‘I felt privileged to be party to his insights.’ Photo: Engraving of William Law by John Scott (1827)
Law abiding: Jacqui Poole finds an Anglican mystic
‘Here was someone who spoke eloquently of his own experience.’
William Law (1686-1761) was a priest who lost his position when he found himself unable to swear allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch. He turned to private teaching, and to writing, influencing authors from Samuel Johnson to John Wesley. Recently, I found a quotation from Aldous Huxley (author of The Perennial Philosophy and Brave New World) talking about Law: ‘What is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and end of life? The answers to these questions will be given to a great extent in the words of that most surprising product of the English 18th century, William Law… a man who was not only a master of English prose, but also one of the most interesting thinkers of his period and one of the most endearingly saintly figures in the whole history of Anglicanism.’
