*The weakness of our state appears from our inability to do any thing of ourselves. In our natural state we are entirely without any power; we are indeed active beings, but can only act by a power, that is every moment lent us from God.
We have no more power of our own to move a hand, or stir a foot, than to move the sun, or stop the clouds.
*When we speak a word, we feel no more power in ourselves to do it, than we feel ourselves able to raise the dead. For we act no more within our own power, or by our own strength, when we speak a word, or make a sound, than the apostles acted within their own power, or by their own strength, when a word from their mouth cast out devils, and cured diseases.
As it was solely the power of God that enabled them to speak to such purposes, so it is solely the power of God that enables us to speak at all.
This is the dependent, helpless poverty of our state, which is a great reason for humility. For since we neither are, nor can do any thing of ourselves; to be proud of any thing that we are, or of any thing that we can do, and to ascribe glory to ourselves for these things, has the guilt both of stealing and lying. It has the guilt of stealing, as it gives to ourselves those things which only belong to God. It has the guilt of lying, as it is denying the truth of our state, and pretending to be something that we are not.
[♦]3. The misery of our condition appears in this, that we use these borrowed powers of our nature, to the torment and vexation of ourselves, and our fellow creatures.
[♦] Numbers 1. and 2. omitted in text.
*God has entrusted us with reason, and we use it to the disorder and corruption of our nature. We reason ourselves into all kinds of folly and misery, and make our lives the sport of foolish and extravagant passions: seeking after imaginary happiness in all kinds, creating to ourselves a thousand wants, amusing our hearts with false hopes and fears, using the world worse than irrational animals, envying, vexing, and tormenting one another with restless passions, and unreasonable contentions.
Let any man but look back upon his own life, and see what use he has made of his reason. What foolish passions, what vain thoughts, what needless labours, what extravagant projects, have taken up the greatest part of his life: how foolish he has been in his words and conversation; how seldom he has been able to please himself, and how often he has displeased others; how often he has changed his counsels, hated what he loved, and loved what he hated; how often he has been enraged and transported at trifles, pleased and displeased with the very same things, and constantly changing from one vanity to another. Let a man but take this view of his own life, and he will see cause enough to confess, that pride was not made for man.
*Let him but consider, that if the world knew all that of him, which he knows of himself; if they saw what vanity and passions govern his inside, and what secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions, he would have no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and wisdom, than a rotten and distempered body to be loved and admired for its health and comeliness.