Required reading
Sure Guide to Heaven (Puritan Paperbacks) by Joseph Alleine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Chapter 3 (please read the whole chapter)
My notes and thoughts
Basically Alleine is systematically demonstrating that without conversion everything is meaningless, meaningless.
1) You yourself have no purpose: 'An unsanctified man cannot work the work of God.'
2) Creation has no purpose in sustaining you: 'While you are unconverted, all the offices of the creatures are in vain to you. Your food nourishes you in vain. The sun holds forth its light to you in vain. Your clothes warm you in vain. Your beast carries you in vain.' I think this is the first time I've come across this argument and I like it. What a waste of food it is when people use that energy for sin.
3) Religion has no purpose: 'God's work must be done according to God's mind, or he will not be pleased; and this cannot be, except it be done with a holy heart.'
4) Your hope is useless: 'To hope we shall be saved, though continuing unconverted, is to hope that we shall prove God a liar.'
5) Christ's work is meaningless. Alleine spends the majority of his time on this point and I think rightly so. To damage God's glory is more terrible than to do damage to our own selves and creation. Yet this is what a refusal of conversion results in: a mockery of Christ.
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