nothing else but God's own outward manifestation of what He
inwardly is, and can do. The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no
higher, and no deeper than the mysteries of nature'. God Himself
is subject to this law. There is no question of God's mercy or of
His wrath', for it is an eternal principle that we can only receive
what we are capable of receiving; and, to ask why one person does
not gain any help from the mercy and goodness of God while
another does gain help is 'like asking why the refreshing dew of
Heaven does not do that to flint which it does to the vegetable
planter
Self-denial and mortification of the flesh are not things imposed
upon us by the mere will of God: considered in themselves, they have
nothing of goodness or holiness; but they have their ground and
reason in the nature of the thing, and are as 'absolutely necessary
to make way for the new birth, as the death of the husk and gross
part of the grain is necessary to make way for its vegetable life? '
Law's attitude towards learning, which has been somewhat
misunderstood, is a part of his belief in the 'Light Within,' which
he shares with all mystical thinkers. In judging of what he says
as to the inadequacy of book knowledge and scholarship, it is
necessary to call to mind the characteristics of his age and public.
When we remember the barren controversies about externals in
matters religious which raged all through his lifetime, and the
exaltation of the reason as the only means whereby man could
know anything of the deeper truths of existence, it is not sur-
prising that, with Law, the pendulum should swing in the opposite
direction, and that, with passionate insistence, he should be driven
to assert the utter inadequacy of the intellect by itself in all
spiritual concerns
· See The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 150—1.
? An Appeal, Works, vol. VI, p. 169.
3 Ibid. pp. 19-20.
* Ibid. pp. 69, 80.
5 The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 23, 27.
6 The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, p. 60.
· The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vo, p. 68. See, also, ibid. pp. 91–2.
8 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, pp. 118-28.
## p. 321 (#345) ############################################
Law's Prose Style
321
He, says Law, who looks to his reason as the true power and light
of his nature, betrays the same Ignorance of the whole Nature,
Power and Office of Reason as if he were to smell with his Eyes, or
see with his Nose? ' All true knowledge, he urges, must come from
within, it must be experienced; and, if it were not that man has
the divine nature in him, no omnipotence of God could open in
him the knowledge of divine things. There cannot be any know-
ledge of things but where the thing itself is; there cannot be any
knowledge of any unpossessed Matters, for knowledge can only be
yours as Sickness and Health is yours, not conveyed to you by a
Hearsay Notion, but the Fruit of your own Perception? '
Law, liberal scholar, clear reasoner and finished writer, was no
more an enemy of learning than Ruskin was an enemy of writing
and reading because he said that there were very few people in
the world who got any good by either. Their scornful remarks on
these subjects often mislead their readers; yet the aim of both
writers was not to belittle these things in themselves, but solely to
put them in their right place 8.
Law is among the greatest of English prose writers, and no
one ever more truly possessed than he 'the splendid and imperish-
able excellence of sincerity and strength. ' Those who least
understand his later views, who look upon them as 'idle fancies,'
and on the whole subject of his mystical thought as 'a melancholy
topic' are constrained to admit, not only that he writes fine and
lucid prose in A Serious Call, but that, in his mystical treatises,
his style becomes mellower and rises to greater heights than in
his earlier work. The reason for this cumulative richness is that
the history and development of Law's prose style is the history
and development of his character. As applied to him, Buffon's
epigram was strictly true. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole
nature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech and of life. Sin-
cerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking
the logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined
his prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his
considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an un-
comprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen, rather
than a profound, intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant
flashes of wit or of grim satire. On this side, his was a true
1 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. VII, pp. 50_1.
2 Ibid. p. 127.
$ Ibid. p. 93.
4 See Bigg, Charles, in his introduction to A Serious Call, pp. XXV and xxviii; also,
for a view of Law's later thought, Stephen, Leslie, English Thought in the 18th Century,
vol. 1, pp. 405—9.
21
E. L. IX.
CH. XII.
## p. 322 (#346) ############################################
322
William Law and the Mystics
eighteenth century mind, logical, sane, practical, with, at the same
time, a touch of whimsey, and a tendency to a quite unexpected
lack of balance on certain subjects. Underneath a severe and
slightly stiff exterior lay, however, emotion, enthusiasm and great
tenderness of feeling. When he was still a young man, the logical
and satirical side was strongest; in later years, this was much
tempered by emotion and tenderness.
This description of Law's character might equally serve as a
description of his style. It is strong, sincere, rhythmical, but,
except under stress of feeling, not especially melodious. A certain
stiffness and lack of adaptability, which was characteristic of the
man, makes itself felt in his prose, in spite of his free use of italics
and capital letters. Law's first object is to be explicit, to convey
the precise shade of his meaning, and, for this purpose, he chooses
the most homely similes, and is not in the least afraid of repetition,
either of words or thoughts. A good instance of his method, and
one which illustrates his disregard for iteration, his sarcastic vein
and his power of expressing his meaning in a simile, is the parable
of the pond in A Serious Call, which was versified by Byrom! .
Again, if you should see a man that had a large pond of water, yet living
in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink half a draught, for fear of
lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength, in
fetching more water to his pond, always thirsty, yet always carrying a bucket
of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the drops of rain,
gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every mire and mud, in
hopes of water, and always studying how to make every ditch empty itself
into his pond. If you should see him grow grey and old in these anxious
labours, and at last end a careful, thirsty life, by falling into his own pond,
would you not say, that such a one was not only the author of all his own
disquiets, but was foolish enough to be reckoned amongst idiots and madmen?
But yet foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the
follies, and absurd disquiets of the covetous man.
Law's use of simile and analogy in argument is characteristic.
By means of it, he lights up his position in one flash, or with
dexterity lays bare an inconsistency. His use of analogies between
natural, and mental and spiritual, processes is frequent, and is
applied with power in his later writings, when the oneness of law
in the spiritual and natural worlds became the very ground of his
philosophy. He had the command of several instruments and
could play in different keys. Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees
(1723), and The Spirit of Prayer (1749—50), while exhibiting
different sides of the man, are excellent examples of the variety and
1 Cf. The Pond, in The Poems of John Byrom (Chetham Society, 1894), part I,
pp. 196–202.
## p. 323 (#347) ############################################
Remarks, Spirit of Prayer and Serious Call 323
range of his prose. The earlier work is biting, crisp, brilliant and
severely logical, written in pithy sentences and short paragraphs,
containing a large proportion of words of one syllable, the printed
page thus presenting to the eye quite a different appearance from
that of his later work. Remarks displays to the full Law's
peculiar power of illustrating the fallacy of an abstract argument,
by embodying it in a concrete example. Mandeville's poem is a
vigorous satire in the Hudibrastic vein, and, in Law's answer, it
called out the full share of the same quality which he himself
possessed. "Though I direct myself to you,' he begins, in address-
ing Mandeville, 'I hope it will be no Offence if I sometimes
speak as if I was speaking to a Christian. ' The two assertions
of Mandeville which Law is chiefly concerned to refute are that
man is only an animal, and morality only an imposture. 'Accord-
ing to this Doctrine,' he retorts, 'to say that a Man is dishonest,
is making him just such a Criminal as a Horse that does not
dance. This is the kind of unerring homely simile which
abounds in Law's writing, and which reminds us of the swift
and caustic wit of Mrs Poyser. Other examples could be cited
to illustrate the pungency and raciness of Law's style when he
is in the mood for logical refutation. But it is only necessary
to glance at the first half page of The Spirit of Prayer to appre-
ciate the marked difference in temper and phrasing. The early
characteristics are as strong as ever; but, in addition, there is a
tolerance, a tender charm, an imaginative quality and a melody of
rhythm rarely to be found in the early work. The sentences and
phrases are longer, and move to a different measure; and, all through,
the treatise is steeped in mystic ardour, and, while possessed of a
strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has seldom surpassed,
conveys the longing of the soul for union with the Divine.
In A Serious Call, Law makes considerable use of his power
of character drawing, of which there are indications already in
Christian Perfection. This style of writing, very popular in the
seventeenth century, had long been a favourite method for con-
veying moral instruction, and Law uses it with great skill. His
sketches of Flavia and Miranda, 'the heathen and Christian sister'
as Gibbon calls them, are two of the best known and most elaborate
of his portraits. Law's foolish, inconsistent and selfish characters,
such as the woman of fashion, the scholar, the country gentleman or
the man of affairs, are more true to life, and, indeed, more sympa-
thetic to frail humanity, than the few virtuous characters he has
drawn. This is a key, perhaps, to the limitations of Law's outlook,
6
21-2
## p. 324 (#348) ############################################
324
William Law and the Mystics
and, more especially, of his influence; for, in his view, a man's work
in the world, and his more mundane characteristics, are as nothing,
so that one good person is precisely like another. Thus, a pious
physician is acceptable to God as pious, but not at all as a physician'.
A Serious Call, as a whole, is a fine example of Law's middle
style, grave, clear and rhythmical, with the strong sarcastic tend-
ency restrained; not, on the one hand, so brilliant as the Remarks,
nor, on the other, so illumined as The Spirit of Prayer. Yet, it
throbs with feeling, and, indeed, as Sir Leslie Stephen-himself not
wholly in sympathy with it—has finely said, its 'power can only be
adequately felt by readers who can study it on their knees. ' One
can well imagine how repugnant it would have been to the writer
that such a work should be criticised or appraised from a purely
literary point of view; and yet, if William Law had not been a
great literary craftsman, the lofty teaching of his Serious Call
would not have influenced, as it has, entire generations of English-
speaking people.
On the whole, the distinguishing and peculiar characteristic of
Law as a prose writer is that, for the most part, he is occupied with
things which can only be experienced emotionally and spiritually,
and that he treats them according to his closely logical habit of
mind. The result is an unusual combination of reason and emotion
which makes appeal at once to the intellect and the heart of the
reader.
Although Law's spiritual influence in his own generation was
probably more profound than that of any other man of his day,
yet he had curiously few direct followers. It is easy to see that
he was far too independent a thinker to be acceptable even to
the high churchmen whose cause he espoused, and, though he
was greatly revered by methodists and evangelists, his later
mysticism was wholly abhorrent to them? The most famous
members of the little band of disciples who visited him at Putney
were the Wesleys, John and Charles, who, two or three times
yearly, used to travel the whole distance from Oxford on foot
in order to consult their 'oracle' Later, however, there was &
rupture between them, when Wesley, on his return from Georgia
in 1738, having joined the Moravians, seems suddenly to have
realized, and to have contended, in very forcible language, that,
1 See Bigg's introduction to A Serious Call, 1899, p. xxix.
See Overton, chap. XXI, Law's opponents.
3 Works, vol. 11, Letter 1x, p.
latter and smaller class, the second generation of nonjurors.
Feeling naturally ran very high when, in answer to the posthumous
? See Walton's Notes, p. 499. The duty on which Law most insisted was charity; see
his defence of indiscriminate giving, in A Serious Call, Works, vol. 1v, pp. 114-18.
For an excellent illustration of the principles and arguments on both sides,
compare Law's letter from Cambridge, written to his brother at the time, with that of
bis future friend Byrom at the same date. Both are quoted by Overton, J. H. , William
Law, Nonjuror and Mystic, 1881, pp. 13-16.
## p. 310 (#334) ############################################
310
William Law and the Mystics
papers of George Hickes? , the nonjuring bishop, who charged the
church with schism, Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, the king's
chaplain, came forward as champion of the crown and church.
Hoadly was an able thinker and writer, and, in his Preservative
against the Principles and Practices of the Non-Jurors, he
attempts to justify the civil power by reducing to a minimum the
idea of church authority and even that of creeds. He tells
Christians to depend upon Christ alone for their religion, and not
upon His ministers, and he urges sincerity as the sole test of truth.
On this last point he dwells more fully and exclusively in his
famous sermon, The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ, preached
before the king on 31 March 1717. Hoadly's pamphlet and sermon
raised a cloud of controversy? ; but by far the ablest answer he
received on the part of the nonjurors was that contained in Law's
Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717–19). The bishop
never replied to Law, and, indeed, he gave strong proof of his acute-
ness by leaving his brilliant young opponent severely alone.
Law instantly detected that Hoadly's arguments tended to do
away altogether with the conception of the church as a living
spiritual society, and his answer is mainly directed against the
danger of this tendency". He begins by pointing out that there
are no libertines or loose thinkers in England who are not pleased
with the bishop, for they imagine that he intends to dissolve the
church as a society; and, indeed, they seem to have good grounds
for their assumption, since the bishop leaves neither authorised
ministers, nor sacraments, nor church, and intimates that 'if a
man be not a Hypocrite, it matters not what Religion he
is of
Law deals with church authority, and shows that if, as Hoadly
says, regularity of ordination and uninterrupted succession be
mere niceties and dreams, there is no difference between the
episcopalian communion and any other lay body of teachers. He
demolishes Hoadly's remarks on the exclusion of the papist
1 The Constitution of the Catholick Church, and the Nature and Consequences of
Schism. 1716.
In the course of July 1717, 74 pamphlets appeared on the subject, and, at one
crisis, for a day or two, the business of the city was at a standstill, little was done on
the Exchange and many shops were shut. See Hoadly's Works, vol. 11, pp. 385, 429;
also Sir Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the 18th Century, vol. II, p. 156.
3 See Hoadly's Works, vol. 11, pp. 694–5, where he gives his reasons for not answer.
ing Law.
. For some of the side issues which were vehemently discussed by other writers,
Bee Leslie Stephen, vol. 11, p. 157.
o Works, vol. 1, Letter 1, pp. 6, 7.
6 Ibid. pp. 14, 15.
8
## p. 311 (#335) ############################################
Law and the Deists
311
succession, and he ends the first letter by refuting the bishop's
definition of prayer, as a 'calm, undisturbed address to God',' in a
passage which is one of the finest pleas in our language for the
right use of passion, and which admirably sums up the funda-
mental difference of outlook between the mystic and the rationalist
temper in the things of the spirit.
Law's next work, Remarks on the Fable of the Bees (1723),
is an answer to Mandeville's poem? , the moral of which is that
private vices are public benefits,' and Law, characteristically
seizing on the fallacy underlying Mandeville's clever paradoxes,
deals with his definition of the nature of man and of virtue in a
style at once buoyant, witty and caustic.
The Case of Reason (1731) is Law's answer to the deists, and,
more especially, to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation
(1730). To reply to such arguments as those of Tindal and the
deists in general was, to a man of Law's insight and intellect, an
easy task. He brings out well the fundamental difference between
his and their points of view. Deists saw a universe governed
by fixed laws, a scheme of creation which was 'plain and per-
spicuous,' capable of accurate investigation, and they believed in
a magnified man God outside the universe, whose nature, methods
and aims were, or should be, perfectly clear to the minds of his
creatures. Law saw a living universe, wrapped in impenetrable
mystery, and believed in a God who was so infinitely greater than
man, that, of His nature, or of the reason or fitness of his actions,
men can know nothing whatsoever. Why complain of mysteries in
revelation, he says, when ‘no revealed mysteries can more exceed
the comprehension of man, than the state of human life itself"'?
Tindal asserts that the 'fitness of things' must be the sole rule
of God's actions. 'I readily grant this,' says Law, but what judges
are we of the fitness of things? ' We can no more judge the divine
nature than we can raise ourselves to a state of infinite wisdom;
and the rule by which God acts ‘must in many instances be
entirely inconceivable by us. . . and in no instances fully known or
perfectly comprehended. '
In short, the fundamental assumption of the deists, that human
all-sufficient to guide us to truth, is the great error which
1 So defined by Hoadly in his sermon The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of
Christ, p. 7.
* The Grumbling Hive, first printed 1705, republished with explanatory notes
under the title The Fable of the Bees, 1714.
3 Christianity as old as the Creation, p. 20.
* The Case of Reason, Works, vol. 11, p. 9.
* Ibid. p. 7.
reason
## p. 312 (#336) ############################################
312
William Law and the Mystics
Law, in his later writings especially, set himself to combat; in his
opinion, it is devilish pride, the sin by which the angels fell? .
In the further development of his position in The Case of
Reason, we can see many indications of the future mystic; for the
crudely material thought of his opponent seems to have called into
expression, for the first time, many of Law's more characteristic
beliefs. There is, throughout, a strong sense of man's capacity for
spiritual development, and a settled belief that the human mind can-
not possibly know anything as it really is, but can only know things
in so far as it is able to apprehend them through symbol or analogy.
Things supernatural or divine, he says, cannot be revealed to us in
their own nature, for the simple reason that we are not capable of
knowing them. If an angel were to appear to us, he would have
to appear, not as he really is, but in some human bodily form, so
that his appearance might be suited to our capacities. Thus, with
any supernatural or divine matter, it can only be represented to
as by its likeness to something that we already naturally know.
This is the way in which revelation teaches us, and it is only able
to teach so much outward knowledge of a great mystery as human
language can represents; reason is impotent in face of it, and only
by the spiritual faculty that exists in us can the things of the spirit
be even dimly apprehended.
Law's practical and ethical works, A Practical Treatise upon
Christian Perfection (1726) and A Serious Call (1728), have been
more read and are better known than any other of his writings;
moreover, they explain themselves, being independent both of local
controversies and of any special metaphysic. For these reasons,
comparatively little need be said about them here. Both treatises
are concerned with the practical question of how to live in accord-
ance with the teachings of Christ, and they point out with peculiar
force that the way consists, not in performing this or that act
of devotion or ceremony, but in a new principle of life, an entire
change of temper and of aspiration.
Christian Perfection, though somewhat gloomy and austere in
tone, has much charm and beauty; but it was quite overshadowed
by the wider popularity of what many consider Law's greatest
work, A Serious Call, a book of extraordinary power, delightful
and persuasive style, racy wit and unanswerable logic. Never have
the inconsistency between Christian precept and practice been
80 ruthlessly exposed and the secret springs of men's hearts so
1 The Case of Reason, p. 3.
3 Ibid. p. 37.
3 Ibid. p. 39.
* Ibid. pp. 16, 17.
## p. 313 (#337) ############################################
A Serious Call
313
uncompromisingly laid bare. Never has the ideal of the Christian
life been painted by one who lived more literally in accordance
with every word he preached. That is the secret of A Serious
Call; it is written from the heart, by a man in deep earnest; and
in an age distinguished for its mediocrity and easygoing laxness,
Law's lofty ideals acted as an electric current, setting aflame the
hearts of all who came under their power.
Few books in English have wielded such an influence. John
Wesley himself acknowledged that A Serious Call sowed the seed
of methodism? , and, undoubtedly, next to the Bible, it contributed
more than any other book to the spread of evangelicalism. It made
the deepest impression on Wesley himself; he preached after its
model? ; he used it as a text-book for the highest class at Kings-
wood school; and, a few months before his death, he spoke of it as
'a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the
English tongue, either for beauty of expression or for justice and
depth of thought. ' Charles Wesley, Henry Whitfield, Henry Venn,
Thomas Scott, Thomas Adam and James Stillingfleet are among
other great methodists and evangelicals who have recorded how
profoundly it affected them. But it did not appeal only to this
type of mind. Dr Johnson, who praised it in no measured terms,
attributes his first serious thoughts to the reading of it. 'I became,
he says, 'a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much
think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford' When
there,
I took op Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life, expecting to find it a dull
book (as such books generally are). . . . But I found Law quite an over-match
for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion.
Gibbont and the first Lord Lyttelton (who, taking it up at bedtime,
was forced to read it through before he could go to rest), are two
among many other diverse characters who felt its force.
Such, very briefly, were Law's views and writings until middle
age. Although, before that time, they do not show any marked
mystical tendency, yet we know that, from his undergraduateship
onwards, Law was a 'diligent reader' of mystical books, and,
when at Cambridge, he wrote a thesis entitled Malebranche, and
6
1 Sermon cvii, Wesley's Works, 11th ed. , 1856, vol. VII, p. 194.
2 Letter to Law of 1738, quoted by Overton, p. 33.
* Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck, 1887, vol. 1, p. 68, also vol. II,
p. 122.
• Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. B. , 1900, p. 23.
5 Byrom's Journal, vol. 11, part 2, p. 634.
o See Some Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's late Reply, Works, vol. vi, p. 319.
## p. 314 (#338) ############################################
314
William Law and the Mystics
the Vision of AU Things in God. There is no question that he
was strongly attracted to, and probably influenced by, Malebranche's
view that all true knowledge is but the measure of the extent to
which the individual can participate in the universal life; that,
unless we see God in some measure, we do not see anything; and
that it is only by union with God we are capable of knowing what
we do know? On the other hand, there are points in Malebranche's
philosophy—which curiously stops short of its logical conclusion-
quite opposed to Law's later thought: more especially the belief,
which Malebranche shared with Descartes on the one side and
Locke on the other, that body and spirit are separate and contrary
existences; whereas, in Law's view, body and spirit are but inward
and outward expressions of the same being? . Among other mystics
studied by Law were Dionysius the Areopagite, the Belgian and
German writers Johannes Ruysbroek, Johann Tauler, Heinrich
Suso and others, and the seventeenth century quietists, Fénelon,
Madame Guyon and Antoinette Bourignon. The last two were
much admired by Byrom, who loved to recur to them in writing and
in talk; but they were not altogether congenial to Law; they were
too diffuse, sentimental and even hysterical to please his essentially
robust and manly temper. When, however, he was about forty-six
(c. 1733), he came across the work of the seer who supplied just what
he needed, and who set his whole nature aglow with mystical fervour.
Jacob Boehme (or Behmen, as he has usually been called in
England), the peasant shoemaker of Görlitz, is one of the most
amazing phenomena in an amazing age. He was the son of a
herdsman, and, as a boy, helped his father to tend cattle; he
was taught how to write and read, was apprenticed to a shoe-
maker, married the daughter of a butcher and lived quietly and
humbly, troubled only by years of bitter persecution from his
pastor, who stirred up the civil authorities against him. This
was his outer life, sober and hardworking, like that of his fellow-
seer, William Blake, but, like him also, he lived in a glory of
inner illumination, by the light of which he caught glimpses of
mysteries and of splendours which, even in Boehme's broken and
faltering syllables, dazzle and blind the ordinary reader. He saw
with the eye of his mind into the heart of things, and he wrote
down so much of it as he could understand with his reason. He
had a quick and supple intelligence, and an intense power of
See Recherche de la Vérité, specially livre m, chap. vi, Que nous voyons toutes
choses en Dieu.
See The Spirit of Love, Works, vol. VIII, pp. 31 and 33.
## p. 315 (#339) ############################################
a
Jacob Boehme
315
visualizing. Everything appears to him as an image, and, with him,
a logical process expresses itself in a series of pictures. Although
illiterate and untrained, Boehme was in touch with the thought of
his time, and the form of his work, at any rate, owes a good deal to
it. The older speculative mysticism which rather despised nature,
and sought for light from within, coming down from Plotinus
through Meister Eckhart and Tauler, had, in Germany, been carried
on and developed by Caspar von Schwenckfeld and Sebastian
Franck; while a revival of the still older practical or 'perceptive
a
mysticism of the east, based on a study of the natural sciences (in
which were included astrology, alchemy and magic), had been
brought about by Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, both of whom
owed much to the Jewish Cabbala. These two mystical traditions,
the one starting from within, the other from without, were, to some
extent, reconciled into one system by the Lutheran pastor Valentin
Weigel, with whose mysticism Boehme has much in common.
The older mystics— eastern and western alike—had laid supreme
stress on unity as seen in the nature of God and all things. No
one more fully believed in ultimate unity than did Boehme; but
he lays peculiar stress on the duality, or, more accurately, the
trinity in unity, and the central point of his philosophy is the
fundamental postulate that all manifestation necessitates oppo-
sition. He asserted the uniformity of law throughout all existence,
physical and spiritual, and this law, which applies throughout
nature, divine and human alike, is that nothing can reveal itself
without resistance, good can only be known through evil, and
weakness through strength, just as light is only visible when
reflected by a dark body?
Thus, when God, the triune principle, or will under three
aspects, desires to become manifest, He divides the will into two,
the 'yes' and the ‘no,' and so founds an eternal contrast to Himself
out of His own hidden nature, in order to enter into a struggle
with it, and, finally, to discipline and assimilate it. The object of
all manifested nature is the transforming of the will which says
'no' into the will which says 'yes,' and this is brought about by
seven organizing spirits or forms. The first three of these bring
nature out of the dark element to the point where contact with
light is possible. Boehme calls them harshness, attraction and
anguish, which, in modern terms, are contraction, expansion, and
rotation. The first two are in deadly antagonism, and, being
1 • Without contraries is no progression,' as Blake puts it in his development of the
same thesis in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
6
6
## p. 316 (#340) ############################################
316
William Law and the Mystics
forced into collision, form an endless whirl of movement. These
two forces, with their resultant effect, are to be found all through
manifested nature, within man and without, and are called by
different names: good, evil and life; God, the devil and the world;
homogeneity, heterogeneity, strain, or the three laws of motion,
centripetal and centrifugal force, resulting in rotation. They are
the outcome of the 'nature' or 'no will,' and are the basis of
all manifestation. They are the power of God, apart from the
'love,' hence, their conflict is terrible. At this point, spirit
and nature approach and meet, and, from the shock, a new form
is liberated, lightning or fire, which is the fourth moment or
essence; in the spark of the lightning, all that is dark, gross and
selfish in nature is consumed; the flash brings the rotating
wheel of anguish to a standstill, and it becomes a cross. A divine
law is accomplished; for all life has a double birth, suffering is
the condition of joy and only in going through fire or the Cross
can man reach light. With the lightning ends the development
of the negative triad, and the evolution of the three higher forms
then begins ; Boehme calls them light or love, sound and sub-
stance; they are of the spirit, and, in them, contraction, expansion
and rotation are repeated in a new sense? The first three forms
give the stuff or strength of being ; the last three manifest the
quality of being, good or bad; and evolution can proceed in either
direction.
These principles of nature can be looked at in another way.
If they are resolved into two sets of three, in the first three the
dark principle which Boehme calls fire is manifested, while the
last three form the principle of light. These two are eternally
distinct, and, whichever is manifested, the other remains hidden.
This doctrine of the hidden and manifest is peculiar to Boehme,
and lies at the root of his explanation of evil. A spiritual principle
becomes manifest by taking on a form or quality. The 'dark' or
harsh principle in God is not evil in itself when in its right place,
i. e. , when hidden, and forming the necessary basis for the light or
good. But, through the fall of man, the divine order has been
transgressed, and the dark side has become manifest and appears
to us as evil. Many chemical processes help to give a crude
illustration of Boehme's thought. Suppose water' stands for
complete good or reality as God sees it. Of the two different gases,
1 Boehme refers to these seven forces in all his writings, but see his Threefold
Life of Man, chap. 1, $$ 23–32; chap. II, 88 27—36, 73; chap. II, § 1; chap. xv, $$ 5, 12;
or Signatura Rerum, chap. xiv, SS 10–15.
6
## p. 317 (#341) ############################################
-
Essence of Boehme's Mysticism 317
hydrogen (=evil) and oxygen (=good) each is manifested separately,
with peculiar qualities of its own, but, when they combine, their
original form goes 'into hiddenness,' and we get a new body
water. Neither of them alone is water, and yet water could not
'
be if either were lacking.
In reading Boehme, it must not be forgotten that he has a
living intuition of the eternal forces which lie at the root of all
things. He is struggling to express the stupendous world-drama
which is ever being enacted, in the universe without and in the soul
of man within; and, to this end, he presses into his service sym-
bolical, biblical and alchemical terms, although he fully realizes
their inadequacy. 'I speak thus,' he says, “in bodily fashion, for
the sake of my readers' lack of understanding. ' Unless this be
remembered, Boehme's work, in common with that of all mystics,
is liable to the gravest misunderstanding. He is never weary of
explaining that, although he is forced to describe things in a series
of images, there is no such thing as historical succession, 'for the
eternal dwells not in time 1. ' He has to speak of the generation of
God as though it were an act in time, although to do so is to use
'diabolical' (i. cw, knowingly untrue) language, for God hath no
beginning. Everything he describes is going on always and simul-
taneously, even as all the qualities he names are in everything
which is manifested. “The birth of nature takes place today, just
as it did in the beginning. '
It would be impossible to give here any adequate account of
Boehme's vision; but the four fundamental principles which he
enunciated and emphasized may be thus summarized: will or desire
as the original force; contrast or duality as the condition of all
manifestation; the relation of the hidden and the manifest; de-
velopment as a progressive unfolding of difference, with a final
resolution into unity. The practical and ethical result of this living
unity of nature is simple. Boehme's philosophy is one which can
only be apprehended by living it. Will, or desire, is the root-force
in man as it is in nature and in the Godhead, and, until this
is turned towards the light, any purely historical or intellectual
knowledge of these things is as useless as if hydrogen were to study
all the qualities of oxygen, expecting thus to become water;
whereas, what is needed is the actual union of the elements.
The whole of Boehme's practical teaching, as, also, that of Law,
might be summed up in the story told of an Indian sage who was
importuned by a young man as to how he could find God. For
Mysterium Magnum, part I, chap. vin.
6
1
## p. 318 (#342) ############################################
318
William Law and the Mystics
some time, the sage did not give any answer; but, one evening, he
bade the youth come and bathe with him in the river, and, while
there, he gripped him suddenly and held his head under the water
until he was nearly drowned. When he had released him, the sage
asked, “What did you want most when your head was under
water? ' and the youth replied, 'A breath of air. ' To which the
sage answered, “When you want God as you wanted that breath
of air you will find Him. '
This realization of the momentous quality of the will is the
secret of every religious mystic? ; the hunger of the soul, as Law
calls it? , is the first necessity, and all else will follow. Such was
the thought of the writer who, spiritually, was closely akin to our
two greatest English mystics. William Blake saw visions and
spoke a tongue like that of the illuminated cobbler ; and of
Law, who was not a seer, we learn that, when he first read
Boehme's works, they put him into 'a perfect sweat. ' Only those
who combine intense mystical aspiration with a clear and imperious
intellect can fully realize what the experience must have been.
The two most important of Law's mystical treatises are An
Appeal to all that Doubt (1740), and The Way to Divine Knowo-
ledge (1752). The first of these should be read by anyone desirous
of knowing Law's later thought, for it is a clear and fine exposition
of his attitude with regard more especially to the nature of man,
the unity of all nature and the quality of fire or desire. The
later book is an account of the main principles of Boehme,
with a warning as to the right way to apply them, and it was
written as an introduction to the new edition of Boehme's works
which Law contemplated publishing. Law's later, are but an
expansion of his earlier, views; the main difference being that,
whereas, in the practical treatises (Christian Perfection and
A Serious Call), he urges certain temper and conduct because
it is our duty to obey God, or because it is right or lawful, in his
later writings-Boehme having furnished the clue--he adds not only
the reason for this conduct being right, but the means of attaining
it, by expounding the working of the law itself. The following
aspect, then, of Boehme's teaching is that which Law most con-
sistently emphasizes.
1 Cf. St Augustine, • To will God entirely is to have Him,' The City of God, book XI,
chap. Iv; or Ruysbroek's answer to the priests from Paris who came to consult him on
the state of their souls : 'You are as you desire to be. '
• Hunger is all, and in all worlds everything lives in it, and by it. ' See Law's
letter to Langcake, 7 September 1751, printed in Walton's Notes and Materials, p. 541.
3 See Law's letter to W. Walker, Byrom's Journal, vol. I, part 2, p. 559.
1
## p. 319 (#343) ############################################
a
a
Boehme and Law
319
Man was made out of the breath of God; his soul is a spark of)
the Deity. It, therefore, cannot die, for it ‘has the unbeginning
unending life of God in it. ' Man has fallen from his high estate
through ignorance and inexperience, through seeking separation,
taking the part for the whole, desiring the knowledge of good and
evil as separate things. The assertion of self is, thus, the root of
all evil; for, so soon as the will of man turns to itself, and would,
as it were, have a sound of its own, it breaks off from the divine
harmony, and falls into the misery of its own discord. ' For it is the
state of our will that makes the state of our life. Hence, by 'the
fall,' man's standpoint has been dislocated from the centre to the
circumference, and he lives in a false imagination. Every quality
is equally good, for there is nothing evil in God, from whom all
comes; but evil appears to be through separation. Thus, strength
and desire in the divine nature are necessary and magnificent
qualities, but when, as in the creature, they are separated from
love, they appear as evil. The analogy of the fruit is, in this con-
nection, a favourite one with both Law and Boehme. When a fruit
is unripe (i. e. incomplete), it is sour, bitter, astringent, unwholesome;
but, when it has been longer exposed to the sun and air, it becomes
sweet, luscious and good to eat. Yet it is the same fruit, and the
astringent qualities are not lost or destroyed, but transmuted and
enriched, and are thus the main cause of its goodness? . The only
way to pass from this condition of 'bitterness' to ripeness, from
this false imagination to the true one, is the way of death. We
must die to what we are before we can be born anew? ; we must
die to the things of this world to which we cling, and for which we
desire and hope, and we must turn towards God. This should be
the daily, hourly exercise of the mind, until the whole turn and
bent of our spirit 'points as constantly to God as the needle
touched with the loadstone does to the north: To be alive in
God, before you are dead to your own nature, is 'a thing as
impossible in itself, as for a grain of wheat to be alive before
it dies'
The root of all, then, is the will or desire. It is the seed of
.
everything that can grow in us; 'it is the only workman in nature,
and everything is its work’; it is the true magic power. And this
will or desire is always active; every man's life is a continual state
1 An Appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, Works, vol. vi,
pp. 27–8.
· The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, p. 24. 8 Ibid. p. 23. * Ibid. p. 20.
The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. VII, pp. 138_9.
## p. 320 (#344) ############################################
320
William Law and the Mystics
of prayer, and, if we are not praying for the things of God, we are
praying for something else! For prayer is but the desire of the
soul. Our imaginations and desires are, therefore, the greatest
realities we have, and we should look closely to what they are? .
It is essential to the understanding of Law, as of Boehme, to
remember his belief in the reality and actuality of the oneness of
nature and of law: Nature is God's great book of revelation, for it
is nothing else but God's own outward manifestation of what He
inwardly is, and can do. The mysteries of religion, therefore, are no
higher, and no deeper than the mysteries of nature'. God Himself
is subject to this law. There is no question of God's mercy or of
His wrath', for it is an eternal principle that we can only receive
what we are capable of receiving; and, to ask why one person does
not gain any help from the mercy and goodness of God while
another does gain help is 'like asking why the refreshing dew of
Heaven does not do that to flint which it does to the vegetable
planter
Self-denial and mortification of the flesh are not things imposed
upon us by the mere will of God: considered in themselves, they have
nothing of goodness or holiness; but they have their ground and
reason in the nature of the thing, and are as 'absolutely necessary
to make way for the new birth, as the death of the husk and gross
part of the grain is necessary to make way for its vegetable life? '
Law's attitude towards learning, which has been somewhat
misunderstood, is a part of his belief in the 'Light Within,' which
he shares with all mystical thinkers. In judging of what he says
as to the inadequacy of book knowledge and scholarship, it is
necessary to call to mind the characteristics of his age and public.
When we remember the barren controversies about externals in
matters religious which raged all through his lifetime, and the
exaltation of the reason as the only means whereby man could
know anything of the deeper truths of existence, it is not sur-
prising that, with Law, the pendulum should swing in the opposite
direction, and that, with passionate insistence, he should be driven
to assert the utter inadequacy of the intellect by itself in all
spiritual concerns
· See The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 150—1.
? An Appeal, Works, vol. VI, p. 169.
3 Ibid. pp. 19-20.
* Ibid. pp. 69, 80.
5 The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. VII, pp. 23, 27.
6 The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, p. 60.
· The Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vo, p. 68. See, also, ibid. pp. 91–2.
8 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. vii, pp. 118-28.
## p. 321 (#345) ############################################
Law's Prose Style
321
He, says Law, who looks to his reason as the true power and light
of his nature, betrays the same Ignorance of the whole Nature,
Power and Office of Reason as if he were to smell with his Eyes, or
see with his Nose? ' All true knowledge, he urges, must come from
within, it must be experienced; and, if it were not that man has
the divine nature in him, no omnipotence of God could open in
him the knowledge of divine things. There cannot be any know-
ledge of things but where the thing itself is; there cannot be any
knowledge of any unpossessed Matters, for knowledge can only be
yours as Sickness and Health is yours, not conveyed to you by a
Hearsay Notion, but the Fruit of your own Perception? '
Law, liberal scholar, clear reasoner and finished writer, was no
more an enemy of learning than Ruskin was an enemy of writing
and reading because he said that there were very few people in
the world who got any good by either. Their scornful remarks on
these subjects often mislead their readers; yet the aim of both
writers was not to belittle these things in themselves, but solely to
put them in their right place 8.
Law is among the greatest of English prose writers, and no
one ever more truly possessed than he 'the splendid and imperish-
able excellence of sincerity and strength. ' Those who least
understand his later views, who look upon them as 'idle fancies,'
and on the whole subject of his mystical thought as 'a melancholy
topic' are constrained to admit, not only that he writes fine and
lucid prose in A Serious Call, but that, in his mystical treatises,
his style becomes mellower and rises to greater heights than in
his earlier work. The reason for this cumulative richness is that
the history and development of Law's prose style is the history
and development of his character. As applied to him, Buffon's
epigram was strictly true. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole
nature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech and of life. Sin-
cerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking
the logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined
his prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his
considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an un-
comprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen, rather
than a profound, intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant
flashes of wit or of grim satire. On this side, his was a true
1 See The Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vol. VII, pp. 50_1.
2 Ibid. p. 127.
$ Ibid. p. 93.
4 See Bigg, Charles, in his introduction to A Serious Call, pp. XXV and xxviii; also,
for a view of Law's later thought, Stephen, Leslie, English Thought in the 18th Century,
vol. 1, pp. 405—9.
21
E. L. IX.
CH. XII.
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William Law and the Mystics
eighteenth century mind, logical, sane, practical, with, at the same
time, a touch of whimsey, and a tendency to a quite unexpected
lack of balance on certain subjects. Underneath a severe and
slightly stiff exterior lay, however, emotion, enthusiasm and great
tenderness of feeling. When he was still a young man, the logical
and satirical side was strongest; in later years, this was much
tempered by emotion and tenderness.
This description of Law's character might equally serve as a
description of his style. It is strong, sincere, rhythmical, but,
except under stress of feeling, not especially melodious. A certain
stiffness and lack of adaptability, which was characteristic of the
man, makes itself felt in his prose, in spite of his free use of italics
and capital letters. Law's first object is to be explicit, to convey
the precise shade of his meaning, and, for this purpose, he chooses
the most homely similes, and is not in the least afraid of repetition,
either of words or thoughts. A good instance of his method, and
one which illustrates his disregard for iteration, his sarcastic vein
and his power of expressing his meaning in a simile, is the parable
of the pond in A Serious Call, which was versified by Byrom! .
Again, if you should see a man that had a large pond of water, yet living
in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink half a draught, for fear of
lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength, in
fetching more water to his pond, always thirsty, yet always carrying a bucket
of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the drops of rain,
gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every mire and mud, in
hopes of water, and always studying how to make every ditch empty itself
into his pond. If you should see him grow grey and old in these anxious
labours, and at last end a careful, thirsty life, by falling into his own pond,
would you not say, that such a one was not only the author of all his own
disquiets, but was foolish enough to be reckoned amongst idiots and madmen?
But yet foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the
follies, and absurd disquiets of the covetous man.
Law's use of simile and analogy in argument is characteristic.
By means of it, he lights up his position in one flash, or with
dexterity lays bare an inconsistency. His use of analogies between
natural, and mental and spiritual, processes is frequent, and is
applied with power in his later writings, when the oneness of law
in the spiritual and natural worlds became the very ground of his
philosophy. He had the command of several instruments and
could play in different keys. Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees
(1723), and The Spirit of Prayer (1749—50), while exhibiting
different sides of the man, are excellent examples of the variety and
1 Cf. The Pond, in The Poems of John Byrom (Chetham Society, 1894), part I,
pp. 196–202.
## p. 323 (#347) ############################################
Remarks, Spirit of Prayer and Serious Call 323
range of his prose. The earlier work is biting, crisp, brilliant and
severely logical, written in pithy sentences and short paragraphs,
containing a large proportion of words of one syllable, the printed
page thus presenting to the eye quite a different appearance from
that of his later work. Remarks displays to the full Law's
peculiar power of illustrating the fallacy of an abstract argument,
by embodying it in a concrete example. Mandeville's poem is a
vigorous satire in the Hudibrastic vein, and, in Law's answer, it
called out the full share of the same quality which he himself
possessed. "Though I direct myself to you,' he begins, in address-
ing Mandeville, 'I hope it will be no Offence if I sometimes
speak as if I was speaking to a Christian. ' The two assertions
of Mandeville which Law is chiefly concerned to refute are that
man is only an animal, and morality only an imposture. 'Accord-
ing to this Doctrine,' he retorts, 'to say that a Man is dishonest,
is making him just such a Criminal as a Horse that does not
dance. This is the kind of unerring homely simile which
abounds in Law's writing, and which reminds us of the swift
and caustic wit of Mrs Poyser. Other examples could be cited
to illustrate the pungency and raciness of Law's style when he
is in the mood for logical refutation. But it is only necessary
to glance at the first half page of The Spirit of Prayer to appre-
ciate the marked difference in temper and phrasing. The early
characteristics are as strong as ever; but, in addition, there is a
tolerance, a tender charm, an imaginative quality and a melody of
rhythm rarely to be found in the early work. The sentences and
phrases are longer, and move to a different measure; and, all through,
the treatise is steeped in mystic ardour, and, while possessed of a
strength and beauty which Plotinus himself has seldom surpassed,
conveys the longing of the soul for union with the Divine.
In A Serious Call, Law makes considerable use of his power
of character drawing, of which there are indications already in
Christian Perfection. This style of writing, very popular in the
seventeenth century, had long been a favourite method for con-
veying moral instruction, and Law uses it with great skill. His
sketches of Flavia and Miranda, 'the heathen and Christian sister'
as Gibbon calls them, are two of the best known and most elaborate
of his portraits. Law's foolish, inconsistent and selfish characters,
such as the woman of fashion, the scholar, the country gentleman or
the man of affairs, are more true to life, and, indeed, more sympa-
thetic to frail humanity, than the few virtuous characters he has
drawn. This is a key, perhaps, to the limitations of Law's outlook,
6
21-2
## p. 324 (#348) ############################################
324
William Law and the Mystics
and, more especially, of his influence; for, in his view, a man's work
in the world, and his more mundane characteristics, are as nothing,
so that one good person is precisely like another. Thus, a pious
physician is acceptable to God as pious, but not at all as a physician'.
A Serious Call, as a whole, is a fine example of Law's middle
style, grave, clear and rhythmical, with the strong sarcastic tend-
ency restrained; not, on the one hand, so brilliant as the Remarks,
nor, on the other, so illumined as The Spirit of Prayer. Yet, it
throbs with feeling, and, indeed, as Sir Leslie Stephen-himself not
wholly in sympathy with it—has finely said, its 'power can only be
adequately felt by readers who can study it on their knees. ' One
can well imagine how repugnant it would have been to the writer
that such a work should be criticised or appraised from a purely
literary point of view; and yet, if William Law had not been a
great literary craftsman, the lofty teaching of his Serious Call
would not have influenced, as it has, entire generations of English-
speaking people.
On the whole, the distinguishing and peculiar characteristic of
Law as a prose writer is that, for the most part, he is occupied with
things which can only be experienced emotionally and spiritually,
and that he treats them according to his closely logical habit of
mind. The result is an unusual combination of reason and emotion
which makes appeal at once to the intellect and the heart of the
reader.
Although Law's spiritual influence in his own generation was
probably more profound than that of any other man of his day,
yet he had curiously few direct followers. It is easy to see that
he was far too independent a thinker to be acceptable even to
the high churchmen whose cause he espoused, and, though he
was greatly revered by methodists and evangelists, his later
mysticism was wholly abhorrent to them? The most famous
members of the little band of disciples who visited him at Putney
were the Wesleys, John and Charles, who, two or three times
yearly, used to travel the whole distance from Oxford on foot
in order to consult their 'oracle' Later, however, there was &
rupture between them, when Wesley, on his return from Georgia
in 1738, having joined the Moravians, seems suddenly to have
realized, and to have contended, in very forcible language, that,
1 See Bigg's introduction to A Serious Call, 1899, p. xxix.
See Overton, chap. XXI, Law's opponents.
3 Works, vol. 11, Letter 1x, p.
