XV. Consider again, that besides the rewards of the other life, the devoting yourself wholly to God has a great reward even in this life, as it makes religion _doubly_ pleasant to you. Whilst you are divided betwixt God and the world, you have neither the pleasures of religion, nor the pleasures of the world; but are always in the uneasiness of a divided state of heart. You have only so much religion as serves to disquiet you; to check your enjoyments; to shew you a _hand-writing upon the wall_; to interrupt your pleasures; to reproach you with your follies; and to appear as a _death’s head_ at all your feasts; but not religion enough to give you a taste and feeling of its proper pleasures and satisfactions. You dare not wholly neglect religion; but then, you take no more of it than is just sufficient to keep you from being a terror to yourself; and you are as loath to be _very good_, as you are fearful to be _very bad_. So that you are just as happy as the _slave_, that dares not run away from his master, and yet always serves him against his will. Instead of having a religion that is your comfort in all troubles, your religion is itself a _trouble_, under which you want to be comforted; and those days and times hang heaviest on your hands, which leave you only to the offices and duties of religion. _Sunday_ would be very dull and tiresome, but that it is but one day in _seven_, and is made a day of _dressing_ and _visiting_, as well as of divine service. You don’t care to keep away from the public worship, but are always glad when it is over. This is the state of half _piety_; thus they live who add religion to a worldly life; all their religion is mere _yoke_ and _burden_, and is only made tolerable by having but little of their time.
XVI. _Urbanus_ goes to church, but he hardly knows whether he goes out of a sense of duty, or to meet his friends. He wonders at those people who are _prophane_, and what pleasure they can find in irreligion; but then, he is in as great a wonder at those who would make every day a day of divine worship. He feels no more of the pleasures of piety, than of the pleasures of prophaneness. As religion has every thing from him but his _heart_, so he has every thing from religion but its _comforts_. _Urbanus_ likes religion, because it seems an _easy_ way of pleasing God; a _decent_ thing, that takes up but little of our time, and is a proper _mixture_ in life: but if he was reduced to take _comfort_ in it, he would be as much at a loss, as those who have lived without God in the world. When _Urbanus_ thinks of joy, and pleasure, and happiness, he does not think at all of religion. He has gone through a hundred misfortunes, fallen into variety of hardships; but never thought of making religion his _comfort_ in any of them. He makes himself quiet and happy in another manner. He is content with his Christianity, not because he is _pious_, but because he is not _prophane_. He continues in the same course of religion, not because of any real good he ever found in it, but because it does him no hurt.
*To such poor purposes as these do numbers of people profess Christianity. Let me therefore exhort you to a _solid piety_, to devote yourself wholly unto God; that entering deep into religion, you may enter deep into its comforts; that serving God with all your heart, you may have the peace and pleasure of a heart that is at unity with itself. When your conscience once bears you witness, that you are _stedfast_, _immoveable_, _and always abounding in the work of the Lord_, you will find that your reward is already begun, and that you could not be less devout, less holy, less charitable, or less humble, without lessening the most substantial pleasure that ever you felt in your life. So that to be content with any lower attainments in piety, is to rob ourselves of a present happiness, which nothing else can give us.
XVII. You would perhaps devote yourself to perfection, but for this or that _little difficulty_ that lies in your way; you are not in so convenient a state for the full practice of piety as you could wish: but consider that this is nonsense, because perfection consists in conquering difficulties. You could not be perfect as the present state of trial requires, had you not those difficulties and inconveniences to struggle with. These things therefore which you would have removed, are laid in your way, that you may make them so many steps to glory.