“Here, again, you find the unsoundness of many professors who consider themselves good Christians; they are partial in the law, and take up with the cheap and easy duties of religion, but go not through with the work. It may be you find them exact in their words, punctual in their dealings, but then they do not exercise themselves unto godliness; and as for examining themselves and governing their hearts, to this they are strangers. You may see them duly at the church; but follow them to their families, and there you shall see little but the world minded; or if they have family duties, follow them to their closets, and there you shall find their souls are little looked after. It may be they seem otherwise religious, but bridle not their tongues, and so “all their religion is vain.” It may be they come up to closet and family prayer; but follow them to their shops, and there you find them in the habit of lying, or some covert and fashionable way of deceit. Thus the hypocrite goes not throughout in the course of his obedience.”
Joseph Alleine (1634 - 1668)
Joseph Alleine was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, in 1633. He loved and served the Lord from childhood. From eleven years of age onward, “the whole course of his youth was an even-spun thread of godly conversation,” wrote one observer. The times, however, are perilous. Charles I was beheaded and his son, Charles II, at the head of a Scottish army, is defeated by Cromwell’s Parliamentarians at Worcester as young Joseph Alleine sets off for Corpus Christi College. At Oxford, Alleine would sit at the feet of such divines as John Owen and Thomas Goodwin.Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted, the best known of his nineteen treatises, was first printed in 1671 (subtitle: A Serious Treatise on Conversion) and subsequently printed as A Sure Guide to Heaven in 1675—the title given to the latest Banner of Truth Trust editions. It is a powerful manual on conversion and the call of the gospel, as the chapter titles reveal: Mistakes about Conversion; The Nature of Conversion; The Necessity of Conversion; The Marks of the Unconverted; The Miseries of the Unconverted; Directions to the Unconverted; The Motives to Conversion.