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{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State}
The next matter for self-examination is whether you are in a thriving and flourishing state or not. Have you made satisfactory progress in holiness? Or are you at a standstill or backsliding? To help you in this, I will only give you these two or three short directions.
Helps for Examination: Compare Yourself with Yourself
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Compare Yourself with Yourself}
Compare your present state with your former state. Look back and consider what you were or have been at any time since you first believed, and then see what ground you have gotten or lost.
Helps for Examination: Compare Your State with Your Time and Resources
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Compare Your State with Time and Resources}
Compare your state with the time that you have had since your conversion, your means, opportunities, and different talents that you have received. See if your stature in grace is consistent with how long you have been a Christian. If you have been a Christian planted in the Lord’s vineyard, for seven, ten, or twenty years, consider if your spiritual growth is consistent with that length of time. See if the fruit of your life is consistent with the resources God has given you. If you have been a Christian many years, and yet have little spiritual stature, if your knowledge is still little, if your faith is still weak, if your love is still cold, if your peace and comforts are still uncertain, and if your corruptions are still as many and mighty as they were many years ago, you may conclude that you are in a poor state, and indeed, to be out of the state of grace.301 This is the more true if the waters of grace and peace rise lower than they did formerly.
Helps for Examination: Compare Your State with the Best of Other Christians
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Compare Your State with the Best Christians}
Compare yourselves with the best of other Christians with whom you have been equal in time and other circumstances.302 See if you have kept pace with the best of your peers. Beware if you see yourselves behind your peers, especially if you see many who have started the Christian life later than you to have outrun you and are way ahead of you. Beware if you see newer Christians or those with few gifts, fewer helps, or greater hindrances to have made more progress than you. Beware if those who have been only a few hours in the field are returning home laden with the sheaves they have gotten while you have been there all the day and have gotten only a few poor handfuls. If these are true, you will have no reason to think that it is overly well with you.
You Christians who are in this state, a barren and growthless state, O, labor to see it, lament it, and acknowledge it: “I confess it is even so with me. I confess this is my case.” If it is so, bewail it, mourn over your neglects, and bemoan your poverty. Suppose you had a business of a normally lucrative type, a good stock of goods, and good markets. If you were to trade and trade from time to time and never prosper, but be poor and low when you see others of the same trade flourish and grow rich, how near would it go to your heart? Christianity is a good trade. Grace is a good stock of goods. The ordinances of God under which you have lived have been good markets. Many that have set up long after you did have grown rich: rich in grace, rich in comfort, and rich in good fruits. It is lamentable that you should still be so poor and left behind. Oh, lament over it, and consider that now, at length, it is time for you to look better to yourselves.
Causes of Lack of Growth, Hindrances to Flourishing in Grace
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Flourishing in Grace}
That you may get into a better state, examine a little further: What is it that has hindered your thriving and kept you back? One or more of some of the following hindrances, which I will mention to you, are very likely to have kept you back.303
A Slight and Cursory Performance of Holy Duties
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Flourishing in Grace
Slight and Cursory Holy Duties}
Duties have a great influence on the state of our hearts and lives. Look at what Christians are in their secret duties and you will find them much the same in their ordinary course of life. If you see one who professes to be a Christian who is dead, barren, careless, and unsavory in his life, follow him into his prayer closet and, ten to one, you will find him as slight, dead, and heedless in his prayers. Those who slide over their duties will only limp in their course of holiness. Consider whether this is true in your case.
Unprofitable Conversation with Christian Friends
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Unprofitable Christian Conversation}
The communion of saints should improve for the education of saints. Christians should find other matters to talk of than their corn and cattle and the weather or news. What? Do you not have God, Christ, and your souls to be reminding each other of? Is there never a word of that country [Heaven] to which you are traveling? We should come together to get light from each other’s candles and get warmth from each other’s fires. If you squander away such opportunities, it is no wonder if you remain dark and cold. Examine yourself to see if you are at fault here.
Unnecessary Conversation with Carnal Friends
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Unnecessary Carnal Conversation}
Frothy and unsavory company leaves a chill, damp, and vanity on our spirits. Is it for nothing that Christ requires His disciples to forsake all the world, father, mother, son, and daughter (John 12:25, Matthew 10:37)? How much more is this true of carnal friends who are at a greater distance relationally? If we cannot forget these, they will quickly help us to forget our God and ourselves.
Yet, Christianity does not teach us to abandon relationships or to be uncivil. Rather, it requires that we give to all their dues: friendship to whom friendship, courtesy to whom courtesy, and duty to whom duty belongs. Christianity does teach us that we do not unnecessarily converse with those whose society we may avoid. We also may not converse unwarily with those whom we may not avoid.304 Whomever your dwelling may be with, let your delight be in the saints. If God places you among others, be on your guard against them rather than too close to them. Keep such a due distance as will neither hinder you in your duties to them nor hamper you in your duty to God. Examine yourself in this matter.
Excessive Busyness in Worldly Affairs
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Excessive Busyness in Worldly Affairs}
You may be overly busy with the affairs of this life. It may be that you find so much work to do around you that you let all lie in disorder inside of you. It may be that the reason why your hearts are so cold is that you have so many irons in the fire. You have so many fields to look after that your garden is all overrun with weeds.
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Guilt of Some Unrepented Sin}
There may be remaining guilt of some unrepented sin. Israel cannot prosper while there is an accursed thing in the camp (Joshua 7:1).
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Unmortified Lust}
You may live under the power of some unmortified305 lust, and yet you may take no notice of it. It may be that you have a proud heart, an angry fretful heart, or an envious, revengeful heart. And it may be this that makes you pine away. An unmortified lust in the heart is like a moth in the garment that eats out its strength and mars the beauty of it. Pride in the heart is as proud flesh in a wound.306 Whatever treatments are used, the wound remains uncured until the proud flesh is removed. An angry, fretful heart is like a wolf in the breast. Whatever remedy is applied, the heart will prey upon and devour it, and the body will pine away until all of the fretting attitude is cured. And likewise, any other prevailing lust will have the same effect. A man with consumption307 who is wasted away to skin and bone will never be healed and his strength will never return until the corroding rheum308 is removed, despite whatever cordials or restoratives he takes. If there is any prevailing lust in your soul, especially if you indulge it, it will be vain to use many medicines. You cannot be cured until that lust is subdued. You may pray and fast and complain all your life long of your deadness, barrenness, and languishing state. But you will still pine away as long as there is any iniquity in your heart in which you indulge. Search diligently and ensure this is not your state.
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
The field of the sluggard is a barren field. He who will not plow, sow, weed, watch, or work in his field is likely to have only a poor crop (Proverbs 24:30–34). [Successful use of the means of grace takes diligent work. Ed.]
Contentedness with a Poor and Low Spiritual Condition
{The Application
Application for the Godly
The Right Performance of Holy Duties
Directions for the Duty of Self Examination
Whether You Are in a Thriving and Flourishing State
Hindrances to Growth and Grace
Contentedness with Poor Spiritual State}
You may be contented with a poor, low, and barren spiritual state. Some who are born poor live all their days adapted to their poverty and never look for riches. For all you know, your heart might have been in a much better state if you had sought spiritual riches. It is the Christian who earnestly desires spiritual riches who is a spiritually rich Christian. Among worldly people, the covetous of the earth are the rich people of the earth. These are the people who have money and lands and have joined house to house and field to field (Isaiah 5:8). And it may be, if you had been spiritually covetous, you might have joined grace to grace and comfort to comfort, and have had great spiritual possessions before now. But you have been a narrow-hearted and poor-spirited creature who never had any ambition. You never took up any plan to grow great and rich toward God; thus it is that you are as you are.
Christian, it may be that none of the preceding causes mentioned have brought you spiritual poverty or hold you under it. But it may be this last, contentedness with a little grace, to which you owe most of your pining away. This is too common a case with Christians. We do not have large hearts toward God. We are not covetous after holiness. We are too contented to be babes in Christ and children in the grace and knowledge of God. Oh, where will we find a Christian who is resolved to be spiritually rich, to seek great things for himself, the great things of eternity, to bring forth much fruit? It is no wonder there are so many barren sheep in Christ’s fold, so many barren fig trees in Christ’s vineyard, and so many starveling souls among the professors of Christianity. There are so few who seriously plan to be fruitful. We might have been like those sheep Solomon mentions (to resemble the Church by) in Song of Solomon 6:6, in which every one bears twins. We might have gotten double of what we have done if we had had an earnest mind for it.
Brethren, consider how it is with you. If you find it to be that your souls are not in a thriving state, search minutely to see if some of the foregoing particulars might have kept you back. And when you have found out the cause of your disease, do not rest until it is removed. For you may be well assured that that which has hindered will continue to hinder until it is taken out of the way.
301There is a common and significant exception to this test that Alleine gives. In some cases, a genuine believer may suffer poor spiritual growth for a long time due to lack of sound teaching, bad teaching, a period of sinful lukewarmness, protracted struggles for solid faith and assurance, isolation from other (especially mature) believers, or any of a number of other adverse circumstances or personal sins. Then there comes a time when that believer gains access to spiritual resources and means of grace, repents of significant sin, or is otherwise set on a course of solid growth in Christ by the Holy Spirit. Those in such a situation should compare their present state, not with their time of conversion, but with the start of their new trajectory.
302The editor wishes to remind the reader of “Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding” (2 Corinthians 10:12 ESV). Skilled hypocrites do exist and we cannot know what is deep in the heart of another. Beyond that, the Holy Spirit sovereignly dispenses natural gifts, spiritual gifts, and lesser or greater visible blessing on more or less equal labors. Thus, the editor wishes to urge the reader to use caution with respect to Alleine’s present advice. Such comparison with others may trigger serious self-examination, but should not be used alone or as a substantial diagnostic criterion.
303Alleine will list a number hindrances, each of which are due to sin on the part of the believer. Yet there are at least two more things worth mentioning. First, as exemplified by this book, sound teaching by godly men (and, for women, sound teaching by godly older women), whether in person or by preaching, lectures, or books, can be extremely helpful for spiritual growth by opening up the Scriptures to us and providing practical advice. Regrettably, not all believers have access to such resources, especially in persecuted countries. Regrettably also, there are congregations that do not emphasize spiritual growth and discipleship. Thus some believers may be unaware of what resources are available and thus not seek them out. Second, even when sound teaching is available, in some cases, false presuppositions, cultural or linguistic barriers, an adverse past, or subtle mental impairments may interfere with an ability to fully receive even sound teaching. Disciple-makers thus need to be alert for such silent barriers to full communication of the truth. By way of example, those abused or abandoned by earthly fathers may have little concept of real fatherhood to the detriment of their understanding of their duties as a father and of their relationship to their Heavenly Father. Yet, in the end, though He may use various means, it is the Holy Spirit who opens God’s truth to us.
304No human interaction done in obedience to Christ—for example, cultivating friendships with unbelievers for evangelistic purposes—would be considered unnecessary in this context.
305mortify: put to death. “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5 ESV).
306proud flesh: hypergranulation or overgranulation. This is a still-current medical term for a situation during wound healing in which an excess of granulation tissue forms in a wound, typically above the surface, and which greatly hampers healing of the wound. However, in current practice, surgical removal of the proud flesh is generally considered a last resort treatment. The interested reader should consult the medical literature. As horses are especially prone to proud flesh in wounds, this topic would have been more familiar to Alleine’s readers than today.
307consumption: active pulmonary tuberculosis.
308corroding rheum: a term that is a product of ancient medical theories involving “humors.”
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