Scripture: "Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."—1 Cor xii. 3
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy," was the dying legacy of William Law to the Church. He had corrected the proofs of the greater part when he was taken away. He invites the clergy to its perusal with the assurance that he desires "not to call their attention to any thing but the one thing needful, the one thing essential, and alone available to our rising out of our fallen state, and becoming as we were at our creation, an holy offspring of God, and real partakers of the Divine nature."
"If it be asked, What this one thing is; It is the sprit of God brought again to His first power of life in us."
"Everything else, however glorious and divine in outward appearance, everything that churches or reformations can do for us, is dead and helpless, but so far as it is the immediate work of the Spirit of God breathing and living in it. The end and design of all that is written in Scripture is only to call us back from the spirit of Satan, the flesh, and the world, to be again under the full Dependence upon and Obedience to the Spirit of God, Who out of free love and thirst after our souls, seeks to have His first power of life in us. All love and delight in Scripture, which is merely human, is but the self-love of fallen Adam, and can have no better a nature till it proceeds from the inspiration of God, quickening His own life and nature within us, which alone can bring forth a godly love. For if it be an immutable truth, that 'no man can call Jesus, Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,' it must be a truth equally immutable, that no one can have any Christlike temper, or power of goodness, but so far as he is immediately led and governed by the Holy Spirit."
Let us remember that it is of little profit to know the meaning of what we read; the great question is, whether we have taken the instruction to heart. Do we indeed believe that this is the one thing needful for the Church and ourselves, the deep conviction that God's one desire is that the Holy Spirit should have the place in us that He had in Adam before the Fall, so that the only thing that gives value to our religion is that it is the immediate work of the Spirit of God.
