by Joseph Alleine (1634-1668)

“Before conversion man seeks to cover himself with his own fig-leaves, and to make himself whole by his duties.  He is apt to trust in himself, and set up his own righteousness, and to reckon his counters for gold, and not to submit to the righteousness of God.

But conversion changes his mind; now he counts his own righteousness as filthy rags. He casts it off, as a man would the venomous tatters of a nasty beggar.

Now he is brought to poverty of spirit, complains of and condemns himself,and all his inventory is “poor, and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and naked”.
He sees a world of iniquity in his holy things, and calls his once idolized righteousness but filth and loss; and would not for a thousand worlds be found in it.”

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Joseph Alleine (1634-1668), served as preacher and pastor of  St. Mary Magdalene Church  in Taunton, Somerset, UK, a Puritan stronghold.

His ministry in Taunton as preacher and pastor was very fruitful. Richard Baxter recalled Alleine’s “great ministerial skillfulness in the public explication and application of the Scriptures—so melting, so convincing, so powerful.” Alleine was also an excellent teacher, devoting much time to instructing his people, using the Shorter Catechism. He was a passionate evangelist. One contemporary wrote, “He was infinitely and insatiably greedy of the conversion of souls, wherein he had no small success.

It was his habit to devote the hours between four and eight o’clock in the mornings to private devotions. His wife recalled that he “would be much troubled if he heard smiths or other craftsmen at work at their trades, before he was at communion with God: saying to me often, ‘How this noise shames me! Doth not my Master deserve more than theirs?’ ”

Excerpt from Meet the Puritans
by Dr. Joel Beeke and Randall J. Pederson
Posted with permission on Monergism.com by Reformation Heritage Books