William Law will have to be noticed hereafter. Suffice it to remark now, that, after obtaining a fellowship at Emanuel College, Cambridge, and officiating as a curate in the metropolis, he refused to take the oaths prescribed by parliament on the accession of George I., lost his fellowship, left the pulpit, and became tutor to Edward Gibbon, father of the renowned historian. He was now resident at Putney, and is described as rather above the middle size, stout but not corpulent, with broad shoulders, grey eyes, round visage, well-proportioned features, an open countenance, and rather inclined to be merry than mournful. His “Christian Perfection” was first published in 1726, just before Wesley read it; and, in strong, clear, racy language, maintains that Christianity requires a change of nature, a renunciation of the world and worldly tempers, self-denial and mortification, in short, a life perfectly devoted to the service of God. Clergymen are reminded that it is far more important to visit the poor and sick, and to be wholly occupied in the cure of souls, than in studying the old grammarians. Vain books and stage entertainments are denounced in the strongest terms; and a close imitation of the life and example of Christ Jesus is enforced with the utmost earnestness. The work throughout is one of the most intensely religious books in the English language; and had it shown the way of attaining holiness as clearly as it enforces the practice of it, it would in all respects have been unequalled. The “Serious Call” is a kindred book, and written in the same earnest and pungent style. “It is,” wrote Wesley, within eighteen months of his decease,—“It is a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, in the English tongue, either for beauty of expression, or for justness and depth of thought.”[56] The effect produced upon Wesley,[57] by reading these two invaluable books, was immense. “I was convinced,” says he “more than ever of the impossibility of being half a Christian, and determined to be all devoted to God, to give Him all my soul, my body, and my substance.”[58]