William Law · 10 of 14

A DEMONSTRATION of the Gross and Fundamental Errors · Part 9

[Dem-349] What is the reason that the faith of the devils, or their belief of a God, does them no good? It is because there is nothing in it but their own act, a mere product of their own; it is because it is an act of your religion of reason, that will have no virtue but by its own strength, and of its own growth. But if they could have so much of the religion of the gospel, as to say in the language of it, "Lord, help our unbelief," their faith would be changed, and be beneficial to them, only for this reason, because they had renounced your religion of doing good to themselves by their own natural powers.

[Dem-350] Hence it sufficiently appears, that your way of natural reason cannot be the way of salvation; 1st, because the want of salvation is nothing else, but the wanting to have our state, or manner of existence in God, altered for the better; or to have something of God communicated to us, which we want and are capable of receiving. But if this is the nature of salvation, then no religion can save us, can do us our proper good, or supply our proper want, but that which has power to alter our state of existence in God, or to communicate to us that of God which we want, and are capable of. Therefore it follows, that nothing but that same God which created us, which gave us our state and manner of existence in him, and communicated to us that which we possess of him; nothing but that same God can redeem us, or help us to that state or manner of existence in him, which we have lost, or are in want of.

[Dem-351] But if God alone can redeem us, and for the same reason that he alone can create; if creation and redemption necessarily require the same power, and must for the same reason be necessarily appropriated to God, because each of them equally imply the communication of something of God to us; then I suppose it may be granted, that the religion of reason, which is for saving ourselves by our own natural powers, is the greatest of all absurdities; as absurd as to suppose, that we can create by our own natural powers, because creation and redemption both of them equally imply a communication of something of the divine nature; and therefore he that cannot do the one, cannot do the other.

[Dem-352] And if a man was to ask himself, why he cannot be the savior of other people, as well as of himself? He could say nothing against the one, but what must for the same reason be said against the other. For if salvation is a communication of something of God to the person saved, then it is plain, that a man can no more do this for himself, than he can do it for another.

[Dem-353] There never could have been any dispute about the possibility of saving ourselves, nor any pretense to save ourselves by our own natural faculties, had not men lost all true knowledge both of God and themselves. For this dispute cannot happen, till men suppose that God is some outward being, that our relation to him is an outward relation, that religion is an outward thing that passes between God and us, like terms of behavior between man and man; that sin hurts and separates us from God, only as a misdemeanor hurts and separates us from our prince; that an offended or angry God either gives or refuses pardon to us, as an angry prince does to his subjects; and that what he gives us, or forgives us, is something as distinct and different from himself, as when a prince sitting upon his throne gives or forgives something to an offender, that is an hundred miles from him.

[Dem-354] Now all this is the same total ignorance of God, of what he is, of the relation we have to him, and the manner of his being our good, as when the old idolaters took men to be gods. And yet nothing is more plain, than that your religion of reason is wholly founded upon these gross and false notions of God. You have not an argument in its defense, but what supposes all these errors just mentioned; that our relation to God is an outward relation, like that of subjects to their prince, and that what we do to, and for God, as our service to him, is and must be done by our own power, as that which we do to, and for our prince, must be by our own power. And here lies the foundation of all your religion of reason and natural power, that if it was not sufficient to obtain for us all that we want of God, he must be less good than a good earthly prince, who requires no more of us, than that which we have a natural strength to do, or can do by our own power.

[Dem-355] And yet this error appears to have all the grossness of idolatry, as soon as you suppose, that God is no outward separate being, but that we are what we are, have what we have, can do that which we can do, because he has brought us to this state of life, power and existence in himself, because he has made us, so far as we are made partakers or possessors of his own nature, and has communicated to us so much of himself; or, in the words of scripture, because in him we live, move, and have our being, and consequently have no life, motion or being out of him. For from this state of our existence in God, it necessarily follows, first, that by the nature of our creation we are only put into a capacity of receiving good: a creature as such, can be in no other state; it is as impossible for him to enrich himself, or communicate more good to himself, as it was to create himself. 2dly, that nothing but God himself can do us any good. 3dly, that God cannot do us good, but by the communication of himself in some manner to us.

[Dem-356] For hence it evidently follows, that your religion of reason, which supposes that we have natural powers that can put us in possession of that, which we want to be possessed of in God, or that we need no more divine assistance to recover what we have lost of God, than to obtain a pardon from a prince; or that God need communicate no more of himself to us in our salvation, than a prince communicates of himself to his pardoned subject, has all the mistakes, error and ignorance of God that is in idolatry, when it takes God to be something that he is not; and has all the false devotion that is in idolatry, when it puts the same trust in, and expects the same help from its own powers and faculties, which idolaters did in and from their idols.

[Dem-357] Therefore your religion of reason, which you esteem as the modern refinement of an human mind, and more excellent and rational than the faith and humility of the gospel, has all the dregs of the heathen idolatry in it, and has changed nothing in idolatry, but the idol; but has the same mistakes of the nature of God, and of the manner in which he is our God, and our good, as those idolaters had; and only differs from them in such a degree of philosophy, as the religion of worshipping the sun differs from the religion of worshipping an onion.

[Dem-358] And if you expect that divine assistance from your reason, which one did from the sun, and another from an onion; ye are all equally idolaters, though ye may not be equally philosophers.

[Dem-359] For as soon as it is known and confessed, that God is all in all, that in him we live, move, and have our being; that we can have nothing separately or out of him, but everything in him; that we can have no being, nor any degree of being, nor any degree of good but in him; and that he can give us nothing but himself, nor any degree of salvation, but in such a degree as he communicates something more of himself; as soon as this is known, then it is known with the utmost evidence, that to put our trust in the sun, an onion, or our own reason, if not equally absurd, is yet equally idolatrous, and equally prejudicial to our salvation.

[Dem-360] This I think, my friend, may sufficiently show you both the nature and danger of your religion of reason; and that it can no more supply the needs and necessities of your soul, than an idol can save them that worshipped it; that in this respect it has the insignificancy of an idol, the vanity of an idol, and the sin of an idol; that it is that same self-confidence, self-acquiescence, that same refusal of a savior and all divine assistance, that keeps lost spirits the prisoners of hell. Could they touch the spirit of the gospel, their freedom would be begun; and because they will not, cannot depart in the smallest tittle from your religion of natural strength, their chains are unmovable.

[Dem-361] For no soul can be lost, that can truly humble itself before God, and apply to his mercy to be helped, saved, and redeemed in such a manner as it shall please him. Let it be hid, or buried, or imprisoned where it will, hell and earth, death and darkness, and everything must give way to the soul thus converted to God, that has no confidence in itself, that sees nothing of its own but sin, and that desires and calls upon God to save it by some miracle of his own mercy and goodness. By this sensibility of the want of a savior, and by this humble conversion and application to God for him, all chains are broken off, all wounds are healed, and the soul must infallibly find, if it thus continues to seek, its salvation in the unknown depths and riches of the divine mercy.

[Dem-362] On the other hand, no soul, however refined and speculative, however lofty and aspiring in its imaginations, spiritual in its conceptions, or deep in its penetration, can possibly be saved, that trusts in its own strength and ability, and will have no other savior or redeemer, but its own natural reason and faculties.

[Dem-363] The whole universe has not two truths of greater certainty than these. And yet if they are truths, and truths of the utmost certainty, then the absolute necessity of the gospel salvation, and utter impossibility of being saved by your religion of reason, has its final decision.

[Dem-364] Further, that principle of life, or light of the mind, which I have said that every man receives from Jesus Christ, as the beginning of his salvation, is entirely different from your magnified light of reason, as that signifies a faculty of viewing the relations of the ideas of things, and drawing consequences from them. For that light I speak of, is goodness itself, a seed or degree of so much of the heavenly life in the soul; but this faculty of speculating and reasoning has nothing of the nature of goodness or religion; it has not so much as the shadow of it, and is in its own nature as foreign from religion, when it is speculating upon it, as when it is speculating upon anything else. Just as our faculty of seeing has no more of goodness, or the nature of an angel in it, when it sees the picture of an angel, than when it sees the picture of a beast.

[Dem-365] And as a blind man has no more light in him, when he reasons about light and colors, than when he discourses about weights and measures; so this ratiocination, or reasoning of the mind, has no more of religion in it, when it speculates its ideas of God, goodness and morality, than when it speculates its ideas of trees and houses.

[Dem-366] And the reason is plain, because this faculty of speculating and arguing, is only the activity of the mind upon its own images and ideas, and is only the same bare activity, whatever the images be that exercise it; it has nothing of the nature of the images that it views, nor gets the nature of them, because it views them; as it does not become dark when it considers the nature, causes, and effects of darkness, nor becomes light when it reasons about it; so neither is it religion, nor gets anything of the nature of religion, when it is wholly taken up in making descriptions and definitions of it.

[Dem-367] If the needle touched with the loadstone was an intelligent being, it could reason and make definitions of itself, of attraction, and of the loadstone; but it would be easy to see, that the attraction of the needle, or the virtue of the loadstone that was left in it, was something in its whole nature really different from this reasoning about it; and that this reasoning and defining had no relation to this attraction, nor would ever be the more like it, for its reasoning upon it, though it continued ever so long, or improved ever so much in its descriptions of it, but would always be at the same distance from it, and could have nothing of its nature in it. But now if this reasoning faculty in the needle should pretend, that the needle need not be drawn by an inward attraction, that it need not be unfixed, or delivered from any outward impediments of its turning to the loadstone, because this reasoning faculty was its true and proper attraction, being full of ideas and definitions of it; you would then have a plain example of your practice, in taking natural reason to be true religion, and to have the nature and power of something that carries the soul to God.

[Dem-368] For this instance is a clear explication of the whole matter; for that which I have called the first redemption of Christ in the soul, a seed of life, an instinct of good, a stirring of conscience, an attraction to God, is that to the soul, which attraction is to the needle that is touched, and is as different from your religion of reason, as a reasoning faculty in the needle would be different from its attraction, and never could be attraction, or have the nature of it.

[Dem-369] If the needle loses its attraction, its communication with the loadstone is at an end; and though it reasons never so long about it, it is still at the same distance from it. So if the soul loses its instinct of goodness, its seed of a divine life, its attraction to God, all its reasonings and definitions about God and goodness are of no use to carry it to God, but it must lie in an absolute state of separation from him, if its attraction, its inward tendency to God, is lost.

[Dem-370] And let me tell you, my dear friend, for so I must call you and think of you, that there is much more in this instance than you imagine. For all is magnetism, all is sentiment, instinct, and attraction, and the freedom of the will has the government of it. There is nothing in the universe but magnetism, and the impediments of it. For as all things come from God, and all things have something of God and goodness in them, so all things have magnetical effects and instincts both towards God and one another. This is the life, the force, the power, the nature of everything, and hence everything has all that is really good or evil in it; reason stands only as a busybody, as an idle spectator of all this, and has only an imaginary power over it.

[Dem-371] We discover this magnetism in some things, where it breaks out sensibly; but it is everywhere, for the same reason that it is anywhere, though we are too busy with the fictions of our own minds to see it, or too much employed in such things as resist and suppress its force.

[Dem-372] But because this magnetism is a secret life, that wants to increase its strength before it can sensibly show its power; and because we have an activity of reason within us, that is soon in action, and concerns itself with everything, and takes all upon it, as if it did all; because it can look at all, and dispute about all, therefore it is, that this magnetism, or instinct towards God and goodness, has much difficulty to show itself sufficiently, and only stirs now and then within us, or when sickness, distress, or some great outward shock has so dashed in pieces all images of reason, and stopped the activity of our minds, that this secret power of the soul has liberty to awake in it.

[Dem-373] This is that trumpet of God which will raise and separate the dead, and then all impediments being removed, everything will take its place not according to the images and ideas it has here played with, but according to the inward tendency and attraction of its nature, and heaven and hell will each take its own.

[Dem-374] And even whilst we are in this life, this magnetism is the mark within us, to what part we belong; and that which has its attraction in us, has the right to us, and power over us, though for a while flesh and blood, and the nature of our temporal state, hinders this from being visibly and sensibly known.

[Dem-375] Nothing however is more plain, than that our goodness bears no proportion to our intellectual abilities of reason; everyone sees this, and yet no more than this need be seen, to give us the fullest demonstration, that natural reason has no connection with virtue and goodness, and therefore surely can have no connection with our salvation, or be the proper cause of it.

[Dem-376] Hence we see, that learned, acute, rational philosophers are often atheists; and those that can demonstrate the foundation of virtue, and paint every office of it, are rakes and debauchees, and will sell every appearance of practical virtue for a salary of so much a year; whilst those that seem to have little of intellectual accomplishments, are virtuous and honest, have a taste and relish for every practical virtue.

[Dem-377] The natural love or affection of relations, bears no proportion to our rational abilities to speak or write of them. A parent that is of too refined an understanding to content himself with the morals of the gospel, or its low way of making men good, and that wants to be entertained with a virtue of more mathematical exactness, is often content with the demonstration, and so remains deficient in the plainest duties of domestic affection: when the poor laborer or mechanic, that knows not what you mean by a definition, has all the solid love and affection that becomes a good relation. All this, and much more, which you and everyone may think for himself of the same kind, is something entirely distinct from our natural faculties of reason and speculation.

[Dem-378] And therefore, when you place the power of your salvation in your intellectual light, or the strength of your own reason, you place it in your weakest part, in the poorest, most trifling and insignificant thing that belongs to you, and upon that which has the least effect in human life.

[Dem-379] The only good that reason can do to you, is to remove the impediments of virtue, and to give room to that inward instinct or attraction to God and goodness to display itself; that the inmost spirit of your mind may receive its strength and assistance from the Spirit of God, from which, as the needle from the loadstone, it has all its instinct of goodness and tendency towards God.

[Dem-380] For this inward instinct of goodness, or life of God in the soul, is all the real and living goodness that is in you, and is as different and distinct from natural reason, as the light, and heat, and power and virtue of the sun, is different from a picture of it upon a piece of canvas, and has as different effects upon the mind.

[Dem-381] For this light of bare reason, or the reasoning faculty of the mind, has no contrariety to the vices of the heart, it neither kills them, nor is killed by them. As pride, vanity, hypocrisy, envy or malice, don't take away from the mind its geometrical skill; so a man may be most mathematical in his demonstrations of the religion of reason, when he has extinguished every good sentiment of his heart, and be the most zealous for its excellency and sufficiency, when he has his passions in the most disordered state.

[Dem-382] But in that light of the heart, or attraction to God, which I have said is common to all mankind in and through Jesus Christ, all is contrary. As it is a gift and grace of God, so it is a real life, a living thing, a sentiment of the heart, and so far as it grows and increases in us, so far it destroys all that is bad and corrupt within us. It has the same contrariety to all vices of the heart, that light has to darkness, and must either suppress or be suppressed by them.

[Dem-383] Now when I speak of this light, or instinct of the heart, or attraction to God, I have not only the authority of scripture, but every man's own experience on my side; that distinction between the head and the heart, which everyone knows how to make, plainly declares for all I have said. It shows that the state, and manner, and tendency of our heart, is all that is good within us; and that the reasonings and speculations of the head, are only an empty show and noise that is made in the outside of us.

[Dem-384] For that which we mean by the heart, plainly speaks thus much; it is a kind of life and motion within us, which everyone knows contains all that is good or bad in us; that we are that which our hearts are, let us talk, and reason, and dispute what we will about goodness and virtue; and that this state of our heart is as distinct from, and independent of all speculations of our reasoning faculties, as it is distinct from, and independent of all the languages in which a scholar can reason and speculate upon it. And if a man should say, that the excellency and sufficiency of natural religion consisted in knowing all the languages in which virtue, goodness and religion are expressed by different sounds and characters, he would have said as much truth, and as well grounded, as he who places the excellency and sufficiency of natural religion in the many arguments and demonstrations which reason can raise about it. For all reasoning and speculation stand on the outside of the heart, in the same superficial manner as all languages do.

[Dem-385] For our heart is our manner of existence, or the state in which we feel ourselves to be; it is an inward life, a vital sensibility, which contains our manner of feeling what and how we are; it is the state of our desires and tendencies, of inwardly seeing, hearing, tasting, relishing and feeling that which passes within us: it is that to us inwardly with regard to ourselves, which our senses of seeing, hearing, feeling &c., are, with regard to things that are without, or external to us.

[Dem-386] Now as reason is a poor, superficial, and insignificant thing with respect to our outward senses, unable to add anything to our hearing and seeing, &c., or to be the true power and life of them, by all its speculations and reasonings upon them; so it is much more a poor, and superficial, and insignificant thing with respect to the inward sensibility of the heart, or its seeing, feeling, &c., and much more unable to add to, or amend the state of the heart, or become the life and power of its motions, by its arguings about them.

[Dem-387] And therefore, to seek for the religion or perfection of the heart in the power of our reason, is more groundless and absurd, and against the nature of things, than to seek for the perfection and strength of our senses in the power of our reason.

[Dem-388] Now I appeal to every man in the world for the truth of all this; for every man has the fullest inward conviction, that his heart is not his reason, nor his reason his heart, but that the one is as different from the other in its whole nature, as pain, and joy, and desire, are different from definitions of them; and that as a thousand definitions of joy and desire, will not become that desire and joy itself; so a thousand definitions of religion will not become religion itself, but be always in the same state of distance from it; and that all reasoning and speculations upon religion, are at the same state of distance from the nature and power of religion, as speculations upon our passions are from the nature and power of them.

[Dem-389] You know, not by hearsay, reasoning, or books, but by an inward sentiment, that your reason can be very nicely religious, very strict in its descriptions of goodness, at the same time that the heart is a mere libertine, sunk into the very dregs of corruption: on the other hand, you know, that when your reason is debauched with arguments, is contending for profaneness, and seems full of proof that piety is superstition, your heart at the same time has a virtue in it, that secretly dissents from all that you say.

[Dem-390] Now all this proof that the state of reason is not the state of your heart, is the same proof that reason is not the power or strength of our religion, because what our heart is, that is our religion; what belongs to our heart, that belongs to our religion; which never had nor can have any other nature, power, or perfection, than that which is the nature, power, and perfection of our heart.

[Dem-391] You are forced to know and feel, whether you will or no, that God has a certain secret power within you, which is watching every opportunity of saying something to you, either of yourself, the vanity of the world, or the guilt and consequences of sin.

[Dem-392] This is that instinct of goodness, attraction of God, or witness of himself in the soul of every man, which without arguments and reasonings rises up in the soul, and would be doing some good to it, if not quenched and resisted by the noise and hurry either of pleasures or business.

[Dem-393] And this is everyone's natural religion, or call to God and goodness, which is faithful to every man, and is the only foundation of all the virtue and goodness that shall be brought forth in him. And the least stirring of this inward principle, or power of life, is of more value than all the activity of our reason, which is only as it were a painter of dead images, which leave the heart in the same state of death, and emptiness of all goodness in which they find it.

[Dem-394] Therefore, my dear friend, know the place of your religion, turn inwards, listen to the voice of grace, the instinct of God that speaks and moves within you; and instead of forming dead and lifeless images, let your heart pray to God, that all that is good and holy in him, may touch, and stir, and revive all that is capable of goodness and holiness in you. Your heart wants nothing but God, and nothing but your heart can receive him. This is the only place and seat of religion, and of all communication between God and you.

[Dem-395] We are apt to consider conscience only as some working of our heart, that checks us, and so we are rather afraid, than fond of it. But if we looked upon it as it really is, so much of God within us, revealing himself within us, so much of a heavenly life, that is striving to raise us from the dead, we should love and adhere to it, as our happy guide to heaven.

[Dem-396] For this reason, I have called this spark of life, or instinct of goodness, our inward redeemer; not only because it is the only thing within, that helps forward our salvation, but also because it is the first beginning of Christ's redemption in the souls of all men, by his becoming the atonement for all.

[Dem-397] And as it is the first step of Christ's redemption in the soul, and that which became their capacity of salvation; so the progress of their redemption consists in the increase and growth of this first seed of life, till the new man be wholly raised up by it.

[Dem-398] Lastly, another real difference between this instinct of goodness, or piety of the heart, and your religion of reason, is this, that natural reason in itself is incapable of Jesus Christ; it cannot comprehend him, it is at enmity with him, and sets itself up against him. For it feels no want of a savior, and therefore is unwilling to receive one. Or if it were to admit of a savior, it must be only such a one as came to increase the number of its images and ideas, or to help it to be more active and artful in the ranging, dividing and distinguishing them. And for this reason it is, that a book of ideas and distinctions is more valued by some people, than all the salvation that is offered in the gospel.