The loving humility is of no benefit to you, but so far as all your own thoughts, words, and actions are governed by it. And the hating of pride does you no good, but so far as you hate to harbour any degree of it in your own heart.
Now in order to set out in the practice of humility, you must take it for granted, that you are proud, that you have been so all your life.
You should believe also, that it is your greatest weakness, that your heart is most subject to it; that it is so constantly stealing upon you, you have reason to suspect its approaches in all your actions.
For there is no one vice that is more deeply rooted in our nature, or that receives such constant nourishment from almost every thing that we think or do; there being hardly any thing in the world that we want or use, or any action or duty of life, but pride finds some means or other to take hold of it. So that at what time soever we begin to offer ourselves to God, we can hardly be surer of any thing, than that we have a great deal of pride to repent of.
If therefore you find it disagreeable to entertain this opinion of yourself, and that you cannot put yourself amongst those that want to be cured of pride, you may be as sure, as if an angel from heaven had told you, that you have not only much, but all your humility to seek.
*For you can have no greater sign of a confirmed pride, than when you think that you are humble enough. He that thinks he loves God enough, shews himself to be an entire stranger to that holy passion; so he that thinks he has humility enough, shews that he is not so much as a beginner in the practice of true humility.
9. Every person, therefore, when he first applies himself to the exercise of humility, must consider himself as a learner, who is, to learn something that is contrary to all his former tempers and habits of mind.
He has not only much to learn; but he has also a great deal to unlearn: he is to forget, and lay aside his own spirit, which has been a long while fixing and forming itself; he must forget and depart from abundance of passions and opinions, which the fashion, and vogue, and spirit of the world, have made natural to him.
He must lay aside the opinions and passions which he has received from the world; because the vogue and fashion of the world, by which we have been carried away, as in a torrent, before we could pass right judgments of the value of things, is utterly contrary to humility.
The devil is called, in scripture, the prince of this world; because he has great power in it, because many of its rules and principles are invented by this evil spirit, to separate us from God, and prevent our return to happiness.