A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by William Law

First published: 1728

Edition(s) used:A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, with an introduction by G. W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1966

Genre(s): Nonfiction

Subgenre(s): Didactic treatise; instructional manual; spiritual treatise

Core issue(s): Daily living; devotional life; discipline; God; guidance; morality; poverty; prayer; Protestants and Protestantism; resignation; responsibility; salvation; self-control; service; virtue; works and deeds

Overview

Responding to the challenge that the Age of Reason posed for Christian faith and practice, William Law crafted a tight, rational argument for “a devout and holy life.” Devotion, as he defined it, should involve all of life—living according to God’s will and not for one’s own selfish desires. If religion covers all of life, then it follows that Christians must observe rules that govern all their actions and not merely times of worship. Scripture does not contain a single instruction regarding worship, but almost every verse gives something on the ordinary actions of life. If we do not practice humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, therefore, we do not live as Christians.

Sad to say, many who call themselves Christians do not incorporate these traits into daily living. What is the difference, he asks, between Leo, who shows little regard for religion per se but lives a respectable life, and Eusebius, who has a huge appetite for religious things and cannot stop talking about religion but does not differ from Leo as regards his everyday life?

Why do we Christians fail to live devout lives? Law asks. We can plead neither ignorance nor inability, for we have the same knowledge and the same Spirit early Christians did. What prevents us, rather, is a lack of intention. Failure of intention puts us in real spiritual danger. Although we have ample assurance of God’s mercy when we sin unavoidably, we cannot count on that mercy when we sin through a lack of intention, as many Scriptures prove. Scriptures show that “our salvation depends upon the sincerity and perfection of our endeavours to obtain it.” Law’s main contention is that we can please God only by intending and devoting all of life to God’s glory and honor. God takes no more delight in one station or position than another. His concern, rather, is that we offer reasonable service in whatever place we occupy in singleness of heart and thus live lives of reason and piety.

A person of leisure himself after his retirement from Cambridge, Law believed such persons held a special responsibility to devote themselves to God in a higher degree. The freer one is from pursuit of necessities, the more one should “imitate the higher perfections of angels.” Law continues:

As we have always the same natures, and are everywhere the servants of the same God, as every place is equally full of his presence, and everything is equally his gift, so we must always act according to the reason of our nature; we must do everything as the servants of God; we must live in every place as in his presence; we must use everything as that ought to be used which belongs to God.

Law applied the same rationale to use of estates and fortunes, expending his own for care of others. The humble, meek, devout, just, or faithful person is not one who has done acts of humility, meekness, devotion, justice, or fidelity now and then, but one who “lives in the habitual exercise of these virtues.” In the matter of estates or fortunes, it is not enough to deny oneself needless expenses or be moderate and frugal sometimes so as to aid the needy; we must do so at all times. Unwise use of one’s estate corrupts both mind and heart. Law posits two “maiden sisters,” Flavia and Miranda, to illustrate his point. As Flavia, a perfect example of the self-centered rich person, illustrates, the religion of such a person exists only in the head; it has no place in the heart. Although Law will not go so far as to say that such a person as Flavia cannot be saved, he judges that “she has no grounds from Scripture to think she is in the way of salvation,” since her whole life conflicts with the “tempers and practices which the Gospel has made necessary to salvation.” On the opposite side, wise and pious use of an estate leads to perfection in all the virtues attendant on the Christian life. As Miranda, a perfect example of the other-directed person, shows, right stewardship of money and time will benefit both ourselves and other persons.

From the beginning, Law writes, there have been two orders of Christians: those who feared and served God in secular vocations and those who devoted themselves to voluntary poverty, virginity, devotion, and withdrawal so they might live wholly for God. Nevertheless, all orders of Christians are obliged to devote themselves to God in all things; to do otherwise is contrary to Christian nature and rebellion against God. Rebellion in any form is equally odious to God. To forsake prayer is no worse than forsaking other responsibilities, for prayer is only a small part of devotion. Unless our lives match our prayers, the latter are at best only “lip labour” and at worst pure hypocrisy.

The end products of the devout and holy life, Law argued, will be peace and happiness. Peace and happiness become possible as we reduce desires to what nature and reason require, control passions by the rule of religion, and remove ourselves “from that infinity of wants and vexations which torment every heart that is left to itself.” Persons who do not regulate their lives by strict piety resort to all sorts of poor contrivances to secure happiness, but they cannot succeed since they do what is contrary to nature. Even the most regular kind of life suffers miseries, wants, and emptiness when it lacks piety. On this the whole world is a book of instruction.

In the second part of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (chapters 19-24), Law deals with times and hours of prayer. The reason he relegated prayer to the second place should be self-evident in the light of his understanding of devotion as living out our commitment to God in all of life and prayer as only “the smallest part” of devotion. No one should deduce from that statement, however, that Law took prayer lightly. “Prayer,” he insisted, “is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyments of Him that we are capable of in this life.” We therefore must pursue it with all the energy we can muster.

True to his Anglican heritage, Law drew his understanding and proposals for the practice of prayer from the early Church. In imitation of early Christian custom he urged prayer five times daily with a specific focus for each: praise and thanksgiving on arising, humility at the third hour (9:00 a.m.), universal love with intercessions at the sixth (12:00 noon), resignation at the ninth (3:00 p.m.), and particular confession of sins and self-examination in the evening. Throughout he stressed discipline. Christians should not sleep too much, for instance, “because it gives a softness and idleness to your soul” and conflicts with the spirit of true devotion. They should begin with forms of prayer at all the regular times. If in praying they “break forth into new and higher strains of devotion,” then they should abandon the forms. It is good to have both fixed and free elements. In later years Law emphasized mystical elements much more than he did here.

Law did not dwell at length on the mechanics of prayer, but he suggested a few simple matters that he deemed important: (1) Shut the eyes and, in a brief period of silence, “let the soul place itself in the presence of God.” (2) Always pray in the same place. (3) At the beginning recall God’s attributes with various expressions so as to remind yourself of God’s greatness and power. (4) Combine fixed elements for each time of prayer with spontaneous petitions.

For the early-morning praise and thanksgiving in which we try to develop “right apprehension and right affections toward God,” the whole aim of devotion, Law urged chanting and singing of Psalms, for nothing “so clears a way for your prayers, . . . disperses dulness of heart, . . . purifies the soul from poor and little passions, . . . opens heaven, or carries your heart so near it” as the Psalms. Reading or merely reciting Psalms will not suffice to lift up the praises a heart that serves God will feel. Singing is the natural way to express joy. Use of imagination will put one in the proper frame of mind for singing.

Like the medieval saints, Law too perceived humility as a precondition for communion with God and proposed that prayer at 9:00 a.m. focus on it. A prayer for humility may loosen the bonds of sin, reform the heart, and draw down divine grace upon us. We should not think any day safe without putting ourselves in this posture and calling on God to assist us in maintaining it. Humility does not consist in excessive self-deprecation but “in a true and just sense of our weakness, misery, and sin.” It is not easy, however, to live in a spirit of humility, for it means we are dead to the world and alive to Christ in us. Being Christian requires nothing less than “absolute conformity to that spirit which Christ showed in the mysterious sacrifice of Himself upon the cross.” We must not think of Christ as acting as substitute for us but as “our representative acting in our name” and enabling us to join with him as persons acceptable to God. Education also makes it difficult sometimes to practice humility. Therefore, Christians must make an effort to secure the kind of education that fosters humility.

For noontime prayer Law recommended concentration on universal love with intercession as a primary act of it. No “principle of the heart” is more acceptable to God than “a fervent universal love of all mankind, wishing and praying for their happiness,” for none is more like God. We must not play favorites when it comes to compassion. All orders of persons must intercede, for nothing makes us love others so much as praying for them. It is not only “the best arbitrator of all differences, the best promoter of true friendship, the best cure and preservative against all unkind tempers, all angry and haughty passions,” but also it enables us to discover “the true state of our own hearts.”

For the ninth hour Law recommended resignation and conformity to the will of God. Resignation entails “a cheerful approbation and thankful acceptance of everything that comes from God.” Such approbation should cover both God’s general providence over the world and his particular providence over us.

Finally, in the evening prayer, Law advised, we should take inventory of all we have done from the beginning of the day. We must not gloss over our sins if we wish to be cleansed and renewed. The more exact the confession, the greater the compunction and sorrow of heart. At bedtime it is good to pray again regarding death.

Christian Themes

For Law, Christian devotion entails the dedication of the whole, and not just a part, of one’s life to God. Most Christians, Law believed, fall short of true devotion because they do not intend to please God in all they do. Although God is merciful to those who sin out of ignorance, we cannot expect him to be so tolerant of those who lack the intention to avoid sinning, as Scriptures amply attest. All Christians, therefore, are obligated to order their everyday lives in such a way as to turn them into continual service of God. Persons who have leisure time have a special obligation to devote themselves to God to a higher degree, living for God “at all times” and “in all places”; this duty includes proper religious use of estates and fortunes as well as time. Religious exercises, such as prayers, represent only a small part of devotion to God, and unless common life matches prayers, they are nothing but “lip labour” or, worse still, hypocrisy. True devotion will bring peace and happiness, for it reduces desires to such things as nature and reason require and thus removes those that torment an uncontrolled heart. Christians ought to be disciplined in their life of prayer, and if apprehensions and perceptions of God are right, they will do so readily.

Sources for Further Study

Brown, R. LaMon. Growing Spiritually with the Saints: Catherine of Genoa and William Law. Macon, Ga.: Peake Road, 1996. Brown, a theology professor, here studies the spiritual lives of Catherine and Law, focusing on the notion of sacrificial service. He emphasizes confession, service, prayer, simplicity, and Holy Communion.

Clarkson, George E. The Mysticism of William Law. New York: P. Lang, 1992. Law later became attracted to the German mystics, particularly the thought of Jakob Böhme. Includes an eight-page bibliography and an index.

Overton, J. H. William Law: Non-juror and Mystic. London: Longmans, Green, 1881. An old but still useful biography.

Rudolph, Erwin Paul. William Law. Boston: Twayne, 1980. A comprehensive yet accessible biography in Twayne’s English Authors series. Includes a bibliography and index.

Walker, A. Keith. William Law: His Life and Thought. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1973. An excellent critical biography.