© 1994-2018, Scott Sperling
True and False Service
"There be many things that move, and yet their motion is not an argument of life. A
windmill when the wind serveth, moveth, and moveth very nimbly too; yet this
cannot be said to be a living creature. No; it moveth only by an external cause, by
an artificial contrivance. So it is also if a man see another man move, and move very
fast, in those things which of themselves are the ways of God: you shall see him
move as fast to hear a sermon as his neighbor doth; he is as forward and hasty to
thrust himself a guest to the Lord's table (when God hath not bid him) as any.
Now,the question is, what principle sets him a-work? If it be an inward principle of
life, out of a sincere affection and love to God and His ordinances, it argueth that
man hath some life of grace; but if it be some wind that bloweth on him--the wind
of state, the wind of law, the wind of danger, of penalty, the wind of fashion or
custom--to do as his neighbors do; if these or the like be the things that draw him
thither, this is no argument of life at all: it is a cheap thing, it is a counterfeit and
dead piece of service."
-- Martin Day (1660)