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.