Though God be everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul…

William Law

The Deepest Part of Thy Soul

Topic: Immanence & Transcendence

Though God be everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul.
Thy natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will, and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of His habitation in thee.
But there is a root or depth in thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a center or as branches from the body of a tree.
This depth is called the Center, the Fund or Bottom of the soul.
This depth is the unity, the eternity, I had almost said the infinity of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it any rest but the infinity of God.

William Law

William Law (1686 – 9 April 1761) was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, George I. Previously William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror (an earlier generation of non-jurors included Thomas Ken). Thereafter, Law first continued as a simple priest (curate) and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately, as well as wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as mystic and theological writing greatly influenced the evangelical movement of his day as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Dr Samuel Johnson and the historian Edward Gibbon.

(1686-1761) Christianity
The Spirit of Prayer

Law, William. "The Spirit of Prayer, Part 1." Printed for M. Richardson, London, 1749, p. 28.

William Law

Theme: Immanence and Transcendence

William Law

An Anglican theologian and writer of eighteenth-century England, William Law (1686-1761) held a position as tutor in the family of the historian Edmond Gibbon before retiring to live quietly and write treatises of profound depth and wide influence. Gibbon said of him, “If Mr. Law finds a spark of piety in a reader’s mind he will soon kindle it into a flame.” His best-regarded book is A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, one of the works which John Wesley, founder of Methodism, credited for crystalizing his “explicit resolve to be all devoted to God.”

Additional William Law Quotes

“We have no spiritual need except for a restoration of the divine nature in us. And if this be true, then nothing can be our salvation except that which brings us into a right relationship with God, making us partakers of the divine nature in such a manner and degree as we need. But to reason about life cannot communicate it to the soul, nor can a religion of rational notions and opinions logically deduced from Scripture words bring the reality of the gospel into our lives. Do we not see sinners of all sorts, and men under the power of every corrupt passion, equally zealous for such a religion? How is it then that Christian leaders spend so much time reasoning about Scripture doctrines, and yet remain so blind to the obvious fact that filling the head with right notions of Christ can never give to the heart the reality of His Spirit and life? For logical reasoning about Scripture words and doctrines will do no more to remove pride, hypocrisy, envy, or malice from the soul of man, than logical reasoning about geometry. The one leaves man as empty of the life of God in Christ as the other. Yet the church is filled with professing Christians whose faith has never gone beyond a conviction that the words of Scripture are true. They believe in the Christ of the Bible, but do not know Him personally. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is sound doctrine to their minds, but their lives are empty of His manifest power either to overcome the power of sin within, or to convert others to Christ. Though many are zealous to preach the gospel, yet instead of bringing men to Christ, they seek to reason them into a trust in their own learned opinions about Scripture doctrines. In contrast to Paul, their gospel is in word only, without the demonstration and power of the Spirit. Nor can they see their need of the Holy Spirit to fill them with Christ, and then to overflow through them in rivers of living water to others, because reason tells them that they are sound in the letter of doctrine.”

—William Law [The Power of the Spirit (1898), edited by Andrew Murray, further edited by Dave Hunt (1971) Ch. 9: Natural Reason Opposes the Spirit].

“The spirit of love has this original. God, as considered in Himself and His holy Being, before anything is brought forth by Him or out of Him, is only an eternal will to all 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… 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.”

—William Law [The Spirit of Love].

The Deepest Part of Thy Soul

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