If then we desire to live as rational creatures, if we would not add heathen lives to christian prayers, if we would perform our baptismal vow, and do God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven; if we would comply with the whole will of God, and answer the end of our blessed Lord’s birth, death, resurrection, and ascension, we must live wholly to God, and make his glory the sole rule and measure of our acting in every employment of life.
For want of knowing, or at least of considering this, we see such a mixture of ridicule in the lives of many people. You see them strict as to some times and places of devotion; but when the service of the church is over, they are like those who seldom or never come there. In their way of life, their manner of spending both time and money, in their cares and fears, in their pleasures and indulgences, in their labours and diversions, they are like the rest of the world. This makes the loose part of the world generally make a jest of those that are thus seemingly devout; not altogether it may be because they are really devoted to God, but because they appear to have no other devotion, but that of occasional prayers.
Julius is very fearful of missing prayers; all the parish suppose Julius to be sick, if he is not at church. But if you ask him, why he spends the rest of his time by humour or chance? Why he is busy at all balls and assemblies? Why he gives himself up to an idle gossipping conversation? If you ask him, why he never puts his conversation, his time, and fortune, under the rules of religion? Julius has no more to say for himself, than the most disorderly person. For he that lives in such a course of idleness and folly, lives no more according to the religion of Jesus Christ, than he who lives in gluttony and intemperance.
Our blessed Saviour and his Apostles did not spend their whole ministry in recommending the duties of public and private prayers; though by their example and precepts they recommended and enforced both; but it is worthy our observation, that after they had laid down a lively faith in God’s mercy through Jesus Christ, as the foundation, they were chiefly taken up in delivering doctrines which relate to common life. For they call upon us “to renounce the world, so as not to be conformed to it: To fear none of its evils, to reject its joys, and have no value for its happiness: To be as new-born babes, that are born into a new state of things; to live as pilgrims, in spiritual watching, in holy fear, and heavenly aspirations after another life: To take up our daily cross, to deny ourselves, to profess the blessedness of holy mourning, and poverty of spirit: To reject the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, so as not to follow or be led by them: To take no anxious thought for the morrow; to live in the profoundest state of humility; to rejoice in worldly sufferings and injuries, when it pleases God to bring them upon us; to forgive and bless our enemies, and to love mankind in the same manner, though not degree, as God loves them. In short, to give up our whole hearts and affections to God, even a God in Christ, and to strive to enter through the strait gate of a sound conversion into a life of eternal glory.”
This is the common devotion, which our blessed Saviour and his Apostles taught, in order to make it the common life of all christians. But yet, though it is thus plain, that this, and this alone, is true christianity, yet it is as plain, that there is little or nothing of this to be found, not only among professed rakes, but even among the better and more sober sort of people. You may see them often at public worship, and the Lord’s table, and hear them talking of grace and religion, and find them pleased with orthodox preachers; but look into their lives, and you see them just the same sort of people as others are, who make no pretences to devotion at all. So that the difference that you find between them, seems to be only the difference of natural tempers, or the effect of a polite and civilized education.
Leo has a great deal of good nature, has kept what they call good company, hates every thing that is false and base, is very generous and brave to his friends, but has concerned himself so little with religion, that he hardly knows the difference between a Jew and a christian.
Eusebius, on the other hand, has had early impressions of religion, sometimes prays extempore, and buys books of devotion, and receives the blessed sacrament once a month. He can talk of all the doctrines of grace, is acquainted with the true state of the controversy between the Calvinists and Arminians, knows all the feasts and fasts of the church, and the names of most men that have been eminent for piety. You never hear him swear, or make a loose jest, and when he talks of religion, he talks of it, as a matter of the last concern.
Here you see, that one person has religion enough, according to the way of the world, to be reckoned a pious christian; and the other is so far from all appearance of religion, that he may fairly be reckoned an heathen; and yet if you look into their common life, you will find Eusebius and Leo exactly alike; seeking, using, and enjoying, all that can be gotten in this world, in the same manner, and for the same ends, even to please themselves, without any prevailing habitual regard to the glory of God. You will find that riches, prosperity, pleasures, indulgences, state, equipage, and honour, are just as much the happiness of Eusebius, as they are of Leo.
And must not all who are capable of any reflection, readily acknowledge, that this is generally the state even of what we commonly term devout people, whether men or women? You may see them different from some others, as to times and places of worship, receiving the sacrament, and with a doctrinal knowledge of the form of sound words; but usually like the rest of the world in all the other parts of their lives. Is it not notorious, that christians are now not only like other men in their frailties and infirmities, (this might be in some degree excusable, since the scriptures inform us, that Elijah was a man of like passions with others) but are they not like heathens, in all the main and chief articles of their lives? Do they not enjoy the world, and live every day with the same indulgence as they did who knew not God, nor of any happiness in another life?
And yet, if christianity has not changed a man’s mind and temper, with relation to these things, what can we say that it has done for him? For if the doctrines of christianity were universally practised, they would make a man as different from other people, as to all worldly tempers, sensual pleasures, and the pride of life, as a wise man is different from an ideot; and it would be almost as easy a thing to know a true professor of christianity, by his outward course of life, as it is now difficult to find any body that lives it.