Law's loving Appeal to the Younger Clergy. 303

those who did not know what an affectionate heart was beating under that somewhat stern exterior. 'I beseech you,' he writes, 'for your own sakes, for the Gospel's sake, for the sake of mankind, to devote yourselves wholly to the love and service of God. As you are yet but beginners in this great office, you have it in your power to make your lives the greatest happiness, both to yourselves and the whole nation. You are enter'd into Holy Orders in degenerate times, where trade and traffic have seized upon all holy things, and it will be easy for you, without fear, to swim along with the corrupt stream, and to look upon him as an enemy, or enthusiast, that would save you from being lost in it. But think, my dear brethren, think in time what remorse you are laying up for yourselves if you live to look back upon a loose, negligent, unedifying life, spent among those whose blood will be required at your hands. Think, on the other hand, how blessedly your employment will end if by your voices, your lives, and labours, you put a stop to the overflowings of iniquity, restore the spirit of the primitive clergy, and make all your flock bless and praise God for having sent you among them ;' and much more in the same loving and earnest spirit.

Many of Dr. Trapp's charges had no application to Law, for they were levelled at practices and doctrines of the Methodists, in which Law took no part, and with which probably, as a High Churchman, he had no sympathy. Law never alludes to this in his answer. As against Dr. Trapp, he was certainly on the side of the Methodists, and therefore this was not the occasion to emphasise his differences with them.

In one passage there might seem, at first sight, to be a touch of personality. It is that in which he describes an ideal Bishop of Winchester, who brought up his children, one a carpenter, in which business our Saviour is

304 Law refers to his Letters to Bishop Hoadly.

said to have labour'd in his youth; another a maker of tents, the trade of the great Apostle; and the rest in the like manner;' and, when he died, 'left only 20l. a year amongst them,' only to be used by them as sickness and age made them stand in need of it;' 'and will the doctor,' asks Law, with a little touch of humour, 'say that this Bishop has ruin'd his wife and children, has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel?' Now the real Bishop of Winchester was Bishop Hoadly, Law's old antagonist, whose life was framed on a rather different model. Law mean to say in effect, 'Look on this picture and then on that'? Many of his readers could hardly help doing so, but it would not be in accordance with Law's general spirit to suppose that the contrast was intended. It is more likely that he selected Winchester simply because it was one of the richest bishoprics.

Did

In quite a different connection, however, Law does refer to Bishop Hoadly. At the close of his treatise he mentions the fact that the then Bishop of Bangor had not answered the three letters Law had written to him twenty-three years earlier, without one word to indicate that he regretted or desired to retract anything he had written in those letters. Does not this again confirm the theory that Law's mysticism did not make him altogether drift away from his old moorings? Indeed, in this very treatise he reaffirms in a modified form the same high conception of the Christian ministry, to defend which he wrote his famous letters in 1717.

The Answer to Dr. Trapp' appeared in the early part of 1740. Later in the same year Law published one of the most comprehensive and important of all his mystic works. It is entitled in full, An Appeal to all that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, whether they be Deists, Arians, Socinians, or nominal Christians. In

The Appeal to all that Doubt, &c.' 305

which the true Grounds and Reasons of the whole Christian Faith and Life are plainly and fully demonstrated.' The title is an ambitious one, but Law performs what he promises. Other works bring out particular points in his system more fully and distinctly; but none takes so full a sweep of the whole system as the Appeal.' For this reason it has been more largely quoted in Chapter XV. of this book than any other of Law's works. There is, therefore, the less need to dwell upon it in this chapter. But the last ten pages deserve special notice, as furnishing a remarkable instance of the link or rather one of the links-which bound together Law the High Churchman and Law the mystic.

If one might sum up the contents of the 'Appeal' in one single word, that word would be 'nature.' And in these last pages, Law shows how closely the mystic view of nature harmonised with the high conception of the Christian sacraments which he always held. He had been explaining on that principle of extreme literalism, which, though quite contrary to the popular idea of mysticism, really forms a most striking feature in its system, how 'the blood of Christ is the life of this world, because it brings forth and generates from itself the paradisiacal, immortal flesh and blood, as certainly, as really, as the blood of fallen Adam brings forth and generates from itself the sinful, vile, corruptible flesh and blood of their life.' And then he asks,' Would you farther know what blood this is, that has this atoning, life-giving quality in it? It is that Blood which is to be received in the Holy Sacrament. Would you know why it quickens, raises, and restores the inward man that died in Paradise? The answer is from Christ himself. "He that eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him." After having elucidated these points in detail, he sums up: Here, therefore, is plainly discovered

X

306

Law's Belief in the Real Presence

to us the true nature, necessity, and benefit of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper; both why, and how, and for what end, we must of all necessity eat the Flesh, and drink the Blood of Christ. No figurative meaning of the words is here to be sought for; we must eat Christ's Flesh,. and drink His Blood in the same reality as He took upon Him the real flesh and blood of the Blessed Virgin : We can have no real relation to Christ, can be no true members of His mystical body, but by being real partakers of that same kind of Flesh and Blood, which was truly His, and was His for this very end, that through Him the same might be brought forth in us: All this is strictly true of the Holy Sacrament, according to the plain letter of the expression, which Sacrament was thus instituted, that the great service of the Church might continually show us, that the whole of our Redemption consisted in the receiving the Birth, Spirit, Life, and Nature of Jesus Christ into us, &c. This is the adorable height and depth of this Divine Mystery, which brings Heaven and Immortality again into us, and gives us power to become sons of God.' 'And woe,' he exclaims, in a strain which almost reminds us of some old Hebrew prophet, 'Woe be to those who come to it with the mouths of beasts, and the minds of serpents! who, with impenitent hearts, devoted to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life, for worldly ends, outward appearances, and secular conformity, boldly meddle with those mysteries that are only to be approached by those that are of a pure heart, and who worship God in spirit and in truth.'

....

It is quite clear that Law held the doctrine of a Real Presence, not only in the hearts of the worshippers, but in the Elements, a doctrine to which his mystic views would only tend to give a deeper and more vivid meaning. The sacred significance which mysticism gives to all outward

was strengthened by His Mysticism.

307 nature would render it perfectly congruous that the Holy Jesus should impart Himself through the bread and wine; and, therefore, considering the 'sacramental view of nature' to which Keble so well draws attention, it is no wonder that Law should set forth his views of sacramental grace far more distinctly in his mystic than in his earlier works. The last words which he would have to linger in the minds of the various unbelievers and misbelievers to whom he addressed his' Appeal,' were an emphatic reiteration of this doctrine of the Real Presence. And thus,' he concludes the appeal, is this great sacrament, which is a continual part of our Christian worship, a continual communication to us of all the benefits of our Second Adam; for in and by the Body and Blood of Christ, to which the Divine nature is united, we receive all that life and immortality and redemption, which Christ as living, suffering, dying, rising from the dead, and ascending into Heaven, brought to human nature; so that this great mystery is that in which all the blessings of our redemption and new life in Christ are centered. And they that hold a sacrament short of this reality of the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, cannot be said to hold that sacrament of eternal life, which was instituted by our Blessed Lord and Saviour.'

Appended to the 'Appeal' and published together with it, is an interesting tract entitled, 'Some Animadversions upon Dr. Trap's Reply.' Dr. Trapp had certainly not followed the example of Christian courtesy which Law had set him in his Answer.' The Reply' is full of the most violent abuse, a few choice specimens of which Law quotes in his Animadversions;' and these quotations from the doctor's own words really form the only severe part of Law's tract. No provocation could tempt him to return railing for railing. As I neither have,' he says, 'nor (by the grace of God), ever will have, any personal contention