Chapter VII: Part I: My Dear Friend,

YOU had no occasion to make any apology for the manner of your letter to me; for tho’ you very well know, that I have as utter an aversion to waste my time and thoughts in matters of theological debate, as in any contentions merely of a worldly nature, as knowing that the former are generally as much, if not more hurtful to the heart of man than the latter; yet as your objections rather tend to stir up the powers of love, than the wrangle of debate; so I consider them only as occasions of edifying both you and myself with the divine blessedness of the _spirit of love_.

You say, “There is nothing in my writings that has more affected you than that spirit of love that breathes in them; and that you wish for nothing so much as to have a living sensibility of the power, life, and religion of love. But you have an objection often rising in your mind, that this doctrine of pure and universal love may be too refined and imaginary; because you find, that however you like it, yet you cannot attain to it.”

Thus stands your objection, which will fall into nothing, as soon as you look at it from a right point of view: which will be, as soon as you have found the true ground of the nature and necessity of the blessed spirit of love.

Now, the spirit of love has this original. God, as considered in himself, before any thing is brought forth by him, is only an _eternal will to all goodness_. This is the _one eternal, immutable_ God, that from eternity to eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less, nor any thing else, but an _eternal will to all the goodness_ that is in himself, and can come from him. The creation of ever so many creatures, adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God: he always was, and always will be, the same immutable will to all goodness. So that as certainly as he is the creator, so certainly is he the blesser of every created thing, and can give _nothing_ but blessing and happiness from himself, because he has _in himself_ nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the sun to give forth darkness, than for God to be, or give forth, any thing but blessing and goodness. Now this is the _ground and original_ of the spirit of love in the creature: it is and must be a _will to all goodness_, and you have not this _spirit of love_ but so far as you have this will to all goodness at all times, and on all occasions. You may indeed do many works of love, especially at such times as they are not inconvenient to you. Yet the spirit of love is not in you, but so far as it is the spirit of your life, as you live _freely_, _willingly_, and _universally_, according to it. For every spirit acts with freedom and universality according to what it is. It needs no command to be what it is, no more than you need bid wrath be wrathful. And therefore when _love_ is the spirit of your life, it will have freedom and universality; it will always live and work in love, not because of _this_ or _that_, _here_ or _there_, but because the spirit of love can only love, wherever it is or goes, or whatever is done to it. As the _sparks_ know no motion, but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the darkness of the night, or in the light of the day; so the spirit of love is always in the same course; it knows no difference of time, place, or persons; but whether it _gives_ or _forgives_, _bears_ or _forbears_, it is equally doing its own delightful work, equally blessed from itself. For the spirit of love, wherever it is, is its own blessing and happiness, is in the same joy, and is the same good to itself, every where, and on every occasion.

*Oh! Sir, would you know the blessing of all blessings, it is the _God of love_ dwelling in your soul, and killing every root of bitterness which is the pain and torment of every earthly love. For all wants are satisfied, all disorders are removed, no life is any longer a burden, every day is a day of peace, every thing you meet becomes a help to you, because every thing you see or do is all done in sweet, gentle love. For as love has no by-ends, wills nothing but its own increase, so every thing is as oil to its flame; it must have that which it wills, and cannot be disappointed, because every thing naturally helps it to live in its own way. The spirit of love does not want to be honoured, or esteemed; its only desire is to propagate itself, and become the blessing and happiness of every thing that wants it. And therefore it meets wrath, and evil, and hatred, and opposition, with the same _one will_, as the light meets the darkness, only to overcome it with all its blessings. Did you want to avoid the ill-will, or to gain the favour of any persons, you might easily miss of your ends; but if you have no will but to all goodness, every thing you meet must be assistant to you. For the wrath of an enemy, the treachery of a friend, and every other evil, only helps the spirit of love to be more triumphant, to find all its blessings in a higher degree. Whether therefore you consider _perfection_ or _happiness_, it is all included in the spirit of love, and must be so, because the infinitely perfect and happy God is mere love, an unchangeable will to all goodness: and therefore every creature must be corrupt and unhappy, so far as it is led by any other will. Thus you see the ground of the spirit of love. Let me now, shew you the necessity of it: no creature can have any union or communion with the Deity, but so far as its life is a spirit of love. This is the one band of union betwixt God and the creature. All besides this, call it by what name you will, is only so much error and corruption got into the creature; and must be entirely separated from it, before it can see God, or find the divine life. For as God is an _immutable will_ to all goodness, so the divine will can unite with no creatures will, but that which willeth with him that which is good. Here the necessity is absolute; nothing will do instead of this will; all contrivances of holiness, all forms of religious piety, signify nothing without this will to all goodness. For as the will to all goodness is the _whole nature_ of God, so it must be the _whole nature_ of every service, that can be acceptable to him. And therefore every thing that followeth our _own will_, forsaketh the _one will_ to all goodness. The necessity therefore of _the spirit of love_, is what God cannot dispense with in the creature, no more than he can deny himself, or act contrary to his own holy being. But as it was his _will to all goodness_, that brought forth angels, and the spirits of men, so he can will nothing in their existence, but that they should live and work, and manifest that same spirit of love and goodness which brought them into being. Every thing therefore, but the _will_ to goodness, is some degree of _apostasy_, yea, rebellion against the _whole nature_ of God.

There is no peace, nor ever can be, for the soul of man, but in the purity and perfection of its first-created nature; nor can it have its purity and perfection in any other way, than in and by the _spirit of love_. For love is the purity, the perfection of all created things; and nothing can live in God but as it lives in love. Look at every vice, pain, and disorder, in human nature, it is in itself nothing but the spirit of the creature turned from the _universality_ of love to some _self-seeking_ in created things. So that love alone is the cure of every evil; and he that lives in the purity of love, is risen out of the power of evil, into the freedom of the one spirit of heaven. The _schools_ have given us very accurate definitions of every vice, whether it be covetousness, pride, wrath, or envy, and shewn us how to conceive them as notionally distinguished from one another. But the Christian has a much shorter way of knowing them, and what they all are, and do, in himself. For, call them by what names you will, they are all, that _same one_ thing, and all do that _same one work_, as the Scribes, the Pharisees, and rabble of the _Jews_, who crucified Christ, were all but _one and the same thing_, and all did _one and the same work_, however different they were in outward names. If you would therefore have a true sense of the nature and power of pride, wrath, covetousness, envy, they are in their whole nature nothing else but the _murderers_ and _crucifiers_ of the true Christ of God; not as the high-priests did many hundred years ago, nailing his outward humanity to an outward cross, but crucifying afresh the Son of God, who is the Christ that every man crucifies as often as he gives way to wrath, pride, envy, or covetousness. For where pride, and envy, and hatred, are wilfully indulged, there the same thing is done, as when Christ was killed, and _Barabbas_ was saved alive.

In all the universe, nothing but heaven and heavenly creatures could have been known, had every creature continued in that state in which it came forth from God. For God can will nothing in the life of the creature but a manifestation of his own goodness, happiness, and perfection. And therefore when this is wanted, it is certain, the creature hath lost its first state that it had from God. Every thing therefore, which is the _vanity_, the _torment_, and evil, of man, or any intelligent creature, is solely the effect of his will turned from God. Misery and wickedness can have no other root; for whatever wills and works with God, must partake of the happiness and perfection of God.

This therefore is a certain truth, that hell and death, curse and misery, can never be removed from the creation, till the will of the creature is again as it came from God, _a spirit of love_, that _willeth_ nothing but goodness. All the whole fallen creation, stand it never so long, must groan and travel in pain, till every contrariety to the divine will is entirely taken from every creature.

Thus, Sir, you have seen the original, immutable ground of the spirit of love. It is no imaginary refinement, or speculative curiosity; but is of the highest reality. It stands in the immutability and perfection of God; and not only every intelligent creature, be it what and where it will, but every inanimate thing must work in vanity till it works under the spirit of love.

*Every son of fallen _Adam_ is under this same necessity of working and striving after _something_ that he neither is nor hath. All evil as well as good men, all the wisdom and folly of this life, are a proof of this. For the vanity of wicked men in their various ways, and the labours of good men in faith and hope, proceed from the _same cause_, _viz._ from a _want_ and _desire_ of having and being _something_ that they neither are nor have. The evil seek wrong, and the good seek right; but they both are _seekers_, and for the same reason; because their present state has not _that_ which it wants to have. And this must be the state of every creature that has fallen from its first state. It must do as the _polluted fluid_ does; it must ferment and work, either _right_ or _wrong_, to mend its state. The muddled wine always works right to the utmost of its power, because it works according to nature; but if it had an intelligent free will, it might work as vainly as man does; it might continually _thicken_ itself, be always stirring up its _own dregs_, and then it would seek for its purity, just as well as the soul of man seeks for its happiness in the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. All which must fall away from the heart of man before it can find its happiness in God, as the dregs must separate from the wine before it can have its perfection and clearness.

*_Purification_ therefore is so necessary, that nothing will do in the stead of it. But man is not purified, till every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish temper is taken from him. He is not dying to himself, till he is dying to these tempers; and he is not alive in God, but as he is dead to them. It is the purity and perfection of the divine nature that must be brought again into him: nor are you to think that these words, the _purity_ and _perfection_ of God, are too high to be used on this occasion; for they only mean, that the will of the creature must _will_ and _work_ with the will of God; and whatever does not thus, is at enmity with God, and cannot have life and happiness with him.

Now, nothing wills and works with God but the _spirit of love_; because nothing else works in God himself. The Almighty brought forth all nature for this only end, that boundless love might have its _infinity_ of height and depth to dwell and work in; and all the properties of nature are only to give life and strength to the spirit of love, that it may come forth into outward activity, and manifest its blessed powers; that all creatures may communicate the spirit of love and goodness, give and receive delight to and from one another. All below this state of love, is a fall from the one life of God, the only life in which the God of love can dwell.

Now who can restore this life? The unbelieving _Jews_ said of our Lord, _How can this man forgive sins?_ Christ shewed them _how_, by appealing to that power which they saw he had over the body: _whether_, says he, _is it easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk_? But the delusion of the unbelieving Deist is greater than that of the _Jew_. For the Deist sees, that his reason has no power over his body; can remove no disease, blindness, deafness, or lameness, from it; and yet will pretend to have power enough from his reason, to help the soul out of all its evil; not knowing that he only, who can say to the dead body of _Lazarus_, Come forth, can say to the soul, _Be thou clean_. The _Deist_ therefore, if he pleases, may stile himself a natural, or a moral philosopher, but with no more truth, than he can call himself an _healer_ of all the maladies of the body. And for a man to think himself a moral philosopher, because he has made a choice collection of syllogisms, in order to quicken and revive a divine goodness in the soul; or that no Redeemer need come from heaven, because human reason, when truly left to itself, has great skill in chopping of logic; may justly be deemed such an ignorance of the nature of things, as is seldom found in the transactions of illiterate and vulgar life. But this by the by.

To return to our chief subject: the sum is this: all evil, all misery of every kind, is nothing else but nature left to _itself_; and therefore, there is no _possibility_ for the natural, earthly man to escape eternal wrath, but solely in the way the gospel teacheth, by denying and dying to himself. On the other hand, all the goodness and perfection, all the happiness, glory, and joy, that any intelligent creature can be possessed of, is, and can be, from nothing else, but the invisible uncreated light and Spirit of God manifesting itself in the creatures, _filling_, _blessing_, and _uniting_ them all in _one love_.

And thus again: there is no possibility of man’s attaining to any heavenly perfection and happiness, but only in the way of the gospel, by the union of the divine and human nature, by man’s being born again from above, of the _Word_ and _Spirit_ of God. There is no possibility of any other way, because there is nothing that can possibly change us into an heavenly state, but the presence and power of the Deity united with, and working in us. And therefore the _Word was made flesh_, and must of all necessity be made flesh, if man is to have an heavenly nature. Now as all evil, sin, and misery, have no beginning, nor power of working, but in the manifestation of _contrary_ properties; so man has nothing to turn to, seek, or aspire after, but the lost _spirit of love_. And therefore it is, that God only can be his Redeemer; because God only is love; and love can be no where else, but in God, and where God dwelleth and worketh.

Now the difficulty you find in attaining this spirit of love, is because you seek for it, in the way of reasoning: you would be possessed of it only from a _rational_ conviction of the fitness and amiableness of it. And as this clear idea does not put you into the possession of it, your reason begins to waver; and suggests to you, that it may be only a _fine notion_, that has no ground but in the power of imagination. But this, Sir, is all your own error; as if you would have your eyes do that, which only your hands or feet can do for you. The _spirit of love_ is a spirit of _nature_ and _life_; and therefore can only be produced in you, by that Almighty power which produced all nature, and gave life to every living thing. Life can only arise in its _own_ time and place from its proper cause, and as the genuine effect of it. Nature and life do nothing by chance, or accidentally, but every thing in one uniform way. _Fire_, _air_, and _light_, do not proceed sometimes from one thing, and sometimes from another: but wherever they are, they are always born in the same manner, and from the same working in the properties of nature. So in like manner, love is an _immutable birth_, always proceeding from the same cause, and cannot be in existence till its own true parents have brought it forth.

*How unreasonable would it be to doubt whether _strength_ and _health_ of body were real things, or possible to be had, because you could not by the power of your reason take possession of them? Yet this is as well as to suspect the purity and perfection of love to be only a _notion_, because your reason cannot bring it forth in your soul. For reason has no more power of altering the _life_ and _properties_ of the soul, than of altering the life and properties of the body. That, and that only, can cast devils, and evil spirits, out of the soul, that can say to the storm, Be still; and to the leper, Be thou clean.

And now, Sir, you see the absolute necessity of the gospel-doctrine of the cross; viz. of _dying to ourselves_, as the only way to life in God. This is the _one morality_ that does man any good. Fancy as many rules as you will, of modelling the moral behaviour of man, they all do nothing, because they leave nature still alive; and therefore can only help a man to an art of concealing his own inward evil. But still nature can no more change from evil to good, than darkness can work itself into light. The one work therefore is to resist and deny nature, that a _supernatural power_ may take possession of it.

There is no standing still, life goes on, and is always bringing forth its _realities_, which way soever it goeth. You see the _true state_ of every natural man, whether he be _Cæsar_ or _Cato_, whether he gloriously murders others, or only stabs himself; blind nature does all the work, and must be the doer of it, till the light of God has helped them to _one common good_, in which they all willingly _unite_, _rest_, and _rejoice_. In a word, goodness is only a _sound_, and virtue a mere strife of _natural passions_, till the _spirit of love_ is the breath of every thing that lives, and moves in the heart. For love is the one only blessing, and goodness, and God of nature; and you have no true religion, are no worshipper of the one true God, but in and by that Spirit of love, which is God himself living and working in you.

An Extract from Mr. LAW’s
Spirit of LOVE.