f Berkeley and Hutchinson had been
comparatively feeble. They could not altogether escape from being
hampered by those favourite reasonings of the day about the wisdom of
morality and the advantages of religion, which after all were much like
the very same argument from expedience, clothed in fairer garb. Law
wrote in a different strain. Addressing himself to Deists who, whatever
else might be their doubts, rarely departed from belief in a God, he
bade them find their answer in that belief. 'Once turn your eyes to
heaven, and dare but own a just and good God, and then you have owned
the true origin of religion and moral virtue.' 'Suppose that God is of
infinite justice, goodness, and truth ... this is the strong and
unmoveable foundation of moral virtue, having the same certainty as the
attributes of God.'[561] Thence came that original excellence of man's
nature which is essentially his healthy state, his sound and perfect
condition, and of which all evil is the corruption and disease. Examine
goodness, analyse it with unsparing strictness; and see 'whether the
investigation does not prove that evil is _not_ the substantial part of
any act which is acted, or thought which is thought, in this world; but,
on the contrary, the destructive element of it, that which makes it
unreal and false.'[562]

Closely connected with this unfaltering conviction of the immutable
character of right and wrong, that the light of our souls comes direct
from the source of light, and that the principles of justice, truth, and
mercy cannot be otherwise than identical in God and His reasoning
creatures--came William Law's speculations about the ultimate destinies
of man. It has been truly observed that 'the first step commonly taken
by Protestant mysticism is an endeavour to mitigate the gloom which
hangs over the future state.'[563] This is very strongly marked in all
the later productions of Law's mind. He was very far from taking
anything like an optimist view of the world around him. There is no
writer of his age who shows himself more impressed with an abhorrence of
sin, and with the sense of its widespread and deeply rooted influences.
He is austere even to excess in his views of what godliness requires.
His whole soul is oppressed with the wilful ruin of spiritual life which
he everywhere beholds. Yet he can conceive of no hope except by the
recovery of that spiritual life, no atonement except by the
extinguishing of sin,[564] no salvati