Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today marks the anniversary of the death of William Law, English theologian, scholar, and author of influential devotional works. Law's book, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) made a significant impression on many prominent 18th-century characters in the English Evangelical movement, including John and Charles Wesley, Samuel Johnson, William Wilberforce, and George Whitfield.

I find Law's writing to be tremendously challenging and convicting, and not simply because he writes about devotional practices with an insistence we don't usually hear. It is rather that his writing reminds me of the holy people I have met in my life. People who live with a profound simplicity and singleness of purpose, who don't get sidetracked by people, things, power, or whatever.

These faithful Christian people have taught me that there are two things necessary for the Christian life. The first is prayer -- both corporate, sacramental worship and private prayer. The second is ascesis -- the notion of traditional Christian disciplines. The purpose of both things is similar. Worship and prayer teach us how to speak to God, how to come into God's presence, where we can experience change. Alexander Schmemann once wrote that the purpose of liturgy is to make us 'nostalgic' of the possibility that we can become saints. Similarly, ascesis (prayer, fasting, repentance) have an essentially positive purpose: to heal our spiritual illness, to tame our passions, and to bring about wholeness.

William Law's writing seems to echo these priorities, in that he understands the critical need to 'go all in' as a Christian, to devote oneself wholeheartedly to devotional practices because of their ultimate purpose. Prayers themselves, to Law, are not devotion, but rather, 'Devotion signifies a life given or devoted to God.'

Blessings,
Justin

P.S. You can read A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life entirely online. The table of contents gives you a good notion of the book's contents.