xpress the greatest admiration of it.

From his retirement at Kingscliffe,[527] where he lived a life of
untiring benevolence, Law took an active part in the religious
controversies of the time; refusing, however, all payment for his
publications. He entered the lists against Tindal, Chubb, and
Mandeville, against Hoadly, against Warburton, against Wesley. His
answer to Mandeville is called by J. Sterling 'a most remarkable
philosophical essay,' full 'of pithy right reason,'[528] and has been
republished by Frederick Maurice, with a highly commendatory
introduction. The authority last mentioned also speaks of him as 'a
singularly able controversialist in his argument with Hoadly;' and adds:
'Of all the writers whom he must have irritated--Freethinkers,
Methodists, actors, Hanoverians,--of all the nonjuring friends whom he
alienated by his quietism, none doubted his singleness of purpose.' It
may be added that there were few of his opponents who might not have
learnt from him a lesson of Christian courtesy. Living in an age when
controversy of every kind was, almost as a rule, deformed by virulent
personalities, he yet, in the face of much provocation, kept always
faithful to his resolve that, 'by the grace of God, he would never have
any personal contention with anyone.'[529]

Such was the man who, from about 1730 to his death in 1761, was a most
earnest student of mystical theology. 'Of these mystical divines,' he
says, 'I thank God I have been a diligent reader, through all ages of
the Church, from the Apostolical Dionysius the Areopagite down to the
great Fenelon, the illuminated Guyon, and M. Bertot.'[530] Tauler made a
great impression on his mind, but Jacob Behmen most of all. Of these
writers in general he speaks in grateful terms, as true spiritual
teachers, purified by trials and self-discipline, and deeply learned in
the mysteries of God, 'truly sons of thunder and sons of consolation,
who awaken the heart, and leave it not till the kingdom of heaven is
raised up in it.'

William Law was a man of far too great intellectual ability to be a
mere borrower of ideas. What he read he thoroughly assimilated; and
Behmen's strange theosophy, after passing through the mind of his
English exponent, reappeared in a far more logical and comprehensible
form. It cannot be said that Law was altogether a gainer by his later
studies. To many of his contemporaries the result appeared quite the
contrary; and he was constantly