The Spirit of Love Has Its Ground in God
“TI/TY DEAR FRIEND, — You say,” There is nothing -*-’-*- in all 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 this 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, or overcome all that in your nature which is contrary to it, do what you can; and so are only able to be an admirer of that love which you cannot lay hold of.
This objection will fall into nothing, as soon as you look at it from a right point of view; which will then be, as soon as you have found the true ground of the nature, power, and necessity of the blessed spirit of love.
1. The Spirit of Love in God.
Now, the spirit of love has this original. God, as considered in Himself, in His holy being, before any thing is brought forth by Him, or out of 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 worlds, or systems of 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, goodness, 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 do, or be, or give forth, any thing but blessing and goodness.
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 the spirit of love till you have this will to all goodness, at all times, and on all occasions. You may indeed do many works of love, and delight in them, especially at such times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your state, or temper, or occurrences in life. But the spirit of love is not in you, till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally, according to it. For every spirit acts with freedom and universally according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own life, or 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 the
THE SrililT OF LOVE D
freedom and universality of a spirit; 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 inotion 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, because it is the truth and reality of God in the soul; and therefore is in the same joy of life, and is the same good to itself, everywhere, and on every occasion.
Ohsir, would you know the blessing of all blessings? It is this God of love dv/olling in your soul, and killing every root of bitterness which is the pain and torment of every eartlijy, selfish love. For all wants are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, every xlay is a day of peace, every thjiig vovL niept becomes a help to you, because every thing you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of 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, and to bring forth its own work. The spirit of love does not want to be rewarded, honoured, or esteemed; its only desire is to propag’ate itself, and become the blessing and happiness of everytiling 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 wrath and 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, be it what it will, must be forced to 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 he more triumphant, to live its own life, and find all its own 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, for this reason, 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 than the one will to all goodness. Thus you see the ground, the nature, and perfection of the spirit of love.
4. The Absolute Necessity of the Spirit
of Love.
Let me now, in a word or two, show you the necessity of it: now the necessity is absolute and unchangeable. No creature can be a child of God, but because the goodness of God is in it; nor can it have any union or communion with the goodness of the Deity, till its life is a spirit of love. This is the one only band of union betwixt God and the creature. All besides this, or that is not this, call it by what name you will, is only so much error, fiction, impurity, and corruption, got into the creature.; and must of all
THE SnWT OF LOVE 7
necessity be entirely separated from it, before it can have that purity and holiness which alone can see God, or find the divine life. For as God is an immutable will to all goodness, so the divine will can unite or work with no creaturely will, but that which willeth with Him only that which is good. Here the necessity is absolute; nothing will do mstead of this will; all contrivances of holiness, all forms of religious piety, signify nothing without this will to all goodness.
For as the V7ill to all goodness is the whole nature of God, so it must be the whole nature of every service, or religion, that can be acceptable to Him.
For nothing serves God, or worships and adores Him, but that which wills and worketh with Hini.
For God can delight in nothing but His own will, and His own spirit, because all goodness is included in it, and can be nowhere else.
And therefore every thing that followeth an own will, or an own spirit, forsaketh the one will to all goodness; and whilst it doth so, hath no capacity for the light and Spirit of God. The necessity, therefore, of the spirit of love is what God Himself 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 and life of goodness, is an apostasy in the creature, and is 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 as love is the God that created all things, so love is the purity, the perfection, and blessing of all created things; and nothing can live in God but as it lives in love.
5. Self crucifies Christ.
Look at every vice, pain, and disorder in human
nature; it is in itself nothing else but the spirit of the
creature turned from the universality of love to some
^^,, self-seeking or own will in created things. So that
7 / /love alone is, and only can be, the cure of every evil;
^’ y 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,
ride, wrath, envy, etc., and shown us how to conceive
them as notionally distinguished from one another.
But the Christian has a much shorter way of knowing
their nature and power, and what they all are, and do,
in and to himself. For, call them by what names you
will, or distinguish them with ever so much exactness,
they are all, separately and jointly, just that same one
thing, and all do that same one work, as the scribes,
the Pharisees, hypocrites, 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, etc., they are in their whole
nature nothing else but the murderers and crucifiers of
THE SPIllIT OF LOVE 9
the true Christ of God. ISTot as the high priests did many hundred years ago, naihng His outward humanity to an outward cross, but crucifying afresh the Son of God, the holy Immanuel, who is the Christ that every man crucifies as often as he gives way to wrath, pride, envy, or covetousness, etc. For every temper or passion that is contrary to the new birth of Christ, and keeps the holy Immanuel from coming to life in the soul, is, in the strictest truth of the words, a murderer and killer of the Lord of life. And where pride, and envy, and hatred, etc., are suffered to live, there the same thing is done as when Christ was killed and Barabbas was saved alive. The Christ of God was not then first crucified when the Jews brought Him to the cross; but Adam and Eve were His first real murderers; for the death which happened to them in the day that they did eat of the earthly tree was the death of the Christ of God, or the divine life in their souls.
6. Of Christ our Bedeemer.
Christ had never come into the world as a second Adam to redeem it had He not been originally the life, and perfection, and glory of the first Adam. And He is our atonement and reconciliation with God; because, by and through Him, brought to life in us, we are set again in that first state of holiness, and have Christ again in us, as our first father had at his creation. For had not Christ been our first Father, as a birth of life in Him, Adam had been created a mere child of wrath, in the same impurity of nature, in the same enmity with God, and in the same want of an atoning Saviour, as we are at this day.
For God can have no delight or union with any creature, but because His well-beloved Son, the express imae of His person, is found in it.
This is as true of all unfallen as of all fallen creatures; the one are redeemed, and the other want no redemption, only through the life of Christ dwelling in them. For as the Word, or Son of God, is the Creator of all things, and by Him every thing is made that was made, so every thing that is good and holy in unfallen angels is as much through His living and dwelling in them, as every thing that is good and holy in redeemed man is through Him. And He is just as much the Preserver, the Strength, and Glory, and Life of all the thrones and principalities of heaven, as He is the Righteousness, the Peace, and Redemption of fallen man.
This Christ of God hath many names in Scripture; but they all mean only this, that He is, and alone can be, the light, and life, and holiness of every creature that is holy, whether in heaven or on earth. Wherever Christ is not, there is the wrath of nature, or nature left to itself, and its own tormenting strength of life, to feel nothing in itself but the vain, restless contrariety of its own working properties. This ia the one only origin of hell, and every kind of curse and misery in the creature. It is nature without the Christ of God, or the spirit of love, ruling over it. And here you may observe, that wrath has in itself the nature of hell; and that it can have no beginning or power in any creature, but so far as it has lost the Christ of God. And when Christ is everywhere, wrath and hatred will be nowhere. Whenever, therefore, you willingly indulge wrath, or let your mind work in hatred, you not only work without Christ, but you resist Him, and withstand His redeeming power over you; you do in reality what those Jews did when they said, “We will not have this Man to reign over us.” For Christ never was, nor can be, in any creature, but purely as a spirit of love.
In all the universe of nature nothing but heaven and heavenly creatures ever had, or could have, been known, had every created will continued in that state in which it came forth out of and from God. For God can will nothing in the life of the creature but a creaturely manifestation of His own goodness, happiness, and perfection. And therefore, where this is wanting, the fact is certain that the creature hath changed and lost its first state that it had from God.
7. Of Purification.
Every son of fallen Adam is under the necessity of working and striving after something that he neither is nor hath; because the life of man has lost its first unity and purity, and therefore must be in a working strife, tiU all contrariety and impurity is separated from it, and it finds its first state in God.
Purification, therefore, is the one thing necessary, and nothing will do in the stead of it. But man is not piuified till every earthly, wrathful, sensual, selfish, partial, self-willing 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 till he is dead to them. For he wants purification only because .he has these tempers; and therefore he has not the purification which he wants till they are all separated from him. It is the purity ‘and perfection of the divine nature that must be brought again into him; because in that purity and perfection he came forth from God, and could have no less, as he was a child of God, that was to be blessed by a life in Him, and from Him. For nothing impure or imperfect in its will and working can have any union with God; 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, as an offspring of the divine will, must will and work with the will of God, for then it stands and lives truly and really in the purity and perfection ol God; and whatever does not thus is at enmity with. God, and cannot have any union of life and happiness with Him, and in Him.
8. The Spirit of Love the Universal Good.
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 striving and working properties of nature are only to give essence and substance, life and strength, to the invisible hidden spirit of love, that it may come forth mto outward activity, and manifest its blessed powers; that creatures born in the strength, and out of the powers of nature, might communicate the spirit of love and goodness, give and receive mutual delight and joy to and from one another. All below this state of love is a fall from the one life of God, and the only life in which the God of love can dwell. Partiality, self, mine, thine, etc., are tempers that can only belong to creatures that have lost the power, presence, and spirit of the universal good. They can have no place in heaven, nor can be anywhere, but because heaven is lost. Think not, therefore, that the spirit of pure, universal love, which is the one purity and perfection of heaven, and all heavenly natures, has been, or can be, carried too high, or its absolute necessity too much asserted. For it admits of no degrees of higher or lower, and is not in being till it is absolutely pure and unmixed, no more than a line can be straight till it is absolutely free from all crookedness.
9. Love is of God.
To return to our chief subject: The sum of all that has been said is this: All evil, be it what it will, all misery of every kind, is in its birth, worldng, and extent nothing else but nature left to itself, and under the divided workings of its own hunger, wrath, and contrariety; and therefore no possibility for the natural, earthly man to escape eternal hunger, wrath, and contrariety, but solely in the way as the gospel teacheth, by denying and dying to self. On the other hand, all the goodness and perfection, all the happiness, glory, and joy that any intelligent, divine 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 properties of the creaturely life, iilliiig, blessing, and uniting them all in one love, and joy of life.
And thus agam: 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 can possibly change the first properties of life into an heavenly state, but the presence, and working power, of the Deity united with and working in them. 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 nature in its divided, contrary properties; so it is certain that 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 nowhere else but in God, and where God dwelleth and worketh.
10. The Spirit of Love not a Notion,
but a Nature.
Now, the difficulty which you find in attaining to this purity and universality of the spirit of love, is because you seek for it, as I once told you, 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 immediately into the real 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, and as contrary to nature 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 all the operations of nature and life are according to the working powers of nature; and every growth and degree of 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 thmg 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 Ide 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 begin 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 forth its birth 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.”
The birth of love is a form or state of life. Reason can no more alter or exalt any one property of life in the soul, and bring it into its perfect state, than it can add one cubit to the stature of the body. The perfection of every life is no way possible to be had, but as every flower comes to its perfection, viz. from its own seed and root, and the various degrees of transmutation, which must be gone through before the flower is found. It is strictly thus with the perfection of the soul; all its properties of life must have their true natural birth and growth from one another. The first, as its seed and root, must have their natural change into an higher state; must, like the seed of the llower, pass through death into life, and be blessed with the fire and light and spirit of heaven, in their passage to it; just as the seed passes through death into life blessed by the fire and light and air of this world, till it reaches its last perfection, and becomes a beautiful, sweet-smelling flower. And to think that the soul can attain its perfection any other way than by the change and exaltation of its first properties of life, just as the seed has its first properties changed and exalted till it comes to have its flower, is a total ignorance of the nature of things.
11. The Birth of Love.
Hold it, therefore, for a certain truth, that you can have no good come into your soul, but only by the one way of a birth from above, from the entrance of the Deity into the properties of your own souhsh life. Nature must be set right, its properties must enter into the process of a new birth, it must work to the production of light, before the spirit of love can have a birth in it. For love is delight, and delight cannot arise in any creature till its nature is in a delightful state, or is possessed of that in which it must rejoice.
And this is the reason why God must become man it is because a birth of the Deity must be found in the soul, giving to nature all that it wants, or the soul can never find itself in a delightful state, and only working with the spirit of love. For whilst the soul has only its natural life, it can only be in such a state as nature, without God, is in, viz. a mere hunger, want, contrariety, and strife for it knows not what.
Hence it is, that that which is called the wisdom, the honour, the honesty, and the religion of the natural man, often does as much hurt to himself and others, as his pride, ambition, self-love, envy, or revenge; and are subject to the same humour and caprice; it is because nature is no better in one motion than in another, nor can be so, till something supernatural is come into it.
We often charge men, both in Church and State, with changing their principles; but the charge is too hasty; for no man ever did, or can, change his principles, but by a birth from above. 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. There is therefore no possibility of having the spirit of love, or any divine goodness, from any power of nature or working of reason. It can only be had in its own time and place; and its time and place is nowhere but where nature is overcome by a birth of the life of God in the properties of the soul. And thus you see the infallible truth and absolute necessity of Christian redemption; it is the most demonstrable thing in all nature.
The Deity must become man, take a birth in the fallen nature, be united to it, become the life of it, or the natural man must of all necessity be for ever and ever in the hell of his own hunger, anguish, contrariety, and self-torment; and all for this plain reason, because nature is, and can be, nothing else but this variety of self-torment till the Deity is manifested and dwelUug in it.
12. Dying to Self the only Way to the
Life of God.
And now, sir, you see also the absolute necessity of the gospel doctrine of the cross, viz. of dying to self, as the one only way to life in God. This cross, or dying to self, is the one morality that does man any good. Fancy has 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 a feigned, hypocritical art of concealing his own inward evil, and seeming to be not under its power. And the reason why it must be so is plain: it is because nature is not possible to be reformed; it is immutable in its workings, and must be always as it is, and never any better, or worse, than its own untaught workings are. It can no more change from evil to good than darkness can work itself into light. The one work, therefore, of morality is the one doctrine of the cross, viz. to resist and deny nature, that a supernatural power, or divine goodness, may take possession of it, and bring a new light into it.
In a word, there are, in all the possibility of things, but two states, or forms of life; the one is nature, and the other is God manifested in nature; and as God and nature are both within you, so you have it in your power to live and work with which you will,
Tire SPreiT OF LOVE 19
but are under a necessity of doing either the one or the other. There is no standmg still; life goes on, and is always bringing forth its realities, which way £03ver it gceth.
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 everything 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.
But here I take off my pen, and shall leave the remaining part of your objection to another opportunity. I am, etc.
King’s Cliff, Jane 16, 1752.
THE SPIRIT OF LOVE
SECOND PART
IN DIALOGUES
By WILLIAM LAW, M.A.