William Law, the English devotional writer, controversialist, theologian, and mystic, was a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. As a nonjuror, he refused to take the oath to King George I and thus terminated his career at the university and in the church. For a time he was a tutor in the household of Edward Gibbon, grandfather of the historian. His later life was virtually without incident, and after years of retirement, he died in his native village of King's Cliffe, Northamptonshire.

Law is best known as a devotional writer and especially for his A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728); but his importance in the history of thought lies elsewhere, in his resistance to latitudinarianism, his defense of morality, his attack on deism, and his mystical writings.

Law was a formidable controversialist, and in his Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor...