“The unmortified Christian and the heathen share the same religion.” || William Penn

The unmortified Christian and the heathen are of the same religion. For though they have different objects to which they do direct their prayers, that adoration in both is but forced and ceremonious, and the deity they truly worship is the god of the world, the great lord of lusts: to him they bow with the whole powers of soul and sense. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? And how shall we pass away our time? Which way may we gather wealth, increase our power, enlarge our territories, and dignify and perpetuate our names and families in the earth? Which base sensuality is most pathetically expressed and comprised by the beloved Apostle John, in these words: “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,” which, says he, “are not of the Father, but of the world, that lieth in wickedness.” (1 John, ii. 16.)

It is a mournful reflection, but a truth no confidence can be great enough to deny, that these worldly lusts fill up the study, care, and conversation of wretched Christendom! and, which aggravates the misery, they have grown with time. For as the world is older, it is worse; and the examples of former lewd ages, and their miserable conclusions, have not deterred, but excited ours; so that the people of this seem improvers of the old stock of impiety, and have carried it so much further than example, that instead of advancing in virtue upon better times, they are scandalously fallen below the life of heathens. Their high-mindedness, lasciviousness, uncleanness, drunkenness, swearing, lying, envy, backbiting, cruelty, treachery, covetousness, injustice, and oppression, are so common, and committed with such invention and excess, that they have stumbled and embittered infidels to a degree of scorning that holy religion, to which their good example should have won their affections.

Excerpted from No Cross, No Crown by William Penn. Public domain.