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[Above: Joseph Alleine. public domain]

JOSEPH ALLEINE was like a splendid firework that rises into the sky, illumines observers with a momentary wash of colors, and then vanishes. He flashed upon his century for fourteen brief years of public Christian service. But unlike a firework, he left behind him a lasting legacy of souls won for Christ and a book calculated to win more.

Alarm to the Unconverted was not published until several years after his death. It immediately sold 20,000 copies and a second printing three years later sold 50,000. It has never been out of print since.

Alleine pointed out cracks in some false foundations on which people rest their hopes of heaven: baptism, assent to creeds, churchgoing, charitable works, God’s merciful disposition, and so forth. Only a true conversion (regeneration, new creation, or new birth by the Holy Spirit) puts a person right with God, he said; it always results in a transformed mind and is proven by increasing holiness.

Alleine warned that those who hope to be saved without being converted are going against God's revealed mind. “To hope that Christ will save thee while unconverted, is to hope that God will falsify his trust.” Many try to clean up their outward acts, but that is futile without an inward transformation: “It is to little purpose to lop off the branches, while the root of corruption remains untouched.” 

While many people desire to be saved from eternal death “they do not desire to be saved from sinning.” By contrast, the true convert hates sin and grasps Christ to be freed from it:

The sound Convert takes a whole Christ, and takes him. . . without exceptions, without limitations, without reserves. He is willing to have Christ upon His own terms, upon any terms. He is willing to have the dominion of Christ, as well as deliverance by Christ. . . . While the unsanctified goes in Christ’s ways as in chains and fetters, the true convert does it heartily, and counts Christ’s laws his liberty.

Alleine grew up during the English civil war which had episodes in his home town, Devizes. The Battle of Roundway Down was fought nearby and a ruined castle within sight of his home was twice besieged and captured, first by the Royalists and then by the Parliamentarians.

Those scenes may have reinforced his religious bent, but he was already known for his sober-mindedness and for spending hours in prayer as a pre-teen. Not surprisingly, when his brother Edward, who had become a pastor, died at the age of twenty-seven, Alleine, then fifteen, asked to be allowed to train to take his place. At the age of twenty he became assistant pastor at Taunton. But as a Puritan and a nonconformist, he was ejected from the ministry in 1662. Because he continued to teach in homes and outdoors, he was harassed by the government and both imprisoned and fined. 

During his months of freedom, as long as he had the strength to do so, he persisted in preaching, visiting homes of his former parishioners, and stretching his small estate to help as many of the poor and sick as he could. However, the hardships of his life, the harsh conditions of his first incarceration, and his years of overwork left him an invalid. Several times he lost the function of his limbs and had to be turned in bed by others. His wife and friends cared for him night and day.

On this day, 17 November 1668, Joseph Alleine died, rejoicing in his savior. He was just thirty-four. His book lived on, converting souls centuries later. For example, Afolalu Julius commented in 2018,

I got born again through reading Alarm to the Unconverted. I am a Nigerian. I read the book in 1978. I remain a Christian till today.

—Dan Graves

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Resurrected Life offers practical insight into the transformational aspects of the Resurrection on a personal, intimate level that can affect profound changes in individual lives—the kind of inner change Alleine pointed to as essential. Watch it at RedeemTV.

(Resurrected Life can be purchased at Vision Video.)

Contemplate the story of the Incarnation day-by-day throughout the season of Advent in our latest publication, The Grand Miracle. Based on the writings of C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, Dorothy Sayers, and others, each day’s reading offers a fresh look at the birth of Christ through the eyes of a modern author. Scripture, prayer, and full-page contemplative images complete each entry. 28 days, 64 pages. Preview the Devotional here.