“Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.”

—  William Law

As quoted in Art and the Message of the Church (1961) by Walter Ludwig Nathan, p. 120.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light,…" by William Law?
William Law photo
William Law 34
English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer 1686–1761

Related quotes

“As man lives, and moves, and has his Being in the Divine Nature, and is supported by it, whether his Nature be good or bad; so the Wrath of Man, which was awakened in the dark Fire of his fallen Nature, may, in a certain Sense, be called the Wrath of God, as Hell itself may be said to be in God, because nothing can be out of his Immensity; yet this Hell, is not God, but the dark Habitation of the Devil. And this Wrath which may be called the Wrath of God, is not God, but the fiery Wrath of the fallen Soul.
And it was solely to quench this Wrath, awakened in the human Soul, that the Blood of the Son of God was necessary, because nothing but a Life and a Birth, derived from him into the human Soul, could change this darkened Root of a self-tormenting Fire, into an amiable Image of the holy Trinity, as it was at first created.
This was the Wrath, Vengeance, and vindictive Justice that wanted to be satisfied, in order to our Salvation; it was the Wrath and Fire of Nature and Creature kindled only in itself, by its departing from true Resignation, and Obedience to God.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

Christian Regeneration.
The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)

Libba Bray photo

“The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die." He winks. "But not without one hell of a fight.””

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine (2009), p. 365

Karl Barth photo

“The Holy Spirit is the coming of the man Jesus, who is the Son of God, to other men who are not this but with whom He still associates* And the witness of the Holy Spirit is the disclosure to these men, and therefore their discovery, of the fact that because they are associated with Him they can be called what they are certainly not called of themselves, and be what they can certainly never become or be of themselves children of God, children of light who in the midst of death are freed from the fear of death because as sinners they are freed from the curse of sin, and as such messengers to all those who, because they do not see the light, are still in darkness, but are not to remain in this darkness.”

Karl Barth book Church Dogmatics

4:2
Church Dogmatics (1932–1968)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

““They did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom. i. 28), and though they could not extinguish “the Light that lighteth every man,” and which “shone in the darkness;” yet because the darkness could not comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of it, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the Light had drawn upward from the ground (i. e., from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that Light alone had made visible”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

i.e., by super-inducing on the animal instinct the principle of self-consciousness
Aids to Reflection (1873), footnote to Aphorism 106 part 13

Henri Barbusse photo

“Men have gone towards each other because of that ray of light which each of them contains; and light resembles light.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: Men have gone towards each other because of that ray of light which each of them contains; and light resembles light. It reveals that the isolated man, too free in the open expanses, is doomed to adversity as if he were a captive, in spite of appearances; and that men must come together that they may be stronger, that they may be more peaceful, and even that they may be able to live.
For men are made to live their life in its depth, and also in all its length. Stronger than the elements and keener than all terrors are the hunger to last long, the passion to possess one's days to the very end and to make the best of them. It is not only a right; it is a virtue.

Michael Connelly photo

“There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.”

Michael Connelly The Scarecrow

Source: The Scarecrow

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“If the light is
It is because God said 'Let there be light.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

At Sunrise, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Libba Bray photo

“The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Bhagawan Nityananda photo

“There is light in the heart; there is no darkness in it. If a man's head be struck off, we cannot say who the man is by simply looking at his trunk. It is the heart which sees through the eye. A man must have the internal eye.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

95
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Pope Francis photo

“God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

In the letter I wrote to you, you will remember I said that our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone.
2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

Related topics