An Appeal to All that Doubt

Law lived in the Age of Enlightenment centering on reason in which there were controversies between Catholics and Protestants, Deists, Socinians, Arians etc.

The Appeal was heavily influenced by the works of the seventeenth-century German philosopher, Lutheran theologian and mystic writer Jakob Boehme.

It contains a statement of William Law's mystical theology and consists of three chapters filled with beautiful prose.

[1] Stephen Hobhouse stated that Law remained loyal throughout his life to the sacraments and institutions of the Anglican Church, in spite of his later leanings towards the Quakers and their pacifist faith.

[2] In the Atonement passages Law asserted the function of Christ as our great example of a good life and the only method of overcoming evil, not by anger or force and punishment, but by love, patience and spiritual not physical resistance.

[3] For to Law and to Boehme "Atonement' was first and foremost "at-one-ment", the rebirth of a new sinless life in the soul and its reunion with God.

This concept, so Hobhouse wrote, will seem unsatisfactory to those people who believe in "guilt, righteous anger, retributive punishment, compensatory justice and sacrificial death.

[4] Hobhouse mentioned several possibly bewildering passages in Law's books, which are also found in the works of Boehme.

No writer, whether Jewish or Christian, has so plainly ... laid open ... the necessity of an eternal, never ceasing relation between God, and all human nature ... has incontestably asserted the immortality of the soul, or spirit of man, and ... proved the necessity of one religion, common to all human nature.

Therefore, he argued, that this world in its current state and condition was not the first and original creation of God: This [world] is in a corrupt, disordered state, full of grossness, disease, impurity, wrath, death and darkness, [which is] as evident, as there is light, beauty, order and harmony everywhere to be found in it.

The present condition of this world is only the remains or ruins, first, of a Heaven spoiled by the fall of Angels, and then of a Paradise lost by the sin of Man.

.... Man and the world in which he lives, lie both in the same state of disorder and impurity, have both the same marks of Life and Death in them, both bring forth the same sort of evils, both want a Redeemer, and have need of the same kind of Death and Resurrection, before they can come to their first state of purity and perfection.Qualities that are good, or even perfect, become evil when they are separated from light and love (God) with which they should be united, argues Law.

[12] He compares it with fruit: If a delicious, fragrant Fruit had a power of separating itself from that rich spirit, fine taste, smell and colour which it receives from the virtue of the sun, and the spirit of the air; or if it could in the beginning of its growth, turn away from the sun, and receive no virtue from it, then it would stand in its own first birth of wrath, sourness, bitterness, and astringency, just as the devils do, who have turned back into their own dark root, and rejected the light and spirit of God.

[13] For William Law the most fundamental doctrine of the Scripture is that the Father is the Creator, the Son the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier.

As there are three in God, there must be three in the creature, and here one finds, so argues Law, the "true, and easy, and sound, and edifying knowledge and belief of the mystery of a Trinity in Unity".

This Law compares with the state of the penitent returning prodigal son, "weary of his own sinful, shameful nature and desiring to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil.".

[19]Since there is "no partiality in God", this salvation through Jesus Christ, so argues Law, was given "through all ages, and in all countries, from the first Patriarchs to the end of the world".

Expect no arbitrary goodness of God toward thee, when thou leavest this world; for that must grow for ever which hath grown here.

.... Let no man therefore trust to be saved at the last day, by any arbitrary Goodness, or free grace of God; for salvation is, and can be nothing else, but the having put off all that is damnable and hellish in our nature.

Evil and good was in the angelic kingdom as soon as they set their wills and desires contrary to God and the divine life.

[25]This is why one has to resist evil "in any kind, under every shape and colour", so that the life and light of heaven may rise up in oneself and God's Kingdom may come "and His will be done in all nature and creature".

[27]At the beginning of the third chapter of An Appeal Law wrote the following summary: The true ground of all the doctrines of the gospel discovered.

[28]In this third chapter Law shows the reader all the objections which "Deists, Arians and Socinians have brought against the first articles of Christian faith", but he will also explain his own view of the suffering of Christ.

It is not by an "arbitrary discretionary pleasure of God" who would accept the sufferings of an innocent person as a "sufficient amends or satisfaction for the sins of criminals".

He saved us not by "giving the merit of his innocent sufferings as a full payment for our [sins]" but by enabling us to come out of our "guilt and iniquities" by having his nature reborn into us.

Who with impertinent hearts, devoted to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life, for worldly ends, outward appearances, and secular conformity, boldly meddle with those mysteries that are only to be approached by those that are of a pure heart and who worship God in spirit and in truth.

[34]This is according to Law the plain and full truth of the "most mysterious part" of the Holy Sacrament, disentangled by him from the tedious strife of words and that "thickness of darkness" which so many learned contenders on all sides brought into it.

Overton also published William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic, in 1881 in which he gave 1740 as the publication date of the first edition of the Appeal.

It is entitled in full, An Appeal to all that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, whether they be Deists, Arians, Socinians, or nominal Christians.

[38] The sixth Volume contained the third edition of An Appeal from 1768 which had been printed for Robinson and Roberts, 25 Pater-Noster Row, London.