William Law
William Law (16869 April 1761) was a
Church of England priest who lost his position at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, when his conscience would not allow him to take the required
oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch,
King George I. Previously, William Law had given his allegiance to the
House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation
non-juror. Thereafter, Law continued as a simple priest (
curate), and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately and wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing, greatly influenced the
evangelistic movement of his day, as well as
Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer
Samuel Johnson and the historian
Edward Gibbon. In 1784,
William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the politician, philanthropist, and leader of the movement to stop the slave trade, was deeply touched by reading William Law's book ''A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life'' (1729). Law's spiritual writings remain in print today.
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