to stumble and fall; and will be, if God prevents not, the ruin of many more.
Faith. Well, my brother, I am bound to believe you, not only because you say you know him, but also because, like a Christian, you make your reports of men. For I cannot think that you speak these things of ill-will, but because it is even so as you say.
Chr. Had I known him no more than you, I might, perhaps, have thought of him as at the first you did; yea, had I received this report at their hands only that are enemies to religion, I should have thought it had been a slander—a lot that often falls from bad men’s mouths upon good men’s names and professions. But all these things, yea, and a great many more as bad, of my own knowledge, I can prove him guilty of! Besides, good men are ashamed of him; they can neither call him brother or friend; the very naming of him among them makes them blush, if they know him.
Faith. Well, I see that saying and doing are two things, and hereafter I shall better observe this distinction.
Chr. They are two things, indeed, and are as different as are the soul and the body; for as the body without the soul is but a dead carcass, so saying, if it be alone, is but a dead carcass also. The soul of religion is the practical part. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” This Talkative is not aware of; he thinks that hearing and saying will make a good Christian; and thus he deceiveth his own soul. Hearing is but as the sowing of the seed; talk is not sufficient to prove that fruit is indeed in the heart and life.
