An Appeal to all that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, whether they be Deists, Arians, Socinians, or nominal Christians, or An Appeal for short, was written by William Law in 1742. Law lived in the Age of Enlightenment centering on reason in which there were controversies between Catholics and Protestants, Deists, Socinians, Arians etc. which caused conflicts that worried him. The Appeal was heavily influenced by the works of the seventeenth-century German philosopher, Lutheran theologian and mystic writer Jakob Boehme.
Jakob Boehme's works appeared between 1612 and 1624, the year of his death, and the sixth year into the Thirty Years' War, a very destructive conflict in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, which had initially been a war between various Catholic and Protestant states. It became however more a war fought for political superiority. It was ended by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
Boehme's books were translated by John Sparrow and John Ellistone into English between 1645 and 1662, right in the middle of the English Civil War (1642–1651) and the trial and execution of King Charles I.
The first edition An Appeal was printed in 1742 for the distinguished William Innys, bookseller in London. It contains a statement of William Law's mystical theology and consists of three chapters filled with beautiful prose.
Introduction to An Appeal Aldous Huxley described Law as a great philosopher and theologian of mysticism. He considered Law as an "illuminating guide for many who seek God in nature and in the depths of the soul".Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, p. ix. 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.Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, p. xiv. 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.Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, p. 298. 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.Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, p. 299.
Hobhouse mentioned several possibly bewildering passages in Law's books, which are also found in the works of Boehme. Hobhouse refers here to Boehme's concept of the "seven forms or properties of nature", to the mythology of the fall of the angels from heaven and to Adam's fall from "a first perfect and androgynous life.Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, p. 344. Hobhouse's advice is therefore to skip these passages in Law's works, for the fine spirituality of Boehme was often obscured by the "physico-chemical, medical, alchemistic, and astrological language which [Boehme] often employed".Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, pp. 345; 357.
Reception of An Appeal An Appeal was well received by many of Law's contemporaries and his friends. There is a letter from the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne to the printer and novelist Samuel Richardson, dated March 9, 1742 in which Cheyne enthusiastically asked Richardson whether he had "seen Law's Appeal?" and Cheyne described The Appeal as "admirable and unanswerable".Charles F. Mullett, The Letters of Doctor George Cheyne to Samuel Richardson (1733-1743), Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Columbia, 1943, p. 88.Gerda J. Joling-van der Sar, The Spiritual Side of Samuel Richardson, Mysticism, Behmenism and Millenarianism in an Eighteenth-Century English Novelist, 2003, p. 117. An Appeal is divided into three chapters each of which is preceded by a short summary.
Chapter I At the beginning of the first chapter of An Appeal Law wrote the following summary:
Of creation in general. Of the origin of the soul. Whence will and thoughts are in the creature. Why the will is free. The origin of evil solely from the creature. This world not a first, immediate creation of God. How the world comes to be in its present state. The first perfection of Man. All things prove a Trinity in God. Man hath the triune nature of God in him. Arianism and Deism confuted by nature. That life is uniform through all creatures. That there is but one kind of death to be found in nature. The fallen soul hath the nature of hell in it. Regeneration is a real birth of a divine life in the soul. That there is but one salvation possible in nature. This salvation only to be had from Jesus Christ. All the deist's faith and hope proved to be false.An Appeal, The Works, Vol. VI, p. 57.
Some essential words need some further explanation, such as "spirit" (spiritus: breath, air or wind, symbolic of the third person of the Trinity) and "spark" (scintilla animae) used by many mystics as a spark in the soul which may catch fire from the flame of God's love and goodness, if so desired.Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law, 1949, pp. 249-250.
One Religion Common To All Mankind For Law there was, is and will always be just one religion for all mankind, as we all have the same nearness to God and as we are all equally His children. The modern reader has to bear in mind that with "Man" and "Mankind" Law refers to both men and women, since according to Law there is no difference between men and women for God. The same applies to the word "son" or "sons" which Law sometimes uses in his texts.
Man, all mankind, stand in the same nearness of relation to God, are all equally his children, are all under the same necessity of paying the same homage of love and obedience to Him, all fitted to receive the same blessing and happiness from Him, all created for the same eternal enjoyment of His love and presence with them, all equally called to worship and adore Him in spirit and truth, all equally able of seeking and finding Him, of having a blessed union and communion with Him. These great truths, the first pillars of all true and spiritual religion, on which the holy and divine lives of the ancient patriarchs was supported, by which they worshipped God in a true and right faith ... plainly declared in the Mosaic writings. 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.An Appeal, The Works, Vol. VI, p. 59.
Law's View of Evil Law wrote that it was evident that there was evil in this world in all its parts, but he was convinced that God did not create evil, neither natural or moral. 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. Therefore it is as impossible, that this outward state and condition of things should be a first and immediate work of God, as that there should be good and evil in God Himself. All storms and tempests, every fierceness of heat, every wrath of cold proves with the same certainty, that outward nature is not a first work of God, as the selfishness, envy, pride, wrath and malice of devils, and men proves, that they are not in the first state of their creation. .... 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. This is according to him the true origin of all evil in the creation, without the least imputation upon God.An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, pp. 68-69. 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.An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, p. 69.
The Ground of the Most Fundamental Doctrine of Scripture 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".An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, p. 73.
The Fall of Man Necessitates a New Birth (a Regeneration) Law believed that Man was created in his original perfection and that the Holy Trinity was his Creator; but when Man was fallen, or had lost his first divine life, there began a new language of a redeeming religion. As a result, according to "the very outward letter and inward truth of the most important articles of the Christian Religion" man has to "born again of the Word, or Son of God, being born of the Spirit of God" in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And this means, so writes Law, that the "triune Life of God" must first be born in us before "we can enter into the triune, beatific Life, or Presence of God". 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.".An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, pp. 80; 83.
Free Choice Law believed that every creature must have a "power of joining with or departing from God ... therefore no creature can have its state or condition fixed, till it gives itself up either wholly unto God, or turns wholly from him". And this is the cause and origin of evil, viz. being absolutely and eternally separated from God.An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, p. 85.
Address to Arians and Deists Law addressed Arians and deists to turn away from their opinions:
If you are an Arian, don't content yourself with the numbers that are with you, or with a learned name or two that are on your side ... nothing but a poor, groping, purblind philosophy, that is not able to look either at God, nature or creature, has ever led any man into it. .... There is a threefold life in God and everything that is, whether it be happy or miserable, perfect or imperfect, is only so, because it has, or has not, the triune nature of God in it. .... If you are a Deist, made so, either by the disorderly state of your own heart, or by prejudices taken from the corruptions and divisions of Christianity, or from a dislike of the language of Scripture, or from an opinion of the sufficiency of a religion of human reason, or from whatever else it may be, look well to yourself, Christianity is no fiction of enthusiasm, or invention of priests.An Appeal, Works, Vol. VI, p. 87.