The easy minister

Next to these are the good-natured, good sort of men, who live an easy, harmless life, neither troubling themselves with outward sin nor with inward holiness. Men who are remarkable neither one way nor the other, neither for religion nor irreligion, who are very regular both in public and in private, but do not pretend to be any stricter than their neighbors. A minister of this kind breaks not one, or a few only, of the least commandments of God, but all the great and weighty branches of his law which relate to the power of godliness, and all that require us to pass the time of our stay here in fear, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, to have our loins always girded and our lights burning (Luke 12:35), to strive, or agonize, to enter at the narrow gate (Luke 13:24). And he teaches people to do so by the whole form of his life and the general tenor of his preaching, which uniformly tends to soothe those in their pleasing dream who imagine themselves Christians and are not, to persuade all who attend his ministry to sleep on and take their rest. No wonder, therefore, if both he and those who follow him wake together in everlasting burnings (Isaiah 33:14).