were
much read among a certain section of thinkers, while the influence of
the teachings of Jacob Boehme, whose works had been translated into
English between the years 1644 and 1692, can be traced, in diverse ways.
They impressed themselves on the thought of the founders of the Society
of Friends, they produced a distinct "Behmenist" sect, and it would seem
that the idea of the three laws of motion first reached Newton through
his eager study of Boehme. But all this has nothing directly to do with
literature, and would not concern us here were it not that in the
eighteenth century William Law came into touch with many of these
mystical thinkers, and that he has embodied in some of the finest prose
in our language a portion of the "inspired cobbler's" vision of the
universe.

Law's character is one of considerable interest. Typically English, and
in intellect typically of the eighteenth century, logical, sane,
practical, he is not, at first sight, the man one would expect to find
in sympathy with the mystics. Sincerity is the keynote of his whole
nature, sincerity of thought, of belief, of speech, and of life.
Sincerity implies courage, and Law was a brave man, never shirking the
logical outcome of his convictions, from the day when he ruined his
prospects at Cambridge, to the later years when he suffered his really
considerable reputation to be eclipsed by his espousal of an
uncomprehended and unpopular mysticism. He had a keen rather than a
profound intellect, and his thought is lightened by brilliant flashes of
wit or of grim satire. We can tell, however, from his letters and his
later writings, that underneath a severe and slightly stiff exterior,
were hidden emotion, enthusiasm, and great tenderness of feeling.

By middle life Law was well known as a most able and brilliant writer on
most of the burning theological questions of the day, as well as the
author of one of the best loved and most widely read practical and
ethical treatises in the language, _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy
Life_. These earlier writings are by far the best known of his works,
and it is with the _Serious Call_ that his name will always be
associated.

Until middle age he showed no marked mystical tendency, although we know
that from the time he was an undergraduate he was a "diligent reader"
of mystical books, and that he had studied, among others, Dionysius the
Areopagite, Ruysbroek, Tauler, Suso, and the seventeenth century
Quie