“What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly? ... wearying himself with climbing upon every ascent, ... bruising himself with continual falls, and at last breaking his neck? And all this, from an imagination that it would be glorious to have the eyes of people looking up at him, and mighty happy to eat, and drink, and sleep, at the top of the highest trees in the kingdom.”
“God smiles when we praise and thank Him continually. Few things feel better than receiving heartfelt praise and appreciation from someone else. God loves it, too. An amazing thing happens when we offer praise and thanksgiving to God. When we give God enjoyment, our own hearts are filled with joy.”
“Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.”
“God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection. Repr. [of the 1726 ed.].
“Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
“As a good Christian should consider every place as holy, because God is there, so he should look upon every part of his life as a matter of holiness, because it is offered unto God. The profession of a clergyman is a holy profession, because it is a ministration in holy things, an attendance at the alter. But worldly business is to be made holy unto the Lord, by being done as a service unto Him, and in conformity to His Divine will.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians by the Late ... ; to which is Added a Biographical Sketch of the Author
“Until we are renewed in the spirit of our mind and illumined in every part, our very virtues are but taught practices grafted upon a corrupt bottom”
“Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection. Repr. [of the 1726 ed.].
“Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians, to which is Added Some Account of the Author and Three Letters to a Friend
“Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians. By William Law, A.M.
“Now if you will stop here and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.”
Source: A Serious Call to A Devout
“The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity, but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least deserve it.”
Source: A serious call to a devout and holy life. with an intr. essay by D. Young
“The eyes of our souls only then begin to see when our bodily eyes are closing.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians, Volume 4
“The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.”
Source: I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus
“Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians, Volume 4
“Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness.”
Source: A serious call to a devout & holy life, abridged
“If someone is leaving you behind, and you are becoming jealous and embittered, keep praying that he may have success in the very matter where he is awakening your envy; and whether he is helped or not, one thing is sure, that your own soul will be cleansed and ennobled.”
“If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested. He now sees other things as more important. People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world.”
“If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and all perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians by the Late ... ; to which is Added a Biographical Sketch of the Author
“The more we pay for any truth, the better is our bargain.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians. By William Law, A.M.
“They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man; they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection
“Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.”
Source: The Power of the Spirit
“If religion commands universal charity, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to forgive and pray for all our enemies without any reserve; it is because all degrees of love are degrees of happiness, that strengthen and support the Divine life of the soul, and are as necessary to its health and happiness, as proper food is necessary to the health and happiness of the body.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
“Let every creature have your love. Love, with its fruits of meekness, patience, and humility, is all that we can wish for ourselves and our fellow creatures. For this is to live in God, united with him, both for time and eternity. To desire to communicate good to everyone, in the degree that we can and to which each person is capable of receiving from us, is a divine temper, for thus God stands unchangeably disposed towards the whole creation.”
“We have all of us free access to all that is great, and good, and happy, and carry within ourselves a key to all the treasures that heaven has to bestow upon us. We starve in the midst of plenty, groan under infirmities, with the remedy in our own hand; live and die without knowing and feeling anything of the One only God, whilst we have it in our power to know and enjoy it in as great a reality as we know and feel the power of this world over us; for Heaven is as near to our souls as this world is to our bodies; and we are created, we are redeemed, to have our conversation in it.”
Source: Extracts from The spirit of prayer
“The will is that which has all power; it makes heaven and it makes hell: for there is no hell but where the will of the creature is turned from God, nor any heaven but where the will of the creature worketh with God.”
Source: I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus
“We may justly condemn ourselves as the greatest sinners we know because we know more of the folly of our own heart than we do of other people's.”
“All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world.”
Source: An earnest and serious answer to Dr. Trapp's Discourse of the folly, sin, and danger of being righteous over-much. An appeal to all that doubt, or disbelieve the truths of the Gospels
“He who complains of the weather, complains of the God who ordained the weather!”
“You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after; no oracle that you need to consult; for whilst you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you.”
Source: The Spirit of Love; A Short Confutation of Dr. Warburton's Defence; Of Justification by Faith and Works, Volume 8: Of Justification by Faith and Works
“When therefore the first spark of a desire after God arises in thy soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into it; it is nothing less than a touch of the divine loadstone, that is to draw thee out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity.”
Source: I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus
“Divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all disquiet, it is all content and happiness; and makes everything to rejoice in itself.”
Source: Characters and Characteristics of William Law: Nonjuror and Mystic
“From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.”
Source: Extracts from The spirit of prayer
“You are to think of yourself as only existing in this world to do God's will. To think that you are your own is as absurd as to think you are self-created. It is an obvious first principle that you belong completely to God.”
“The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God.”
“Whatever littleness and vanity is to be observed in the minds of women, it is, like the cruelty of butchers, a temper that is wrought into them by that life which they are taught and accustomed to lead.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
“Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul.”
Source: The Spirit of Prayer; The Way to Divine Knowledge, Volume 7
“He that rightly understands the reasonableness and Excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians, Volume 4
“Follow Christ in the denial of all the wills of self, and then all is put away that separates you from God; the heaven born new creature will come to life in you, which alone knows and enjoys the things of God, and has his daily food of gladness in that manifold blessed, and blessed, which Christ preached on the mount.”
Source: Selections from the Works of ... W. Law, making a guide to rest, in belief of the Gospel, and in obedience to the Divine Law
“Reading is good, hearing is good, conversation and meditation are good; but then, they are only good at times and occasions, in a certain degree, and must be used and governed with such caution as we eat and drink and refresh ourselves, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians, to which is Added Some Account of the Author and Three Letters to a Friend
“As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.”
Source: The Power of the Spirit
“This new birth in Christ, thus firmly believed and continually desired, will do everything that thou wantest to have done in thee, it will dry up all the springs of vice, stop all the workings of evil in thy nature, it will bring all that is good into thee, it will open all the gospel within thee, and thou wilt know what it is to be taught of God.”
Source: The Spirit of Prayer : Or, the Soul Rising Out of the Vanity of Time, Into the Riches of Eternity
“What could begin to deny self, if there were not something in man different from self?”
“If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
“Nothing harms or destroys us but the wrong use of that liberty of choice which God has entrusted to us.”
Source: The Power of the Spirit
“All the wants which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God, which weary us in vain labors and foolish anxieties, which carry us from project to project, from place to place in a poor pursuit of we don't know what, are the wants which neither God, nor nature, nor reason hath subjected us to, but are solely infused into us by pride, envy, ambition, and covetousness.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
“Where has the Scripture made merit the rule or measure of charity?.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians, Volume 4
“A revelation is to be received as coming from God, not because of its internal excellence, or because we judge it to be worthy of God; but because God has declared it to be His in as plain and undeniable a manner as He has declared creation and providence to be His.”
Source: The works
“All our salvation consists in the manifestation of the nature, life and spirit of Jesus Christ in our inward new man. This alone is Christian redemption, this alone delivers from the guilt and power of sin, this alone redeems and renews.”
Source: I. The spirit of prayer; or, the soul rising out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. In two parts ; 7,II. The way to divine knowledge; being several dialogues between Humanus, Academicus, Rusticus, and Theophilus
“This is the state of all creatures, whether men or angels; as they make not themselves, so they enjoy nothing from themselves; if they are great, it must be only as great receivers of the gifts of God; their power can only be so much of the divine power acting in them; their wisdom can be only so much of the divine wisdom shining within them; and their light and glory, only so much of the light and glory of God shining upon them.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All Orders of Christians by the Late ... ; to which is Added a Biographical Sketch of the Author
