a quite different matter.’[555] ’Our guilt is transferred upon Him in no other sense than as He took upon Him the state and condition of our fallen nature ... to heal, remove, and overcome all the evils that were brought into our nature by the fall ...  His merit or righteousness is imputed or derived into us in no other sense than as we receive from Him a birth, a nature, a power to become the sons of God.’[556] There is nothing here said which would not now be widely assented to among members of most sections of the Christian Church.  William Law’s writings will not be rightly estimated unless it be remembered that in his time orthodox theology in England scarcely allowed of any other than those scholastic and forensic notions of the Atonement which he deprecates.  Other views were commonly thought to savour of rank Deism or rank Quakerism.  His theological opponents seemed somewhat to doubt under which of these denominations he should be placed, or whether he would not more properly be referred to both.[557]

Law’s unwavering trust in a Spirit which guides faith and goodness into all necessary truth, led him to take a different course from the evidence writers of his time.  ‘I would not,’ he says, ’take the method generally practised by the defenders of Christianity.  I would not attempt to show from reason and antiquity the necessity and reasonableness of a Divine revelation in general, or of the Mosaic and Christian in particular.  Nor do I enlarge upon the arguments for the credibility of the Gospel history, the reasonableness of its creeds, institutions, and usages; or the duty of man to receive things above, but not contrary to his reason.  I would avoid all this, because it is wandering from the true point in question, and only helping the Deist to oppose the Gospel with a show of argument, which he must necessarily want, was the Gospel left to stand upon its own bottom.’[558] To follow up the line of thought suggested by these words would be in itself a treatise.  It is a first axiom among all mystics, that light is its own witness.  With what limitations and precautions this is to be transferred to the spiritual region, and how far Christianity is independent of other testimony than its own intrinsic excellence—­is a question of profound importance, and one which various minds will answer very differently.  Law’s unhesitating answer is another example of the way in which he was wont to combat Deists with their own weapons.

The vigour and success with which Law controverted the reasonings of those who grounded human society upon expedience, was also owing in large part to what was styled his mysticism or his enthusiasm.  A religious philosophy which led him to dwell with special emphasis on the Divine element inherent in man’s nature, and his faculties in communion with the Infinite, inspired him with the strongest force of conviction in combating theories such as that expressed in its barest form by Mandeville—­that, in man’s original state, right and wrong were but other expressions for what was found to be expedient or otherwise, that not rarely