#1.0 Title Spirit of Prayer

The Spirit of Prayer

or

The Soul Rising out of the 

Vanity of Time

into the 

Riches of Eternity

In TWO PARTS

by William Law, M.A.

The Fourth Edition
Revised and Corrected by the Author 1758 

originally reformatted and annotated In My Anguish

January in the year of our of Lord, 2011

  Some Matters preparatory to the Spirit of Prayer by William Law.

The torments of the damned in hell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The original format is here on Christian Classics but it is of the 1749 version. Recently I got a hold of the revision by Reverend Law  in 1758.  That made me decide to update my adaptation of the book here on Blogspot,  where I  originally started my work, instead of continuing it on WordPress, where I moved the blog, in 2012.

Part of my reasoning for return, was  to the surprising lack of interest in the piece.  Over the two years that I have been WordPress I have noticed a distinct difference in the reading viewership of the two sites with Google being superior, at least for a religious audience.  Frankly, that surprised me.

On Scribd.com  that the whole pdf of the 1758 can be found ;  Christian Classics  has only the the first edition. I have noticed many differences and I do think that the '58 edition is the better one.  That means though, starting my work from scratch, but to be honest, my original work was a mix-up and hard to follow, but I doubt that was the reason for lack of viewership on WordPress.

What I have done is paraphrase,   Law's writings,  while still trying to keep the original capitalizations  as I think that they had some flavour to the piece,  but updating the spellings and grammar,  when they are so different from Modern English as to be either distracting or misleading.  When necessary I had added (in parentheses) meanings of archaic words.

In correcting, Rev. Law's grammar, that often entails, breaking up some of his very long Proustian passages as well explaining the  analogies, or modernizing them as the case may be so that they relevant.    Finally when Law refers to verses in the Bibles I have copied the whole verse into the text so that the reading is seamless,  and one does not have to check back and forth between the piece, and the Bible for references as modern audiences are not as conversant with the Bible as former ones were (remembering that reading implied a solid education).  This  latter update has been personally very helpful.  I have tried to use either the KJV or the ASV; sometimes I have used the modern NET Bible -- in all cases I have relied as far as possible on texts in the public domain.

When using the KJV because I know many find it difficult to read, I have put in the bridges that fill in the gaps look for this  [   ]  within the scripture here is an example.  As time and familiarity with KJV and other Bibles grow, you will find that the [] are like training wheels and no longer needed.

Nehemiah 13 King James Version (KJV)
13 On that day they read in the book of Moses [to] the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God ever; 2 Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but [instead] hired Balaam -- a pagan god -- against them, that he [our Lord] should curse [the Israelites] : [and so ]  our God turned the curse into a blessing.

Something about Law:

Samuel Johnson , the great British essayist, & John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, called William Law their spiritual father. He was a personal tutor, to Edward Gibbon, father of the great historian and writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman His influence of many English thinkers and religious thought is profound and unfortunately, forgotten.

Both Johnson & Wesley, felt that Law was as integral to Protestant thought as Martin Luther, primarily because he outlined the Christian ethical ideal for human life,  and how to achieve it -- exhorting his audience to be steadfast in discipline & constant inprivate prayer. Where Rev. Wesley disagreed with his spiritual mentor, and it quite was strongly,  was in Law's using the Midrash* & his emphasis on the mystical experience of "knowing God".

While this idea of Christian mysticism had long been a facet of Eastern Orthodox prayer, and in the Lives of the Roman Catholic  Saints (St Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake for her "hearing voices" from God on how to save France; St Bernadete was considered too stupid to have actually had a visitation, etc.),  it was a very alien idea to the Protestant "no frills" literal-text ethic.

Mysticism though has a strong universal attraction for man, and it can be found throughout the world in various apparitions like Chinese Taoism, Modern day Kabbalists, Buddhism and Muslim Sufism, but for Wesley the "literal reading" (no metaphor, similes or symbols)  of the Good Book, had no place in their mindset, and Wesley heavily objected to this whole idea of Christian mysticism & the creation of a Personal Jesus.

Law though,  insisted that there much Bible precedence for it, like 2 Peter 1 v21's explanation of the historical role of prophecy: "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but [by] holy men of God [who] spake as [though] they were moved by the Holy Ghost," [KJV] and thankfully  Rev. Jonathan Swift of Dublin and the poet, Alexander Pope, urged him in many meetings and much correspondence, on despite the Wesleyan outrage & thankfully Law listened to better heads and wrote on.

I hope you enjoy this adaptation, & that it  eases your questions, and comforts your worries, as we both grow stronger in Our Father.

============

The Midrash is commonly defined as the process of interpretation, where  the rabbis fill in "gaps" of understanding that are found in the Torah.   Today that is often done with the various "Commentaries" that are either separate or part of the Holy Bible itself.  In both cases, the Midrash and current commentary, they are a literature that seeks to ask the questions that if the  reader/listener could, ask the teacher (Rabbi/writer).