See a most
interesting
MS letter in Latin
from Francis Lee to P.
from Francis Lee to P.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
His
most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated
on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737—41). This vast
work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical
objection to the Old Testament scriptures——that the books of
Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An
objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the
writings of the greater deists ; but it suited Warburton's purpose
and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees
that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of
rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal
to any such belief or teach any such doctrine, although it was
## p. 297 (#321) ############################################
Samuel Clarke
297
common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this,
he argues, proves the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of
nature are an insufficient support for morality; without the belief
in a future life, government cannot be maintained-except by
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore,
taken as a proof that they were under the immediate providence
of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of
this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for display-
ing his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of
topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his
learning, Bentley said that he had a 'monstrous appetite and bad
digestion. ' His ability to get up a case and score a point has
been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed
to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features
of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy
or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
IIL. MORALISTS.
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius; but, by sheer
intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English
philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the
day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian
controversy, biblical and classical study--all occupied him. Only
as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many
problems, he never defined his position. He was born in 1675,
and died in 1729. In 1697, he published an annotated Latin
translation of the Cartesian Rohault's Traité de physique, and
thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception
of Newton's works as text-books at Cambridge ; he also translated
Newton's Optics. In 1699, his controversies with the deists began,
with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 1705, he delivered
two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A Demon-
stration of the Being and Attributes of God, and A Discourse
concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and
the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published
editions of Caesar's Commentaries (1712) and Homer's Iliad
(1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise
entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought
upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with con-
vocation. In 1715—16, he was engaged in a controversy with
Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of
a
## p. 298 (#322) ############################################
298 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
Newton's in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God,
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and
came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest
work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrange-
ment of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the
whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation
of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the
controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series
of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demon-
strate; but, otherwise, he did not imitate mathematical method, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes,
.
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from
existence, not from idea: maintaining that there must be a
self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going
on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent
being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are
among these attributes, he relies expressly on a posteriori
reasoning. The whole argument—therein resembling Locke's
belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke's system has been
represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the comparison
is superficial. One salient point of resemblance-the view of
space as an attribute of God-means something different in the
two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter.
And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition
of freedom and for a distinction of morality from nature, which
were impossible for Spinoza
Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent in-
fluence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other
doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral
relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe.
There are certain 'fitnesses of things' over and above their merely
physical relations : 'there is,' he says, “a fitness or suitableness of
certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons,
antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment
whatsoever. ' Many illustrations are given of these 'relations of
things'; but their nature is not further explained. 'Fitness,
‘agreement, 'suitableness' are the terms by which they are
described. They differ, therefore, from the causal relations with
which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different
aspect—the moral aspect
of reality. But they are known in the
6
## p. 299 (#323) ############################################
6
Rational Ethics
299
same way-by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear
to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far
as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct
by them. God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the
will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests,
and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible
and common. For this reason, also, the obligation of virtue needs
the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that
morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe,
had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature';
Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the
nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil
are qualities which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step
further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one
thing with another—a relation as eternal as is the nature of the
things. But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond
the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very
careful statement became obvious from some of the consequences
drawn by his followers. His views were defended, against the
first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy,
in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727-8). Still earlier,
William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722),
had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory pro-
pounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called 'fitness' was inter-
preted by him as an actual existing relation or quality: a wrong
act is simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus,
“if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him,' he does not
consider him as being what he is,' namely, another man's horse ;
and 'to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of
the great law of our nature, the law of reason. ' Bentham's
criticism of this is hardly a caricature: 'if you were to murder
your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he
father. '
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by
Clarke's contemporary, the third earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself educated under
Locke's supervision. He was debarred by weak health from follow-
ing an active political career, and his life was thus mainly devoted
to intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school
а
your
was not
## p. 300 (#324) ############################################
300 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a
life at Winchester, he travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a
tutor; in early manhood he resided in Holland ; in later life
his health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent
student of the classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius, a devotee of liberty in thought and in political affairs,
and an amateur of artmat once a philosopher and a virtuoso. His
writings were published in three volumes, entitled Characteristics
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a second edition,
carefully revised and enlarged, was ready at the time of his death
in 1713. Several of the treatises comprised in these volumes had
been previously published. The most important of them, An
Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, was surreptitiously printed
from an early draft, in 1699, by Toland-whom he had befriended
and financed; The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared
in 1709; A Letter concerning Enthusiasm in 1708 ; Sensus Com-
munis: an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1709;
Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises
in later editions were posthumous : A Notion of the Historical
Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and
Miscellaneous Reflections, 1714. The style of these works is, nearly
always, clear, and it has the great merit of avoiding traditional
technicalities; but it is over-polished and often artificial-too
‘genteel,' as Lamb said. Its decorations pleased contemporary
taste ; but the rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the
modern ear, and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher.
Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and, perhaps,
not without reason, though his first publication was an introduction
to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, and he
remained a churchman to the end. His sympathies were with
that spiritual view of the world which is common to Christianity
and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. He had no taste for the
refinements of theological controversy or for modern religious
fanaticisms. He hated, still more, the method of suppressing the
latter by persecution; and this led to his suggestion that they
would be better met if their absurdities were left to ridicule. He
never said that ridicule was the test of truth ; but he did regard
it as a specific against superstition; and some of his comments
in illustration of this thesis, not unnaturally, gave offence. He
himself, however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his
concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his
devotion to his view of truth.
For him, the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, which he
## p. 301 (#325) ############################################
a
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
301
found not in Hobbes only but, also, in a more insinuating form,
in Locke. His own ethical writings were intended to show that
the system of man's nature did not point to selfishness. There
are affections in man which have regard to his own interest or
happiness; but there are also social (or, as he calls them, natural)
affections which are directed to the good of the species to which
he belongs; and he labours to prove that there is no conflict
between the two systems. But the mind of man has a still higher
reach. “The natural affection of a rational creature' will take
in the universe, so that he will love all things that have being in
the world : for, in the universal design of things, 'nothing is
supernumerary or unnecessary'; 'the whole is harmony, the
numbers entire, the music perfect. Further, the mind of man
is itself in harmony with the cosmic order. Connate in it is
a 'sense of right and wrong,' to which Shaftesbury gives the name
'the moral sense. ' And it is for his doctrine of the moral sense
that he is now most often remembered. In his own century, his
writings attained remarkable popularity : Berkeley (in Alciphron)
was one of his severest critics; Leibniz and Diderot were among
his warmest admirers.
The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate development,
especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson, a native
of Ulster, was educated at the university of Glasgow, and, in 1729,
returned there as professor of moral philosophy. Among the
more notable British philosophers, he was the first to occupy
a professor's chair; and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart
to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste for
analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, to which the world is
indebted for some of the most valuable produotions of the eighteenth century,
Before his appointment as professor, Hutcheson had published
two volumes An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue (1725), and An Essay on the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Ilustrations on the
Moral Sense (1726)-each containing two treatises. Text-books
on logic, metaphysics and ethics followed; his System of Moral
Philosophy (1755) was published after his death. The ideas of
Shaftesbury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic
form and with an increased tendency towards a psychological
interpretation of them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterested-
ness of benevolence; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments;
he elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speaking
of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain; and he identified
## p. 302 (#326) ############################################
302 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
virtue with universal benevolence: in the tendency towards
general happiness he found the standard of goodness. In this
respect, he was, historically, the forerunner of the utilitarians. In
his first work, he even used the formula—'the greatest happiness
for the greatest numbers'-afterwards, with only a slight verbal
change, made famous by Bentham? He anticipated Bentham,
also, in the attempt to form a calculus of pleasures and pains.
Hutcheson's first work was described on the title-page as a
defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable of the
Bees. In 1705, Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician resident
in London, had published a pamphlet of some four hundred lines
of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd
Honest. This was republished as a volume, in 1714, together with
'an inquiry into the original of moral virtue' and 'remarks' on
the original verses, and, again, in 1723, with further additions—the
whole bearing the title The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits. Mandeville marks a reaction against the too
facile optimism which was common with the deists and to which
Shaftesbury gave philosophical expression, and against the con-
ventions associated with popular morality. But he did not draw
nice distinctions: convention and morality are equally the objects
of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and vice
that gather round the industrial system, and perverse enough to
mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to Hobbes's selfish
theory of human nature, but was without Hobbes's grasp of the
principle of order. He looked upon man as a compound of various
passions, governed by each as it comes uppermost, and he held that
'the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot
upon pride. '
The combination of ability and coarseness with
which this view was developed led to many other answers than
Hutcheson’s. Berkeley replied in Alciphron ; and William Law,
as his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant
pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the
Bees (1723)? Law also made his mark in the deist controversy
by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in which he
1 Although Bentham thought and said (Works, 2, 46, 142) that he got the formula
from Priestley, it is not to be found in Priestley's works, and was, almost certainly,
taken from Beccaria. Beccaria's words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima
felicità divisa nel maggior numero, and these were rendered in the English translation
(1767) by 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'-the exact words which
Bentham first used in 1776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not
established.
2 Cf. chap. XII, p. 311, post.
## p. 303 (#327) ############################################
Joseph Butler
303
anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards worked out by
Butler.
Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two years
(1750—52) of his life, did not make any contributions to pure
metaphysics ; but his is the greatest name both in the theological
and in the ethical thought of the period. He published two books
only-a volume of Fifteen Sermons (1726), which (in particular,
the first three sermons, entitled 'on human nature') express his
ethical system, and The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736).
These works are without any pretentions to literary elegance; and
it is only in rare passages that the usually sombre style glows with
the fire of restrained eloquence. But they are compact of pro-
found thought. The names of other writers are rarely mentioned;
but all their arguments have been considered ; no difficulties are
slurred over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to
the bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about the
reasoning, which needs no grace of diction.
Butler's condensed and weighty argument hardly admits of
summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may be expressed
in the one word 'teleological' Human nature is a system or
.
constitution; the same is true of the world at large; and both
point to an end or purpose. This is his guiding idea, suggested
by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is given ; and it enables him
to rise from a refutation of the selfish theory of Hobbes to the
truth that man's nature or constitution is adapted to virtue. The
old argument about selfish or disinterested affections is raised
to a higher plane. He shows that the characteristic of impulse,
or the particular passions,' is to seek an object, not to seek
pleasure, while pleasure results from the attainment of the object
desired. Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there
are also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses
is judged and their value appraised. On this level, selfishness
is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle of
conduct; beside it stands the moral sense, or, as Butler preferred
to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or 'superintendency '
(a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the very nature of
conscience; and, although Butler labours to prove the harmony
of the dictates of the two principles, it is to conscience that he
assigns ultimate authority. It is true that, in an oft-quoted
sentence, he admits
that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this
6
## p. 304 (#328) ############################################
304 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
[i. e. moral rectitude) or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be
for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.
But, even if we disregard the 'let it be allowed that introduces
the admission, the single sentence is hardly sufficient to justify the
assertion that Butler held the authority of self-love to be equal to,
or higher than, that of conscience. The passage is, rather, a
momentary concession to the selfish spirit of the age; and it has
to be interpreted in the light of his frequent assertions of the
natural superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from
the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it,' he says.
‘Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world!
Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this spiritual
principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion that man is adapted
to virtue. But here his ethics may be said, almost, to stop short,
He does not explain further the nature of conscience in relation
to reason and will, or derive from it, in any systematic way, the
,
content of morality. He was distrustful of any attempt at &
complete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability as the
guide of life.
The same fundamental conception and the same limitation
reappear in Butler's still more famous work, The Analogy. The
world is a system-'a scheme in which means are made use of
to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws. ' It
is neglect of this truth which makes men think that particular
instances of suffering virtue or successful vice are inconsistent
with 'the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of
nature. ' In the constitution and government of the world, nature
and morality are so closely connected as to form a single scheme,
in which it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried
on merely in subserviency to the latter. ' The imperfections of
our knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail.
But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of
nature, and it can be shown that there is no difficulty in the
doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, which has not
a parallel difficulty in the principle common to both sides in the
argument. This is the analogy to the establishment of which in
detail Butler's reasonings are directed. They are so exhaustive,
so thorough and so candid, that critics of all schools are agreed in
regarding his as the final word in a great controversy.
## p. 305 (#329) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS
To speak of mystical thought in the first half of the eighteenth
century in England seems almost a contradiction in terms; for the
predominating character of that age, its outlook on life and its
mind as expressed in philosophy, religion and literature, was in
every way opposed to what is understood by mystical. In litera-
ture, shallowness of thought is often found combined with unrivalled
clearness of expression; in general outlook, the conception of a
mechanical world made by an outside Creator; in religion and
philosophy, the practically universal appeal to 'rational' evidence
as supreme arbiter. In no age, it would seem, have men written
so much about religion, while practising it so little. The one
quality in Scripture which interests writers and readers alike is
its credibility, and the impression gathered by the student of the
religious controversies of the day is that Christianity was held
to exist, not to be lived, but, like a proposition in Euclid, only
to be proved.
This view, however, of the main tendency of the time, though
representative, is not complete. There is also an undercurrent
of thought of a kind that never quite disappears and that helps to
keep the earth green during the somewhat dry and arid seasons
when rationalism or materialism gains the upper hand.
This tendency of thought is called mysticism, and it may be
described in its widest sense as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of fundamental unity, of
alikeness in all things. All mystical thought springs from this as
base. The poet mystic, looking out on the natural world, rejoices
in it with a purer joy and studies it with a deeper reverence than
other men, because he knows it is not something called 'matter'
and alien to him, but that it is as he is—spirit itself made visible.
The mystic philosopher, instead of attempting to reason or analyse
or deduce, seeks merely to tell of his vision; whereupon, words
20
а
E. L. IX,
CH. XII.
## p. 306 (#330) ############################################
306
William Law and the Mystics
generally fail him, and he becomes obscure. The religious mystic
has for goal the union of himself with God, the actual contact
with the Divine Presence, and he conceives this possible because
man is 'a God though in the germ,' and, therefore, can know God
through that part of his nature which is akin to Him.
There were many strains of influence which, in the seventeenth
century, tended to foster this type of thought in England. The
little group of Cambridge Platonists gave new expression to great
neo-Platonic ideas, the smouldering embers of which had been
fanned to flame in the ardent forge of the Florentine renascence? ;
but, in addition to this older thought, there were not only new
influences from without but, also, new conditions within which
must be indicated.
A strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam,
whither the first body of exiled separatists had gone in 1593.
Elizabeth, thinking to quell independent religious thought at
home, had planted nurseries of freedom in Holland, which waxed
strong and sent back over seas in the next century a persistent
stream of opinion and literature To this can be traced the
root-ideas which animated alike quakers, seekers, Behmenists,
anabaptists, familists and numberless other sects which em-
bodied a reaction against forms and ceremonies that, in ceasing
to be understood, had become lifeless. They all agreed in
deeming it more important to spiritualize this life than to
dogmatize about the life to come. They all believed in the 'inner
light,' in the immediate revelation of God within the soul as the
supreme and all-important experience. They all held that salvation
was the effect of a spiritual principle, a seed quickened invisibly
by God, and, consequently, they considered learning useless, or
even mischievous, in dealing with the things of the spirit. So far,
these various sects were mystical in thought; though, with the
exception of familists, Behmenists and seekers, they cannot un-
reservedly be classed as mystics. Large numbers of these three
sects, however, became children of light,' thus helping to give
greater prominence to the strong mystical element in early
quakerism.
It only needed the release from the crushing hand of Laud,
and the upheaval of the civil war, to set free the religious revival
а
6
1 See vol. VIII, chap. X.
* For an interesting detailed account of this phase of religious life, with full
references to original documents, see Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909, by Jones,
R. M. , chaps, xvi and XVII.
## p. 307 (#331) ############################################
a
6
Seventeenth Century Mysticism 307
which had long been seething, and to distract England, for a time,
with religious excitement. Contemporary writers refer with horror
to the swarm of 'sects, heresies and schisms' which now came into
being, and Milton alone seems to have understood that the
turmoil was but the outward sign of a great spiritual awakening?
Unhappily, there were few who, with him, could perceive that the
'opinion of good men is but knowledge in the making,' and that
these many sects were but various aspects of one main movement
towards freedom and individualism, towards a religion of the heart
rather than of the head. The terrible persecutions of the quakers
under Charles II% tended to withdraw them from active life, and
to throw them in the direction of a more personal and introspective
religion". It was then that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon,
Madame Guyon and Fénelon became popular, and were much read
among a certain section of thinkers, while the teachings of Jacob
Boehme, whose works had been put into English between the years
1644 and 1692, bore fruit in many ways. Whether directly or
indirectly, they permeated the thought of the founders of the
Society of Friends, they were widely read both in cottage and
study? and they produced a distinct Behmenite sects. Their
influence can be seen in the writings of Thomas Tryon, John
Pordage, George Cheyne, Francis Lee, Jane Lead, Thomas Bromley,
Richard Roach and others; in the foundation and transactions of the
1 See, for instance, Pagitt's Heresiography, 1645, dedication to the lord mayor;
or Edwards, who, in his Gangraena, 1646, names 176, and, later, 23 more, 'errors,
heresies, blasphemies. '
? Areopagitica, 1644.
3 13,562 Friends suffered imprisonment during the years 1661–97, while 198 were
transported overseas and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. See Inner Life of
the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by Barclay, pp. 474_8.
• For further observations on early quakerism in its connection with literature,
see vol. VIII, chap. iv.
6 Charles I, who, shortly before his death, read Boehme's Forty Questions, just then
translated into English, much admired it.
See a most interesting MS letter in Latin
from Francis Lee to P. Poiret in Dr Williams's library, C 5. 30.
8. Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books that the Quakers bought, for there
is the Principle or Foundation of their Religion. ' A Looking Glass for George Fox,
1667, p. 5. But Boehme was not wholly approved of even among the early quakers;
see Inner Life of the Religious Societies, p. 479. For the influence of Boehme on
Fox and Winstanley, see Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 494—5; cf. , also, Fox's
Journal for 1648, 8th ed. , vol. 1, pp. 28–9, with Boehme's Three Principles, chap. xx,
88 39—42; also, life of J. B. in . Law's edition,' vol. I, p. xiii, or the Signatura Rerum.
7 See Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works, vol. VII, pp. 84, 85 ; Byrom's Journal,
vol. 1, part 2, pp. 560, 598; vol. II, part 2, pp. 193, 216, 236, 285, 310–11, 328,
377, 380.
8 See Richard Baxter's Autobiography, Reliquiae Bacterianae, 1696, part 1,
P. 77.
20-2
## p. 308 (#332) ############################################
308
William Law and the Mystics
Philadelphian society; in the gibes of satirists? ; in forgotten
tracts; in the increase of interest in alchemy”; in the voluminous
MS commentaries of Freher, or even in Newton's great discovery;
for it is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion
first reached Newton through his eager study of Boehme.
The tracing of this mystical thought, however, during the
period under discussion and later, mainly among obscure sects
and little-known thinkers, would not form part of a history of
English literature, were it not that our greatest prose mystic lived
and wrote in the same age.
William Law had a curiously paradoxical career. After
graduating as B. A. and M. A. at Cambridge, in 1708 and 1712,
and being, in 1711, ordained and elected fellow of his college
(Emmanuel), he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to
George I, and thus lost his fellowship and vocation. Though an
ardent high churchman, he was the father of methodism. Though
deprived of employment in his church, he wrote the book which,
of all others for a century to come, had the most profound and
far-reaching influence upon the religious thought of his country.
Though a sincere, and, so he believed, an orthodox Christian, he was
the classic exponent of Boehme, a thinker abhorred and mistrusted
alike by eighteenth century divines and by Wesleyan leaders.
About the year 1727, Edward Gibbon selected Law as tutor for
his only son, the father of the historian, and, in 1730, when his pupil
went abroad, Law lived on with the elder Gibbon in the 'spacious
house with gardens and land at Putney,' where he was 'the much
honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family!
During these years at Putney, Law's reputation as a writer
became assured. He was already known as the ablest defender of
nonjuror principles; the publication of A Serious Call in 1729
had brought him renown, and he was revered and consulted by
an admiring band of disciples. His later life was spent at his
birthplace, King's Cliffe, near Stamford. He settled there in 1737
or 1740, and was joined by Hester Gibbon, the historian's aunt,
and Mrs Hutcheson, a widow with considerable means. This
oddly assorted trio gave themselves to a life of retirement and
good deeds, the whole being regulated by Law. With a united
income of over £3000 a year, they lived in the simplest fashion.
• He Anthroposophus and Floud,
And Jacob Behmen understood. '
Hudibras, 1, canto 1, cf. A Tale of a Tub, sect. V, and Martinus Scriblerus, end of
chap. I.
? See Aubrey's Lives.
3 Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G, B. , 1900, p. 34.
1
## p. 309 (#333) ############################################
Law's Life and Writings 309
They spent large sums in founding schools and almshouses, and in
general charity, which took the form of free daily distribution of
food, money and clothes, no beggar being turned away from the
door, until the countryside became so demoralized with vagrants
that the inhabitants protested and the rector preached against
these proceedings from the pulpit? The trouble, however, seems
to have abated when the three kindhearted and guileless offenders
threatened to leave the parish, and, possibly, it may have caused
them to exercise a little discrimination in their giving.
Here, at King's Cliffe, after more than twenty years of residence,
passed in the strictest routine of study and good works, Law died,
after a short illness, almost in the act of singing a hymn.
Law's writings fall naturally into three divisions, contro-
versial, practical and mystical. His three great controversial
works are directed against a curious assortment of opponents:
Hoadly, latitudinarian bishop of Bangor, Mandeville, a sceptical
pessimist, and Tindal, a deistical optimist. These writers
represent three main sections of the religious opinion of the
day, and much light is thrown on Law's character and beliefs
by the method with which he meets them and turns their own
weapons against themselves.
It was a time of theological pamphleteering, and the famous
Bangorian controversy is a good specimen of the kind of dis-
cussion which abounded in the days of George I. It is, on the
whole, good reading, clear, pointed and even witty, and, if com-
pared with similar controversies in the reign of Charles I, presents
an admirable object lesson as to the advance made during the
intervening years in the writing of English prose.
When queen Anne died, and the claims of the Stewarts were
set aside in favour of a parliamentary king from Hanover, the
church, committed absolutely to the hereditary, as opposed to the
parliamentary, principle, found itself on the horns of a dilemma.
High churchmen were forced either to eat their own words, or to
refuse to take the oaths of allegiance to the new king and of
abjuration to the pretender? 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.
most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated
on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737—41). This vast
work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical
objection to the Old Testament scriptures——that the books of
Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An
objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the
writings of the greater deists ; but it suited Warburton's purpose
and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees
that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of
rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal
to any such belief or teach any such doctrine, although it was
## p. 297 (#321) ############################################
Samuel Clarke
297
common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this,
he argues, proves the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of
nature are an insufficient support for morality; without the belief
in a future life, government cannot be maintained-except by
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore,
taken as a proof that they were under the immediate providence
of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of
this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for display-
ing his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of
topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his
learning, Bentley said that he had a 'monstrous appetite and bad
digestion. ' His ability to get up a case and score a point has
been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed
to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features
of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy
or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
IIL. MORALISTS.
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius; but, by sheer
intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English
philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the
day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian
controversy, biblical and classical study--all occupied him. Only
as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many
problems, he never defined his position. He was born in 1675,
and died in 1729. In 1697, he published an annotated Latin
translation of the Cartesian Rohault's Traité de physique, and
thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception
of Newton's works as text-books at Cambridge ; he also translated
Newton's Optics. In 1699, his controversies with the deists began,
with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 1705, he delivered
two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A Demon-
stration of the Being and Attributes of God, and A Discourse
concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and
the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published
editions of Caesar's Commentaries (1712) and Homer's Iliad
(1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise
entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought
upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with con-
vocation. In 1715—16, he was engaged in a controversy with
Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of
a
## p. 298 (#322) ############################################
298 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
Newton's in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God,
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and
came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest
work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrange-
ment of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the
whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation
of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the
controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series
of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demon-
strate; but, otherwise, he did not imitate mathematical method, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes,
.
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from
existence, not from idea: maintaining that there must be a
self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going
on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent
being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are
among these attributes, he relies expressly on a posteriori
reasoning. The whole argument—therein resembling Locke's
belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke's system has been
represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the comparison
is superficial. One salient point of resemblance-the view of
space as an attribute of God-means something different in the
two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter.
And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition
of freedom and for a distinction of morality from nature, which
were impossible for Spinoza
Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent in-
fluence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other
doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral
relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe.
There are certain 'fitnesses of things' over and above their merely
physical relations : 'there is,' he says, “a fitness or suitableness of
certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons,
antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment
whatsoever. ' Many illustrations are given of these 'relations of
things'; but their nature is not further explained. 'Fitness,
‘agreement, 'suitableness' are the terms by which they are
described. They differ, therefore, from the causal relations with
which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different
aspect—the moral aspect
of reality. But they are known in the
6
## p. 299 (#323) ############################################
6
Rational Ethics
299
same way-by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear
to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far
as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct
by them. God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the
will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests,
and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible
and common. For this reason, also, the obligation of virtue needs
the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that
morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe,
had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature';
Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the
nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil
are qualities which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step
further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one
thing with another—a relation as eternal as is the nature of the
things. But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond
the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very
careful statement became obvious from some of the consequences
drawn by his followers. His views were defended, against the
first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy,
in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727-8). Still earlier,
William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722),
had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory pro-
pounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called 'fitness' was inter-
preted by him as an actual existing relation or quality: a wrong
act is simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus,
“if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him,' he does not
consider him as being what he is,' namely, another man's horse ;
and 'to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of
the great law of our nature, the law of reason. ' Bentham's
criticism of this is hardly a caricature: 'if you were to murder
your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he
father. '
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by
Clarke's contemporary, the third earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself educated under
Locke's supervision. He was debarred by weak health from follow-
ing an active political career, and his life was thus mainly devoted
to intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school
а
your
was not
## p. 300 (#324) ############################################
300 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a
life at Winchester, he travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a
tutor; in early manhood he resided in Holland ; in later life
his health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent
student of the classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius, a devotee of liberty in thought and in political affairs,
and an amateur of artmat once a philosopher and a virtuoso. His
writings were published in three volumes, entitled Characteristics
of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in 1711; a second edition,
carefully revised and enlarged, was ready at the time of his death
in 1713. Several of the treatises comprised in these volumes had
been previously published. The most important of them, An
Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit, was surreptitiously printed
from an early draft, in 1699, by Toland-whom he had befriended
and financed; The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody appeared
in 1709; A Letter concerning Enthusiasm in 1708 ; Sensus Com-
munis: an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in 1709;
Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author in 1710. Two of the treatises
in later editions were posthumous : A Notion of the Historical
Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713, and
Miscellaneous Reflections, 1714. The style of these works is, nearly
always, clear, and it has the great merit of avoiding traditional
technicalities; but it is over-polished and often artificial-too
‘genteel,' as Lamb said. Its decorations pleased contemporary
taste ; but the rhapsodies of The Moralists fall coldly on the
modern ear, and the virtuoso has obscured the philosopher.
Shaftesbury was reckoned among the deists, and, perhaps,
not without reason, though his first publication was an introduction
to the sermons of Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, and he
remained a churchman to the end. His sympathies were with
that spiritual view of the world which is common to Christianity
and to Plato and Marcus Aurelius. He had no taste for the
refinements of theological controversy or for modern religious
fanaticisms. He hated, still more, the method of suppressing the
latter by persecution; and this led to his suggestion that they
would be better met if their absurdities were left to ridicule. He
never said that ridicule was the test of truth ; but he did regard
it as a specific against superstition; and some of his comments
in illustration of this thesis, not unnaturally, gave offence. He
himself, however, was not without enthusiasms, as is shown by his
concern for the good of his friends and his country and by his
devotion to his view of truth.
For him, the enemy was the selfish theory of conduct, which he
## p. 301 (#325) ############################################
a
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
301
found not in Hobbes only but, also, in a more insinuating form,
in Locke. His own ethical writings were intended to show that
the system of man's nature did not point to selfishness. There
are affections in man which have regard to his own interest or
happiness; but there are also social (or, as he calls them, natural)
affections which are directed to the good of the species to which
he belongs; and he labours to prove that there is no conflict
between the two systems. But the mind of man has a still higher
reach. “The natural affection of a rational creature' will take
in the universe, so that he will love all things that have being in
the world : for, in the universal design of things, 'nothing is
supernumerary or unnecessary'; 'the whole is harmony, the
numbers entire, the music perfect. Further, the mind of man
is itself in harmony with the cosmic order. Connate in it is
a 'sense of right and wrong,' to which Shaftesbury gives the name
'the moral sense. ' And it is for his doctrine of the moral sense
that he is now most often remembered. In his own century, his
writings attained remarkable popularity : Berkeley (in Alciphron)
was one of his severest critics; Leibniz and Diderot were among
his warmest admirers.
The doctrine of the moral sense led to immediate development,
especially at the hands of Francis Hutcheson. Hutcheson, a native
of Ulster, was educated at the university of Glasgow, and, in 1729,
returned there as professor of moral philosophy. Among the
more notable British philosophers, he was the first to occupy
a professor's chair; and his lectures are said by Dugald Stewart
to have contributed very powerfully to diffuse, in Scotland, that taste for
analytical discussion, and that spirit of liberal enquiry, to which the world is
indebted for some of the most valuable produotions of the eighteenth century,
Before his appointment as professor, Hutcheson had published
two volumes An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of
Beauty and Virtue (1725), and An Essay on the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Ilustrations on the
Moral Sense (1726)-each containing two treatises. Text-books
on logic, metaphysics and ethics followed; his System of Moral
Philosophy (1755) was published after his death. The ideas of
Shaftesbury reappear in these works in a somewhat more systematic
form and with an increased tendency towards a psychological
interpretation of them. Hutcheson maintained the disinterested-
ness of benevolence; he assimilated moral and aesthetic judgments;
he elaborated the doctrine of the moral sense, sometimes speaking
of it as merely a new source of pleasure or pain; and he identified
## p. 302 (#326) ############################################
302 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
virtue with universal benevolence: in the tendency towards
general happiness he found the standard of goodness. In this
respect, he was, historically, the forerunner of the utilitarians. In
his first work, he even used the formula—'the greatest happiness
for the greatest numbers'-afterwards, with only a slight verbal
change, made famous by Bentham? He anticipated Bentham,
also, in the attempt to form a calculus of pleasures and pains.
Hutcheson's first work was described on the title-page as a
defence of Shaftesbury against the author of The Fable of the
Bees. In 1705, Bernard Mandeville, a Dutch physician resident
in London, had published a pamphlet of some four hundred lines
of doggerel verse entitled The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd
Honest. This was republished as a volume, in 1714, together with
'an inquiry into the original of moral virtue' and 'remarks' on
the original verses, and, again, in 1723, with further additions—the
whole bearing the title The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits. Mandeville marks a reaction against the too
facile optimism which was common with the deists and to which
Shaftesbury gave philosophical expression, and against the con-
ventions associated with popular morality. But he did not draw
nice distinctions: convention and morality are equally the objects
of his satire. He was clever enough to detect the luxury and vice
that gather round the industrial system, and perverse enough to
mistake them for its foundation. He reverted to Hobbes's selfish
theory of human nature, but was without Hobbes's grasp of the
principle of order. He looked upon man as a compound of various
passions, governed by each as it comes uppermost, and he held that
'the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot
upon pride. '
The combination of ability and coarseness with
which this view was developed led to many other answers than
Hutcheson’s. Berkeley replied in Alciphron ; and William Law,
as his manner was, went to the heart of the matter in a brilliant
pamphlet, Remarks upon a late book, entituled The Fable of the
Bees (1723)? Law also made his mark in the deist controversy
by The Case of Reason (1731), a reply to Tindal, in which he
1 Although Bentham thought and said (Works, 2, 46, 142) that he got the formula
from Priestley, it is not to be found in Priestley's works, and was, almost certainly,
taken from Beccaria. Beccaria's words (Dei Delitti e delle Pene, 1764) were la massima
felicità divisa nel maggior numero, and these were rendered in the English translation
(1767) by 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'-the exact words which
Bentham first used in 1776. The dependence of Beccaria on Hutcheson is not
established.
2 Cf. chap. XII, p. 311, post.
## p. 303 (#327) ############################################
Joseph Butler
303
anticipated the line of argument soon afterwards worked out by
Butler.
Joseph Butler, bishop of Durham during the last two years
(1750—52) of his life, did not make any contributions to pure
metaphysics ; but his is the greatest name both in the theological
and in the ethical thought of the period. He published two books
only-a volume of Fifteen Sermons (1726), which (in particular,
the first three sermons, entitled 'on human nature') express his
ethical system, and The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736).
These works are without any pretentions to literary elegance; and
it is only in rare passages that the usually sombre style glows with
the fire of restrained eloquence. But they are compact of pro-
found thought. The names of other writers are rarely mentioned;
but all their arguments have been considered ; no difficulties are
slurred over, and no opinion is accepted without being probed to
the bottom. There is an air of completeness and finality about the
reasoning, which needs no grace of diction.
Butler's condensed and weighty argument hardly admits of
summary. Yet his view of things as a whole may be expressed
in the one word 'teleological' Human nature is a system or
.
constitution; the same is true of the world at large; and both
point to an end or purpose. This is his guiding idea, suggested
by Shaftesbury, to whom due credit is given ; and it enables him
to rise from a refutation of the selfish theory of Hobbes to the
truth that man's nature or constitution is adapted to virtue. The
old argument about selfish or disinterested affections is raised
to a higher plane. He shows that the characteristic of impulse,
or the particular passions,' is to seek an object, not to seek
pleasure, while pleasure results from the attainment of the object
desired. Human nature, however, is not impulsive merely; there
are also reflective principles by which the tendency of impulses
is judged and their value appraised. On this level, selfishness
is possible; but self-love is not the only reflective principle of
conduct; beside it stands the moral sense, or, as Butler preferred
to call it, conscience. The claim to rule, or 'superintendency '
(a point overlooked by Shaftesbury), is of the very nature of
conscience; and, although Butler labours to prove the harmony
of the dictates of the two principles, it is to conscience that he
assigns ultimate authority. It is true that, in an oft-quoted
sentence, he admits
that when we sit down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to ourselves this
6
## p. 304 (#328) ############################################
304 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
[i. e. moral rectitude) or any other pursuit, till we are convinced that it will be
for our happiness, or at least not contrary to it.
But, even if we disregard the 'let it be allowed that introduces
the admission, the single sentence is hardly sufficient to justify the
assertion that Butler held the authority of self-love to be equal to,
or higher than, that of conscience. The passage is, rather, a
momentary concession to the selfish spirit of the age; and it has
to be interpreted in the light of his frequent assertions of the
natural superiority of conscience. "To preside and govern, from
the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it,' he says.
‘Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world!
Since the essence of human nature is expressed in this spiritual
principle, Butler is able to justify the assertion that man is adapted
to virtue. But here his ethics may be said, almost, to stop short,
He does not explain further the nature of conscience in relation
to reason and will, or derive from it, in any systematic way, the
,
content of morality. He was distrustful of any attempt at &
complete philosophy, and resigned to accept probability as the
guide of life.
The same fundamental conception and the same limitation
reappear in Butler's still more famous work, The Analogy. The
world is a system-'a scheme in which means are made use of
to accomplish ends, and which is carried on by general laws. ' It
is neglect of this truth which makes men think that particular
instances of suffering virtue or successful vice are inconsistent
with 'the wisdom, justice, and goodness of the constitution of
nature. ' In the constitution and government of the world, nature
and morality are so closely connected as to form a single scheme,
in which it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried
on merely in subserviency to the latter. ' The imperfections of
our knowledge make it impossible to demonstrate this in detail.
But grant, as the deists granted, that God is the author of
nature, and it can be shown that there is no difficulty in the
doctrines of religion, whether natural or revealed, which has not
a parallel difficulty in the principle common to both sides in the
argument. This is the analogy to the establishment of which in
detail Butler's reasonings are directed. They are so exhaustive,
so thorough and so candid, that critics of all schools are agreed in
regarding his as the final word in a great controversy.
## p. 305 (#329) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
WILLIAM LAW AND THE MYSTICS
To speak of mystical thought in the first half of the eighteenth
century in England seems almost a contradiction in terms; for the
predominating character of that age, its outlook on life and its
mind as expressed in philosophy, religion and literature, was in
every way opposed to what is understood by mystical. In litera-
ture, shallowness of thought is often found combined with unrivalled
clearness of expression; in general outlook, the conception of a
mechanical world made by an outside Creator; in religion and
philosophy, the practically universal appeal to 'rational' evidence
as supreme arbiter. In no age, it would seem, have men written
so much about religion, while practising it so little. The one
quality in Scripture which interests writers and readers alike is
its credibility, and the impression gathered by the student of the
religious controversies of the day is that Christianity was held
to exist, not to be lived, but, like a proposition in Euclid, only
to be proved.
This view, however, of the main tendency of the time, though
representative, is not complete. There is also an undercurrent
of thought of a kind that never quite disappears and that helps to
keep the earth green during the somewhat dry and arid seasons
when rationalism or materialism gains the upper hand.
This tendency of thought is called mysticism, and it may be
described in its widest sense as an attitude of mind founded upon
an intuitive or experienced conviction of fundamental unity, of
alikeness in all things. All mystical thought springs from this as
base. The poet mystic, looking out on the natural world, rejoices
in it with a purer joy and studies it with a deeper reverence than
other men, because he knows it is not something called 'matter'
and alien to him, but that it is as he is—spirit itself made visible.
The mystic philosopher, instead of attempting to reason or analyse
or deduce, seeks merely to tell of his vision; whereupon, words
20
а
E. L. IX,
CH. XII.
## p. 306 (#330) ############################################
306
William Law and the Mystics
generally fail him, and he becomes obscure. The religious mystic
has for goal the union of himself with God, the actual contact
with the Divine Presence, and he conceives this possible because
man is 'a God though in the germ,' and, therefore, can know God
through that part of his nature which is akin to Him.
There were many strains of influence which, in the seventeenth
century, tended to foster this type of thought in England. The
little group of Cambridge Platonists gave new expression to great
neo-Platonic ideas, the smouldering embers of which had been
fanned to flame in the ardent forge of the Florentine renascence? ;
but, in addition to this older thought, there were not only new
influences from without but, also, new conditions within which
must be indicated.
A strong vein of mysticism had been kept alive in Amsterdam,
whither the first body of exiled separatists had gone in 1593.
Elizabeth, thinking to quell independent religious thought at
home, had planted nurseries of freedom in Holland, which waxed
strong and sent back over seas in the next century a persistent
stream of opinion and literature To this can be traced the
root-ideas which animated alike quakers, seekers, Behmenists,
anabaptists, familists and numberless other sects which em-
bodied a reaction against forms and ceremonies that, in ceasing
to be understood, had become lifeless. They all agreed in
deeming it more important to spiritualize this life than to
dogmatize about the life to come. They all believed in the 'inner
light,' in the immediate revelation of God within the soul as the
supreme and all-important experience. They all held that salvation
was the effect of a spiritual principle, a seed quickened invisibly
by God, and, consequently, they considered learning useless, or
even mischievous, in dealing with the things of the spirit. So far,
these various sects were mystical in thought; though, with the
exception of familists, Behmenists and seekers, they cannot un-
reservedly be classed as mystics. Large numbers of these three
sects, however, became children of light,' thus helping to give
greater prominence to the strong mystical element in early
quakerism.
It only needed the release from the crushing hand of Laud,
and the upheaval of the civil war, to set free the religious revival
а
6
1 See vol. VIII, chap. X.
* For an interesting detailed account of this phase of religious life, with full
references to original documents, see Studies in Mystical Religion, 1909, by Jones,
R. M. , chaps, xvi and XVII.
## p. 307 (#331) ############################################
a
6
Seventeenth Century Mysticism 307
which had long been seething, and to distract England, for a time,
with religious excitement. Contemporary writers refer with horror
to the swarm of 'sects, heresies and schisms' which now came into
being, and Milton alone seems to have understood that the
turmoil was but the outward sign of a great spiritual awakening?
Unhappily, there were few who, with him, could perceive that the
'opinion of good men is but knowledge in the making,' and that
these many sects were but various aspects of one main movement
towards freedom and individualism, towards a religion of the heart
rather than of the head. The terrible persecutions of the quakers
under Charles II% tended to withdraw them from active life, and
to throw them in the direction of a more personal and introspective
religion". It was then that the writings of Antoinette Bourignon,
Madame Guyon and Fénelon became popular, and were much read
among a certain section of thinkers, while the teachings of Jacob
Boehme, whose works had been put into English between the years
1644 and 1692, bore fruit in many ways. Whether directly or
indirectly, they permeated the thought of the founders of the
Society of Friends, they were widely read both in cottage and
study? and they produced a distinct Behmenite sects. Their
influence can be seen in the writings of Thomas Tryon, John
Pordage, George Cheyne, Francis Lee, Jane Lead, Thomas Bromley,
Richard Roach and others; in the foundation and transactions of the
1 See, for instance, Pagitt's Heresiography, 1645, dedication to the lord mayor;
or Edwards, who, in his Gangraena, 1646, names 176, and, later, 23 more, 'errors,
heresies, blasphemies. '
? Areopagitica, 1644.
3 13,562 Friends suffered imprisonment during the years 1661–97, while 198 were
transported overseas and 338 died in prison or of their wounds. See Inner Life of
the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, by Barclay, pp. 474_8.
• For further observations on early quakerism in its connection with literature,
see vol. VIII, chap. iv.
6 Charles I, who, shortly before his death, read Boehme's Forty Questions, just then
translated into English, much admired it.
See a most interesting MS letter in Latin
from Francis Lee to P. Poiret in Dr Williams's library, C 5. 30.
8. Jacob Behmont's Books were the chief books that the Quakers bought, for there
is the Principle or Foundation of their Religion. ' A Looking Glass for George Fox,
1667, p. 5. But Boehme was not wholly approved of even among the early quakers;
see Inner Life of the Religious Societies, p. 479. For the influence of Boehme on
Fox and Winstanley, see Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 494—5; cf. , also, Fox's
Journal for 1648, 8th ed. , vol. 1, pp. 28–9, with Boehme's Three Principles, chap. xx,
88 39—42; also, life of J. B. in . Law's edition,' vol. I, p. xiii, or the Signatura Rerum.
7 See Way to Divine Knowledge, Law's Works, vol. VII, pp. 84, 85 ; Byrom's Journal,
vol. 1, part 2, pp. 560, 598; vol. II, part 2, pp. 193, 216, 236, 285, 310–11, 328,
377, 380.
8 See Richard Baxter's Autobiography, Reliquiae Bacterianae, 1696, part 1,
P. 77.
20-2
## p. 308 (#332) ############################################
308
William Law and the Mystics
Philadelphian society; in the gibes of satirists? ; in forgotten
tracts; in the increase of interest in alchemy”; in the voluminous
MS commentaries of Freher, or even in Newton's great discovery;
for it is almost certain that the idea of the three laws of motion
first reached Newton through his eager study of Boehme.
The tracing of this mystical thought, however, during the
period under discussion and later, mainly among obscure sects
and little-known thinkers, would not form part of a history of
English literature, were it not that our greatest prose mystic lived
and wrote in the same age.
William Law had a curiously paradoxical career. After
graduating as B. A. and M. A. at Cambridge, in 1708 and 1712,
and being, in 1711, ordained and elected fellow of his college
(Emmanuel), he refused to take the oaths of allegiance to
George I, and thus lost his fellowship and vocation. Though an
ardent high churchman, he was the father of methodism. Though
deprived of employment in his church, he wrote the book which,
of all others for a century to come, had the most profound and
far-reaching influence upon the religious thought of his country.
Though a sincere, and, so he believed, an orthodox Christian, he was
the classic exponent of Boehme, a thinker abhorred and mistrusted
alike by eighteenth century divines and by Wesleyan leaders.
About the year 1727, Edward Gibbon selected Law as tutor for
his only son, the father of the historian, and, in 1730, when his pupil
went abroad, Law lived on with the elder Gibbon in the 'spacious
house with gardens and land at Putney,' where he was 'the much
honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family!
During these years at Putney, Law's reputation as a writer
became assured. He was already known as the ablest defender of
nonjuror principles; the publication of A Serious Call in 1729
had brought him renown, and he was revered and consulted by
an admiring band of disciples. His later life was spent at his
birthplace, King's Cliffe, near Stamford. He settled there in 1737
or 1740, and was joined by Hester Gibbon, the historian's aunt,
and Mrs Hutcheson, a widow with considerable means. This
oddly assorted trio gave themselves to a life of retirement and
good deeds, the whole being regulated by Law. With a united
income of over £3000 a year, they lived in the simplest fashion.
• He Anthroposophus and Floud,
And Jacob Behmen understood. '
Hudibras, 1, canto 1, cf. A Tale of a Tub, sect. V, and Martinus Scriblerus, end of
chap. I.
? See Aubrey's Lives.
3 Gibbon's Memoirs, ed. Hill, G, B. , 1900, p. 34.
1
## p. 309 (#333) ############################################
Law's Life and Writings 309
They spent large sums in founding schools and almshouses, and in
general charity, which took the form of free daily distribution of
food, money and clothes, no beggar being turned away from the
door, until the countryside became so demoralized with vagrants
that the inhabitants protested and the rector preached against
these proceedings from the pulpit? The trouble, however, seems
to have abated when the three kindhearted and guileless offenders
threatened to leave the parish, and, possibly, it may have caused
them to exercise a little discrimination in their giving.
Here, at King's Cliffe, after more than twenty years of residence,
passed in the strictest routine of study and good works, Law died,
after a short illness, almost in the act of singing a hymn.
Law's writings fall naturally into three divisions, contro-
versial, practical and mystical. His three great controversial
works are directed against a curious assortment of opponents:
Hoadly, latitudinarian bishop of Bangor, Mandeville, a sceptical
pessimist, and Tindal, a deistical optimist. These writers
represent three main sections of the religious opinion of the
day, and much light is thrown on Law's character and beliefs
by the method with which he meets them and turns their own
weapons against themselves.
It was a time of theological pamphleteering, and the famous
Bangorian controversy is a good specimen of the kind of dis-
cussion which abounded in the days of George I. It is, on the
whole, good reading, clear, pointed and even witty, and, if com-
pared with similar controversies in the reign of Charles I, presents
an admirable object lesson as to the advance made during the
intervening years in the writing of English prose.
When queen Anne died, and the claims of the Stewarts were
set aside in favour of a parliamentary king from Hanover, the
church, committed absolutely to the hereditary, as opposed to the
parliamentary, principle, found itself on the horns of a dilemma.
High churchmen were forced either to eat their own words, or to
refuse to take the oaths of allegiance to the new king and of
abjuration to the pretender? 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.
