16

Law's Prospects as a Nonjuror.

he says everybody is for the succession."1 A year later, the good man's mind is not yet quite made up, but it is evidently becoming so. 'The abjuration oath,' he writes to the same correspondent,2 'hath not been put to us yet, nor do I know when it will be; nobody of our year scruples it, and, indeed, in the sense they say they shall take it, I could. One says he can do it and like the Pretender never the worse; another, that it only means that he won't plot to bring him in, he doesn't trouble his head about him &c. You know my opinion, that I am not clearly convinced that it is lawful, nor that it is unlawful; sometimes I think one thing, and sometimes another;' but what he thought finally it is not very difficult to anticipate. It was well for Byrom's prospects that his friendship with Law did not commence till many years later. One can fancy what havoc the latter would have made of the scraps of argument which Byrom adduces with transparent simplicity for the course he meant to adopt.

But to return to Law. How his letter was received in Northamptonshire is not known. His mother, for whom he showed so touching and tender a concern, had not long lost her husband, whose epitaph is still to be read on a monument in the chancel of King's Cliffe church: 'Here lye the dear Remains of Thomas Law, lately Grocer in this Parish a kind, careful, industrious Father of a large Family; a tender and affectionate Husband; a true and faithful Friend; and a peaceable honest Neighbour; who deceased on the tenth day of October, Anno Dei 1714. "And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in Thee." There is no reason for thinking that the widowed mother had cause for anxiety about any of her children; but she would naturally look upon William as the pride and hope of the family. A brilliant career 'Byrom's Journal, vol. i. part i. p. 25.

2 Ibid. p. 31.

Law Simply Obeyed his Conscience.

17

seemed to be open to the able young fellow of Emmanuel, and it must have been a disappointment to her to feel that all hopes of that seemed at an end.

Law's prospects as a nonjuror were dreary enough. He had not even the poor satisfaction of being able to join heart and soul with the active opponents of the new régime; for he had no mind to meddle with politics. It was a matter of indifference to him, personally, whether King James or King George were sitting on the throne; he simply obeyed his conscience, and was prepared to take the consequences, whatever they might be.

1 Not but that Law's sympathies were to the end of his life with the exiled Stuarts. Among other interesting memorials of her great relative in the possession of Miss Sarah Law, is a pincushion with this inscription on one side, 'Down with the Rump'; and on the other, 'God save K. J. P. C. D. H.', that is, King James, Prince Charles, Duke Henry.' See also Byrom's Journal for July 27, 1739, vol. ii. (part i.) 259.

C

18 Law's Life after the Loss of his Fellowship.

CHAPTER III.

LAW AND THE BANGORIAN CONTROVERSY.

THERE is a tradition that, after the resignation of his fellowship, Law was a curate in London under the famous preacher Dr. Heylin, Rector of S. Mary-le-Strand, Vicar of Sunbury, and Prebendary of S. Paul's. Law himself, a few months before his death, alluded incidentally, in the course of conversation, to a time when he was curate in London.'1 Byrom twice2 mentions the report; once on the authority of a Mr. Rivington, who, however, threw discredit upon the whole story by adding the very improbable piece of gossip that Law was then 'a gay parson, and that Dr. Heylin said his book (The Serious Call') would have been better if he had travelled that way himself.' A Mrs. Collier also told Byrom that Mr. Law was a great beau, would have fine linen, was very sweet upon the ladies, and had made one believe that he would marry her; that he made his great change in the year 1720; that he wore a wig again.' All this, however, is mere gossip, unworthy of a moment's serious consideration. It is quite possible that Law's serious impressions may have been deepened about the year 1720; but that he was ever other than a grave, conscientious, God-fearing man is highly improbable.

3

It is also reported that he was offered several pieces of valuable preferment by, or through the instrumentality of,

1 See the Memoirs of the Life, Death, Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen, now first done at large into English &c., by Francis Okely. Northampton, 1780.

His Letters to the Bishop of Bangor.

19

his friend Dr. Sherlock; but how this could be, it is not easy to see. Of course, if Law persisted in refusing the oaths, he could not have held any preferment; and Dr. Sherlock, then Dean of Chichester, if he knew Law's character at all, must have been aware that he might as well try to persuade his cathedral to walk into the sea, as try to persuade Law to change his convictions or to sacrifice them to his interests. The only evidence of Law's having officiated in church at all after he became a nonjuror is a notice in the Preacher's Assistant' that he published a single sermon in 1718 on the text I Cor. xii. 3; but this sermon does not appear to be extant.

Law, however, was certainly not idle. In 1717 he wrote his 'Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor,' which raised him at once to the very highest rank of writers in controversial divinity. The appearance of so powerful an ally was warmly and quickly welcomed by the High Church party. Mr. Pyle tells us he wrote against Law because 'his was thought to be the strongest and most impartial piece that has appeared against his Lordship.' 2 Law's friend, Dean Sherlock, himself one of the most clear-headed and powerful writers of the time, declared that Mr. Law was a writer so considerable that he knew but one good reason why his Lordship did not answer him.' Some years later, Mr.

1 See Preacher's Assistant, vol. ii. 1737.

2 See a Vindication of the Bishop of Bangor in answer to W. Law, by T. Pyle, Lecturer of Lynn Regis, 1718. Mr. Law's performance,' writes Mr. Pyle, 'has been so much approved of by the rest, and particularly by Dr. Snape'-Dr. Snape being himself, it need hardly be said, one of the foremost opponents of Bishop Hoadly.

Quoted in A Full Examination of Several Important Points relating to Church Authority, &c., by Gilbert Burnet, 1718. See also Hoadly's Works, ii. 694-5, where the bishop gives his reasons to Dr. Sherlock for not answering Law; but promises that, if the dean will 'publicly own any one of Mr. Law's main principles,' he will reply to him. This was a severe home-thrust; for Hoadly knew that Sherlock was not prepared to identify himself with Law, whose uncompromising character was not of the stuff of which bishops were

20

Merits of the Three Letters.

Jones of Nayland, himself an able advocate of High Church principles in their older and nobler sense, characterised Law's Three Letters' as 'incomparable for truth of argument, brightness of wit, and purity of English.'1 Later still, Dean Hook singled out these alone among all the voluminous literature on the subject, as 'perhaps the most important of the works produced by the Bangorian controversy;' and added, 'Law's "Letters" have never been answered, and may indeed be regarded as unanswerable.' Bishop Ewing thinks that the Letters to Hoadly may fairly be put on a level with the "Lettres Provinciales" of Blaise Pascal, both displaying equal power, wit, and learning.' Mr. F. D. Maurice is of opinion that 'the "Letters" show that Law had the powers and temptations of a singularly able controversialist.' 4

2

One of the chief among the many merits of these fine pieces of composition is that they always keep close to the true point at issue. As a rule, the writers on both sides in the tedious but very important Bangorian controversy show a constant tendency to fly off at a tangent to all sorts of irrelevant questions. This Law never does. Whether Bishop Hoadly was justified or not in having a converted Jesuit as tutor in his family; whether he did or did not interpolate some modifying epithets in his printed sermon which were not in the original MS.; whether Sherlock had or had not once preached the same doctrines as

made in the eighteenth century. Though I do not agree with Bishop Hoadly's principles, I admit that he was a very able controversialist, and not afraid of any antagonist.

1 See The Scholar Armed.

2 Church Dictionary. Art. 'Bangorian Controversy.'

Present-Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology.

F. D. Maurice's Introduction to 'Remarks on the Fable of the Bees,' p. xi. 1844.

This is noticed by Mr. Leslie Stephen in his interesting account of Law. See English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 161.