Law, WILLIAM, one of the ablest controversialists of the 18th century, was born a grocer's son at Kingscliffe, in Northamptonshire, in 1686, entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1705, and became a fellow in 1711. At the accession of George I. he found himself unable to subscribe the oath of allegiance, and consequently forfeited his fellowship. About 1727 he became tutor to the father of Edward Gibbon at Putney, and here, or at Cambridge with his pupil, he spent ten years 'the much honoured friend and spiritual director of the whole family.' Gibbon, in his autobiography, speaks of the unworldly thinker with unusual warmth as 'a worthy and pious man who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.' The elder Gibbon died in 1737, and three years later Law retired to his native village, and there was soon joined by his disciples, Miss Hester Gibbon, sister of his pupil, and Mrs Hutchesson, a wealthy widow. The two ladies had a united income of about £3000 a year, and most of this they spent in those works of charity to which they devoted themselves in their seclusion, which lasted over twenty years. Law rose at five, and spent many hours of every day in silent meditation and in exercises of devotion. About the year 1733 he had begun to study the writings of Jacob Boelme, and most of his later books are more or less expositions of his mysticism. Law died in his retreat, April 9, 1761. William Law, however unworldly in his theology, was a strong thinker and a consummate dialectician. He won his first triumphs against Bishop Hoadly, in the famous Bangorian controversy, with his Three Letters (1717). His Remarks on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1723; republished by F. D. Maurice, 1844) is a masterpiece of incisive logic, caustic wit, and terse and vigorous English. Only less admirable is the Case of Reason (1732), in answer to Tindal's able book, Christianity as old as the Creation. But the most famous of his works remains the Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), to which Dr Johnson ascribed his first religious convictions, and which profoundly influenced the Wesleys, and earned the praises of Gibbon. Of Law's mystical works may be named The Way to Divine Knowledge, and The Spirit of Love (1752).
There are two collected editions of his works, each in 9 vols.—that of 1762 and that of Moreton (1893 et seq.). See C. Walton's Notes and Materials for a Complete Biography (1848), Canon Overton's William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic (1881), and Dr Whyte's Characters and Characteristics of William Law (1892). See also Lecky's History of England in the 18th Century; and Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the 18th Century.