William Law Quotes

       William Law
       1686-1761
      
       William Law was an English cleric and theological writer. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was elected a fellow in 1711, the year of his ordination. He declined to take the oath of loyalty to King George I, in 1714, and was deprived of his fellowship. He became the tutor of Edward Gibbon, father of the famous historian. Later he returned to his birthplace of King's Cliffe where he lived the rest of his life, though he was known throughout England for his speaking and writing.
      
       His writing of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728), together with its predecessor, A Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection (1726), deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival.
      
       John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, Thomas Scott, and Thomas Adam all express their deep obligation to the author. The Serious Call also affected others deeply.

Be intent on the perfection of the present day.     Topics: Achievement Whenever a man allows himself to have anxieties, fears, or complaints, he must consider his behaviour as either a denial of the wisdom of God or as a confession that he is out of his will.     Topics: Anxiety Whatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.     Topics: Character He that rightly understands the reasonableness and excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly.     Topics: Charity, Money Christ is the breathing forth of the heart, life and spirit of God into all the dead race of Adam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer of all that, from Cain to the end of time, was lost and dead to the life of God. He is the love that prays for all its murderers; the love that willingly suffers and dies among thieves, that thieves may have a life with him in Paradise; the love that visits publicans, harlots and sinners, and wants and seeks to forgive where most is to be forgiven.     Topics: Christ, Restoration, Murder This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.     Topics: Christianity, Piety If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.     Topics: Christians, Humility, Self-denial This new birth in Christ, thus firmly believed and continually desired, will do everything that thou wantest to have done in thee, it will dry up all the springs of vice, stop all the workings of evil in thy nature, it will bring all that is good into thee, it will open all the gospel within thee, and thou wilt know what it is to be taught of God.     Topics: Conversion, Holy Spirit Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness.     Topics: Death, Business Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.     Topics: Death, Worldliness Reading is good, hearing is good, conversation and meditation are good; but then, they are only good at times and occasions, in a certain degree, and must be used and governed with such caution as we eat and drink and refresh ourselves, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance.     Topics: Discretion, Meditation Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.     Topics: Eternity, Time