There is not one case in the New Testament in which the apostles
urged souls to believe, or in which a soul is narrated as believing,
in which we have not good grounds to believe that these preparatory
steps of conviction and repentance, had been taken. The only one was
that of Simon the sorcerer. He was, as numbers of people are, in
great religious movements, carried away by the influence of the
meeting, and the example of those around him, and professed to
believe. Doubtless, he did credit the fact that Jesus died on the
cross. He received the facts of Christianity into his mind, and, in
that sense, he became a believer--in the same sense that tens of
thousands are in these days--and he was baptized. But when the
testing point came, as to whose interests were paramount with him,
his own or God's, then he manifested the true state of the case, as
the apostle said, "I see thy heart is not right with God." And nobody
is converted whose heart is not right with God! That is the test. If
Simon had been converted, his heart would have been right with God
and he would not have supposed the Holy Ghost could have been bought
for money. And Paul added, "For I perceive that thou art still in the
gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity." And what further
did he say to him? "Therefore, at once believe"? No; he did not.
"Therefore, repent, and pray God, if, perhaps, the thought of thine
heart may be forgiven thee." Repent first! and then believe, and get
this wickedness forgiven, and so we get a double lesson in the same
passage. This Simon was the only person we have any record of, as
believing, where there is not in the passage itself, taken with the
context, a reasonable and rational evidence, that these preparatory
steps of conviction and repentance, were taken before the teaching of
faith, or the exercise and confession of faith. Simon had this faith
of the head, but not of the heart, and, therefore, it ended in defeat