True Christianity: A Quote from almost 300 years ago

The other day I was re-reading Richard Lovelace's Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal (I will be highlighting things I'm learning from this over the coming months) and found some quotes by a Pietist pastor from nearly 300 years ago (1712). So I went to the source and discovered a treasure: Anthony William Boehm's Introduction to the English translation of John Ardnt's True Christianity. [I am not all that impressed with Ardnt's book, for it is marked too heavily by the great weaknesses of the Pietist approach (namely, an overly-individualized Christianity), but Boehm's Intro comments are golden.]

Here are a few:

"true Christianity is, to be principally concerned with the essentials and substantials of religion; such as is the great work of faith and of the new birth, with the rest of the Christian virtues freely accompanying it, as resignation, mortification, imitation of CHRIST, self-abnegation, contrition, and others relating to the inward principle of grace, and its various motions and operations"

In other words, Biblical Christianity focuses on the centrality of the Gospel and the chief fruits that always flow from the Gospel.

But he continues: "but false Christianity is chiefly, if not only, busy about the ceremonial part, and some accessory and circumstantial points. It brings forth every age new schemes, new’ models, new projects-of religion. And hence it is, that what religion produces now, is often contrary to what it is designed to produce, and to what it brought forth actually, when it first came to be known among men."

In other words, the fake version of Christianity is caught up into the ceremonies of the faith or controversial tangents that are exciting for the moment but can easily distract us from the Glory of Christ and the immeasurable beauty and depth of the Gospel. False Christianity focuses on new schemes, models, and projects. That this was written almost 300 years ago is amazing, because this describes Evangelical Christianity over the past 50 years and especially today. Virtually all churches are so into finding the newest scheme, model, or project that will be the solution to fixing the church and especially to igniting church growth. Meanwhile, Christ and His Person and Work get left in the shadows. And necessarily, true Christian growth (real sanctification) and the radically sacrificial life of Faith is by-passed. By focusing on diversions, this imitation of Biblical Christianity prolongs immaturity and keeps people away from Christ rather than leading them to Him (even though the schemes, models, and projects may have actually led people to Jesus initially, but once they become the focus, Christ becomes an afterthought). We see this profoundly played out in the book of Colossians. This is why Paul calls them back to the wonders of Christ and the true Christian life, which is rooted in Him who is the Treasure of all wisdom and understanding.

"false Christian is apt to lean on an outward compliance with some set duties and modes of worship".

This danger includes looking to both aesthetically-moving high liturgy and emotionally-moving contemporary forms of worship to be what gives life. [Worship should be both aesthetically & emotionally moving, but these are not to be what gives worship life.]

"True Christianity requires that the word of the gospel, as the ordinary means of man's recovery, should become an ingrafted word; a word mixed with faith in the hearer; that so it may be able to save the soul"

The life giving source for us is the Gospel that looks to Christ for life both initially and as we seek to grow.

Col 2:6-10a "Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete"

More from Boehm on True Christianity

"Real piety and true practical Christianity has been all along an unwelcome guest in all ages, in all parties and denominations, in all states of Christendom: and men, however they pretend to honour it, have found out a way to keep its power and energy at a convenient distance not caring to be too nearly acquainted with a religion, whose main scope is to matter the corrupt bent and bias of nature, and to bring the will of men into an entire compliance with the will of God."

Again we see this sadly played out in epidemic proportions in the church today.

Note: I reposted these Boehm quotes so that they can be followed more easily and in sequence on my blog.

Boehm Quotes #3

"6. It is true, abundance of dead works of the Papists, which vulgar eyes admired in those days, have been laid aside by Protestants: but is not our dead faith, which too many have raised instead thereof, as empty a thing as their deal works? Where is that compunction and brokenness of heart, that poverty in spirit, that humility, those internal breathings, longings, and desires after Christ the author of salvation? Where is that inward knowledge and sense of the spirituality of the law, and that sorrow, grief, and anxiety of heart attending the experimental knowledge of our apostasy from God? And yet all this must needs proceed the practical application of the doctrine of faith, if ever the latter shall leave a saving change upon the mind, and prove a shelter in the day of wrath, and a stay in the storm of temptation. For all these acts of humiliation are comprehended in the drawing of the Father, which is the forerunning dispensation of the law, whereby the soul, as by a school master is brought at last unto Christ, to be justified by faith. No sooner does she come to believe in Christ. but she is thereby removed from that stock which is wild by nature. and is in grafted into Christ the true vine, in whom she now lives like a branch, and brings forth much fruit.

7. But where are those fruits which must unavoidably follow the doctrine of faith if duly applied by a returning sinner? Where are those sweet emanations and rivers of living water, which will readily flow, and often gush forth from the believer, though there were never a law to compel them? Where is that mortification of the deeds of the flesh, together with the succeeding newness of life? Where is that new creature, that patient resignation and submission to the will of God in his disposals of us? Where is that love of God shed abroad in the heart, and those other heavenly virtues and fruits of the Spirit springing up from the principle of faith as from a divine seed lodged within the soul? Are not these weighty and practical doctrines of true Christianity, both as they precede and follow the settlement of a divine faith, if not quite lost, yet despised, neglected, silenced among~ Protestants in this degenerate age?"

(19.) indeed many left the Pope, but never came to Christ. They cast away the more notorious prejudices, but took up more refined ones, and never received the love to truth, or any inward principle of grace.


(20.) As they were very dry, so everything seemed dead and destitute of a principle of life in the times of popery. Not as if there had been no Saviour at all, but because there were too many. It seems the guides and governors felt in themselves a secret conviction of the deplorable deadness and emptiness of that church, and for this reason contrived abundance human helps, means, inventions, thereby to amuse the ignorant, and to supply the place of a living Christ and Saviour. But all this would not do. The bones continued dead and dry. At last the work of reformation began. Christ is preached up as the fountain of life, to wash away the sin and uncleanness of the world.

Boehm on How Sectarianism Often Replaces Gospel Christianity

"8. The doctrine of faith itself has fared no better. Faith, as it is now in vogue, signifies no more than a firm adhering to a certain sect and denomination of people, and a violent maintaining of such particular tenets as have been received and approved by that party. All the ingredients of such a faith are nothing but human education, custom, tradition, persuasion, conversation. The zeal which goes along with it is entirely the effect of self-love and off corrupt reason, the two great framers of sects and party-notions….This faith is handed down from one generation to the other; one friend persuading the other into the fame notional belief, and parents leaving it to their children, by way of inheritance….Thus is faith, which, according to its primitive standard of scriptural signification, is entirely a creation of God, made a work and persuasion of men, and a traditional business, without so much as one ray of true gospel-light shining into the heart."


"12. The enemy of souls is always busy to obstruct such endeavours as have a direct tendency to the promoting of true faith and religion. This doth plainly appear from the conduct of those who succeeded indeed the first reformers; but did not labor so much to express their inward life and spirit, as tolerably to keep up to outward form, scheme and model by them raised. This has been in all ages one of the sources of corruption. Many have presumed to value themselves and their way of worship, upon a scheme of religion introduced by some apostolical and eminent men, without stirring up in themselves, a spirit of holy emulation, whereby to answer not only the external formality, but the inward zeal also, the love, wisdom, indefatigable diligence, and, other divine characters which rendered their predecessors so conspicuous in their time. But what else can be expected from so dangerous a mismanagement of the work of reformation, but a piece of self-Christianity, consisting in a naked profession of some particular tenets and opinions of men?"

Boehm Quotes #5

"9. …. True faith, whenever it is seated in the mind, brings forth works suitable to its inward impulse and constitution. These are termed good works, fruits of righteousness, fruits of the Spirit, rivers of living water ; because they are brought forth by a believer as freely as a good tree yields its fruits, and a plentiful fountain its water. The true Christian is constantly employed about doing good, and laying out what he has received"

The Nature of True Faith from Luther in Boehm

"Quote from Luther in Boehm’s intro to Ardnt:
(10.) " Many, (says he) when they hear the gospel, frame unto themselves a thought, which says, I believe. This thought of theirs being excited by their own strength, is counted by them true faith: Whereas it is their own fiction and cogitation leaving no experimental impression at all upon the heart. And as it is but a human business, so it is not followed neither be any good work, nor amendment of life. But true faith is a divine work within us, whereby we are changed and born anew of God. It mortifies the old Adam, and makes us quite other men, in heart, in mind, in temper, and in all the faculties of our soul, bringing along with it the Holy Spirit of God. 0h, it is certainly a lively, active, operative, and mighty work to have faith! So that it is altogether impossible for it, not to be constantly employed about some good thing or other. Nor doth faith ask a while, whether one ought to do good works; for it hath done them before one can ask, and is continually employed about doing. He therefore who is destitute of such works, is for certain a faithless man or downright unbeliever. "

Boehm Quotes #6

"11. the former being in a manner lost [i.e., active faith]; it is no wonder, the latter shoots forth into many luxuriant branches, and quite degenerates into some empty moralities, raised on no other foundation than the scanty goodness of the natural man."

"24.... True Christianity is a creation of GOD: but the advocates of false Christianity do not rise above themselves; but spin all their religious duties, as it were, out of their own bowels. There is nothing of heaven in it; nothing of grace; nothing of the Divine nature. Every duty they seemingly perform is a mere human creation."

Boehm on Truly Christianity Community

"21. … Where is that true communion the body ought to have with the head, and the uninterrupted influence the head ought to have again upon the body Where are the vital emanations which must needs attend so close an union and the real effects derived again from this union, upon the life, manners, desires, thoughts, actions, and the whole internal and external conduct of a Christian? Again: if the body be considered in relation to the members; where is then that sweet fellowship to be found in our modern church-societies which one member ought to bear to the other, and which makes every one employ its particular gifts for the profit and benefit of the whole, in a manner most abounding and universal, free from hatred, envy, bitterness, strife and animosities, as things utterly inconsistent with the nature of the church, body, and spouse of Christ? Where is that spiritual: sympathy and fellow-feeling, wherewith those that are not dead, but living members of this spiritual body, must needs be affected among themselves? Where is that divine coherence and symmetry not so much in particular opinions, forms, schemes, and modes of an external way of worship, as in spirit, in power, and in reciprocal acts of an endearing love, and of a most cordial friendship?"

Where is this in the church today? This is one of my deep passions and whole-hearted pursuits.