Famous are the exploits of this divine gift; time would fail to recount them: all sacred story is filled with them. But let it suffice, that by it the holy ancients endured all trials, overcame all enemies, prevailed with God, renowned his truth, finished their testimony, and obtained the reward of the faithful, a crown of righteousness, which is the eternal blessedness of the just.
1. Of pride, the first capital lust; its rise.--2. Its definition and distinction.--3. That an inordinate desire of knowledge in Adam, introduced man's misery.--4. He thereby lost his integrity.--5. Knowledge puffs up.--6. The evil effects of false, and the benefit of true knowledge.--7. Cain's example a proof in the case.--8. The Jews' pride in pretending to be wiser than Moses, God's servant, in setting their post by God's post.--9. The effect of which was the persecution of the true prophets.--10. The divine knowledge of Christ brought peace on earth.--11. Of the blind guides, the priests, and the mischief they have done.--12. The fall of Christians, and the pride they have taken in it, hath exceeded the Jews; under the profession of their new-moulded Christianity, they have murdered the witness of the Lord Jesus.--13. The angels sang peace on earth at the birth of the Lord of meekness and humility: but the pride of the Pharisees withstood and calumniated him.--14. As Adam and the Jews lost themselves by their ambition, so the Christians losing the fear of God, grew creed and worship-makers, with this injunction, Conform or burn.--15. The evil effects of this in Christendom, so called.--16. The way of recovery out of such miserable defection.
I. Having thus discharged my conscience against that part of unlawful self, that fain would be a Christian, a believer, a saint, whilst a plain stranger to the cross of Christ, and the holy exercises of it; and in that briefly discovered what is true worship, and the use and business of the holy cross therein, to render its performance pleasing to Almighty God; I shall now, the same Lord assisting me, more largely prosecute that other part of unlawful self, which fills the study, care, and conversation of the world, presented to us in these three capital lusts, that is to say, pride, avarice, and luxury; from whence all other mischiefs daily flow, as streams from their proper fountains: the mortifying of which makes up the other; and indeed a very great part of the work of the true cross; and though last in place, yet first in experience and duty: which done, it introduces in the room of those evil habits, the blessed effects of that so much needed reformation, to wit, mortification, humility, temperance, love, patience, and heavenly-mindedness, with all other graces of the Spirit, becoming followers of the perfect Jesus, that most heavenly man.