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248

Law's Later Theology.

CHAPTER XIV.

LAW'S LATER THEOLOGY.

ALTHOUGH William Law is now best known as the author of 'The Serious Call,' and although he is admitted to have been almost without an equal as a controversial writer in his day, still his most remarkable works are those which will now come under our notice. For both in his practical and his controversial treatises he only did what others were doing. He did his work better indeed than most of his contemporaries; but the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. As an English mystic he is unique. Of course there were others in England both before and after him who held similar views; but hardly one, at least in the eighteenth century, who had any pretensions to be called an English classic.

The fascination which Jacob Behmen's writings exercised over Law's mind has already been referred to. It remains for us to consider what he wrote when that spell was upon him; that is, from about the year 1734 to almost the day of his death in 1761.

But as Law's peculiar sentiments are repeated in almost all his later works with little variation, it will be the best plan to give a summary of those sentiments generally before proceeding to consider his separate compositions in detail.

A caution seems necessary at the outset. When Law's 'later theology' is spoken of, in contrast with his earlier system, it must not be supposed that he diverged, con

He still remained a Staunch Churchman. 249

sciously at least, a hair's breadth from any one of the doctrines to which he was bound as a clergyman of the Church of England. If he had done so, there can be no manner of doubt that he would at once have renounced his Orders. For of all the characteristics, both of Law's moral, and also of his intellectual nature, none is more conspicuous than his thorough and downright honesty. He was totally incapable of any quibbling, moral or intellectual. One sees this in every step of his career. He warmly advocated the doctrines of Divine right, passive obedience, and the rest of the Jacobite programme, at the time when these doctrines were fashionable; and when they became unfashionable, he never hesitated one moment in his adherence to them, at the expense of all his worldly prospects. His part in the Bangorian controversy was simply the carrying out to their logical results of principles which others who had advocated them were not prepared, as Law was, to put forward so openly at a time when they were extremely unpopular. He took the Sermon on the Mount quite literally; and, in every action of his life, no less than in his 'Serious Call,' he showed that he was bent upon carrying out every precept of it thoroughly, without the slightest compromise. In fact, as it has been well said, 'his sensitiveness to logic was as marked as his sensitiveness to conscience.' And this sensitiveness is distinctly shown in his mystic phase. There is no sort of difficulty in reconciling his Behmenism with his position as an Anglican priest. If we take the three Creeds of the Church as a full exposition of the doctrines of Christianity, it would not be enough to say that there is not one single article in those Creeds to which Law to the day of his death could not give his most cordial adherence 2; more than that, Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii.

P. 396.

2 Law's eschatology in no wise affected his acceptance of the Athanasian Creed in its most literal sense,

250

'God is Love'-the Basis of Law's System.

the denial of any one of their articles would be a distinct denial of one of the very bases on which Law built his system.

Indeed, it seems to me, that it was this very sensitiveness to logic and conscience which caused him to embrace enthusiastically the views which are now to be described. This will be seen at once when we begin to investigate what those views were.

2

'God is Love, yea, all Love, and so all Love, that nothing but Love can come from Him.' This doctrine, repeated in various forms a thousand times in Law's mystic works, is the very hinge on which the whole of his system turns. Or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that Law held this doctrine before he became a Behmenist, and that he embraced Behmenism, because he found in that system what seemed to him a satisfactory explanation of all the disorders of nature, in harmony with this great fundamental truth; and this was the reason why I said above that it was Law's sensitiveness to logic and conscience which led him to adopt his later system.

Starting then from this axiomatic truth, that God is Love, and then characteristically insisting that His dealings not only with men, but with the whole universe, must be

The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration, Works, vol. v. (2) p. 46. It may here be explained that the figure in brackets (2) is inserted necessarily, because in the common edition of Law's works which I have used, two or more separate treatises, each with a separate pagination, are often very inconveniently bound up in the same volume. This will be the meaning of the bracket whenever it occurs in references to Law's works.

2 See, inter alia, Works, vol. v. (2) 49, vi. (2) 30, vii. 26,29 (2), 99, 127, viii. 5 (2), 5, &c., &c. 'Law's theological system,' writes Bishop Ewing, 'may be said to rest upon one only basis, viz. that God is Love-from eternity to eternity Love-abyssal love, ordering all his counsels, working all his works, regulating all events, governing all creatures according to the rules and measures of love alone; every sentiment antagonistic to love being absolutely foreign to the Divine nature, and existing not in the creator, but in the creature.'-Present Day Papers,' p. 16.

Why Law began with the Fall of Angels. 251

reconciled with this principle, Law was naturally led to ask, how could any evil, any disorder, arise in that universe which was framed and governed by One who was 'nothing but an Eternal Will to all goodness?' This was the reason why Law's system must begin before the foundation of the world, even with that mysterious subject, the Fall of the Angels. It was not because Law loved mysteries, not because he loved to pry with morbid curiosity into profound subjects beyond the ken of finite men; such feelings were quite foreign to his character, which was essentially a plain, clear-sighted, and humble character. But it was also a very logical character, one that could not slur over difficulties; and here was a difficulty at the outset; how could evil and misery ever find a place in the universe of the all-loving God? Behmen suggested an answer to this question, and Law did not so much repeat that answer as assimilate and make it his own, and present it to his readers in his own nervous and luminous style. The answer was briefly this: 'All qualities are not only good, but infinitely perfect as they are in God. But the same qualities, thus infinitely good and perfect in God, may become imperfect and evil in the creature; because in the creature, being limited and finite, they may be divided and separated from one another by the creature itself.' This was how the angels fell. They broke off from the Heavenly Light and Love of God.' Law illustrates his meaning by an instance in the natural world; or rather, he shows an example of precisely the same process in a lower form; for in his view, evil in every part of the universe-in a vegetable, as in an angel— was one and the same thing. If,' he says, 'a delicious, fragrant fruit had a power of separating itself from that rich spirit, fine taste, smell, and colour, which it receives from

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' Appeal to all that Doubt, &c., Works, vol. vi. (2) 24.

252

How the Angels could Fall.

the virtue of the sun, and the spirit of the air,; or, if it could in the beginning of its growth turn away from the sun, and receive no virtue from it, then it would stand in its own first birth of sourness, bitterness, and astringency, just as the devils do, who have turned back into their own dark root, and rejected the Light and Spirit of God." And so neither the Angels' fall nor their punishment was any derogation to the love of God. For 'no Hell was made for them, no new qualities came into them, no vengeance or pains from the God of Love fell upon them; they only stood in that state of division and separation from the Son and Holy Spirit of God, which by their own motion they had made for themselves,'' and that was misery unspeakable, for 'by their revolt from God, they lost the Divine Light, and awakened in themselves, and the region in which they dwelt, the dark, wrathful fire of Hell.' 3

But then how was it possible that they could thus separate themselves from God? In this very possibility Law saw only another proof of the love of God. God gave them a free will, 'an offspring or ray derived from the will of God.' And herein consisteth the infinite goodness of God, in the birth of all intelligent creatures; and also the exceeding height, perfection, and happiness of their created state; they are descended from God, full of Divine power; they can will and work with God, and partake of the Divine happiness. They can receive no injustice, hurt, or violence, either from nature or creature; but must be only that which they generate, and have no evil or hurt but that which they do in and to themselves.' But then the possession of this great gift rendered it possible that they

5

Appeal to all that Doubt, Works, vol. vi. (2) p. 28.
3 Spirit of Prayer, Works, vol. vii. (2) 26.
Appeal to all that Doubt, Works, vi. (2) 106.
Way to Divine Knowledge, Works, vii. (3) 141.

2 Ibid. p. 29.

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