“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.].
“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
“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
“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 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.”
“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
“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 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
“If contempt of the world and heavenly affection is a necessary temper of christians, it is necessary that this temper appear in the whole course of their lives, in their manner of using the world, because it can have no place anywhere else.”
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.
“He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and happy life.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection ... The fifth edition
“If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”
“We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection. Repr. [of the 1726 ed.].
“All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.”
“Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection
“Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.”
Source: William Law: The Works
“This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love
“Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.”
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
“Hell is nothing else but nature departed or excluded from the beam of divine light.”
Source: The Spirit of Prayer; The Way to Divine Knowledge, Volume 7
“Self is the root, the tree, and the branches of all the evils of our fallen state.”
Source: An Humble, Earnest, and Affectionate Address to the Clergy; A Collection of Letters; Letters to a Lady inclined to enter the Romish Communion, Volume 9
“What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?”
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.
“Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.”
Source: A practical treatise upon Christian perfection
“No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress.”
Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
