Laurel
A tree which Apuleius classes among the plants which preserve men from the influence of evil spirits. It was also believed to give protection from lightning. Laurin or Der Kleine Rosengarten: A Tyrolese romance of the late thirteenth century. Laurin, a dwarf, possesses a magic rose-garden into which no one may enter without the loss of a hand or a foot. Dietrich and his follower Witege, enter it, and the latter rides through the rose bushes. Laurin, the dwarf, appears, on horseback and dismounts Witege. He is challenged by Dietrich and, assuming his cloak of invisibility, wounds him. Dietrich now persuades him to a wrestling match and wrenches off the dwarf's belt which gives him super-human strength. Thus he overthrows Laurin. Laurin then invites Dietrich and his followers to his mountain home, prepares them a banquet, makes them tipsy, and throws them all into a dungeon. They are released by Künhild, a mortal woman, who restores their weapons. They take Laurin prisoner and carry him to Bern where he becomes a Christian convert and receives Künhild in marriage.
Law, William: English Mystic and Theologian (1686-1761.) William Law was born at Kingscliffe, Northamptonshire, in the year 1686. His father followed the humble calling of a grocer, but it is manifest that he was in tolerably affluent circumstances nevertheless, and ambitious besides, for in 1705 William was sent to Cambridge University. Entering Emmanuel College, he became a fellow thereof in 1711, but on the accession of George I. he felt himself unable to subscribe the oath of allegiance, the inevitable consequence being that he forfeited his fellowship. In 1727 he went to Putney, having acquired there the post of tutor to the father of Edmund Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire in decline, and he acted in this capacity for ten years, winning universal esteem the while for his piety and his theological erudition. In 1737, on the death of his employer, Law retired to his native village of Kingscliffe, and it would seem that thenceforth he was chiefly supported by the purses of some of his devotees, notably Miss Hester Gibbon, sister of his guardian pupil, and a widow named Mrs. Hutcheson. These two ladies had a united income of fully £3000 a year, so Law must have been comfortable indeed, yet wealth and luxury did not tend to corrupt his piety, and it is recorded that he was wont to get up every morning at five, and spend several hours before breakfast in prayer and meditations. At a considerably earlier stage in his career he had begun publishing theses on mysticism, and on religion in general; and now, being blessed with abundance of leisure, and having acquired fresh inspiration from reading the works of Jacob Boehme, he produced year after year a considerable mass of writing. Thus his life passed away placidly, and he died in 1761.
Law's works amount in all to some twenty volumes.
His début as a writer was made in 1717, with an examination of certain tenets lately promulgated from the pulpit by the Bishop of Bangor; and this was followed soon afterwards by a number of analogous writings, while in 1726 he employed his pen to attack the theatre, bringing out a book entitled The Absolute Uulawfulness of the Stage Entertainment fully Demonstrated. In the same year he issued A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection, and this was followed shortly by A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians. This last is the best-known of his works, but others which it behoves to cite are The Grounds and Reason of Christian Regeneration (1739), The Spirit of Prayer (1749), The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752), The Spirit of Love (1752), and Of Justification by Faith and Works (1760). Most of the foregoing, but especially the Serious Call, have been reprinted again and again; while in 1762 a collected edition of Law's works was published, and in 1893 there appeared a sort of anthology, made up of extracts from the writer, chosen by Dr. Alexander Whyte. In his preface the editor speaks of Law's "golden books," while he adds that Leannan "In sheer intellectual strength Law is fully abreast of the very foremost of his illustrious contemporaries, while in that fertilising touch which is the true test of genius, Law stands simply alone." Numerous other encomiums no less enthusiastic than this have been offered to the mystic, and it is noteworthy that he has engaged the interest of many great writers. Sir Leslie Stephen, for example, deals with him in his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, and again in his pleasant Studies of a Biographer: while the mystic figures also in the brilliant pages of W. E. H. Lecky, and in Gibbon's Autobiography he is hailed as worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined." 66 a