48. This religion, which alone is of value before God, is the very thing you want. You want (and in wanting this, you want all) the religion of love. You do not love your neighbour as yourself, no more than you love God with all your heart. Ask your own heart now, if it be not so? ’Tis plain you do not love God. If you did, you would be happy in him. But you know, you are not happy. Your _formal_ religion no more makes you happy, than your neighbour’s _gay_ religion does him. O how much have you suffered for want of plain-dealing! Can you now bear to hear the naked truth? You have _the form of godliness_, but not _the power_. You are a mere whited wall. Before the Lord your God I ask you, are you not? Too sure. For your _inward parts are very wickedness_. You love _the creature more than the Creator_. You are _a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God_. A lover of God! You do not love God at all, no more than you love a stone. You love the world; therefore the love of the Father is not in you. 49. You are on the brink of the pit, ready to be plunged into everlasting perdition. Indeed you have a zeal for God: but not according to knowledge. O how terribly have you been deceived! Posting to hell, and fancying it was heaven. See, at length, that _outward religion_ without _inward_, is nothing; is far worse than nothing, being indeed no other than a solemn mockery of God. And _inward religion you have not_. You have not the faith _that worketh by love_. Your _faith_ (so called) is no living, saving principle. It is not the apostle’s faith, _the substance_ (or subsistence) _of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen_. So far from it, that _this_ faith is the very thing which you call _enthusiasm_. You are not content with being without it, unless you blaspheme it too. You even revile that _life which is hid with_ Christ _in_ God; all seeing, tasting, hearing, feeling God. These things are _foolishness unto_ you. No marvel; _for they are spiritually discerned_. 50. Oh! no longer shut your eyes against the light. Know you have a name that you live, but are dead. Your soul is utterly dead in sin; dead in pride, in vanity, in self-will, in sensuality, in love of the world. You are utterly dead to God. There is no intercourse between your soul and God. _You have neither seen him_ (by faith, as our Lord witnessed against them of old time) _nor heard his voice at any time_. You have no spiritual _senses exercised to discern spiritual good and evil_. You are angry at infidels, and are all the while as mere an infidel before God as they. You have _eyes that see not, and ears that hear not_. You have a _callous, unfeeling_ heart.