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.
one ever more truly possessed than he 'the splendid and imperish-
able excellence of sincerity and strength.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
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. 123.
## p. 325 (#349) ############################################
John Byrom
325
although Law, in his books (A Christian Perfection and A Serious
Call), put a very high ideal before men, he had, nevertheless, omitted
to emphasize that the only means of attaining it was through the
atonement of Christ. This was largely the quarrel of Wesley, as,
'
also, of the later methodists, with mysticism in general; 'under the
term mysticism,' he writes from Georgia, 'I comprehend those and
only those who slight any of the means of grace? . ?
George Cheyne, fashionable doctor, vegetarian and mystic,
was another of Law's friends at this time ; but the most charming
and most lovable of his followers was his devoted admirer,
John Byrom. The relationship between these two men much
resembles that of Johnson and Boswell, and we find the same
outspoken brusqueness, concealing a very real affection, on the
part of the mentor, with the same unswerving devotion and
zealous record of details—even of the frequent snubs received
on the part of the disciple. Byrom, in many ways, reminds us of
Goldsmith; he possesses something of the artless simplicity, the
rare and fragrant charm, which is the outcome of a sincere and
tender nature; he has many forgivable foibles and weaknesses, a
delightful, because completely natural, style in prose and a con-
siderable variety of interests and pursuits. He travelled abroad
and studied medicine, and, though he never took a medical degree,
he was always called Doctor by his friends; he was an ardent
Jacobite, a poet, a mystic and the inventor of a system of short-
hand, by the teaching of which he increased his income until, in
1740, he succeeded to the family property near Manchester.
Byrom, though a contemporary of Law at Cambridge, evidently
did not know him personally until 1729, and his first recorded
meeting with his hero, as, also, the later ones, form some of the
most attractive passages of an entirely delightful and too little
known book, The Private Journal and Literary Remains of
John Byrom. It is from this journal that we gather most of our
information about Law at Putney, and from it that, incidentally, we
get the fullest light on his character and personality.
On 15 February 1729, Byrom bought A Serious Call, and, on
the following 4 March, he and a friend named Mildmay went down
in the Fulham coach to Putney to interview the author. This was
the beginning of an intimacy which lasted until Law's death, and
a
1 For a full account of the relations of Wesley and Law, and the text of their two
famous letters, see Overton, pp. 80–92, and see, also, the account in Byrom's Journal,
vol. 11, part 1, pp. 268–70.
2 See Byrom's Journal, vol. 11, part 1, p. 181, and for later methodist views, The
Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, by Thomas Jackson, 1841, vol. 1, pp. 52, 53, 112, 113.
8
## p. 326 (#350) ############################################
326
William Law and the Mystics
which was founded on a strong community of tastes in matters
of mystical philosophy, and on the unswerving devotion of
Byrom to his ‘master? ' They met at Cambridge, where Byrom
gave shorthand lessons, and Law shepherded his unsatisfactory
pupil ; at Putney, in Somerset gardens and, later, at King's
Cliffe
Byrom, though scarcely a poet, for he lacked imagination,
had an unusual facility for turning everything into rime. Не
sometimes wrote in very pleasing and graceful veins, and he
had an undoubted gift of epigram; but he was particularly fond
of making verse paraphrases of prose writings, and especially of
those of William Law. His two finest pieces of this kind are An
Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple (1749), which versifies Law's
Spirit of Prayer; and the letter on Enthusiasm (1752), founded
on the latter part of Law's Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's
Reply. This last poem is written with admirable clearness and
point; Law's defence of enthusiasm is one of the best things
he wrote, and Byrom does full justice to it. Enthusiasm,
meaning, more especially ' a misconceit of inspirations, the laying
claim to peculiar divine guidance or 'inner light,' resulting in
anything approaching fanaticism or even emotion, was a quality
equally abhorred and feared in the eighteenth century by philo-
sophers, divines and methodists, indeed, by everyone except
mystics. The first care of every writer and thinker was to clear
himself of any suspicion of this “horrid thing®. ' Law's argument,
which is to the effect that enthusiasm is but the kindling of the
driving desire or will of every intelligent creature, is well sum-
marized by Byrom :-
1
1
"O how much better he from whom I draw
Though deep yet clear his system-“Master Law. "
Master I call him . . . (Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple. )
See, for an example of their conversations, which, in the variety of its topics, and
distinctive character of its sentiments, throws much light on Law's thoughts and
ideals, that of Saturday, 7 June 1735.
3 Especially in his song "Why prithee now' (Poems, 1, 115), or his early pastoral,
• My Time, O ye Muses. '
* As in the famous lines upon Handel and Bononcini, often attributed to Swift
(Poems, I, 35), and the Pretender toast (Poems, 1, 572).
o Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 1662, 8 2.
• Bishop Butler, when talking once to Wesley, exclaimed, 'Sir, the pretending to
extraordinary revelation or gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid
thing. ' For an admirable account of Enthusiasm,' see The English Church in the
18th Century, by Abbey and Overton, vol. I, chap. IX; also a note by Ward, A. W. , in
Byrom's Poems, vol. 11, pt. 1, pp. 169—79; and a note by Hill, G. Birkbeck, in
Gibbon's Memoirs, 1900, p. 22.
1
## p. 327 (#351) ############################################
Henry Brooke
327
Think not that you are no Enthusiast, then!
All Men are such, as sure as they are Men.
The Thing itself is not at all to blame
'Tis in each State of human Life the same,
That which concerns us therefore, is to see
What Species of Enthusiasts we bel.
Byrom hoped that, by turning them into verse, Law's later teach-
ings might reach a larger public? , and, in this, Law evidently agreed
with him, looking upon him as a valuable ally. Byrom's work
certainly did not lack appreciation by his contemporaries; War-
burton—who had no cause to love him—thought highly of it, and
Wesley, who ascribes to him all the wit and humour of Swift,
together with much more learning, says that in his poems are
'some of the noblest truths expressed with the utmost energy of
language, and the strongest colours of poetry. '
Henry Brookewas another writer who was deeply imbued
with Boehme's thought, and his expression of it, imbedded
in that curious book The Fool of Quality (1766—70), reached,
probably, a larger public than did Law's mystical treatises 5.
In many ways, Brooke must have been a charming character,
original, tender-hearted, overflowing with sentiment, but entirely
incapable of concentration or even continuity of thought. His
book is a brave one, full of high ideals. It is an extraordinary
mixture of schoolboy pranks, romantic adventures, stories-ancient
and modern-ethical dialogues, dissertations on mystical philosophy,
political economy, the British constitution, the relation of the
sexes, the training of a gentleman and many other topics. MrMeekly
and Mr Fenton (or Clinton) are Brooke's two exponents of a
very general and diluted form of 'Behmenism. ' The existence
of the two wills, the formation of Christ within the soul, the
reflection of God's image in matter as in a mirror, the nature of
beauty, of man and of God, the fall of Lucifer and the angels, and
of Adam-all these things are discussed and explained in mystical
language, steeped in emotion and sentimente.
1 Byrom's Poems, II, 1, pp. 190_-1.
"Since different ways of telling may excite
In different minds Attention to what's right,
And men (I measure by myself) sometimes,
Averse to Reas'ning, may be taught by Rimes. ' Poems, 11, 1, 164.
3 Wesley's Journal, Monday, 12 July 1773.
• The uncle of the Henry Brooke of Dublin, who knew Law and greatly admired him.
6 Brooke also wrote a large number of plays and poems, two of the latter being full
of mystical thought, Universal Beauty (1735–6) and Redemption (1772). As to Brooke's
novels of. vol. x, chapter III, post.
6 See The Fool of Quality, ed. Baker, E. A. , 1906, pp. 30, 31, 33, 39, 133-6,
142, 258–60, 328—30, 836, 867-9, 394.
1
9
## p. 328 (#352) ############################################
328
William Law and the Mystics
The Fool of Quality found favour with John Wesley, who
reprinted it in 1781, under the title The History of Henry Earl
of Moreland. In doing this, he reduced it from five volumes to
two, omitting, as he says in his preface, 'a great part of the mystic
Divinity, as it is more philosophical than Scriptural. ' He goes on
to speak of the book with the highest praise, 'I now venture to
recommend the following Treatise as the most excellent in its kind
of any that I have seen, either in the English, or any other lan-
guage'; its greatest excellence being that it continually strikes at
the heart. . . I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless
he has a heart of stone. ' Launched thus, with the imprimatur of
their great leader, it became favourite reading with generations of
devout Wesleyans, and, in this form, passed through many editions!
Mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have
little chronological development, since mysticism can neither age nor
die. They rarely found schools of thought in their own day. It is,
therefore, not surprising that, in spite of various strains of a mystic
tendency, the mysticism of Law and his small circle of followers
had no marked influence on the main stream of eighteenth century
thought. The atmosphere of the age was antagonistic to it, and it
remained an undercurrent only, the impulse given by Law in this
direction spending itself finally among little-known dreamers and
eccentrics?
Later, some of the root - ideas of Boehme returned to
England by way of Hegel, Schelling, Jung-Stilling and Friedrich
Schlegel, or through Boehme's French disciple, Louis-Claude de
Saint-Martin. They influenced Coleridges, and profoundly modified
nineteenth century conceptions, thus preparing the way for the
better understanding of mystical thought. Blake's prophetic books
are only now, after a hundred years, beginning to find readers,
and, undoubtedly, Law's Appeal, if it were more widely known,
would, in the twentieth century, win the response for which it has
long been waiting.
1 Wesley's alterations in wording are most instructive and interesting, for he has
not hesitated to alter as well as to omit passages. Cf. Clinton's account of the
nature of man and God in Wesley, ed. of 1781, vol. II, pp. 286—7, with Brooke, 1 vol.
ed. 1906, p. 367.
3 As, for instance, Francis Okely, or, later, J. P. Greaves and Christopher Walton.
There remains, however, to be traced an influence which bore fruit in the nineteenth
century. Thomas Erskine of Linlathen was indebted to both Law and Boehme, and
he, in his turn, influenced F. D. Maurice and others.
8 Coleridge also knew both Law and Boehme at first hand; for his appreciation of
them see Biographia Literaria, chap. IX, Aids to Reflexion, conclusion, and notes to
Southey's Life of Wesley, 3rd ed. , 1846, vol. 1, p. 476. For his projected work on
Boehme, and in connection with his philosophy, see letter to Lady Beaumont, 1810, in
Memorials of Coleorton, ed. Knight, W. , 1887, vol. II, pp. 105—7.
## p. 329 (#353) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
SCHOLARS AND ANTIQUARIES
I. BENTLEY AND CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP
At the end of the seventeenth century, the history of scholar-
ship is illuminated by the great name of Richard Bentley.
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. 123.
## p. 325 (#349) ############################################
John Byrom
325
although Law, in his books (A Christian Perfection and A Serious
Call), put a very high ideal before men, he had, nevertheless, omitted
to emphasize that the only means of attaining it was through the
atonement of Christ. This was largely the quarrel of Wesley, as,
'
also, of the later methodists, with mysticism in general; 'under the
term mysticism,' he writes from Georgia, 'I comprehend those and
only those who slight any of the means of grace? . ?
George Cheyne, fashionable doctor, vegetarian and mystic,
was another of Law's friends at this time ; but the most charming
and most lovable of his followers was his devoted admirer,
John Byrom. The relationship between these two men much
resembles that of Johnson and Boswell, and we find the same
outspoken brusqueness, concealing a very real affection, on the
part of the mentor, with the same unswerving devotion and
zealous record of details—even of the frequent snubs received
on the part of the disciple. Byrom, in many ways, reminds us of
Goldsmith; he possesses something of the artless simplicity, the
rare and fragrant charm, which is the outcome of a sincere and
tender nature; he has many forgivable foibles and weaknesses, a
delightful, because completely natural, style in prose and a con-
siderable variety of interests and pursuits. He travelled abroad
and studied medicine, and, though he never took a medical degree,
he was always called Doctor by his friends; he was an ardent
Jacobite, a poet, a mystic and the inventor of a system of short-
hand, by the teaching of which he increased his income until, in
1740, he succeeded to the family property near Manchester.
Byrom, though a contemporary of Law at Cambridge, evidently
did not know him personally until 1729, and his first recorded
meeting with his hero, as, also, the later ones, form some of the
most attractive passages of an entirely delightful and too little
known book, The Private Journal and Literary Remains of
John Byrom. It is from this journal that we gather most of our
information about Law at Putney, and from it that, incidentally, we
get the fullest light on his character and personality.
On 15 February 1729, Byrom bought A Serious Call, and, on
the following 4 March, he and a friend named Mildmay went down
in the Fulham coach to Putney to interview the author. This was
the beginning of an intimacy which lasted until Law's death, and
a
1 For a full account of the relations of Wesley and Law, and the text of their two
famous letters, see Overton, pp. 80–92, and see, also, the account in Byrom's Journal,
vol. 11, part 1, pp. 268–70.
2 See Byrom's Journal, vol. 11, part 1, p. 181, and for later methodist views, The
Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, by Thomas Jackson, 1841, vol. 1, pp. 52, 53, 112, 113.
8
## p. 326 (#350) ############################################
326
William Law and the Mystics
which was founded on a strong community of tastes in matters
of mystical philosophy, and on the unswerving devotion of
Byrom to his ‘master? ' They met at Cambridge, where Byrom
gave shorthand lessons, and Law shepherded his unsatisfactory
pupil ; at Putney, in Somerset gardens and, later, at King's
Cliffe
Byrom, though scarcely a poet, for he lacked imagination,
had an unusual facility for turning everything into rime. Не
sometimes wrote in very pleasing and graceful veins, and he
had an undoubted gift of epigram; but he was particularly fond
of making verse paraphrases of prose writings, and especially of
those of William Law. His two finest pieces of this kind are An
Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple (1749), which versifies Law's
Spirit of Prayer; and the letter on Enthusiasm (1752), founded
on the latter part of Law's Animadversions upon Dr Trapp's
Reply. This last poem is written with admirable clearness and
point; Law's defence of enthusiasm is one of the best things
he wrote, and Byrom does full justice to it. Enthusiasm,
meaning, more especially ' a misconceit of inspirations, the laying
claim to peculiar divine guidance or 'inner light,' resulting in
anything approaching fanaticism or even emotion, was a quality
equally abhorred and feared in the eighteenth century by philo-
sophers, divines and methodists, indeed, by everyone except
mystics. The first care of every writer and thinker was to clear
himself of any suspicion of this “horrid thing®. ' Law's argument,
which is to the effect that enthusiasm is but the kindling of the
driving desire or will of every intelligent creature, is well sum-
marized by Byrom :-
1
1
"O how much better he from whom I draw
Though deep yet clear his system-“Master Law. "
Master I call him . . . (Epistle to a Gentleman of the Temple. )
See, for an example of their conversations, which, in the variety of its topics, and
distinctive character of its sentiments, throws much light on Law's thoughts and
ideals, that of Saturday, 7 June 1735.
3 Especially in his song "Why prithee now' (Poems, 1, 115), or his early pastoral,
• My Time, O ye Muses. '
* As in the famous lines upon Handel and Bononcini, often attributed to Swift
(Poems, I, 35), and the Pretender toast (Poems, 1, 572).
o Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, 1662, 8 2.
• Bishop Butler, when talking once to Wesley, exclaimed, 'Sir, the pretending to
extraordinary revelation or gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid
thing. ' For an admirable account of Enthusiasm,' see The English Church in the
18th Century, by Abbey and Overton, vol. I, chap. IX; also a note by Ward, A. W. , in
Byrom's Poems, vol. 11, pt. 1, pp. 169—79; and a note by Hill, G. Birkbeck, in
Gibbon's Memoirs, 1900, p. 22.
1
## p. 327 (#351) ############################################
Henry Brooke
327
Think not that you are no Enthusiast, then!
All Men are such, as sure as they are Men.
The Thing itself is not at all to blame
'Tis in each State of human Life the same,
That which concerns us therefore, is to see
What Species of Enthusiasts we bel.
Byrom hoped that, by turning them into verse, Law's later teach-
ings might reach a larger public? , and, in this, Law evidently agreed
with him, looking upon him as a valuable ally. Byrom's work
certainly did not lack appreciation by his contemporaries; War-
burton—who had no cause to love him—thought highly of it, and
Wesley, who ascribes to him all the wit and humour of Swift,
together with much more learning, says that in his poems are
'some of the noblest truths expressed with the utmost energy of
language, and the strongest colours of poetry. '
Henry Brookewas another writer who was deeply imbued
with Boehme's thought, and his expression of it, imbedded
in that curious book The Fool of Quality (1766—70), reached,
probably, a larger public than did Law's mystical treatises 5.
In many ways, Brooke must have been a charming character,
original, tender-hearted, overflowing with sentiment, but entirely
incapable of concentration or even continuity of thought. His
book is a brave one, full of high ideals. It is an extraordinary
mixture of schoolboy pranks, romantic adventures, stories-ancient
and modern-ethical dialogues, dissertations on mystical philosophy,
political economy, the British constitution, the relation of the
sexes, the training of a gentleman and many other topics. MrMeekly
and Mr Fenton (or Clinton) are Brooke's two exponents of a
very general and diluted form of 'Behmenism. ' The existence
of the two wills, the formation of Christ within the soul, the
reflection of God's image in matter as in a mirror, the nature of
beauty, of man and of God, the fall of Lucifer and the angels, and
of Adam-all these things are discussed and explained in mystical
language, steeped in emotion and sentimente.
1 Byrom's Poems, II, 1, pp. 190_-1.
"Since different ways of telling may excite
In different minds Attention to what's right,
And men (I measure by myself) sometimes,
Averse to Reas'ning, may be taught by Rimes. ' Poems, 11, 1, 164.
3 Wesley's Journal, Monday, 12 July 1773.
• The uncle of the Henry Brooke of Dublin, who knew Law and greatly admired him.
6 Brooke also wrote a large number of plays and poems, two of the latter being full
of mystical thought, Universal Beauty (1735–6) and Redemption (1772). As to Brooke's
novels of. vol. x, chapter III, post.
6 See The Fool of Quality, ed. Baker, E. A. , 1906, pp. 30, 31, 33, 39, 133-6,
142, 258–60, 328—30, 836, 867-9, 394.
1
9
## p. 328 (#352) ############################################
328
William Law and the Mystics
The Fool of Quality found favour with John Wesley, who
reprinted it in 1781, under the title The History of Henry Earl
of Moreland. In doing this, he reduced it from five volumes to
two, omitting, as he says in his preface, 'a great part of the mystic
Divinity, as it is more philosophical than Scriptural. ' He goes on
to speak of the book with the highest praise, 'I now venture to
recommend the following Treatise as the most excellent in its kind
of any that I have seen, either in the English, or any other lan-
guage'; its greatest excellence being that it continually strikes at
the heart. . . I know not who can survey it with tearless eyes, unless
he has a heart of stone. ' Launched thus, with the imprimatur of
their great leader, it became favourite reading with generations of
devout Wesleyans, and, in this form, passed through many editions!
Mystics, unlike other thinkers, scientific or philosophical, have
little chronological development, since mysticism can neither age nor
die. They rarely found schools of thought in their own day. It is,
therefore, not surprising that, in spite of various strains of a mystic
tendency, the mysticism of Law and his small circle of followers
had no marked influence on the main stream of eighteenth century
thought. The atmosphere of the age was antagonistic to it, and it
remained an undercurrent only, the impulse given by Law in this
direction spending itself finally among little-known dreamers and
eccentrics?
Later, some of the root - ideas of Boehme returned to
England by way of Hegel, Schelling, Jung-Stilling and Friedrich
Schlegel, or through Boehme's French disciple, Louis-Claude de
Saint-Martin. They influenced Coleridges, and profoundly modified
nineteenth century conceptions, thus preparing the way for the
better understanding of mystical thought. Blake's prophetic books
are only now, after a hundred years, beginning to find readers,
and, undoubtedly, Law's Appeal, if it were more widely known,
would, in the twentieth century, win the response for which it has
long been waiting.
1 Wesley's alterations in wording are most instructive and interesting, for he has
not hesitated to alter as well as to omit passages. Cf. Clinton's account of the
nature of man and God in Wesley, ed. of 1781, vol. II, pp. 286—7, with Brooke, 1 vol.
ed. 1906, p. 367.
3 As, for instance, Francis Okely, or, later, J. P. Greaves and Christopher Walton.
There remains, however, to be traced an influence which bore fruit in the nineteenth
century. Thomas Erskine of Linlathen was indebted to both Law and Boehme, and
he, in his turn, influenced F. D. Maurice and others.
8 Coleridge also knew both Law and Boehme at first hand; for his appreciation of
them see Biographia Literaria, chap. IX, Aids to Reflexion, conclusion, and notes to
Southey's Life of Wesley, 3rd ed. , 1846, vol. 1, p. 476. For his projected work on
Boehme, and in connection with his philosophy, see letter to Lady Beaumont, 1810, in
Memorials of Coleorton, ed. Knight, W. , 1887, vol. II, pp. 105—7.
## p. 329 (#353) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
SCHOLARS AND ANTIQUARIES
I. BENTLEY AND CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP
At the end of the seventeenth century, the history of scholar-
ship is illuminated by the great name of Richard Bentley.
