_First_, If he that is in CHRIST be a new creature, this may serve as a reproof for those who rest in a bare performance of outward duties, without perceiving any real inward change of heart.
We may observe a great many persons to be very punctual in the regular returns of public and private prayer, as likewise of receiving the holy communion, and perhaps now and then too in keeping a fast. But here is the misfortune, they rest barely in the use of the means, and think all is over, when they have thus complied with those sacred institutions; whereas, were they rightly informed, they would consider, that all the instituted means of grace, as prayer, fasting, hearing and reading the word of GOD, receiving the blessed sacrament, and such-like, are no farther serviceable to us, than as they are found to make us inwardly better, and to carry on the spiritual life in the soul.
It is true, they are means; but then they are only means; they are part, but not the whole of religion: for if so, who more religious than the Pharisee? He fasted twice in the week, and gave tythes of all that he possessed, and yet was not justified, as our Saviour himself informs us, in the sight of GOD.
You perhaps, like the Pharisee, may fast often, and make long prayers; you may, with _Herod_, hear good sermons gladly. But yet, if you continue vain and trifling, immoral or worldly-minded, and differ from the rest of your neighbours barely in going to church, or in complying with some outward performances, are you better than they? No, in no wise; you are by far much worse; for if you use them, and at the same time abuse them, you thereby encourage others to think there is nothing in them, and therefore must expect to receive the greater damnation. But,
_Secondly_, If he that is _in_ CHRIST be a new creature, then this may check the groundless presumption of another class of professors, who rest in the attainment of some moral virtues, and falsely imagine they are good christians, if they are just in their dealings, temperate in their diet, and do no hurt or violence to any man.
But if this was all that is requisite to make us christians, why might not the heathens of old be good christians, who were remarkable for these virtues? or St. _Paul_ before his conversion, who tells us, that he lived in all good conscience? but we find he renounces all dependance on works of this nature, and only desires to be found in CHRIST, and to know the power of his resurrection, or have an experimental proof of receiving the Holy Ghost, purchased for him by the death, and ensured and applied to him by the resurrection of JESUS CHRIST.
The sum of the matter is this: christianity includes morality, as grace does reason; but if we are only mere Moralists, if we are not inwardly wrought upon, and changed by the powerful operations of the Holy Spirit, and our moral actions, proceed from a principle of a new nature, however we may call ourselves christians, we shall be found naked at the great day, and in the number of those, who have neither CHRIST’s righteousness imputed to them for their justification in the sight, nor holiness enough in their souls as the consequence of that, in order to make them meet for the enjoyment, of GOD. Nor,
_Thirdly_, Will this doctrine less condemn those, who rest in a partial amendment of themselves, without experiencing a thorough, real, inward change of heart.
A little acquaintance with the world will furnish us with instances, of no small number of persons, who, perhaps, were before openly profane; but seeing the ill consequences of their vices, and the many worldly inconveniencies it has reduced them to, on a sudden, as it were, grow civilized; and thereupon flatter themselves that they are very religious, because they differ a little from their former selves, and are not so scandalously wicked as once they were: whereas, at the same time, they shall have some secret darling sin or other, some beloved _Dalilah_ or _Herodias_, which they will not part with; some hidden lust, which they will not mortify; some vicious habit, which they will not take pains to root out. But wouldst thou know, O vain man! whoever thou art, what the LORD thy GOD requires of thee? thou must be informed, that nothing short of a thorough sound conversion will fit thee for the kingdom of heaven. It is not enough to turn from profaneness to civility; but thou must turn from civility to godliness. Not only some, but “all things must become new” in thy soul. It will profit thee but little to do many things, if yet some one thing thou lackest. In short, thou must not only be an almost, but altogether a new creature, or in vain thou boasteth that thou art a christian.