308 Dr. Trapp again. with any man whatever, so all the triumph which the doctor has gained over me by that overflow of contempt which he has let loose upon me I shall leave him quietly to enjoy.' Law was as good as his word. Not one single syllable unworthy of a Christian gentleman can be found in the Animadversions.' At the same time he cannot retract any of the assertions of his former work. Dr. Trapp declared that a Quaker or infidel' could not well have reflected with more virulence upon the clergy than Law had done, but he could not deny the facts which Law alleged. Those facts Law here reiterates, but there is sincerity on the very face of his emphatic denial of aught but love towards his brethren in the ministry. If it was a thing required of me,' he says, 'I know no more how to raise in myself the least spark of rancour, or ill-will towards the clergy, as such, than I know how to work myself up into a hatred of the light of the sun. It is as natural to me to wish them all their perfection as to wish peace and happiness to myself both here and hereafter; and when I point to any failings in their conduct, it is only with such a spirit as I would pluck a brother out of the fire.' No unprejudiced reader can read what Law has written to and of the clergy in any of his works, without feeling that what he here says is literally true; there is, therefore, no need to follow him as he answers, point by point, but with the utmost courtesy, the doctor's angry vituperations. Many interesting points are touched upon incidentally in this tract,' some of which have been already referred to, and others will be by-and-by, in connection with Law's life. But we must not pass over this tract without noting E.g. his remarks on the Romanists, on the Quakers, on Sir I. Newton Law's Defence of Enthusiasm. 309 that in it Law ventured to write in defence of that hated bugbear of the eighteenth century-enthusiasm. Nothing shows more clearly both his moral courage and his antagonism to the spirit of his age than this defence. There were many who were called, and with very good reasons, enthusiasts, but most of them denied the charge. Law boldly accepts it, and defends a character which had certainly very few friends in his day. Those alone who are acquainted with the literature of the eighteenth century can appreciate the courage which it required to make such remarks as the following: 'To appropriate enthusiasm to religion is the same ignorance of nature as to appropriate love to religion; for enthusiasm is as common, as universal, as essential to human nature as love is. . . . No people are so angry at religious enthusiasts as those that are the deepest in some enthusiasm of another kind. He whose fire is kindled from the divinity of Tully's rhetoric, who travels over high mountains to salute the dear ground that Marcus Tullius Cicero walked upon; whose noble soul would be ready to break out of his body, if he could see a desk, a rostrum, from whence Cicero had poured forth his thunder of words, may well be unable to bear the dulness of those who go on pilgrimages only to visit the sepulchre whence the Redeemer of the world rose from the dead, or who grow devout at the sight of a crucifix, because the Son of God hung as a sacrifice thereon! He whose heated brain is all over painted with the ancient hieroglyphics; who knows how and why they were this and that, better than he can find out the customs and usages of his own parish; who can clear up everything that is doubtful in antiquity, &c. &c., may well despise those Christians, as brain-sick visionaries, who are sometimes finding a moral and spiritual sense in the bare letter and history of Scripture facts. . . . Even the poor species of fops and beaux have a right to be placed among ... 310 Law's Defence of Enthusiasm. enthusiasts, though capable of no other flame than that which is kindled by tailors and peruke-makers. 'The grammarian, the critick, the poet, the connoisseur, the antiquary, the philosopher, the politician are all violent enthusiasts, though their heat is only a flame from straw, and therefore they all agree in appropriating enthusiasm to religion.... Enthusiasts we all are, as certainly as we are men. You need not go to a cloyster, the cell of a monk, or to a field-preacher to see enthusiasts; they are everywhere: at balls and masquerades, at court and the exchange. Enthusiasm is not blameable in religion when it is true religion that kindles it.' Then, after defending this position at some length, he thus sums up the character of the true religious enthusiast, in whom we still see the mystic and the High Churchman blended. 'Every man, as such, has an open gate to God in his soul; he is always in that temple, where he can worship God in spirit and truth; every Christian, as such, has the firstfruits of the Spirit, a seed of life, which is his call and qualification to be always in a state of inward prayer, faith, and holy intercourse with God.' So far the mystic. Now observe in the passage which immediately follows the High Churchman: 'All the ordinances of the Gospel, the daily sacramental service of the Church, is to keep up, and exercise, and strengthen this faith; to raise us to such an habitual faith and dependence upon the Light and Holy Spirit of God, that by thus seeking and finding God in the institutions of the Church, we may be habituated to seek Him and find Him, to live in His Light, and walk by His Spirit in all the actions of our ordinary life. This is the enthusiasm in which every good Christian ought to endeavour to live and die.' 1 It is interesting to compare with this passage Wesley's sermon on 'Enthusiasm (see his Sermons, vol. i. serm. xxxvii.). Of course Wesley agrees with Law in defending those whom the world calls enthusiasts,' but, unlike Law, unlike an Eighteenth Century Man. 311 The reflection which the reading of such a passage as this calls up must be, Is it possible that this man could have lived in the eighteenth century? This defender of pilgrimages and crucifixes in an age when anti-Popery was rampant? This depreciator of grammarians, criticks,' and the rest, in an age when reason was triumphant? This apologist for enthusiasm in an age which, when it had labelled a man 'enthusiast,' thought that it had put him under an universal ban? Could William Law really have been the contemporary of the Warburtons, the Hoadlys, and the Trapps, ay, or even of the Butlers and the Sherlocks? Law, he gives up the name: a disorder of the mind,' &c. As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is undoubtedly Wesley is far more of an eighteenth century man than his quondam mentor; hence, in part, the far wider influence which he exercised. 312 The Spirit of Prayer. CHAPTER XVII. 'THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER' AND 'THE SPIRIT OF LOVE.' IF the 'Appeal to all that Doubt, &c.,' is the most comprehensive of all Law's mystic works, the two treatises which are the subject of this chapter are certainly the most attractive, and also the most exhaustive in their explanation of particular points. They were written after Law's mysticism had excited much attention and much opposition; and therefore he adopts a method which gave him an opportunity not only of elucidating his own views, but also of answering possible and actual objections to those views. That method was, in both cases, first, to unfold his own sentiments without interruption, and then to introduce speakers who comment upon them; that is, to give first an essay, and then some dialogues upon it. The first part of the Spirit of Prayer' was published in 1749. It is an essay of about one hundred pages, written in a most fascinating style, and describing on the principles of Behmenism the progress of the Soul Rising out of the Vanity of Time into the Riches of Eternity.' This, indeed, is its alternative title, and a very proper one, according to Law's view; for he understands the word 'prayer' in the same sense as he did in the two practical treatises;1 that is, not merely as the offering up of petitions to God, nor even as holding communion with God, but as synonymous with a life of devotion in the strictest sense of the term. See the Christian Perfection and Serious Call, passim. |