Monday, July 20, 2015

Gurnall on those who change their "convictions" according to the fashion of the day

Gurnall has been talking about the belt of truth and the need to work hard to get ourselves well-grounded in the truth. Then he says this:
...This might well chastise the strange fickleness and unsettledness of judgment which many labour with in this unconstant age.
Truths in many professors’ minds are not as stars fixed in the heavens, but like meteors, that dance in the air; they are not as characters engraven in marble, but writ in the dust, which every wind and idle breath of seducers deface; many entertain opinions, as some entertain suitors, not that they mean to marry them, but cast them oft as soon as new ones come.
Never was there a more giddy age than ours. What is said of fashion-mongers, that some men, should they see their pictures in that habit which they wore a few years past, would hardly know themselves in their present garb, it is most true in regard of their opinions; should many that have been great professors take a view of their religious principles a dozen years ago, and compare them with their present, they would be found not the same men. They have so chopped and changed, that they seem to have forsaken their old faith.
Not that the old which they renounce was false, or the new which they espouse is true; but because they were either ignorant of the truth they first professed, or were insincere in the profession of it; and it is no wonder that the one should upon easy terms part with that, which he first took upon as weak grounds as now he leaves it; or that the other, who did not love or improve the truth he professed, should be given up of God to change it for an error.
If the heathen, who did not glorify God with the light of nature they had, were righteously given up to a reprobate, injudicious mind to do that which was inconvenient, and morally absurd; then they who dishonour God with the revealed light of Scripture truth much more deserve that they should be given up to that which is spiritually wicked, even to believe lies and errors for truth. A heavy curse, did we rightly judge of it, to wander and wilder in a maze of error, and yet think they are walking in the way of truth.
[William Gurnall and John Campbell, The Christian in Complete Armour (London: Thomas Tegg, 1845), 212-213. Broken into paragraphs]

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