In 1668, Richard Alleine—an English Puritan—published The World Conquered, a book that spells out how Satan schemes to rule over us and what true victory requires from followers of Christ. Launching into this treatise from 1 John 5:1–4, Alleine asserts, “A true Christian, then, is a conqueror, more heroic, more noble, more exalted than the greatest of all earthly conquerors, for he has conquered that which has conquered them—the world.”[1]
Several passages in his book stand out as particularly worthy of reflection. While these quotes could generate lengthy discussion regarding their implications for the Christian life, I offer them here simply as highlights.
Christ Must Occupy More Than a Corner of Our Hearts
“Christ will not come to be an underling; He will have the chief respect and esteem; He will have command of all that is within the heart. Christianity consists in surrendering up the heart to Christ. The question is not whether we can find a corner in our hearts in which to entertain Christ, but who occupies the throne, who has the government of the soul?”[2]
The Enemy Infects Our Hearts Through Our Eyes
“If the devil can but turn the eye to behold vanity, by the eye he will easily infect the heart.”[3]
The Enemy Attacks by Sowing Doubt Regarding our Identity
“The devil so bewilders and deludes souls that they often know not what to make of themselves but conclude themselves to be quite another thing than they are.”[4]
The Enemy Gains Dominion When One Views the World as Their Treasure
“The supremacy of the world is founded in its supposed power and sufficiency to bless men and to make them happy. While men hold it as their treasure, they resign themselves to it as their ruler.”[5]
The Enemy Does Not Fear a Prayerless Person
“If the devil can but keep you out of your [prayer] closets, he will not fear to meet you in the field.”[6]
Victory Requires Steadfast Pursuit of God
“When the heart is fixed on God and so strongly working upward that it will not be detained from the service and worship of Him by anything it either has or hopes for here, then the world is vanquished.”[7]
Victory Requires Self-Control
“It is not the least part of a Christian’s victory over the world to have, by the grace of God, the command of himself in lawful affairs and businesses. When he has such power over himself that he can assign to everything its proper place, measure, and season depending on the Lord, then he is a conqueror.”[8]
Victory Consists in Contentment
“Contentment is having the heart at ease, being well pleased with out condition without quarreling with our lot, without murmuring against God, and without self-tormenting vexations.”[9]
Victory Consists in a Willingness to Die
“Worldly men are unwilling to meet death because it deprives them of all their treasures. That which they have they cannot carry with them, and they are unwilling to leave it behind. They cannot carry their money, their houses, or their lands with them. They covet, they purchase, they build, and they lay up with as much care and zeal as if they could carry with them all they have into the other world; yet, as they came in naked, so they must go naked out of this world, Job 1:21. As this is a certain truth—that man, as long as he is selfish and earthly-minded, must be destitute of true life, the life of the Holy Spirit, in his soul—what, then, should be more dreaded than a way of worldly ease and prosperity! What a misery, nay, what a curse, is there in everything which gratifies and nourished our self-love and self-esteem.… To the Christian who has conquered the world, the world from thenceforth ceases to be his treasure.”[10]
Victory Requires the Holy Spirit
“If ever you would get victory over the world, you must first possess another spirit. In vain do you think to live other than a worldly life while the spirit of the world lives in you.”[11]
On Joyful Obedience
“Obedience is only painful to him who does not have the love of God in his heart.”[12]
On Not Having a Divided Heart
“Half-reformation ends in certain ruin.… Loyalty can admit no rivalry. If Christ is your King, then His laws and scepter must rule all within you. You must acknowledge no foreign power; that would be treason.”[13]
On Displacing Worldly Affections with a Better, Greater Affection
“There is no way possible to divide the heart from this world till it shall choose a better. Whatever it finds and apprehends to be good, that it grasps and will hold till a higher good come in sight. The world is considered by the worldling to be his treasure. It is the best he knows, and he must be bought out of it before he will let it go. He must be bought out of his house, his riches, his comforts, and his pleasures by something that is apprehended to be a valuable price before he will choose to quit what he has. It is vain to persuade him to voluntary poverty, unless he has in view a higher good.… The heart will not let go of this world but upon the discovery of a better.”[14]
The Sweet Toil of Conquest
“When you cease to be servants to the world, think not to have an easy, idle life. You will have more and more work to do than ever—pursuing your enemy so that he will not rally again upon you, watching your hearts, guarding your eyes, governing your appetites so that they do not run again after it, pleasing and following the Lord in all things that He commands you. The day on which you break off from the world and join yourselves to the Lord, you take up a life of self-denying labor. But it is a sweet toil.”[15]
[1] Richard Alleine, The World Conquered by the Faithful Christian (Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995), 1.
[2] Alleine, World Conquered, 14.
[3] Alleine, World Conquered, 36.
[4] Alleine, World Conquered, 116.
[5] Alleine, World Conquered, 61.
[6] Alleine, World Conquered, 67.
[7] Alleine, World Conquered, 62.
[8] Alleine, World Conquered, 65.
[9] Alleine, World Conquered, 72.
[10] Alleine, World Conquered, 96–7.
[11] Alleine, World Conquered, 103.
[12] Alleine, World Conquered, 101.
[13] Alleine, World Conquered, 102.
[14] Alleine, World Conquered, 104–5.
[15] Alleine, World Conquered, 164.
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