William Wilberforce is famous not only for his persistent efforts to see the slave trade abolished in England, but as the author of Real Christianity,1 in which he makes the radical distinction between nominal and real Christians.
Less well-known is the fact that Wilberforce regularly heard this distinction made in the sermons of his pastor and colleague, John Venn, rector of the Clapham Church and Chaplain of the so-called Clapham Sect.
In this excerpt from one of John Venn’s sermons, real Christianity is distinguished from nominal Christianity in vivid terms:
Religion is not merely an act of homage paid upon our bended knees to God; it is not confined to the closet and the church, nor is it restrained to the hours of the sabbath; it is a general principle extending to a man’s whole conduct in every transaction and in every place. I know no mistake which is more dangerous than that which lays down devotional feelings alone as the test of true religion . . . Let us be convinced that all prayer, all preaching, all knowledge, are but means to attain a superior end; and that end the sanctification of the heart and of all the principles on which we are daily acting. Till our Christianity appears in our conversation, in our business, in our pleasures, in the aims and objects of our life, we have not attained a conformity to the image of our Saviour, nor have we learned His Gospel aright.2
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2 John Venn, Sermons, vol. 2, 238-239, quoted in Michael Hennell, John Venn and the Clapham Sect (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), 205.
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