16. It will not give the sinner leave to see his pride, when it is reproved; nor to confess it, if he see it; nor to be humbled for it, if he do confess it, nor to loathe himself and forsake it, though conviction and terror seem to humble him. Even while he heareth all the signs of pride, he will not see it in himself. 17. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine—it is the shadow of ourselves. 18. Self-love is the love of all things for oneself. It makes men idolaters of themselves. 19. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. 20. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon-day as in the night; we are in desolate places, as dead men. 21. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. CHAPTER III WE SEE NOT OUR OWN HEARTS ARIGHT 1. The passions are too much engrossed by their objects to meditate on themselves; and none are more ignorant of their growth and subtle workings than their own victims. WE MAGNIFY 2. Oftentimes a work seemeth to be charity, and it is rather a work of the flesh, because self-will, hope of reward, and desire of our own interest, are motives seldom absent. 3. We are sometimes moved with passion, and we think it to be zeal. 4. We reprehend small things in others, and pass over greater matters in ourselves. WE THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR 5. We quickly enough feel and weigh what we suffer at the hands of others, but we mind not what others suffer from us. 6. We hand folk over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. 7. We would willingly have others perfect, and yet not amend our own faults. We will have others severely corrected, and will not be corrected ourselves. 8. The large liberty of others displeaseth us, and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. And thus it appeareth how seldom we weigh ourselves in the same balance with our neighbours. ΙΟ 9. We permit all things to ourselves, and that which we call sin in others is experiment for us. Every man thinks a latitude safe for himself which is nowise to be indulged to another. 10. Murder to the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it: it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel it turns out to be a horrible jangling and confounding of all relations. 11. There is little light in us, and that which we have we often lose by our negligence. SELF EXAMINA TION 12. I do not know what it is, or by what spirit we are led, or what we pretend, we that seem to be called spiritual, that we take so much pains and are so full of anxiety about transitory and mean things, while we scarcely at all, or but seldom, think of our own inward concernments with full recollection of mind. 13. Where art thou when thou art not with thyself? And when thou hast run over all, what hast thou then profited, if thou hast neglected thyself? 14. If thou desirest peace of mind and true unity of purpose, thou must still put all things behind thee, and look upon thyself. CHAPTER IV WE MAY BE IN DANGER OF MORAL DEATH 1. Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. 2. The sin that practice burns into the blood PAST DEEDS CRAVE REPEATED Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be. 3. Every sin, the oftener it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for, as sins proceed, they ever multiply; and, like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that went before it. 4. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change: for this reason, that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. 5. A man is in a dangerous way when he hath plunged himself into such engagements to sin, that he cannot leave it without its costing him very dear; it will be his shame to confess it, or his undoing in the world to forsake it. It will be hard breaking over so great difficulties. 6. Whoever stops not at the first degree of sin, runs the hazard of arriving at the last and greatest. 7. It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, 8. When the will would, it cannot; because when it might, it would not. Therefore by an evil will man loses his good power. 9. It is astonishing how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel, if a single stitch is dropped. SIN KILLS 10. After the first blush of sin, comes its indifference ; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made. 11. It hardens all within, THE CONSCIENCE 12. There is a dreadful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. 13. O how senseless are those men who lie so deeply sunk in the earth that they can relish nothing but carnal things, 14. Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 15. "My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." 16. Let no man think lightly of sin, saying in his heart: "It cannot overtake me." |