William Law · 1 of 14

Part I. In a Letter to a Friend · Part 1

THE SPIRIT OF LOVE

My Dear Friend,

You had no Occasion to make any Apology for the Manner of your Letter to me, for though you very well know that I have as utter an aversion to waste my Time and Thoughts in Matters of theological Debate as in any Contentions merely of a worldly Nature, as knowing that the Former are generally as much, if not more, hurtful to the Heart of Man than the Latter; yet as your Objections rather tend to stir up the Powers of Love than the wrangle of a rational Debate, so I consider them only as Motives and Occasions of edifying both you and myself with the Truth, the Power and Divine Blessedness of the Spirit of Love.

You say ‘There is nothing in all my Writings that has more affected you than that Spirit of Love that breathes in them, and that you wish for nothing so much as to have a living Sensibility of the Power, Life, and Religion of Love. But you have these two Objections often rising in your Mind: First, that this Doctrine of pure and universal Love may be too refined and imaginary, because you find that however you like it, yet you cannot attain to it, or overcome all That in your Nature which is contrary to it, do what you can; and so are only able to be an Admirer of that Love which you cannot lay hold of. Secondly, Because you find so much said in Scripture of a Righteousness and Justice, a Wrath and Vengeance of God that must be atoned and satisfied, &c., that though you are in Love with that Description of the Deity which I have given, as a Being that is all Love, yet you have some Doubt whether the Scripture will allow of it.’

Thus stand your Objections, which will fall into nothing as soon as you look at them from a right Point of View, Which will then be, as soon as you have found the true Ground of the Nature, Power, and Necessity of the blessed Spirit of Love.

Now the Spirit of Love has this Original. God, as considered in himself in his Holy Being, before any thing is brought forth by him or out of him, is only an eternal Will to all Goodness. This is the one eternal immutable God, that from Eternity to Eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less nor any thing else but an eternal Will to all the Goodness that is in himself, and can come from him. The Creation of ever so many Worlds or Systems of Creatures adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God. He always was and always will be the same immutable Will to all Goodness. So that as certainly as he is the Creator, so certainly is he the Blesser of every created Thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness, and Happiness from himself because he has in himself nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the Sun to give forth Darkness, than for God to do, or be, or give forth anything but Blessing and Goodness. Now this is the Ground and Original of the Spirit of Love in the Creature; it is and must be a Will to all Goodness, and you have not the Spirit of Love till you have this Will to all Goodness at all Times and on all Occasions. You may indeed do many Works of Love and delight in them, especially at such Times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your State or Temper or Occurrences in Life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the Spirit of your Life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every Spirit acts with Freedom and Universality according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own Life, or be what it is, no more than you need bid Wrath be wrathful. And therefore when Love is the Spirit of your Life, it will have the Freedom and Universality of a Spirit; it will always live and work in Love, not because of This or That, Here or There, but because the Spirit of Love can only love, wherever it is or goes or whatever is done to it. As the Sparks know no Motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the Darkness of the Night or in the Light of the Day, so the Spirit of Love is always in the same Course; it knows no Difference of Time, Place, or Persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful Work, equally blessed from itself. For the Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul, and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion.

Oh Sir! Would you know the Blessing of all Blessings? It is this God of Love dwelling in your Soul and killing every Root of Bitterness which is the Pain and Torment of every earthly, selfish Love. For all Wants are satisfied, all Disorders of Nature are removed, no Life is any longer a Burden, every Day is a Day of Peace, every thing you meet becomes a Help to you because every thing you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle Element of Love. For as Love has no By-Ends, wills nothing but its own Increase, so every thing is as Oil to its Flame. It must have that which it wills and cannot be disappointed, because every thing naturally helps it to live in its own Way and to bring forth its own Work. The Spirit of Love does not want to be rewarded, honoured, or esteemed. Its only Desire is to propagate itself and become the Blessing and Happiness of every thing that wants it. And therefore it meets Wrath and Evil and Hatred and Opposition with the same one Will as the Light meets the Darkness, only to overcome it with all its Blessings. Did you want to avoid the Wrath and Ill-will or to gain the Favour of any Persons, you might easily miss of your Ends; but if you have no Will but to all Goodness, everything you meet, be it what it Will, must be forced to be assistant to you. For the Wrath of an Enemy, the Treachery of a Friend, and every other Evil only helps the Spirit of Love to be more triumphant, to live its own Life and find all its own Blessings in a higher Degree. Whether therefore you consider Perfection or Happiness, it is all included in the Spirit of Love and must be so for this Reason, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is mere Love, an unchangeable Will to all Goodness; and therefore every Creature must be corrupt and unhappy, so far as it is led by any other Will than the one Will to all Goodness. Thus you see the Ground, the Nature, and Perfection of the Spirit of Love. Let me now in a Word or two show you the Necessity of it. Now the Necessity is absolute and unchangeable. No Creature can be a Child of God but because the Goodness of God is in it; nor can it have any Union or Communion with the Goodness of the Deity till its Life is a Spirit of Love. This is the one only Band of Union betwixt God and the Creature. All besides this, or that is not this, call it by what Name you Will, is only so much Error, Fiction, Impurity, and Corruption got into the Creature, and must of all Necessity be entirely separated from it before it can have that Purity and Holiness which alone can see God or find the Divine Life. For as God is an immutable Will to all Goodness, so the Divine Will can unite or Work with no creaturely Will but that which willeth with him only that which is good. Here the Necessity is absolute; nothing will do instead of this Will; all Contrivances of Holiness, all Forms of religious Piety, signify nothing without this Will to all Goodness. For as the Will to all Goodness is the whole Nature of God, so it must be the whole Nature of every Service or Religion that can be acceptable to him. For nothing serves God or worships and adores him but that which wills and worketh with him. For God can Delight in nothing but his own Will and his own Spirit, because all Goodness is included in it and can be nowhere else. And therefore every thing that followeth an own Will or an own Spirit forsaketh the one Will to all Goodness, and whilst it doth so, hath no Capacity for the Light and Spirit of God. The Necessity therefore of the Spirit of Love is what God himself cannot dispense with in the Creature, no more than he can deny himself or act contrary to his own holy Being. But as it was his Will to all Goodness that brought forth Angels and the Spirits of Men, so he can Will nothing in their Existence but that they should live and work and manifest that same Spirit of Love and Goodness which brought them into Being. Every thing therefore but the Will and Life of Goodness is an Apostasy in the Creature and is Rebellion against the whole Nature of God.

There is no Peace, nor ever can be for the Soul of Man but in the Purity and Perfection of its first created Nature; nor can it have its Purity and Perfection in any other Way than in and by the Spirit of Love. For as Love is the God that created all Things, so Love is the Purity, the Perfection, and Blessing of all created Things; and nothing can live in God but as it lives in Love. Look at every Vice, Pain, and Disorder in human Nature; it is in itself nothing else but the Spirit of the Creature turned from the Universality of Love to some self-seeking or own Will in created Things. So that Love alone is, and only can be, the Cure of every Evil, and he that lives in the Purity of Love is risen out of the Power of Evil into the Freedom of the one Spirit of Heaven. The Schools have given us very accurate Definitions of every Vice, whether it be Covetousness, Pride, Wrath, Envy, &c., and shown us how to conceive them as notionally distinguished from one another. But the Christian has a much shorter Way of knowing their Nature and Power and what they all are and do in and to himself. For call them by what Names you will, or distinguish them with ever so much Exactness, they are all, separately and jointly, just that same one Thing, and all do that same one Work as the Scribes, the Pharisees, Hypocrites, and Rabble of the Jews who crucified Christ were all but one and the same Thing and all did one and the same Work, however different they were in outward Names. If you would therefore have a true Sense of the Nature and Power of Pride, Wrath, Covetousness, Envy, &c., they are in their whole Nature nothing else but the Murderers and Crucifiers of the true Christ of God; not as the High-Priests did many hundred Years ago, nailing his outward Humanity to an outward Cross, but crucifying afresh the Son of God, the holy Immanuel, who is the Christ that every Man crucifies as often as he gives way to Wrath, Pride, Envy, or Covetousness, &c. For every Temper or Passion that is contrary to the new Birth of Christ and keeps the holy Immanuel from coming to Life in the Soul is, in the strictest Truth of the Words, a Murderer and Killer of the Lord of Life. And where Pride and Envy and Hatred, &c., are suffered to live, there the same Thing is done as when Christ was killed and Barrabas was saved alive. The Christ of God was not then first crucified when the Jews brought him to the Cross but Adam and Eve were his first real Murderers; for the Death which happened to them in the Day that they did eat of the earthly Tree was the Death of the Christ of God or the Divine Life in their Souls. For Christ had never come into the World as a second Adam to redeem it had he not been originally the Life and Perfection and Glory of the First Adam. And he is our Atonement and Reconciliation with God, because by and through him brought to Life in us, we are set again in that first State of Holiness, and have Christ again in us as our first Father had at his Creation. For had not Christ been in our first Father as a Birth of Life in him, Adam had been created a mere Child of Wrath, in the same Impurity of Nature, in the same Enmity with God, and in the same Want of an atoning Saviour as we are at this Day.— For God can have no Delight or Union with any Creature but because his well-beloved Son, the express Image of his Person, is found in it.— This is as true of all unfallen as of all fallen Creatures; the one are redeemed and the other want no Redemption, only through the Life of Christ dwelling in them. For as the Word, or Son of God, is the Creator of all Things, and by him every Thing is made that was made, so every Thing that is good and holy in unfallen Angels is as much through his living and dwelling in them as every Thing that is good and holy in redeemed Man is through him. And he is just as much the preserver, the Strength, and Glory, and Life of all the Thrones and Principalities of Heaven as he is the Righteousness, the Peace, and Redemption of fallen Man.

This Christ of God hath many Names in Scripture, but they all mean only this, that he is, and alone can be, the Light and Life and Holiness of every Creature that is holy, whether in Heaven or on Earth. Wherever Christ is not, there is the Wrath of Nature or Nature left to itself and its own tormenting Strength of Life, to feel nothing in itself but the vain, restless Contrariety of its own working Properties. This is the one only Origin of Hell, and every kind of Curse and Misery in the Creature. It is Nature without the Christ of God or the Spirit of Love ruling over it. And here you may observe that Wrath has in itself the Nature of Hell, and that it can have no Beginning or Power in any Creature but so far as it has lost the Christ of God. And when Christ is everywhere, Wrath and Hatred Will be nowhere. Whenever therefore you willingly indulge Wrath or let your Mind work in Hatred, you not only work without Christ, but you resist him and withstand his redeeming Power over you. You do in Reality what those Jews did when they said, "We will not have this Man to reign over us." For Christ never was, nor can be, in any Creature but purely as a Spirit of Love.

In all the Universe of Nature nothing but Heaven and heavenly Creatures ever had, or could have, been known, had every created Will continued in that State in which it came forth out of and from God. For God can will nothing in the Life of the Creature but a creaturely Manifestation of his own Goodness, Happiness and Perfection. And therefore, where this is wanted, the Fact is certain that the Creature hath changed and lost its first State that it had from God. Every Thing therefore which is the Vanity, the Wrath, the Torment and Evil of Man or any intelligent Creature is solely the Effect of his Will turned from God and can come from nothing else. Misery and Wickedness can have no other Ground or Root, for whatever wills and works with God must of all Necessity partake of the Happiness and Perfection of God.

This therefore is a certain Truth, that Hell and Death, Curse and Misery, can never cease or be removed from the Creation till the Will of the Creature is again as it came from God and is only a Spirit of Love that willeth nothing but Goodness. All the whole fallen Creation, stand it never so long, must groan and travail in Pain; this must be its Purgatory till every Contrariety to the Divine Will is entirely taken from every Creature.

Which is only saying that all the Powers and Properties of Nature are a Misery to themselves, can only Work in Disquiet and Wrath till the Birth of the Son of God brings them under the Dominion and Power of the Spirit of Love.

Thus Sir, you have seen the Original, immutable Ground and Necessity of the Spirit of Love. It is no imaginary Refinement or speculative Curiosity, but is of the highest Reality and most absolute Necessity. It stands in the Immutability and Perfection of God, and not only every intelligent Creature, be it what and where it will, but every inanimate Thing must work in Vanity and Disquiet till it has its State in and works under, the Spirit of Love. For as Love brought forth all Things, and all Things were what they were and had their Place and State under the working Power of Love, so every Thing that has lost its first-created State must be in restless Strife and Disquiet till it finds it again. There is no sort of Strife, Wrath, or Storm in outward Nature, no Fermentation, Vegetation, or Corruption in any Elementary Things but what is a full Proof and real Effect of this Truth, viz., That Nature can have no Rest but must be in the Strife of Fermentation, Vegetation, and Corruption, constantly doing and undoing, building and destroying, till the Spirit of Love has rectified all outward Nature and brought it back again into that glassy Sea of Unity and Purity in which St. John beheld the Throne of God in the Midst of it. For this glassy Sea, which the beloved Apostle was blessed with the Sight of, is the transparent, heavenly Element in which all the Properties and Powers of Nature move and work in the Unity and Purity of the one Will of God, only known as so many endless Forms of triumphing Light and Love. For the Strife of Properties, of Thick against Thin, Hard against Soft, Hot against Cold, &c., had no Existence till Angels fell, that is till they turned from God to Work with Nature. This is the Original of all the Strife, Division, and Materiality, in the fallen World.

No Fluid in this World ferments but because there is some Thickness and Contrariety in it which it would not have. And it ferments only for this Reason, to have a Unity and Clearness in itself which its Nature wants to have. Now when you see this in any Fluid, you see the Work of all fallen Nature and the same, that every Thing else is doing, as well as it can, in its own Way; it is in a restless Working and Strife after a Unity and Purity which it can neither have nor forbear to seek. And the Reason why all Things are doing thus is this, because all the Elements of this World, before they were brought down into their present State, had their Birth and Existence in the Unity and Purity of the heavenly glassy Sea, and therefore must be always in some Sort of Strife and Tendency after their first State, and doomed to Disquiet till it is found.

This is the Desire of all fallen Nature in this World. It cannot be separated from it but every Part must work in Fermentation, Vegetation, and Corruption, till it is restored to its first Unity and Purity under the Spirit of Love.

Every Son of fallen Adam is under this same Necessity of working and striving after something that he neither is nor hath, and for the same Reason, because the Life of Man has lost its first Unity and Purity and therefore must be in a working Strife till all Contrariety and Impurity is separated from it and it finds its first State in God. All evil as well as good Men, all the Wisdom and Folly of this Life, are equally Proof of this. For the Vanity of wicked Men in their various Ways, and the Labours of good Men in Faith and Hope, &c., proceed from the same Cause, viz., from a Want and Desire of having and being something that they neither are nor have. The Evil seek Wrong and the Good seek Right, but they both are Seekers, and for the same Reason, because their present State has not That which it wants to have. And this must be the State of human Life and of every Creature that has fallen from its first State or has something in it that it should not have. It must do as the polluted Fluid does; it must ferment and work, either right or wrong, to mend its State. The muddled Wine always works right to the utmost of its Power because it works according to Nature, but if it had an intelligent free Will it might work as vainly as Man does; it might continually thicken itself, be always stirring up its own Dregs, and then it would seek for its Purity, just as well as the Soul of Man seeks its Happiness, in the Lusts of the Flesh, the Lust of the Eyes, and the Pride of Life. All which must of the same Necessity fall away from the Heart of Man before it can find its Happiness in God, as the Dregs must separate from the Wine before it can have its Perfection and Clearness.

Purification therefore is the one Thing necessary, and nothing will do in the stead of it. But Man is not purified till every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish, partial, self-willing Temper, is taken from him. He is not dying to himself, till he is dying to these Tempers; and he is not alive in God, till he is dead to them. For he wants Purification only because he has these Tempers, and therefore he has not the Purification which he wants till they are all separated from him. It is the Purity and Perfection of the Divine Nature that must be brought again into him; because in that Purity and Perfection he came forth from God, and could have no less, as he was a Child of God, that was to be blessed by a Life in him, and from him. For nothing impure or imperfect in its Will and Working, can have any Union with God. Nor are you to think that these Words, the Purity and Perfection of God, are too high to be used on this Occasion; for they only mean, that the Will of the Creature, as an Offspring of the Divine Will, must will and work with the Will of God, for then it stands and lives truly and really in the Purity and Perfection of God; and whatever does not thus, is at Enmity with God, and cannot have any Union of Life and Happiness with him, and in him.

Now, nothing wills and works with God but the Spirit of Love, because nothing else Works in God himself. The Almighty brought forth all Nature for this only End, that boundless Love might have its Infinity of Height and Depth to dwell and work in, and all the striving and working Properties of Nature are only to give Essence and Substance, Life and Strength, to the invisible hidden Spirit of Love, that it may come forth into outward Activity and manifest its blessed Powers, that Creatures born in the Strength, and out of the Powers of Nature, might communicate the Spirit of Love and Goodness, give and receive mutual Delight and Joy to and from one another. All below this State of Love is a Fall from the one Life of God, and the only Life in which the God of Love can dwell. Partiality, Self, Mine, Thine, &c., are Tempers that can only belong to Creatures that have lost the Power, Presence, and Spirit of the universal Good. They can have no Place in Heaven, nor can be anywhere but because Heaven is lost. Think not, therefore, that the Spirit of pure, universal Love, which is the one Purity and Perfection of Heaven, and all heavenly Natures, has been, or can be carried too high, or its absolute Necessity too much asserted. For it admits of no Degrees of higher or lower, and is not in Being till it is absolutely pure and unmixed, no more than a Line can be straight till it is absolutely free from all Crookedness.

All the design of Christian Redemption is, to remove every Thing that is unheavenly, gross, dark, wrathful, and disordered, from every Part of this fallen World. And when you see Earth and Stones, Storms and Tempests, and every kind of Evil, Misery, and Wickedness, you see that which Christ came into the World to remove, and not only to give a new Birth to fallen Man, but also to deliver all outward Nature from its present Vanity and Evil and set it again in its first heavenly State. Now, if you ask, How came all Things into this Evil and Vanity? It is because they have lost the blessed Spirit of Love, which alone makes the Happiness and Perfection of every Power of Nature. Look at Grossness, Coldness, Hardness, and Darkness; they never could have had any Existence, but because the Properties of Nature must appear in this manner when the Light of God is no longer dwelling in them.

Nature is at first only spiritual; it has in itself nothing but the spiritual Properties of the Desire, which is the very Being and Ground of Nature. But when these spiritual Properties are not filled and blessed, and all held in one Will by the Light and Love of God ruling in them, then something is found in Nature which never should have been found; viz., the Properties of Nature, in a State of visible, palpable Division and Contrariety to each other. And this new State of the Properties of Nature is the first Beginning and Birth, and Possibility of all that Contrariety that is to be found betwixt Hot and Cold, Hard and Soft, Thick and Thin, &c., all which could have had no Existence, till the Properties of Nature lost their first Unity, and Purity under the Light and Love of God, manifested and working in them. And this is the one true Origin of all the Materiality of this earthly System, and of every Struggle and Contrariety, found in material Things. Had the Properties of Nature been kept by the Creature, in their first State, blessed and overcome with the Light and Love of Heaven dwelling and working in them, no Wrath or Contrariety could ever have been known by any Creature; and had not Wrath and Contrariety entered into the Properties of Nature, nothing Thick or Hard or Dark, &c., could ever have been found or known in any Place. Now every Thing that you see and know of the Things of this World, shows you, that Matter began only in and from the Change of the spiritual Properties of Nature; and that Matter is changed and altered, just as the Light and Purity of Heaven is more or less in it. How comes the Flint to be in such a State of hard, dark Compaction? It is because the Meekness and Fluidity of the Light, and Air, and Water of this World have little or no Existence in it. And therefore, as soon as the Fire has unlocked its hard Compaction and opened in it the Light, and Air, and Water of this World, it becomes transparent Glass, and is brought so much nearer to that first glassy Sea in which it once existed. For the Light, and Air, and Water, of this World, though all of them in a material State, yet have the most of the first heavenly Nature in them; and as these are more, or less, in all material Things, so are they nearer, or farther from, their first heavenly State. And as Fire is the first Deliverer of the Flint from its hard Compaction, so the last universal Fire must begin the Deliverance of this material System and fit every Thing to receive that Spirit of Light and Love, which will bring all Things back again to their first glassy Sea, in which the Deity dwelleth, as in his Throne. And thus, as the earthly Fire turns Flint into Glass, so Earth will become Heaven, and the Contrariety of four divided Elements Will become one transparent Brightness of Glory, as soon as the last Fire shall have melted every Grossness into its first undivided Fluidity, for the Light and Love, and Majesty, of God to be all in all in it. How easy and natural is it to suppose all that is Earth, and Stones, to be dissolved in Water, the Water to be changed into Air, the Air into Aether, and the Aether rarefied into Light? Is there any Thing here impossible to be supposed? And how near a Step is the next, to suppose all this changed or exalted into that glassy Sea, which was everywhere, before the Angels fell? What now is become of hard, heavy, dead, divisible, corruptible Matter? Is it annihilated? No; And yet nothing of it is left; all that you know of it is gone, and nothing but its shadowy Idea will be known in Eternity. Now as this shows you, how Matter can lose all its material Properties, and go back to its first spiritual State, so it makes it very intelligible to you, how the Sin of Angels, which was their sinful Working in and with the Properties of Nature, could bring them out of their first Spirituality into that Darkness, Grossness, and Chaos out of which God raised this material System. See now, Sir, how unreasonably you once told me, that our Doctrine must suppose the Eternity of Matter; for throughout the Whole you might easily have seen, that it neither does nor can suppose it, but demonstrates the Impossibility of it; shows the true Origin of Matter, that it is no older than Sin; could have no Possibility of beginning to be, but from Sin, and therefore must entirely vanish when Sin is entirely done away.