William Law · 10 of 13

The Third Dialogue · Part 1

[Way-3-1] Academicus. If you please, Theophilus, pray go on, just where you left off at our last meeting. For this mystery seems to be at daybreak with me; and the approach of its light leaves me no power to be content without it.

[Way-3-2] Theophilus. You have seen, that all nature begins and stands in a magic birth; and is only a large display of its working power in every kind of creature. You now want to see farther into this mystery, how eternal nature begins; and how God, the first, hidden, imperceptible cause of all after-things, manifests himself in the properties of a visible and working nature. Now I would, to the best of my power, gladly assist you in this matter, if I could find out a way of doing it, by opening in your heart a knowledge of God, of nature, and yourself, without helping you to a mere opinion, or increasing your thirst after ideal speculation. Tell me, therefore, what you propose by the gratification of this desire; or what effect you expect from such knowledge, as you here seek.

[Way-3-3] Academicus. All that I desire by it is, to strengthen and confirm the ground on which I stand; that, seeing the true philosophy of religion, I may have nothing to fear from all that variety of attacks which now, more than ever, are made upon it by infidel reason. I hope, therefore, it is no vain curiosity, to desire to enter into the depth of this mystery, since I only desire thereby strength to resist all the enemies of religion.

[Way-3-4] Theophilus. All this is right, and very well; provided you do but know who, and what, are the great and powerful enemies of religion. But this, perhaps, you do not so well apprehend, as you may imagine. Your own reason, born, and bred, and governed, by your own flesh and blood, is the most powerful enemy of religion that you have to do with, and whom you have the most to fear from.

[Way-3-5] The men of speculative reason, whom you seem most to apprehend, are powerless enemies, that cannot strike at your religion with the strength of a straw. Did you but rightly see what their power is, you would see it as ridiculous, as that of a few water-engines trying to quench the fiery globe of the sun: for reason stands in the same inability to touch the truth of religion, as the water-engine to affect the sun. Nay, its inability is much greater; for could the water, thrown from the engine, be made to reach the sun, it would have some, though an insignificant, effect upon it; but reason can no more affect the truth of religion, than nothing can affect something. If reason seems to have any power against religion, it is only where religion is become a dead form, has lost its true state, and is dwindled into opinion; and when this is the case, that religion stands only as a well-grounded opinion, then indeed it is always liable to be shaken; either by having its own credibility lessened, or that of a contrary opinion increased. But when religion is that which it should be, not a notion or opinion, but a real life growing up in God, then reason has just as much power to stop its course, as the barking dog to stop the course of the moon. For true and genuine religion is nature, is life, and the working of life; and therefore, wherever it is, reason has no more power over it, than over the roots that grow secretly in the earth, or the life that is working in the highest heavens. If therefore you are afraid of reason hurting your religion, it is a sign, that your religion is not yet as it should be, is not a self-evident growth of nature and life within you, but has much of mere opinion in it.

[Way-3-6] Observe the word "self-evident"; for there lies the truth of the matter; for you have no more of the truth of religion than what is self-evident in you. A blind man may be rich in notions and opinions about the nature, power, and good, of light; and in this case, one blind man may perplex another, and unsettle his notions; but when the light manifesteth itself, and is become self-evident, then he is at once delivered from all uncertainty about it. Now religion is light and life; but light and life can only manifest themselves, and can nowhere be known, but where they are self-evident.

[Way-3-7] You can know nothing of God, of nature, of heaven, or hell, or yourself, but so far as all these things are self-evident in you. Neither could any of these things be of any concern to you, but because they can all of them be self-evident in you. For the bare history, or hearsay of any one thing, signifies no more to you, than the hearsay of any other thing. And if God and heaven, hell and the devil, the world and the flesh, were not all of them self-evident in you, you could have no more good or hurt from any hearsay about them, than from the hearsay of pleasant gardens, and dismal prisons, in the world of the moon.

[Way-3-8] Let it be supposed, that your ingenious reason should suggest to you, that there are no devils or hell, and therefore no occasion to believe that revelation that gives an account of them: in this case, do but turn to that which is sensible and self-evident in you, and then you must know, in the same certainty as you know yourself to be alive, that there is wrath, self-torment, envy, malice, evil-will, pride, cruelty, revenge. Now say, if you please, there are no other devils but these, and that men have no other devils to resist; and then you will have said truth enough, have owned devils enough, and enough confessed, that you are in the midst of them; that you are everywhere tempted by them; and that flesh and blood is too weak to resist them, and therefore wants some kind of savior, of so contrary a nature, as has power to destroy these works of the devil in you.

[Way-3-9] Now this is the only knowledge that you can possibly have of an outward hell, and outward devils; and this knowledge is as self- evident in you as your own thoughts, and is as near to you as your own life. But to see and know an outward hell, or outward devils, that are outward living creatures, can never be your own case, till all that is divine and human in you is extinguished; and then you will have knowledge enough, how hell is a place, and how the devils of rage, wrath, envy, and pride, are living creatures.

[Way-3-10] Again, let it be supposed, that your sceptic reason had brought you into doubt about the being and providence of God in you: you have no occasion to consult the demonstrations which heathen philosophers, school divines, Deists, or atheists, have produced about it, from the existence of things; all concluding, as well Christians, as Deists and atheists, that there must be some eternal first cause from which all has proceeded.

[Way-3-11] For what a God is this, that is only proved to be, because something now is, and therefore something must always have been, an infinite, eternal something, with infinite power to bring forth all that is come into being? What a God, I say, is this, which the Arian, the Deist, and the atheist, is as willing to own as the Christian; and which is as serviceable to the cause of Arianism, Deism, idolatry, and atheism, as it is to Christianity? For the atheist has his omnipotent, eternal, first cause, as well as all the disputers for a God.

[Way-3-12] But now, if you turn from all these idle debates and demonstrations of reason, to that which is sensible and self-evident in you, then you have a sensible, self-evident proof of the true God of life, and light, and love, and goodness, as manifest to you as your own life. For with the same self-evident certainty, as you know that you think, and are alive, you know that there is goodness, love, benevolence, meekness, compassion, wisdom, peace, joy. Now this is the self-evident God, that forces himself to be known, and found, and felt, in every man, in the same certainty of self-evidence, as every man feels and finds his own thoughts and life. And this is the God, whose being and providence, thus self-evident in us, calls for our worship, and love, and adoration, and obedience to him: and this worship, and love, and adoration, and conformity to the divine goodness, is our true belief in, and sure knowledge of, the self-evident God. And atheism is not the denial of a first omnipotent cause, but is purely and solely nothing else but the disowning, forsaking, and renouncing the goodness, virtue, benevolence, meekness. of the divine nature, that has made itself thus self-evident in us, as the true object of our worship, conformity, love, and adoration. This is the one true God, or the Deity of goodness, virtue, and love. the certainty of whose being and providence opens itself to you in the self-evident sensibility of your own nature; and inspires his likeness, and love of his goodness, into you. And as this is the only true knowledge that you can possibly have of God and the divine nature, so it is a knowledge not to be debated or lessened by any objections of reason, but is as self-evident as your own life. But to find or know God in reality, by any outward proofs, or by anything but by God himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the world, and the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you, or by you, but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretended knowledge of any of these things, beyond or without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them, as the blind man hath of that light, that never entered into him.

[Way-3-13] And as this is our only true knowledge, so every man is, by his birth and nature, brought into a certain and self-evident sensibility of all these things. And if we bring ourselves by reasoning and dispute into an uncertainty about them, it is an uncertainty that we have created for ourselves, and comes not from God and nature. For God and nature have made that which is our greatest concern, to be our greatest certainty; and to be known by us in the same self-evidence, as our own pain or pleasure is. For nothing is religion, or the truth of religion, nothing is good or bad to you, but that which is a self- evident birth within you. So that if you call that only God, and religion, and goodness, which truly are so, and can only be known by their self-evident powers and life in you, then you are in the truth, and the truth will make you free from all doubts; and you will no more fear or regard anything that talkative reason can discourse against it, than against your own seeing, hearing, or sensible life. But if you turn from self-evidence to reason and opinion, you turn from the tree of life, and you give yourself up to certain delusion.

[Way-3-14] Wonder not therefore, my friend, that though the mystery under consideration contains the greatest truths, yet I am unwilling to help you to reason and speculate upon it; for if you attempt to go farther in it than self-evidence leads you, you only go so far out of it, or from it. For the end of this mystery is not to furnish new or better matter for reason and opinion, but to bring man home to that sensibility, which is self-evident in himself, and to lead him only by self-evident principles, to see, and find, and feel the difference between true and false religion in the same degree of self-evident certainty, as he sees and feels the difference between fire and water. This, I say, is the great intent of this mystery, to bring man into a sensibility of God and nature, to know and feel, that good and evil, life and death, are a self-evident growth and birth of nature in man, according as his will enters into and works with that which is unchangeably good, or unchangeably evil, in the working of nature. Now as the workings of nature are unchangeable in their effects, and that which is naturally good or evil, must always be so; and seeing man's life standeth in nature, and must work with it, must have only that good or evil which is unchangeable in nature; and seeing his state in nature, whether good or evil, is, and can be, only that, which the sensible, self-evident powers of his own life manifest to him; then you see the fitness and necessity of your keeping steadily to that, which is self- evident in you, as the very tree of life, the criterion of all that truth and goodness that belongs to you. Secondly, you see with what good reason Jacob Behmen so often tells you, that all that he has written, was only to help man to seek and find himself, to see and know his place and state in nature, and how to cooperate with God and nature in generating a birth of heaven within himself. Thirdly, you may see how you and I should abase this blessed mystery, should we, instead of only and truly seeking and finding its birth within us, make it a matter of reasoning and opinion.

[Way-3-15] Academicus. I have neither power nor inclination to object to anything that you have said. But still I must desire you to assist me in your own way, and such as you judge to be suitable to the intention of this mystery. I plainly see, that the whole ground of religion lies in the knowledge of what God is in himself, as distinct from nature; what nature is in itself; what I have from God, and what I am in and from nature; and how I am to work with it, as God himself is and worketh in nature. For if this knowledge can be opened in me, then the why, and the how, of every mystery of redemption must be seen to the bottom.

[Way-3-16] Theophilus. By nature are meant, all the working, stirring properties of life, or all the various sensibilities which life is capable of finding and feeling in itself. And therefore you need only look at the working sensibilities of your own life, the several kinds and ways of feeling and finding your own state, to know by a self- evident certainty, what nature is in itself. And thus also, in the same self-evident certainty, you may know, that nature is not God. For as you find, that nature is opened in you; that all its properties have their existence in you; and yet that none of these properties of life are their own happiness, or can make themselves to be happy, full of peace, delight, and joy, and free from every want; so you have a full self-evident proof, that God is not nature, but entirely distinct from, and superior to, nature; and that, as considered in himself, he is that which alone can make nature happy, free from want, and full of all delightful satisfaction. And thus you know, not from hearsay, but from a self-evident certainty in yourself, that God, considered as in himself, is the happiness, the rest, the satisfaction, the joy, the fulfilling of all the properties and sensibilities of nature; and also that nature, in itself, is that working life of various properties and sensibilities, which want to be made happy, which reach after something that they are not, and have not, and which cannot be happy or fulfilled, till something of an higher nature than themselves be united with them; that is, the working of nature must be in want, in pain, and dissatisfaction, till God (the blessing and fulfilling of nature) is manifested, found, and enjoyed in it.

[Way-3-17] Now suppose you knew no more of what God is in himself, distinct from nature, and what nature is as thus distinguished from God, than is already opened in you, you would know enough to be a key to all that which Jacob Behmen speaks of God, and of nature; and enough also to show you how to cooperate with God and nature, in bringing forth a new birth of the divine life within you. For as soon as you know, that nature in itself is only a working life of various sensibilities, which wants something distinct from itself, and higher than itself, to make it happy, then you have a self-evident certainty of these following truths: first, that God, considered as in himself, is the blessing, the satisfaction, the heaven, and happiness, of all and every sensibility of nature. Secondly, that therefore, as the gospel teaches, only the Word, the light, the Son of God, or Jesus Christ, can redeem fallen nature, restore it to its first state of blessedness in God. Thirdly, that therefore, as the gospel teaches, you have but one thing to do, and that one thing absolutely necessary to be done; viz., to deny yourself; that is, to turn this fallen nature from itself, from all its own wills and workings in the vanity of this life, to give up itself in faith, in hunger and thirst after that light, Word, Son, or Jesus Christ of God, who is the fullness, the satisfaction, the joy, and blessedness, of all nature; who alone can turn every working and sensibility of nature in a participation of heavenly satisfaction and joy. Now what can you desire, or need you to know of God, of nature, and the mystery of Christian redemption, more than this? And yet all this is a self- evident knowledge, born within you as soon as you turn to it.

[Way-3-18] Academicus. Oh! Sir, you quite transport me with this short, easy, and yet full explication of so great a matter, which has often perplexed me. But now I shall never be at a loss how to understand the distinction between God and nature, and also the absolute necessity of it; which, when rightly known, sets all the doctrines and mysteries of Christian redemption upon such a ground as cannot be removed. But still I must beg of you to help me to the same self- evidence of the birth and generation of the properties of nature, as they are set forth by Jacob Behmen, especially of the three first forms, which I perceive to be the ground of all; and yet their birth and generation, their union with, and distinction from, one another, I do not enough comprehend, as he sets them forth. Thus, the first form of nature is said to be desire; which is the ground and foundation of all things. This desire (the first property), he saith, is astringing, drawing, shutting up, compressing, hardening. Now all this is evident enough; for I have a sufficient sensibility, that this is the nature of desire; that, in its spiritual way, it attracts, draws, compresses, and would shut up, or enclose. But then, it is immediately said, that the second property is attraction, drawing, sting, and motion. Now if the first is attraction and drawing, how can the second be different from it, and yet be attraction and drawing?

[Way-3-19] Theophilus. The desire is not one property, but is in itself all the properties of nature; it is the ground in which they all dwell, and the mother out of which they are all born: so that all that is said of the three first forms of nature, is only so much said of three forms or properties of the desire. For the desire is not the first property of nature; but every property hath all that it hath in and from the desire. The first property of the desire, of that which is the peculiarity of its nature, as distinguished from the second, is, to compress, enclose, shut up., whence cometh thickness, darkness, hardness. But no sooner does the desire begin to compress, shut up, but it brings forth its own greatest enemy, and the highest resistance to itself: for it cannot compress or thicken, but by drawing or attracting; but drawing and attracting is quite contrary to shutting up, or compressing; because drawing or attracting is motion, and every motion is contrary to shutting up or compressing together.

[Way-3-20] And thus your difficulty is removed: attraction or drawing is rightly ascribed to the desire, and rightly called its second property, because it is born of it; and yet is directly contrary to that which is the desire's first property or intention; viz., to compress, to hold in stillness.

[Way-3-21] Now as these two properties are two resistances, not in two different things, but are one and the same thing in this contrariety in and to itself, as they are inseparable, generate each other, are equal in strength, and can neither of them overcome the other, so as to go one way, but each of them stops the other in the same manner; and seeing this desire cannot cease to be these two contrary things; viz. a holding-fast, and moving-away, a shutting-in, and a going-out, both in the same degree of strength; neither able to shut up, or to go out, nor able to cease from either; these two contrarieties become a whirling anguish in itself, and so bring forth a third property of nature. And in these properties lies the true ground of all sensibility of life, and also of every created thing. Matter, motion, darkness, fire, and every natural power or quality of anything, has its beginning from them. Considered in themselves, they are the working powers of that great and strong creaturely life, which cannot be broken, because it begets itself, and every property is included in, and generates each other. It is a band or knot of life, that can never be loosed; nor is capable of annihilation, because it is a birth of eternal nature, which is as unchangeable as God himself. And as it arises from no outward thing, but is generated in and from itself, its work is eternal, and can never be made to cease. For as one property has no power over the other, but that of forcing it to exist; as one property does not weary the other, but always gives strength to it; so there can be no cessation of their working, but they must do, as they do, to all eternity.

[Way-3-22] Now the life of these three properties is a life of three contrary wills, equally strong and powerful against each other; and therefore is a life of the highest disquiet, torment, and anguish, full of the most horrible sensibility. It is a life that can feel nothing but its own tearing contrariety, that reigns with it. And this is the life of nature separated from God; it is the life of hell, and the devils; and is that life of dark, raging distraction, which every living creature must be in, whose first properties of life are not softened and quieted, either by the light of God, or the light of this world, dwelling and making peace in them. And he that will only seek to his reason, to cool the flame of these raging first properties of life, acts as wisely as he, whose house being on fire, would only have it extinguished, by reading a lecture upon the nature of water to it.

[Way-3-23] And now, sir, you have seen plainly enough the birth, nature, and difference, of these three first properties. But let it be supposed, that you have no feeling, or inward sensibility, of these three properties in the manner they have been here described, according to Jacob Behmen; yet you have no reason to be troubled at it, or put your brain upon the rack how to conceive it, or fear that you must want the benefit of this knowledge, till you have it as above described; for you have in yourself a most self-evident proof, that the thing is really so; and that desire hath all that in it which he so deeply declares, from its first seed, or root.

[Way-3-24] For it is a thing self-evident to you, that every desire, as such, is in itself a restless torment; that it has pain, disquiet, and anguish, in itself; and, as to itself, consists of nothing else. Now, whether you can, with Jacob Behmen, divide this restless, anguishing desire into its three essential parts, of which it consists, matters not, as to the reality of the thing itself; for you have sensibility enough, that the desire is made up of pain and anguish, till the thing desired is obtained: and therefore you have all the certainty and benefit of this knowledge; and it serves the same end, as if you knew the ground of it with the same exactness as he has set it forth.

[Way-3-25] You have yourself for a proof, that desire and pain begin together; and this is a full proof of what was said; viz. that desire begins with two properties, that resist and strive against one another. Again, you have the same evidence in yourself, that the desire, left to itself, that is, without the least glimpse of any possibility of having that which it desires, is a degree of hell, and quite intolerable to itself: and this is a self-evident proof of what was said; viz. that the third and last property of the desire, is that whirling anguish, brought forth by the two first properties: for these three properties are the whole of the desire; it has nothing more in it. And when your desire cannot cease, and yet has nothing but itself, without the least mixture or feeling of hope in it, then you have a full self-evidence of all that which the desire is, in its three essential, inseparable properties, and that strictly according to the letter of Jacob Behmen.

[Way-3-26] Now all that is nature, or natural life within you, is only the working of desire in this painful state; and that which can set this painful life at rest in you, is so much of God, or the divine nature, manifested in you, and changing your restless properties of life into peace and happiness. And as the working properties of desire are your natural life, so the same working properties are the life of eternal nature; from whence, as out of the womb, your natural life is brought forth, and hath neither more nor less in it than that which is in eternal nature.

[Way-3-27] And if the working properties, which constitute the life of eternal nature, could be supposed to be without God in them, eternal nature would be a mere eternal hell: But as the eternal desire, with all its working properties, is brought forth by the magic power of the divine will, only for this end, that the holy Deity may manifest a heaven of glory in them; so eternal nature always was, and always must be, a kingdom of heaven, or the unchangeable manifestation of the invisible God in an outward sensibility of life, happiness, glory, and majesty.

[Way-3-28] Academicus. I am fully satisfied as to this point; and all that you have said, has the evidence of light at noonday. And I hope you will now go on in the birth of the four remaining properties; and show me, in the same degree of evidence, how these three properties bring forth the four following ones, which turn nature into a kingdom of heaven.

[Way-3-29] Theophilus. These three properties of nature cannot bring forth the four following ones. They can bring forth nothing but themselves to all eternity, nor can ever be anything else in themselves, but what they were at first. Nature can rise no higher than this painful state; and its painful working contrariety must always be the ground of all life, and all sensibility of life. For if (1.) this shutting-up, or compressing; and (2.) this resistance to it; and (3.) this whirling arising from both, was ever to cease, there life, and all sensibility, must cease with them; and therefore these three properties must always do as they do, as the only possible ground of every kind and degree of creaturely life, both in heaven, and on earth.

[Way-3-30] But if life is to be happy, something else must come into them, not to destroy their natural working, but to make every contrariety in them a strife of joy, and delightful sensibilities. Thus, (1.) compressing, or shutting-up, must find itself only to compress and keep in light and love; (2.) the attraction or drawing- motion, must find itself to be the drawing and motion of love; and, (3.) the whirling anguish must whirl still, but as a transport of joy unavoidably brought forth from the strife of love in the two properties of which it is born. And thus nature remains in its full strength; it compresses, it attracts, and it whirls, as it did at first; and nothing is lost, or taken from it, but its hatred, wrath, and misery. Now here you are to observe, that every thing or creature, either in heaven, hell, or this world, hath its substance, or all that is substantiality in it, solely from these three first properties of nature. The creaturely substance of an angel, a devil, or a dead flint, all stand in these three first forms of nature. And all the difference betwixt high and low, spiritual and material, in the creatures, arises from their different participation of the four following forms of nature. But the four following forms cannot exist, or manifest themselves, but in the three first; and therefore the three first are, and must be, as well in the highest as in the lowest of creatures: they are the first something, or substantiality of nature, in which the light, and love, and Spirit of God could manifest itself; for spirit cannot work without something to work in and upon, and in which it may be found; nor could light shine, unless there was something in nature thicker than itself, to receive and reflect it: and therefore, thickness or darkness is, and must be, as eternal as the visible or shining light. Darkness is so far from being a mere negation, or only an absence, of the light, that it is the first and only substance, and the ground of all the possible substantiality in nature, and the substantial manifester of light itself, which could have no visibility, shine, or color, but in and through, and by the substantiality of darkness or thickness. This darkness, thickness, or substantiality, is not co-existent with, or independent of, God, but is the compressing, astringing, thickening work of the first property of the desire; which desire comes eternally from God, only as a magic birth from the will of the Deity, which willeth to come out of its hiddenness into an outward visibility of a working life. And therefore the desire is the beginning of nature; it compresseth and thickeneth. But what does it compress and thicken? Why, nothing but itself; viz. its own three properties. And these three properties thus brought forth, tied and bound in one another, are, from eternity to eternity, all the substantiality and thickness, that is or ever can be in nature, or any creature, from the highest to the lowest. And they are thus brought forth in this indissolvable band in and by the desire, that the invisible light and life of the hidden Deity may have its something to move and shine in; his hidden Spirit have something to work and manifest itself in; his hidden love have something into which it may give itself; and his hidden life have something in which it can open itself in a variety of births of life. And this something is the working compressing desire, which includes itself, (1.) a continual thickening, which is darkness and substantiality: (2.) motion or resistance to this thickening, which is the ground of all sensibility; and, (3.) a restless state of whirling from these two properties, which is the very nature and power of life. And thus these three properties of the desire, are that sufficient something, in which the Deity, by entering into it, can manifest his hidden power in all the substances and working properties of nature, by turning them all in their different workings into an endless variety of delightful forms and sensibilities of the creaturely life.