"I am a Christian," said Mr. Bragwell; "many of my friends are Christians, but I do not see as it has done us much good." "Christianity itself," answered Worthy, "can not make us good, unless it be applied to our hearts. Christian privileges will not make us Christians, unless we make use of them. On that shelf I see stands your medicine. The doctor orders you to take it. Have you taken it?" "Yes," replied Bragwell. "Are you the better for it?" said Worthy. "I think I am," he replied. "But," added Mr. Worthy, "are you the better because the doctor has ordered it merely, or because you have also taken it?" "What a foolish question," cried Bragwell; "why to be sure the doctor might be the best doctor, and his physic the best physic in the world; but if it stood forever on the shelf, I could not expect to be cured by it. My doctor is not a mountebank. He does not pretend to cure by a charm. The physic is good, and as it suits my case, though it is bitter, I take it."
"You have now," said Mr. Worthy, "explained undesignedly the reason why religion does so little good in the world. It is not a mountebank; it does not work by a charm; but it offers to cure your worst corruptions by wholesome, though sometimes bitter prescriptions. But you will not take them; you will not apply to God with the same earnest desire to be healed with which you apply to your doctor; you will not confess your sins to one as honestly as you tell your symptoms to the other, nor read your Bible with the same faith and submission with which you take your medicine. In reading it, however, you must take care not to apply to yourself the comforts which are not suited to your case. You must, by the grace of God, be brought into a condition to be entitled to the promises, before you can expect the comfort of them. Conviction is not conversion; that worldly discontent, which is the effect of worldly disappointment, is not that godly sorrow which worketh repentance. Besides, while you have been pursuing all the gratifications of the world, do not complain that you have not all the comforts of religion too. Could you live in the full enjoyment of both, the Bible would not be true."
Bragwell. Well, sir, but I do a good action sometimes; and God, who knows he did not make us perfect, will accept it, and for the sake of my good actions will forgive my faults.
Worthy. Depend upon it, God will never forgive your sins for the sake of your virtues. There is no commutation tax there. But he will forgive them on your sincere repentance for the sake of Jesus Christ. Goodness is not a single act to be done; so that a man can say, I have achieved it, and the thing is over; but it is a habit that is to be constantly maintained; it is a continual struggle with the opposite vice. No man must reckon himself good for any thing he has already done; though he may consider it as an evidence that he is in the right way, if he feels a constant disposition to resist every evil temper. But every Christian grace will always find work enough; and he must not fancy that because he has conquered once, his virtue may now sit down and take a holiday.
Bragwell. But I thought we Christians need not be watchful against sin; because Christ, as you so often tell me, died for sinners.
Worthy. Do not deceive yourself: the evangelical doctrines, while they so highly exalt a Saviour, do not diminish the heinousness of sin, they rather magnify it. Do not comfort yourself by extenuation or mitigation of sin; but by repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not by diminishing or denying your debt; but by confessing it, by owning that you have nothing to pay, that forgiveness is to be hoped.
Bragwell. I don't understand you. You want to have me as good as a saint, and as penitent as a sinner at the same time.
Worthy. I expect of every real Christian, that is, every real penitent, that he should labor to get his heart and life impressed with the stamp of the gospel. I expect to see him aiming at a conformity in spirit and in practice to the will of God in Jesus Christ. I expect to see him gradually attaining toward the entire change from his natural self. When I see a man at constant war with those several pursuits and tempers which are with peculiar propriety termed worldly, it is a plain proof to me that the change must have passed on him which the gospel emphatically terms becoming "a new man."
Bragwell. I hope then I am altered enough to please you. I am sure affliction has made such a change in me, that my best friends hardly know me to be the same man.
Worthy. That is not the change I mean. 'Tis true, from a merry man you have become a gloomy man; but that is because you have been disappointed in your schemes: the principle remains unaltered. A great match for your single daughter would at once restore all the spirits you have lost by the imprudence of your married one. The change the gospel requires is of quite another cast: it is having "a new heart and a right spirit;" it is being "God's workmanship;" it is being "created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works;" it is becoming "new creatures;" it is "old things being done away, and all things made new;" it is by so "learning the truth as it is in Jesus—to the putting off the old man, and putting on the new, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" it is by "partaking of the divine nature." Pray observe, Mr. Bragwell, these are not my words, nor words picked out of any fanatical book; they are the words of that gospel you profess to believe; it is not a new doctrine, it is as old as our religion itself. Though I can not but observe, that men are more reluctant in believing, more averse to adopting this doctrine than almost any other: and indeed I do not wonder at it; for there is perhaps no one which so attacks corruption in its strongholds; no one which so thoroughly prohibits a lazy Christian from uniting a life of sinful indulgence with an outward profession of piety.