For some weeks in the past your influence has been improving; but you lack firmness of principle. You are deficient in many things, and in some things you must know where you fail. The follies of your youth have left their impress upon you; you can never recover what you have lost through impure habits. These things have so benumbed your sensibilities that sacred things are not clearly discerned. You cannot, with your present experience, resist temptation. You cannot endure trials. You are not sanctified through the truth. You have taken hold of the truth, but it has not taken hold upon you to transform you by the renewing of your mind. You are a self-deceived man. Oh, do not, I entreat you, remain deceived in regard to your true condition! You have not felt deep conviction because of your sins, and in humility sought the Lord with anguish of heart that your transgressions might be blotted out. You could not see that your ways were so sinful before God. Therefore the work of reformation has not been wrought in your soul. (2T 322.1) MC VC

You have clothed yourself with a self-righteous garment to cover up the deformity of sin; but this is not the remedy. You know not what true conversion is. The old man is not dead in you. You have a form of godliness, but not the cleansing power of God. You can and do talk and write smoothly, and as far as your words go, they may possibly be correct; but the true language of the heart is not spoken. You are enough acquainted with yourself to know this. Your case is perilous; yet God pities you, and will save you if you fall all broken at His feet, feeling your impurity and vileness, your rottenness of soul, without the transforming power of God. (2T 322.2) MC VC