Think again, how many poor souls see heaven lost, and lie now expecting a miserable eternity, for their homage to a world, that thinks itself every whit as well without them, and is just as merry as it was when they were in it.
Is it therefore worth your while to lose the smallest degree of virtue, for the sake of pleasing so bad a master, and so false a friend as the world is?
Is it worth your while to bow the knee to such an idol as this, that so soon will have neither eyes, nor ears, nor a heart to regard you, instead of serving that great, and holy, and mighty God, that will make all his servants partakers of his own eternity?
Will you let the fear of a false world, that has no love for you, keep you from the fear of that God, who has only created you, that he may love and bless you to all eternity?
13. Consider our blessed Lord’s words, They are not of this world, as I am not of this world. This is the state of Christianity, with regard to this world. If you are not thus out of, and contrary to the world, you want the distinguishing mark of Christianity; you don’t belong to Christ, but by being out of the world as he was out of it.
We may deceive ourselves, if we please, with softening comments upon these words; but they are and will be understood in their first simplicity and plainness, by every one that reads them in the same spirit that our blessed Lord spoke them. And to understand them in any lower meaning, is to let carnal wisdom explain away that doctrine, by which itself was to be destroyed.
Christianity has placed us out of, and above the world; and we fall from our calling, as soon as we fall into the tempers of the world.
Now as it was the spirit of the world that nailed our blessed Lord to the cross; so every man that has the Spirit of Christ, that opposes the world as he did, will certainly be crucified by the world some way or other.
For Christianity still lives in the same world that Christ did; and these two will be utter enemies, till the kingdom of darkness is entirely at an end.
Had you lived with our Saviour as his true disciple, you had then been hated as he was; and if you now live in his Spirit, the world will be the same enemy to you now, that it was to him then.