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William Law and Matter |
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William Law on 'Matter'William Law, was an English non-juror and spiritual writer. He was influential in the lives of John and Charles Wesley, George MacDonald amongst others, and lived from 1686 to 1761. From the Spirit of Love: [Love-1-18] Nature is at first only spiritual. It has in itself nothing but the spiritual properties of the desire, which is the very being and ground of nature. But when these spiritual properties are not filled and blessed, and all held in one will by the light and love of God ruling in them, then something is found in nature which never should have been found, viz., the properties of nature in a state of visible, palpable division and contrariety to each other.And this new state of the properties of nature is the first beginning and birth and possibility of all that contrariety that is to be found betwixt hot and cold, hard and soft, thick and thin, etc., all which could have had no existence till the properties of nature lost their first unity and purity under the light and love of God, manifested and working in them. And this is the one true origin of all the materiality of this earthly system and of every struggle and contrariety found in material things. Had the properties of nature been kept by the creature in their first state, blessed and overcome with the light and love of heaven dwelling and working in them, no wrath or contrariety could ever have been known by any creature, and had not wrath and contrariety entered into the properties of nature, nothing thick or hard or dark, etc., could ever have been found or known in any place. Now everything that you see and know of the things of this world shows you that matter began only in and from the change of the spiritual properties of nature, and that matter is changed and altered just as the light and purity of heaven is more or less in it. How comes the flint to be in such a state of hard, dark compaction? It is because the meekness and fluidity of the light and air and water of this world have little or no existence in it. And therefore, as soon as the fire has unlocked its hard compaction and opened in it the light and air and water of this world, it becomes transparent glass and is brought so much nearer to that first glassy sea in which it once existed. For the light and air and water of this world, though all of them in a material state, yet have the most of the first heavenly nature in them, and as these are more or less in all material things, so are they nearer or farther from their first heavenly state. And as fire is the first deliverer of the flint from its hard compaction, so the last universal fire must begin the deliverance of this material system and fit everything to receive that spirit of light and love which will bring all things back again to their first glassy sea, in which the Deity dwelleth as in his throne. And thus, as the earthly fire turns flint into glass, so earth will become heaven and the contrariety of four divided elements will become one transparent brightness of glory as soon as the last fire shall have melted every grossness into its first undivided fluidity, for the light and love and majesty of God to be all in all in it. How easy and natural is it to suppose all that is earth and stones to be dissolved into water, the water to be changed into air, the air into ether, and the ether rarefied into light? Is there anything here impossible to be supposed? And how near a step is the next, to suppose all this changed or exalted into that glassy sea, which was everywhere before the angels fell? What now is become of hard, heavy, dead, divisible, corruptible matter? Is it annihilated? No; and yet nothing of it is left. All that you know of it is gone and nothing but its shadowy idea will be known in eternity. Now as this shows you how matter can lose all its material properties and go back to its first spiritual state, so it makes it very intelligible to you how the sin of angels, which was their sinful working in and with the properties of nature, could bring them out of their first spirituality into that darkness, grossness, and chaos out of which God raised this material system. See now, sir, how unreasonably you once told me that our doctrine must suppose the eternity of matter, for throughout the whole you might easily have seen that it neither does nor can suppose it, but demonstrates the impossibility of it; shows the true origin of matter, that it is no older than sin; could have no possibility of beginning to be, but from sin, and therefore must entirely vanish when sin is entirely done away. |
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