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Okely puts Law into Verse.

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Before dismissing Mr. Okely it should be added that he afterwards became a voluminous writer; and that he took every opportunity in his writings of recommending Law's works. It is to be feared that if Law had lived to see his admirer's lucubrations, he could not have returned the compliment, for there were certainly many things in them of which he would have strongly disapproved. It is doubtful, too, whether Mr. Okely's praises were likely to recommend Law's writings to the world at large. This is the way in which he sums up a rapturous account of Law's mystic works; Now, courteous reader, if thy spiritual stomach doth not loath such sweets, know that this great author's works are like so many honeycombs by him assiduously collected, formed, digested, and filled during a long life out of all the spiritual writers, or mystic flowers, ancient and modern. And if the translator has any degree of spiritual judgment, and may be allowed to express his poor opinion, the very last book of this mystical bee is like quintessential clarified honey itself, collected out of all the rest.' Okely shared Byrom's extraordinary infatuation (or rather derived it from Byrom, for my late friend, Mr. Byrom, of Manchester, first pointed out this way to me,') that Law's good prose might be improved by being put into bad rhyme; and accordingly he set about, with some misgivings, the task of versifying various passages of Law's mystic works. 'Sacred poetry,' he says, 'ought, like the true daughters of Abraham and Sarah (1 Pet. iii. 3–6), never to be tricked up in the gaudy and tawdry manner of the daughters of this world.' At the same time 'a regard due to my very important subject, my reader's edification, and my own usefulness, has put me upon the exertion of my

The passage occurs in Okely's Translation of the Life, Death, Burial, and Wonderful Writings of Jacob Behmen, published 1780.

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Law's Friends—Mr. Okely.

very best talents.' The exertion of his very best talents resulted in such verses as these:

A PLAIN VERSION OF AN UNPOPULAR AUTHOR.

(From the Way to Divine Knowledge.)

Before we part, I'll in your presence trace
Christianity's true nature and firm base.
'Tis Gospel Christianity I mean

God's masterpiece; distinguishable clean
From the Christianity original

By grace first introduc'd on Adam's fall.

The old religion of the patriarchs

And that which Moses and all prophets marks, &c.

The reader may have thought that this curious kind of literary work had reached its nadir in some of Byrom's verses; but he will now see that in the lowest depths there is yet a lower. Byrom's friend out-Byroms Byrom.

A dim consciousness seems to have possessed Mr. Okely that, though such sacred poetry as that which has been quoted' was certainly like the true daughters of Abraham and Sarah in being free from all ornament, it still might not have reached the acme of perfection. And therefore he modestly adds,' Being, after all, not insensible that the execution has not always answered the design, I take this opportunity of inviting some better disposed and more

'Lest it should be thought that an unusually bad specimen has been selected, here are two more taken quite at hap-hazard:

From the Appeal to all that Doubt, &c.

And now to us it clearly will appear

Why our dear Lord so much must do and bear,

If we but him as second Adam view,

Who is, what wrong the first did, to undo.

For he must enter into ev'ry state

Which of fall'n nature one might term the fate.

From the Short Confutation of Dr. Warburton.
Men in two ways, one may quite plainly see,
Attach themselves to Christianity.
One's with conviction as a sinner poor,
The other as a scholar and no more, &c.

Law's Friends a feeble Folk.

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competent person to go on.' Moreover, it occurs to him as just within the bounds of possibility that Law will be more acceptable to some people in his own dress than in Okely's, Byrom's or anybody else's, and so he makes this kind concession: Should any one, whether before acquainted with Mr. Law, or now by this means first made so, prefer the original prose to this metrical, or even to the very best poetical version, I shall have no reason to regret the inclination of either.'

The general impression which one gathers from the accounts of Law's friends is that, though they all belonged to what are called the educated classes, they were (exceptis excipiendis) but a feeble folk. And it is distinctly a misfortune to Law in more ways than one that this was the case. Law himself is in danger of being compromised by such absurdities as those which have been quoted; his strong sense, his good judgment, and his intellectual powers generally would never be suspected by those who regarded him through the distorting medium in which some of his injudicious friends have presented him. And then it is never wholesome for a man to be always king of his company; the friction of equal minds is necessary to bring out a man's brightness; Law seldom or never had the benefit of such friction. And once more, a certain peremptoriness of tone was constitutional to Law; at bottom he was the humblest man living; but his humility does not always appear upon the surface; it was not good for him always to be bowed down to, always to be made an oracle of. In short, it would have been well for him if he had sometimes been brought into personal communication with men of the calibre of some of those who will be noticed in the next chapter.

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Law's Opponents.

CHAPTER XXI.

LAW'S OPPONENTS.

IN the admirable essay 'On the Mysticism attributed to the Early Fathers,' in Tract 89 of the Tracts for the Times,' the writer (Mr. Keble), observes :-' Mysticism is not a hard word, having been customarily applied to such writers as Fenelon and William Law, whom all parties have generally agreed to praise and admire.' So far as William Law is concerned this remark is only applicable to his personal character. No one could help admiring that. The thorough reality of the man, his ardent piety, his splendid intellectual powers were undeniable; and with very few exceptions, his warmest opponents did homage to them. But, just in proportion as they admired the man, they abominated all the more the opinions which seemed to them to spoil so fine a character. The person

I greatly reverence and love. The doctrine I utterly abhor.' These words of one of the most distinguished of Law's opponents express the pretty general feeling among them all.

In fact, instead of 'praise and admiration,' few writers (quâ writers) have met with so much abuse from so many different quarters as Law did in his later years. It could hardly be otherwise. The eighteenth century was, of all periods, that in which popular sentiment was most unfavourable to anything which savoured of enthusiasm, mysticism, idealism-whatever vague term best expressed the pet

Opposition to Law's views natural.

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abhorrences of the day. All men, it is said, are born Aristotelians or Platonists. If there had been a registry of births

But

on this principle, there would have been found an enormous preponderance of Aristotelians in the period we are speaking of. Perhaps at no other period could such an utterance have been made as that which Voltaire-the very incarnation of eighteenth century feeling in its most unspiritual formmade when he called Locke 'the English Plato, so far superior to the Plato of Greece,' nor as that which Gibbon made when he unhesitatingly declared his preference for Xenophon over Plato, as an exponent of Socrates. the opponents of Law were not men of the stamp of Voltaire and Gibbon. They were, for the most part, orthodox divines of the Church of England, thoughtful men and well read in theological literature. And, really, one cannot wonder that such men should have taken exception to many of Law's sentiments, and, still more, to many of his incidental expressions. Law's later works certainly breathe the spirit of earnest piety; they are full of beautiful thoughts, beautifully expressed; they deal in a very striking and suggestive way with difficulties which press upon the minds of thoughtful men in all ages; but, on the other hand, they are certainly full of strange theories and interpretations; they cannot, to say the least of it, bear to be judged by the 'quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus' standard. His views on the Atonement, on the Wrath of God, on the creation of the world, on the state of the universe before the creation, and on many other points, range beyond the beaten track of theology, to put it in the mildest form. His speculations on the 'glassy sea,' on the universal fire, on the Pearl of Eternity, &c., are curious and fascinating, but often very wild and fanciful. His admiration of Behmen almost amounted to an infatuation; and his violent diatribes against 'human learning' were not unnaturally

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