William Law > Quotes

“If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.”
― William Law

“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.”
― William Law

“If you will here stop and ask yourselves 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.”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.”
― William Law

“Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness.”
― William Law

“Grant that I may worship and pray unto Thee with as much reverence and godly fear, as if I saw the heavens open and all the angels that stand around Thy throne. Amen.”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“Humility is nothing else but a right judgment of ourselves.”
― William Law

“Everything in ...nature, is descended out that which is eternal, and stands as a. ..visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate out the grossness, death, and darkness. ..from it, we find. ..it in its eternal state.”
― William Law

“Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life.”
― William Law

“To lessen your fear and regard to the opinion of the world, think how soon the world will disregard you, and have no more thought or concern about you, than about the poorest animal that died in a ditch...Is it therefore worth your while to lose the smallest degree of virtue, for the sake of pleasing so bad a master, and so false a friend, as the world is?”
― William Law

“Let the Christian world forget or depart from this true gospel salvation; let anything else be trusted but the cross of Christ and the Spirit of Christ; and then, though churches and preachers and prayers and sacraments are everywhere in plenty, nothing can come of them but a Christian kingdom of pagan vices, along with a mouth-professed belief in the Apostles’ Creed and the communion of saints. To this sad truth all Christendom both at home and abroad bears full witness. Who need be told that no corruption or depravity of human nature, no kind of pride, wrath, envy, malice, and self-love; no sort of hypocrisy, falseness, cursing, gossip, perjury, and cheating; no wantonness of lust in every kind of debauchery, foolish jesting, and worldly entertainment, is any less common all over Christendom, both popish and Protestant, than towns and villages. What vanity, then, to count progress in terms of numbers of new and lofty cathedrals, chapels, sanctuaries, mission stations, and multiplied new membership lists, when there is no change in this undeniable departure of men’s hearts from the living God. Yea, let the whole world be converted to Christianity of this kind, and let every citizen be a member of some Protestant or Catholic church and mouth the creed every Lord’s day; and no more would have been accomplished toward bringing the kingdom of God among men than if they had all joined this or that philosophical society or social fraternity.”
― William Law, The Power of the Spirit

“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.”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“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.”
― William Law

“We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.”
― William Law

“the reason why you see no real mortification or self-denial, no eminent charity, no profound humility, no heavenly affection, no true contempt of the world, no Christian meekness, no sincere zeal, no eminent piety in the common lives of Christians, is this, because they do not so much as intend to be exact and exemplary in these virtues.”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“A lack of this complete submission to the will of God, and a failure to realize that our salvation can only be worked out by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit forming the very life of Christ within the redeemed heart, has placed the Christian church today in the same apostasy that characterized the Jewish nation.”
― William Law, The Power of the Spirit

“As sure, therefore, as there is any wisdom in praying for the Spirit of God, so sure is it, that we are to make that Spirit the rule of all our actions;”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“know, would be ready to break with grief if you thought this was the last day that I would be with you. But, my child, though you now think yourself mighty happy because you have hold of my hand, you are now in the hands and under the tender care of a much greater Father and Friend than I am, whose love to you is far greater than mine, and from whom you receive such blessings as no human being can give. This is the God whom you have seen me daily worship, whom I daily call upon to bless both you and me, and all mankind, whose wondrous acts are recorded in those Scriptures which you constantly read. This is that God who created the heavens and the earth, who brought a flood upon the whole world, who saved Noah in the ark, who”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“And it has occurred for one and the same reason. The Jews refused Him who was the substance and fulfilling of all that was taught in their Law and Prophets. The Christian church is in a fallen state for the same rejection of the Holy Spirit, who was given to be the power and fulfilling of all that was promised by the gospel. And just as the Pharisees’ rejection of Christ was under a profession of faith in the Messianic Scriptures, so church leaders today reject the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit in the name of sound doctrine.”
― William Law, The Power of the Spirit

“True Christianity is nothing but the continual dependence upon God through Christ for all life, light, and virtue; and the false religion of Satan is to seek that goodness from any other source. So”
― William Law, The Power of the Spirit

“If [we] have no chosen the kingdom of God [first], it will make in the end no difference what [we] have chosen instead.”
― William Law

“Wonder not therefore, Academicus, that all the Work of our Salvation and Regeneration is, by the Scripture, wholly confined to the Operation of the Light and Spirit of God, living and working in us.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“where I will wait for you and hope for your safe arrival at the same place. Therefore, my child, meditate on these great things, and your soul will soon grow great and noble. Let your thoughts often leave these gardens, these fields and farms, to contemplate God and heaven, and to consider the angels and the spirits of good men living in light and glory. As you have been used to look to me in all your actions and have been afraid to do anything unless you first knew my will, so let it now be a rule of your life to look up to God in all your actions, to do everything in His fear, and to abstain from everything that is not according to His will. Keep Him always in your heart and mind. Train your thoughts to reverence Him in every place, for there is no place where He is”
― William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“cloister,”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“The greatest spirits of the heathen world, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Antonius, etc., owed all their greatness to the spirit of devotion.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“The natural, called in Scripture, the old Man, is steadily the same in Heart and Spirit in every Thing he does, whatever Variety of Names may be given to his Actions. For Self can have no Motion but what is selfish, which Way soever it goes, or whatever it does, either in Church or State. And be assured of this, that Nature in every Man, whether he be learned or unlearned, is this very Self, and can be nothing else, till a Birth of the Deity is brought forth in it.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“From Morning to Night keep Jesus in thy Heart, long for Nothing, desire Nothing, hope for Nothing, but to have all this within Thee changed into the Spirit and Temper of the Holy Jesus. Let this be thy Christianity, thy Church, and thy Religion.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“Who has not at one time or another felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts, and then as suddenly going off again, either by the cheerfulness of the sun or air, or some agreeable accident, and again at times as suddenly returning upon him? Sufficient indications are these to every man that there is a dark guest within him, concealed under the cover of flesh and blood, often lulled asleep by worldly light and amusements, yet such as will, in spite of everything, show itself... It is exceeding good and beneficial to us to discover this dark, disordered fire of our soul; because when rightly known and rightly dealt with, it can as well be made the foundation of heaven as it is of hell.”
― William Law, The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration

“Fancy as many Rules as you will of modeling the moral Behaviour of Man, they all do nothing, because they leave Nature still alive, and therefore can only help a Man to a feigned, hypocritical Art of concealing his own inward Evil, and seeming to be not under its Power.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law

“And now, Sir, you may see in the greatest Clearness how every Thing in this World, every Thing in the Soul and Body of Man, absolutely requires the one Redemption of the Gospel.”
― William Law, The Complete Works of William Law