the Wisdom of William Law: Conscience, Renunciation, and Soul's Return

Discover the eighteenth-century English mystic whose patient prose has reshaped serious Christian life for nearly three centuries.William Law (1686-1761) was the non-juring priest who refused to swear allegiance to George I, lost his Cambridge fellowship, and spent the rest of his life as a quiet writer in the English Midlands. His books on devotion, perfection, and the inward life of the soul became the formative reading of John Wesley, George Whitefield, Samuel Johnson, John Henry Newman, William Blake, and a long line of less famous readers whose interior lives were rearranged by what he had to say.The Wisdom of William Law: Conscience, Renunciation, and the Soul's Return traces, in clear and contemplative prose, the long arc of his life and thought: from the unbending conscience that cost him his career, through the seriousness of his great practical works, to the deep mystical theology of the late dialogues on prayer and love. Written in the patient tone of a thoughtful historian, The Wisdom of William Law: Conscience, Renunciation, and the Soul's Return is at once a biography, an intellectual portrait, and an introduction to one of the most important spiritual writers in the English language.Readers will encounter: - The young Fellow whose refusal of an oath in 1714 shaped everything that followed- The masterpieces of practical devotion that altered eighteenth-century English religion- The long encounter with Jakob Boehme that opened his mature mystical vision- The complex relations with the early Methodists, including John Wesley- The hidden religious community at King's Cliffe and its charitable institutions- The doctrine of the indwelling Christ and the dying of the fallen selfWhether read as a portrait of one of the most consistent lives in English religious history, or as a doorway into a contemplative tradition that the modern world is rediscovering, The Wisdom of William Law: Conscience, Renunciation, and the Soul's Return offers a thoughtful and unhurried companion for the reader who wishes to encounter this remarkable figure without intermediaries.