THE DANGERS OF SELF-DECEPTION
John Angell James
It will help you in the solemn business of self-examination, if I place before you a tabular view of some of the leading marks of false, and true professors, arranged in opposite columns:
| MARKS OF SELF-DECEIVED PROFESSORS | MARKS OF TRUE SAINTS |
|---|---|
| 1. When deep concern about salvation ceased as soon as a profession was made, and an entrance into the church was gained; |
1. When the mind retains its deep solicitude about salvation, and has it increased by the idea, that a lost professor is the most awful of all characters: |
| 2. When, after profession was made, the person soon relapsed into practices, which though not what are called immoral, were considered to be sinful during the season of anxious concern, and as such were renounced: | 2. When there is a continued and increasing dread of sins renounced during concern; and sanctification in these very particulars is carried on with vigour: |
| 3. When evil tempers, natural dispositions, and besetting sins, restrained for a season, resume their usual powers and predominance: | 3. When besetting sins are, if not totally eradicated; yet repressed and kept under, by watchfulness and prayer: |
| 4. When under the consciousness of sin, there is a disposition to take comfort against the reproaches of conscience, in the thought that we are professors: | 4. When the idea of being a professor, makes the thought of sin committed more bitter, and renders us restless and uneasy, till we have obtained forgiveness, by renewed faith and repentance: |
| 5. When we can reconcile ourselves to a low state of personal piety, or to the prevalence of corruption, or to worldly mindedness and conformity, by the idea, that we are not more inconsistent or defective than most other professors, and thus take comfort under the reproaches of an accusing conscience, by thinking we are not worse than others | 5. When the sins of others, and especially of professors, and their low state of piety cause deep grief, and make us additionally anxious to attain to higher degrees of personal godliness, in order that we may preserve the credit of religion, and prevent dishonour from being cast on the name of Christ: |
| 6. When our habitual frame of mind is not characterised by a sincere, anxious, and studious desire to obey God and please him; and our service is only occasional and prompted by the frowns of conscience, and not constant from an impulse of choice and delight: | 6. When we so love God as to feel that our great business and delight is to obey, serve, and please him; and to find that no measure of service will satisfy us, short of absolute perfection: |
| 7. When our obedience is stinted, as well as compulsory, and we are trying with how little religion we can get to heaven, rather than how much holiness we can obtain: | 7. When the motive to obedience, and to all we do in religion is, so far as we can ascertain it, a prevailing desire and aim to glorify God: |
| 8. When we are glad to hear of the failings of ther professors, as an excuse for our own, and are ever ready to quote the misconduct of the saints, whose history is recorded in the scriptures, in justification or pallliation of our own: | 8. When the sins of other professors are matters of grief, humiliation, and distress, and the failings of scripture saints are read with awe, and regarded as beacons to warn us from the rocks on which they split: |
| 9. When we feel dislike with preachers for talking so much about revivals of piety in the church, and with close searching sermons that tend to shew professors their shortcomings, and carry them on to a higher state of personal godliness: | 9. When we are pleased, not only with comforting preaching, and such as dwells on the doctrines of grace, and privileges of believers, but also with close, pungent appeals to the conscience, and discourses that search the heart and lay open its corruptions, and are ever ready to co-operate with our pastors in promoting revivals of the church: |
| 10. When we are much more pleased with the society and conversion of the half hearted and worldly minded portion of the church, than with the more spiritual and heavenly minded, and shun the latter to associate with the former: | 10. When we retire from earthly minded, fashionable, and lukewarm professors, to associate with those who are eminently holy, consistent and heavenly: |
| 11. When we want comforting discourses at the very time our consciences tell us we are living in sin, or the neglect of duty: | 11. When no prospect of gain can induce us to engage in an unlawful occupation; or to carry on a lawful one by forbidden means; and rather than violate truth, honesty. Justice and generosity, we would be content with poverty and a quiet conscience. |
| 12. When we are carrying on any business in itself unlawful, or conducting a lawful one, with violations of truth, honesty, justice, and honor: | 12. When we carry religion with us in to the shop, to regulate all our business, and consider ourselves under solemn obligation to let our light shine forth before worldly men in all our transactions; to make the six days of labour, as well as the one day of rest, a time for glorifying God; and to consider ourselves his servants at all times and in all places: |
| 13. When we take up the idea that religion has nothing to do with trade, and that it is necessary for professors, if they would live, to do as others do; that trade, and trading days are our own, and only the sabbath and sabbath services belong to God: |
13. When we feel not only an obligation, but a pleasure, in practising self-denial, and a willingness to give up the gratifications of appetite and feeling, for the sake of Christ. |
| 14. When we are ever seeking to gratify, and serve, and please ourselves, and neither in matters of appetite nor feeling, nor property, are disposed to practice self denial, but are resolved to enjoy ourselves and live at ease: | 14. When though diligent in business and not careless about property, our chief pleasure in accumulation, is that we have more to do good with; and we avoid luxuries and splendour, that we may have more to spend for God: and while not unmindful of our families, consider that God has claims upon us, as well as they: |
| 15. When we are making it our great, and apparently our main business, to accumulate property, to aggrandise our families, and live in splendour, and give little to the cause of God for the conversion of souls, and give that little also, grudgingly and reluctantly: | 15. When we have a tender conscience easily roused, which will not allow us to engage in doubtful actions: |
| 16. When we have little or no tenderness of conscience, and, disregarding scruples of our own conscience, or the caution of others, proceed to doubtful actions, with as much resolute determination, as we do to the performance of others, about which there is no question: | 16. When we are as careful to abstain from all angry, resentful and malicious feelings, as we are from licentious and dishonest ones: |
| 17. When we live in the habitual indulgence of malevolent, revengeful, and envious tempers: | 17. When our religion is not the spirit of fear, and slavish dread; the service rendered by a slave to a tyrant; but of power, and love, and of a sound mind; the service of a child to a father, in whom he confides, and for whom he has the strongest affection: |
| 18. When our religion is one of fear and dread, rather than of hope and love, and we are led on to obedience by the apprehensions of wrath to come, and not by love to God, and delight in his service: | 18. When there is a strong, steady and laborious desire to do good, especially in the way of converting sinners, by personal exertion, by property, by prayer, so that we feel it to be a part of our calling, and one great end of it to aid in saving souls from death; when we are distressed that little is doing in this way; are willing to make sacrifices to do good; are continually devising means for this purpose; and rejoice in what others are doing, even if they belong not to our party or denomination: |
| 19. When, amidst all the means and incentives to do good, which abound so much in this age, there is no desire to be useful, no impulse of the soul towards that which is going on for the cause of Christ, and the salvation of souls: | 19. When the mind, though not slavishly, or ignorantly anxious about its state, or safety, keeps up a jealous watchfulness over itself, and frequently examines itself before God: |
| 20. When there is no kind of solicitude about our eternal safety, but the matter is taken for granted, without examination, and the soul reposes upon its profession, concluding without evidence, and sometimes against it, that all is right, and that the matter need not be enquired into. |
20. When there is in affliction more anxiety to have it sanctified than removed, and a prevailing acquiescence in the will of God in painful circumstances: |
| Then in all these cases, it may be justly feared that the professor in such a state, is self-deceived, and is no true born child of God. | When the soul feels an habitual drawing to heaven, as to its native country and home: Then may the professor who has such evidence conclude, that he is indeed a true follower of the Lamb, and not self-deceived. |