A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life Author:William Law William Law, who wrote this plea for dedicated, practical Christianity in 1728, little thought that his book would become one of the English religious classics. Many readers without knowing it may well approach it as did the young Samuel Johnson at Oxford. "I took up this book," said Johnson, "expecting to find it a dull book (as ... more »such books generally are) and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me." And later Dr. Johnson describes Law's book as "the finest piece of hortatory Christianity in any language." William Law was also tutor to Edward Gibbon, father of the great historian, and the son said of him in the pages of his Autobiography: "In our family he had left the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed and practised all that he enjoined ... Law's master work, the Serious Call, is still read as a popular and powerful book of devotion. His precepts are rigid, but they are founded on the gospel; his satire is sharp, but it is drawn from the knowledge of human life; and many of his portraits are not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere." « less