William Law · 4 of 13

The First Dialogue · Part 4

[Way-1-102] The one business then upon his hands, if he will hold out against you, must be to deny his reason and senses, and maintain, in spite of both, that man is not fallen, but is by nature holy, just, good, and happy both in body and soul; and that mankind, and the world they are in, have all that goodness and happiness, which they could be supposed to have from an infinitely good and happy God; and who can will nothing in the creature but goodness and happiness. Here you bring the Deist to his proper work, and all the contradiction to sense and reason will lie on his side: you set Christianity upon its true ground; and whoever thus defends it, as it ought to be defended, not only does justice to the Christian cause, but acts the most kind and friendly part towards those who oppose it merely through a misunderstanding of its true ground and nature; which I will venture to say is the case of all the sober well-meaning Deists. For Deism has no natural foundation, or ground of its own, to stand upon; it does not grow from any root or strength within itself, but is what it is merely from the bad state of Christendom, and the miserable use that heathenish learning, and worldly policy, have made of the gospel. If it (Deism) seems to itself to be strong and well-grounded, it is merely because it can so easily object to church-doctrines, and scholastic opinions: if it seems to itself to be good it is because it can so easily lay open the evils which Christians and churches bring upon one another: if it seems to itself to be highly rational, its reason is, because it is free from that number of absurdities and contradictions which Christian churches lay to the charge of one another. Lastly, if it keeps off all fearful forebodings of the consequences of not receiving the gospel, it is because it so plainly sees, that Christians say, "Hail, master," kiss the gospel, and then break every part of it.

[Way-1-103] This is the true height, and depth, and total strength of Deism or infidelity; it never had any other support in myself but this; nor did I ever converse with a Deist, who carried the matter higher or farther than this, to support the cause. Hence it is, that you made so speedy a convert of me, by showing me such a Christianity as I never heard of before; and stripped of everything that gave me power to oppose it. Had you proceeded in the way practiced by most defenders of the gospel, you had left me just as you found me, if not more confirmed in my old way. But as you have justly removed all controversy about doctrines from the merits of the cause, and shown that it all lies in this one short, plain, and decisive point, namely the fall of man; a fall proved and demonstrated to all my senses and reason, by every height and depth of nature, by every kind of misery, evil, and sin in the world, by everything we know of God, ourselves, and the world we live in; the ground and foundation of Christianity is undeniable, and no one can be too speedy a convert to the belief of it. And as you have also shown, that the whole nature of the gospel redemption means nothing but the one, true, and only possible way of delivering man from his miserable state in this world; Christianity is shown to be the most intelligible and desirable thing that the heart of man can think of. And thus, contrary to all expectation, the tables are quite turned; Deism can no longer be founded on argument, and Christianity is as self- evident as our senses: all learning on both sides, either for or against it, is insignificant; Christianity stands upon a bottom quite superior to it, and may be the sure possession of every plain man, who has sense enough to know whether he is happy or unhappy, good or evil. For this natural knowledge, if adhered to, is every man's sure guide to that one salvation preached by the gospel. Which gospel stands in no more need of learning and critical art now, than it did when Christ was preaching it upon earth. How absurd would it have been for any critics in Greek and Hebrew, to have followed Christ and his apostles, as necessary explainers of their hard words, which called for nothing in the hearers but penitent hearts turned to God; and declared, that they only "who were of God, could hear the Word of God!" How strange, that Christ should choose only illiterate men to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, if only great scholars could rightly understand what they said! Again, supposing learned men to have only the true fitness to understand the word of scripture, and that the plain man is to receive it from them, how must he know which are the scholars that have the right knowledge? From whence is he to have this information? For no one need be told, that ever since learning has borne rule in the church, learned doctors have contradicted and condemned one another in every essential point of the Christian doctrine. Thousands of learned men tell the illiterate, they are lost in this or that church; and thousands of learned men tell them, they are lost, if they leave it.

[Way-1-104] If therefore Christianity is in the hands of scholars, how must the plain man come at it? Must he, though unable to understand scripture, for want of learning, tell which learned man is in the right, and which is not? If so, the unlearned man has much the greatest ability, since he is to do that for scholars, which they cannot do for themselves.

[Way-1-105] But the truth of the matter is this; Christian redemption is God's mercy to all mankind; but it could not be so, if every fallen man, as such, had not some fitness and capacity to lay hold of it. It must have no dependence upon times and places, or the ages and several conditions of the world, or any outward circumstance of life; as the first man partook of it, so must the last; the learned linguist, and the blind, the deaf and dumb, have but one and the same common way of finding life in it. And he that writes large commentaries upon the whole Bible, must be saved by something full as different from book knowledge, as they were, who lived when there was neither book nor any alphabet in the world.

[Way-1-106] For this salvation, which is God's mercy to the fallen soul of man, merely as fallen, must be something that meets every man; and which every man, as fallen, has something that directs him to turn to it. For as the fall of man is the reason of this mercy, so the fall must be the guide to it; the want must show the thing that is wanted. And therefore the manifestation of this one salvation, or mercy to man, must have a nature suitable, not to this or that great reader of history, or able critic in Hebrew roots and Greek phrases, but suitable to the common state and condition of every son of Adam. It must be something as grounded in human nature, as the fall itself is, which wants no art to make it known; but to which the common nature of man is the only guide in one man, as well as another. Now this something, which is thus obvious to every man, and which opens the way to Christian redemption in every soul, is a sense of the vanity and misery of this world; and a prayer of faith and hope to God, to be raised to a better state.

[Way-1-107] Now in this sensibility, which every man's own nature leads him into, lies the whole of man's salvation; here the mercy of God and the misery of man are met together; here the fall and the redemption kiss each other. This is the Christianity which is as old as the fall; which alone saved the first man, and can alone save the last. This is it on which hang all the law and the prophets, and which fulfills them both; for they have only this end, to turn man from the lusts of this life, to a desire, and faith, and hope of a better. Thus does the whole of Christian redemption, considered on the part of man, stand in this degree of nearness and plainness to all mankind; it is as simple and plain as the feeling our own evil and misery, and as natural as the desire of being saved and delivered from it.

[Way-1-108] This is the Christianity which every man must first be made sensible of, not from hearsay, but as a growth or degree of life within himself, before he can have any fitness, or the least pretense to judge or speak a word about the further mysteries of the gospel. But here I stop.

[Way-1-109] Theophilus. Well, Humanus, I have now pushed the matter with you, as far as I intended; and you have given me full proof of the truth and solidity of your own conversion, and your ability to do good amongst your old brethren. You must now enter the lists with them; not to charge them with ignorance, ill will, or profaneness of spirit, but only to try, in the spirit of love and meekness, to undeceive them, in the manner you have been undeceived; and to show them, that Christianity is by no means that thing, which you and they have so long disliked.

[Way-1-110] Nothing can be more right than your resolution not to enter into debate about the gospel doctrines, or propose the reasonableness of them to anyone, till he owns himself sensibly convinced of the forementioned fall of man; and stands in a full desire to be saved, or delivered from it. And if that time never comes, you must leave him, as in the same incapacity to hear or judge of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, in the incarnation of the Son of God, the operation of the Holy Spirit, as Epicurus would be. For every man that cleaves to this world, that is in love with it, and its earthly enjoyments, is a disciple of Epicurus, and sticks in the same mire of atheism, as he did, whether he be a modern Deist, a Popish or Protestant Christian, an Arian, or an orthodox teacher. For all these distinctions are without any difference, if this world has the possession and government of his heart. For the whole of the matter lies solely in this, whether heaven, or earth, hath the heart and government of man. Nothing divides the worshipers of the true God from idolaters but this: where earth possesses and rules the heart, there all are of one and the same religion, and worship one and the same god, however they may be distinguished by sect or party.

[Way-1-111] And wherever the heart is weary of the evil and vanity of the earthly life, and looking up to God for an heavenly nature, there all are one of the true religion, and worshipers of the true God, however distant they may be from one another, as to time or place. But enough has been said of this matter.

[Way-1-112] Let me now only, before we break up, observe to you the true ground and nature of gospel Christianity: I call it so by way of distinction from that original universal Christianity, which began with Adam; was the religion of the patriarchs, of Moses and the prophets, and of every penitent man in every part of the world, that had faith and hope towards God, to be delivered from the evil of this world.

[Way-1-113] But when the Son of God had taken a birth in and from the human nature, had finished all the wonders that belonged to our redemption, and was sat down at the right hand of God in heaven, then a heavenly kingdom was set up on earth, and the Holy Spirit came down from heaven, or was given to the flock of Christ in such a degree of birth and life, as never was, nor could be given to the human nature, till Christ, the redeemer of the human nature, was glorified. But when the humanity of Christ, our second Adam, was glorified, and became all heavenly, then the heavenly life, the comfort, and power, and presence of the Holy Spirit, was the gift which he gave to his brethren, his friends and followers, which he had left upon earth.

[Way-1-114] The Holy Ghost descended in the shape of cloven tongues of fire on the heads of those, that were to begin and open the new powers of a divine life set up amongst men. This was the beginning and manifestation of the whole nature and power of gospel Christianity, a thing as different from what was Christianity before, as the possession of the thing hoped for is different from hope, or deliverance different from the desire or expectation of it. Hence the apostles were new men, entered into a new kingdom come down from heaven, enlightened with new light, inflamed with new love, and preached not any absent or distant thing, but Jesus Christ, as the wisdom and power of God, felt and found within them, and as a power of God ready to be communicated in the same manner, as a new birth from above, to all that would repent and believe in him. It was to this change of nature, of life, and spirit, to this certain immediate deliverance from the power of sin, to be possessed and governed by gifts and graces of an heavenly life, that men were then called to, as true Christianity. And the preachers of it bore witness, not to a thing that they had heard, but to a power of salvation, a renewal of nature, a birth of heaven, a sanctification of spirit, which they themselves had received. Gospel Christianity then stood upon its own true ground; it appeared to be what it was. And what was it? Why, it was an awakened divine life set up amongst men; itself was its own proof; it appealed to its proper judge, to the heart and conscience of man, which was alone capable of being touched with these offers of a new life.

[Way-1-115] Hence it was, that sinners of all sorts, that felt the burden of their evil natures, were in a state of fitness to receive these glad tidings. Whilst the rigid Pharisee, the orthodox priest, and the rational heathen, though at enmity with one another, and each proud of his own distinction, yet all agreed in rejecting and abhorring a spiritual savior, that was to save them from their carnal selves, and the vanity of their own rational selfish virtues. But when, after a while, Christianity had lost its first glory, appeared no longer as a divine life awakened amongst men, and itself was no longer its own proof of the power and Spirit of God manifested in it; then heathenish learning, and temporal power, was from age to age forced to be called the glory and prosperity of the church of Christ; although in the Revelation of St. John, its figure is that of a scarlet whore riding upon the beast.

[Way-1-116] Here therefore, my friend, you are to place the true distinction of gospel Christianity from all that went before it, or that is come up after it. It is purely and solely a divine life awakened, and set up amongst men, as the effect and fruit of Christ's glorification in heaven; and has no other promise from him but that of his Holy Spirit, to be with it, as its light, its guide, its strength, its comfort, and protection, to the end of the world. Therefore as gospel Christians, we belong to the new covenant of the Holy Spirit, which is the kingdom of God come down from heaven on the day of Pentecost; and therefore it is, that there is no possibility of seeing or entering into this new kingdom, but by being born again of the Spirit. The apostles and disciples of Christ, though they had been baptized with water, had followed Christ, heard his doctrines, and done wonders in his name; yet as then, stood only near to the kingdom of God, and preached it to be at hand. They had only seen and known Christ according to the flesh; had followed him with great zeal, but with little and very low knowledge either of him or his kingdom; and therefore it was, that they were commanded to stand still, and not act as his ministers in his new glorified state, till they were endued with power from on high: which power they then received, when the Holy Ghost with his cloven tongues of fire came down upon them, by which they became illuminated instruments, that were to diffuse the light of an heavenly kingdom over all the world. From that day began gospel Christianity, with its true distinction from everything that was before it; which was the ministration of the Spirit; and the ministers of it called the world to nothing but gifts and graces of the same Spirit, to look for nothing but spiritual blessings, to trust, and hope, and pray for nothing but the power of that Spirit, which was to be the one life and ruling Spirit of this newly opened kingdom of God. No one could join himself to them or have any part with them but by dying to the wisdom and light of the flesh, that he might live by the Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ, who had thus called him to his kingdom and glory. Now this Christianity is its own proof; it can be proved from nothing but itself; it wants neither miracles, nor outward witness; but, like the sun, is only its own discoverer.

[Way-1-117] He that adheres only to the history of the facts, doctrines, and institutions of the gospel, without being born of its Spirit, is only such a Christian, and is no nearer to Christ, than the Jew, who carnally adhered to the letter of the law. They both stand in the same distance from gospel Christianity.

[Way-1-118] It is in vain therefore for the modern Christian, to appeal to antiquity, to history, and ancient churches, to prove that he belongs to Christ; for he can only belong to him, by having the power of Christ, and the Spirit of God living and dwelling in his renewed inward man.

[Way-1-119] But a learned Christianity, supported and governed by reason, dispute, and criticism, that is forced to appeal to canons, and councils, and ancient usages, to defend itself, has lost its place, stands upon a fictitious ground, and shows, that it cannot appeal to itself, to its own works, which alone are the certain and only proofs either of a true, or a false Christianity.

[Way-1-120] For the truth of Christianity is the Spirit of God living and working in it; and where this Spirit is not the life of it, there the outward form is but like the outward carcase of a departed soul.

[Way-1-121] For the spiritual life is as much its own proof, as the natural life, and needs no outward, or foreign thing to bear witness to it. But if you please, gentlemen, we will end for this time, and refer what remains to the afternoon.

The End of the First Dialogue