Pride

With regard to ambition, I possess it not, except to that honorable kind which impels me to this service—to inquire with all earnestness in the Holy Scriptures for divine truth, and mildly and without contradiction to declare it when found, without prescribing it to any one, or laboring to extort consent, much less through a desire to “have dominion over the faith of others,” but rather for the purpose of my winning some souls for Christ, that I may be a sweet savor to him, and may obtain an approved reputation in the church of the saints. This good name I hope I shall obtain by the grace of Christ, after a long period of patient endurance; though I be now a reproach to my brothers, and “made as the filth of the world and the offscouring of all things” to those who with me worship and invoke one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, in one spirit and with the same faith, and who have the same hope with me of obtaining the heavenly inheritance through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity.

The faith of simple folk is scoffed at, the hidden things of God are exposed, questions about the most exalted truths are rashly ventilated, the Fathers are derided because they held that such things are rather to be tasted than solved. Thence it comes to pass that the Paschal Lamb, contrary to the command of God, is either cooked with water, or is eaten of raw in a rude and bestial fashion. What is left is not burnt with fire but is trodden under foot; so human reason usurps for itself everything, and leaves nothing for faith. It tries things above it, tests things too strong for it, rushes into divine things; holy subjects it rather forces open than unlocks, what is closed and sealed it rather plunders than opens; and whatever it finds out of its reach it holds to be of no account and disdains to believe.