Audiobook · read by volunteers
Dialogue Between a Methodist and a Churchman
William Law (1686–1761)
Read by Kirsten Ferreri, David Barnes · 3 chapters · 1 h 34
About the book
Two voices argue in a quiet room: a Methodist and a Churchman. William Law, himself an Anglican priest and a writer whose books were read across Britain, uses their exchange to examine what he saw as some of the most dangerous teachings of Methodism, above all on predestination. Is faith a matter of feeling or of discipline? What is the role of Scripture, of the church and of inward experience? The dialogue is revealing about the religious temper of the eighteenth century. The argument unfolds across three parts, step by step, in the form of a conversation rather than a sermon. In three parts and about an hour and a half, it will interest anyone curious about the history of Christian thought and about how people once argued about the deepest matters.
Introduction
William Law was born in 1686 and died in 1761. An Anglican priest and a Christian mystic, he was among the most prominent, popular and controversial religious writers of his time. His book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, published in 1729, was widely read and influenced many people, and its readers included figures who would become leaders of the Methodist movement. Law's popularity rivalled that of John and Charles Wesley.
Law changed the way many eighteenth-century Anglicans thought about the spiritual side of their faith. He drew on mystical practices from the writings of the early church and applied them to the life and doctrine of the modern English church, with the aim of equipping ordinary lay people to pursue a closer relationship with God. Later in life he turned increasingly to the thought of the German mystic Jakob Böhme.
The Dialogue Between a Methodist and a Churchman is a late work, published around 1760. It takes the form of a conversation, a common device for religious argument, and presents the two sides of a lively dispute in the Church of England of the day.
The recording was made by LibriVox volunteers. It consists of three parts and lasts about an hour and a half. It will be of special interest to listeners who care about religious history, the Wesleys and the roots of evangelical Christianity, but it can also be enjoyed simply as an example of religious argument in the eighteenth century.
Public domain
William Law died in 1761: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text