Dean Gregory lecture on William Law
Apr 15, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Alan P.R. Gregory will explore "Rationality and Sensibility: Bishop Hoadly and William Law" on Wednesday, April 15, at Seminary of the Southwest, 501 E. 32nd Street.
The 2:00 pm lecture by Dr. Gregory, seminary academic dean and associate professor of church history, is open to the public without charge in Knapp Auditorium. Free visitors parking is available in a lot at the southeast corner of Duval and East 32nd Street with entrance off 32nd.
After the lecture, Dr. Gregory will sign copies of his recently-published book - Quenching Hell: The Mystical Theology of William Law. Law was an English cleric, mystic and theological writer whose books on practical divinity influenced the thinking of contemporaries like Dr. Samuel Johnson and John Wesley in the first half of the 1700s.
Law clashed with Bishop of Bangor Benjamin Hoadly over the Bangorian Controversy, aroused by Hoadly's attack on the authority of the Church. Law supported the high church outlook while Hoadly championed a radical liberalism that threatened to reduce the Church to being a creature of the state.
