Think again, how many poor souls see heaven lost, and lie now expecting a miserable eternity, for their homage to a world, that thinks itself every whit as well without them, and is just as merry as it was when they were in it. Is it therefore worth your while to lose the _smallest degree_ of virtue, for the sake of pleasing so _bad a master_, and so _false a friend_ as the world is? Is it worth your while to bow the knee to such an _idol_ as this, that so soon will have neither _eyes_, nor _ears_, nor a _heart_ to regard you, instead of serving that great, and holy, and mighty God, that will make all his servants partakers of his own eternity? Will you let the fear of a false world, that has no love for you, keep you from the fear of that God, who has only created you, that he may love and bless you to all eternity? 13. Consider our blessed Lord’s words, _They are not of this world, as I am not of this world_. This is the state of Christianity, with regard to this world. If you are not thus out of, and contrary to the world, you want the distinguishing mark of Christianity; you don’t belong to Christ, but by being out of the world as he was out of it. We may deceive ourselves, if we please, with softening comments upon these words; but they are and will be understood in their first simplicity and plainness, by every one that reads them in the same spirit that our blessed Lord spoke them. And to understand them in any lower meaning, is to let carnal wisdom explain away that doctrine, by which itself was to be destroyed. Christianity has placed us out of, and above the world; and we fall from our calling, as soon as we fall into the tempers of the world. Now as it was the spirit of the world that nailed our blessed Lord to the cross; so every man that has the Spirit of Christ, that opposes the world as he did, will certainly be crucified by the world some way or other. For Christianity still lives in the same world that Christ did; and these two will be utter enemies, till the kingdom of darkness is entirely at an end. Had you lived with our Saviour as his true disciple, you had then been hated as he was; and if you now live in his Spirit, the world will be the same enemy to you now, that it was to him then. 14. _If ye were of the world_, saith our blessed Lord, _the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you_. John xv. 19. We are apt to lose the true meaning of these words, by considering them only as an _historical description_ of something that was the state of our Saviour and his disciples at that time. But this is reading the scripture as a _dead letter_: for they as exactly describe the state of true Christians at this, and all other times, to the end of the world.