‘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.’
When I read Law for the first time, I had that intuitive reaction that here was someone who spoke eloquently of his own experience of ‘the Spirit of Love’. I felt so privileged to be party to his insights and sensed the truth of them.
True mystics are not the monopoly of any single religious tradition. George Fox, I’m sure, was one, as was the author of the Hindu sacred writings, the Bhagavad Gita. I’d also count the poet Rumi from the Sufi wisdom tradition, along with many, many others from all world cultures. Law, to my mind, is among them.
What we need to be sure is discernment, that quality much vaunted by we Quakers, which enables us to recognise the same truths expressed in the context of different cultures and traditions. I will leave you with an excerpt from Law’s The Spirit of Love, for your own discernment. I have put his eighteenth-century language into modern English.
‘Consider the treasure you have within: the saviour of the world, the eternal word of God, lies hidden within you, as a spark of the divine nature whose function is to overcome sin and death and hell and regenerate the life of heaven in your soul.
‘Turn to your heart and your heart will find its saviour, its God, within itself.
‘You see, feel and hear nothing of God because you’re looking for God in the outside world, using your physical eyes; you’re looking for God in books, in discussions, in the church and in outward activities, but you won’t find God there until you first find God within you.
‘If you look for God in your deep centre, you won’t seek in vain because that is where God’s home is. This centre is the source of God’s Light and the Holy Spirit. Turning to the Light and Spirit of God at your deep centre is the only true way of turning to God; there is no other way of finding God apart from going to the place where God lives within you.’
