What can render the state of a person worse than to be an enemy of
God, Jesus Christ, and the power of godliness; and yet to think he is
holy and a good Christian? Nay, because his conscience is blind in the
matter, it acquits him since it lacks saving light, while he keeps up in
a zealous performance of the external acts of duty and religion; by
which means he is deprived of that help which some openly profane gain
from the rebukes and lashes of their own consciences, which often proves
a means of their conversion. But the hypocritical professor, not
knowing he lacks a changed heart, nor understanding that he is without
those Sacred Principles from whence should flow all he acts and does,
but contrariwise he is stirred up by false Principles, and acts only by
the power of natural conscience and affections, having no clear judgment
to discern his own danger, nor what a state he is still in. His
condition is deplorable, and this unclean spirit is worse and more
dangerous than that which he was in before.
Their blindness and ignorance consists in
that they cannot discern nor distinguish between a changed heart and a
changed life, or between legal reformation and true regeneration. They
think, because their behavior seems so much better than it was before,
in their own apprehension, and in the apprehension of others also, their
condition is good enough. They comparing themselves with themselves,
beholding what a vast difference there is, or seems to be in respect of
what they once were, when swearers, drunkards, whoremongers, etc.,
cannot but commend themselves to themselves. Once they saw themselves
sinners, and called themselves so, and were ashamed of their own sinful
and wicked lives; but now they are righteous in their own eyes, and so
have no need of any further work, being arrived to that state of
holiness (so they think) to that degree of piety, to that change, to
that conversion, that they conclude they need not seek for further
change and yet they are deceived…
The state of the self-righteous and Pharisaical persons is far worse
than the state of gross and profane sinners. These are sick and know it
not; wounded, but see no need of a physician… They may conclude they are
converted, and therefore seek not after conversion.
It is a hard and difficult thing to bring a Pharisaical person, one
that looks upon himself to be a religious man, to see his woeful state
and condition. Continue at Benjamin Keach
