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 (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.
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
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