William Law - Writer

Clergyman, born in Kingscliffe, Northamptonshire, C England, UK. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow (1711), and was ordained, but was forced to resign on refusing to take the oath of allegiance to George I. He wrote several treatises on Christian ethics and mysticism, notably the Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), which influenced the Wesleys.

William Law (1686 – April 9, 1761), English divine, was born at Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire. By 1727 he was domiciled with Edward Gibbon (1666-1736) at Putney as tutor to his son Edward, father of the historian, who says that Law became the much-honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family. His pupil then went abroad, but Law was left at Putney, where he remained in Gibbon's house for more than ten years, acting as a religious guide not only to the family but to a number of earnest-minded folk who came to consult him. Law was parted from his friends, and in 1740 retired to Kings Cliffe, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was presently joined by two ladies: Mrs Hutcheson, the rich widow of his old friend, who recommended her on his death-bed to place herself under Law's spiritual guidance, and Miss Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. This curious trio lived for twenty-one years a life wholly given to devotion, study and charity, until the death of Law on the 9th of April 1761.

Writer

Law was a busy writer under three heads:

Controversy

In this field he had no contemporary peer save perhaps Richard Bentley. Thomas Sherlock declared that Mr Law was a writer so considerable that he knew but one good reason why his lordship did not answer him. Law's next controversial work was Remarks on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1723), in which he vindicates morality on the highest grounds; Law's Case of Reason (1732), in answer to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation is to a great extent an anticipation of Bishop Butler's famous argument in the Analogy. In this work Law shows himself at least the equal of the ablest champion of Deism.

Practical Divinity

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728), together with its predecessor, A Treatise of Christian Perfection (1726), deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival. In a tract entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments (1726) Law was tempted by the corruptions of the stage of the period to use unreasonable language, and incurred some effective criticism from John Dennis in The Stage Defended.

Mysticism

Though the least popular, by far the most interesting, original and suggestive of all Law's works are those which he wrote in his later years, after he had become an enthusiastic admirer (not a disciple) of Jacob Boehme, the Teutonic theosophist. From his earliest years he had been deeply impressed with the piety, beauty and thoughtfulness of the writings of the Christian mystics, but it was not till after his accidental meeting with the works of Boehme, about 1734, that pronounced mysticism appeared in his works. They are:

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729) A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors of a late Book called a Plain Account, etc., of the Lord's Supper (1737) The Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Regeneration (1731) An Appeal to all that Doubt and Disbelieve the Truths of Revelation (1740) An Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr Trapp's Sermon on being Righteous Overmuch (1740) The Spirit of Prayer (1749, 1752) The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752) The Spirit of Love (1752, 1754) A Short but Sufficient Confutation of Dr Warburton's Projected Defence (as he calls it) of Christianity in his Divine Legation of Moses (1757) A Series of Letters (1760) a Dialogue between a Methodist and a Churchman (1760) An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761).