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Reasons for Law's dislike of Freethinkers. 403

heart bleeds for you. Think, I beseech you, in time, what mercies ye are trampling under your feet. Say not that reason and your intellectual faculties stand in your way; that these are the best gifts that God has given you, and that these suffer you not to come to Christ. For all this is as vain a pretence, and as gross a mistake, as if ye were to say that you had nothing but your feet to carry you to Heaven.'1

The advocates of natural, as opposed to revealed religion, disgusted Law all the more, because their system appeared to him to be a sort of hideous parody of some of his own most cherished sentiments. The doctrine of an universal Saviour was a cardinal point of his scheme. As he expressed it, ' Heathens, Jews, and Christians differ not thus, that the one have a Saviour, and are in a redeemed state, and the other are not; or that the one have one Saviour, and the other have another; for the one Judge of all is the one Saviour of all. But they only differ in this, that one and the same Saviour is differently made known to them, and differently to be obtained by them. The heathens knew Him not as He was in the numerous types of the Jewish law; they knew Him not as He is gloriously manifested in the Gospel; but they knew Him as He was the God of their hearts, manifesting himself by a light of the mind, by instincts of goodness, by a sensibility of guilt, by awakenings and warnings of conscience. And this was their Gospel, which they received as truly and really in, and by, and through Jesus Christ, as the Law and Gospel were received through Him. Therefore it is a great and glorious truth, enough to turn every voice into a trumpet, and make heaven and earth ring with praises and hallelujahs to God, that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all the world, and of

From the Spirit of Prayer, 'Works,' vii. (2), 160-2.

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Law's Opponents-The Freethinkers.

every man, of every nation, kindred, and language.' And then he quotes, very appositely, and with evident rapture, Rev. v. 9 and vii. 9, 10.

But then, was not this the very thing that the friends of natural religion were contending for? Was not this the very Christianity as old as the Creation' of their ablest exponent? Law anticipates the question, and answers it fully. 'I must,' he writes, 'before I proceed further, put in here a word of caution. If you are touched with modern infidelity, having your reason set upon the watch to guard you against the Gospel, it may here do its office, and will perhaps tell you that what I have here said in favour of the general light, or seed of life, that is in all men, is much the same thing that you say in defence of natural reason, or religion, only with this difference, that I mention it as coming from Christ, and you consider it as the bare light of nature. . . . To prevent all misapprehension, I now declare to you, and will show you in the most explicit manner, that that which I call the light of men, or the seed of life sown into all men by Jesus Christ, is as wholly different from that which you call natural reason as light is different from darkness; and that they stand in that same state of contrariety to each other, both as to their original, their nature, and qualities, as our Saviour and Pontius Pilate did. I must therefore asssure you that, as I fear God, and wish your salvation, so I can no more say a word in favour of what is now called the religion of natural reason than I would recommend to you the ancient idolatry of heathens.'1

Law is as good as his word, and does show the distinction 'in the most explicit manner'; but, unfortunately, he takes sixty pages to do so. It is, of course, impossible to transcribe them; and as Law is, as has been said, the

1 See Works, v. 185.

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most consecutive of writers, it is equally impossible to condense his arguments without doing him grievous injustice. It must, therefore, suffice to add that Law shows unanswerably his perfect consistency in adhering to his literal interpretation of his favourite text on 'the Light which lighteth every one that cometh into the world,' and yet warning his reader to 'cast away this religion of nature from him with more earnestness than he would cast burning coals out of his bosom'; 'for,' he adds, 'could it only destroy your body, I should have been less earnest in giving you notice of it.'

Considering Law's reluctance to take up any personal quarrel, we have perhaps lingered too long on the subject of this chapter. But, whether he would or no, Law's opponents occupied too conspicuous a place in relation to his biography to allow his biographer to ignore them; and even yet there is more to be said on the subject, as the next chapter will show.

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Law on Systems kindred to Mysticism.

CHAPTER XXII.

LAW ON SYSTEMS KINDRED TO MYSTICISM.

WE have seen that there were several systems which hung, as it were, on the outskirts of mysticism. With these, Law's position necessarily brought him into contact; and his relation to them must now be briefly noticed.

From the wild extravagances which characterised some of these semi-mystic schemes, Law was saved not merely by his strong sense and clear judgment, but still more by his firm adherence to the creeds of the Church. He might be a 'rank enthusiast'; but the rankest enthusiasm cannot go far beyond the bounds of sound spirituality so long as it is chastened and corrected by the well-weighed and deliberate judgments of the Church Catholic, as expressed in the symbols of her faith. Those who depreciate the value of creeds would do, well to ponder on the contrast between the enthusiasts who let their fancy run riot, scorning to be bound by such trammels, and the enthusiast whose speculations, wild and dreamy as they sometimes were, were always held in check by his regard for the utterances of the Church. This contrast will, it is hoped, be brought out in strong colours in the following brief sketch.

1. The Philadelphians.

In the year 1697 a short-lived society was formed under the name of the Philadelphian Society,' the object

The Philadelphian Society.

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of which was 'to cultivate spiritual and practical piety founded on the study of Jacob Behmen.' Its leading spirits were Mrs. Joanna Lead, who was the intimate friend of Dr. Pordage, a nonjuring clergyman, and afterwards a physician, the learned and excellent Francis Lee, who married Mrs. Lead's daughter, Lot Fisher, also a physician, and Thomas Bromley, also a physician, the author of the 'Sabbath of Rest.' The society, however, was not content with Behmenism pure and simple, but regarded Mrs. Lead as an inspired prophetess, and accepted her visions almost as articles of faith. The society was broken up long before Law became a mystic, having 'completed its public testimony,' and consequently dissolved itself, in 1703. But, as a Behmenist, Law was naturally led to give his opinion about these earlier admirers of the illuminated Jacob. When accused of 'reading Jacob Behmen, Dr. Pordage, and Mrs. Lead, with almost the same veneration and implicit faith that other people read the Scripture,' he replied, 'Two of these writers I know very little of, yet as much as I desire to know.' And from a private letter we find, what, indeed, we might have anticipated from the general tone of Law's writings, the reason why he desired to know no more of Dr. Pordage and Mrs. Lead. In the beginning,' he writes, 'of this century, a number of persons, many of them of great piety, formed themselves into a kind of society, by the name of Philadelphians. They were great readers, and well versed in the language of Jacob Behmen, and used to make eloquent discourses of the mystery in their meetings. Their only thirst was after visions, openings, and revelations. And yet nowhere could they see their distemper so fully described, the causes it proceeded

1 See Works, vi. (2), 313.

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