202 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



[2ndS. N0 63., Mar. 14.'57. 



tAW S PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS. 



Referring to the conclusion of the article (" N. & 

 Q." 2"'^ S. i. 515, 516), I now give the proposed Ab- 

 stract of Mr. Law's philosophical writings (vols, 

 ii. and iii. of Introduction to Theosophy\ which 

 may be said to constitute an essential preliminary 

 study to the Works of Jacob Bohme. These pieces, 

 (with those contained in the preceding volume) 

 are what our popular religious writers designate 

 " Law's Mystical Writings," though the logical 

 and philosophical student will consider them 

 simply to contain a familiar yet strict demonstra- 

 tion of the true faith and practice of the Christian 

 Religion, — not from the gospel revelation of the 

 Old and New Testaments, but from the ground 

 and viystery of the eternal Nature itself originally 

 opened and revealed by God in Behmen, as asserts 

 Mr. Law. So that, whosoever shall become ac- 

 quainted with, and have but sufficient intellectual 

 ability, honesty of purpose, and patience, to r^ad 

 and duly examine such revelation, — be he who he 

 may, Hindoo, INIahomedan, Jew, or Christian un- 

 believer, — he will be forced to yield himself a con- 

 vert to the doctrine, if not to the practice, of the 

 true Christian Faith. And thus, it is maintained, 

 was the groundwork laid by Divine Providence, 

 (i. e. by a counterpart gospel of natural religion,) 

 for the introduction of the intellectual alien nations 

 out of their patriarchal religious philosophy, into 

 the evangelical fold of Christianity. AVhence also 

 has proceeded the radical, universal refinement of 

 philosophy and theology among the western na- 

 tions. 



" Book V. — The Appeal : or the Fundamental Doc- 

 trines of Christianity Demonstrated. (Forming a Practical 

 Guide to the Science of True Metaphysics.) 



" Chapter t. — Of creation in general. Of the origin of 

 the soul. Whence will and thought are in the creature. 

 AVhy the will is free. The origin of evil solely from the 

 creature. This world not a first immediate creation of 

 God. How the world comes to be in its present state. 

 The first perfection of man. All things prove a trinity in 

 God. Man hath the triune nature of God in him. 

 Arianism and deism confuted by nature. That life is 

 uniform through all creatures. That there is but one 

 kind of death to be found in all nature. The fallen soul 

 hath the nature of hell in it. Regeneration is a real birth 

 of a divine life in the soul. That" there is but one salva- 

 tion possible ill nature. This salvation onlj' to be had 

 from Jesus Christ. All the rationalist's faith and hope 

 proved to be false. 



" Chapter II — Of eternal and temporal nature. ITow 

 nature is from God, and the scene of his action. How the 

 creatures are out of it. Temporal nature created out of 

 that which is eternal. The fallen angels brought the first 

 disorders into nature. This world created to repair those 

 disorders. Whence good and evil are in everything t)f 

 this world. How heaven and hell are the foundation, or 

 generate the whole of this world. How the fire of this 

 world differs from eternal fire; and the matter of this 

 world from the materiality of heaven. Eternal nature is 

 the kinirdom of heaven, the beatific manifestation of the 

 triune Deity. The Deity is rnere love and goodness. 

 How wrath and anger came to be ascribed to God; Of 



fire in general. Of the unbeginning fire. Of the spiritu- 

 ality of fire. How fire comes to be in material things. 

 Whence the possibility of kindling fire in the things of 

 this world. Every man is, and must be, the kindler of 

 his own eternal fire or spiritual life. 



" Chapter III. — The true ground of all the doctrines of 

 the gospel discovered. Why Adam could make no atone- 

 ment for his sins. Why and how Jesus Christ alone can 

 make this atonement. Whence the shedding of blood for 

 the remission of sins. What wrath or anger it is, that is 

 quenched and atoned by the blood of Christ. • Of the last 

 sufferings of Christ. Why and how we must eat tlie 

 flesh and drink the blood — of the universal heavenly 

 body or nature — of Jesus Chi-ist. 



" Book VI. — The Spirit of Prayer, or the Way to Re- 

 generation. In Three Parts. — (Being a Popular Treatise 

 of the Art of Reconstituting the Dislocated Principles of 

 Man's Threefold Life, or Nature, in their Original created 

 Order, Relations and Subserviency. According to the 

 Grounds established in the preceding Book V.) 



" Part First. Chapter I. — The indifference and insen- 

 sibility of men in general to their eternal interests. The 

 original state of man as the son of God, or central child of 

 the total divine and astral nature. His unavoidable trial 

 and his fall. The groundwork commencement of his re- 

 demption. His real nature and state by reason of sin : 

 how it differs from that of the fallen angels. The means 

 of his salvation, or recovery of the Light and holy Spirit 

 of God. The new birth not a figurative expression, but a 

 real, living process, or moral transmutation and vege- 

 tation. The whole chapter being a familiar discourse 

 of matters preparatory' to the spirit of prayer. 



" Chapter II. — In what salvation, or the regenerate life 

 consists, namely, in the manifestation of the nature, life and 

 spirit of Jesus Christ in the neiv inward man. The means 

 of attaining such a state lie in faith, or the right direction 

 and earnest working of the will. How the ground or 

 principium of faith, which is a seed of '■ Chi-ist," called in 

 scripture the "seed of the woman," or the "engrafted 

 word," lies graciously implanted in every soul. Its open- 

 ing, awakening and developement, the only way of salva- 

 tion. The tokens by which the regenerate life discovers 

 itself. All depends on adherence to it (as the place or centre 

 of God to us), and removing all impediments of earthly lusts 

 away from it. The infallible truths by which we may 

 be assured that our dependance is well grounded. The 

 abandonment of self, and the true nature and worth of 

 self-denials and mortification. No activity of our own of 

 any avail to salvation. The only way is the desire of the 

 soul wholly turned to God. £The further elucidation of 

 these points will be found in the last dialogue of the 

 hereafter following treatise of the " Spirit of Love."] 



"PaktSecoj^d [the argument being set forth in the 

 form of Dialogues, between (1.) Theophilus, alearned sage, 

 and master of the science contained in the writings of 

 Jacob Bohme, surnamed centralis philosophus, (2.) an 

 academic, or scholastic-theologian and metaphysician, 

 (3.) a plain, unlettered, common-sense christian, and (4.) a 

 rationalist, or natural moralist — whether Deist, Unitarian, 

 or modern Swedenborgian.'] 



" Dialogue I. — Introduction, on the vanity of spiritual 

 knowledge where there is no earnest devotion. Mj'Stical 

 or spiritual books only useful as calls to the renunciation 

 of self, and the cultivation of the new life. The nature of 

 self described, and the necessity of its complete oblation 



or death demonstrated. The actual grounds of this 



necessity here shown to be in the nature of things, and not 

 in the arbitrary provisions of God's providence. How the 

 Will of the creature stands between God and Nature, as 

 the onlj' opener of ail good and evil. Its turning to God 

 in true faith, or fixed imagination and earnest desire, the 



