A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Sign XIII. A proud man will give more to his honour than to God: his estate is more at the command of his pride, than of God. He giveth more in the view or knowledge of others, than he could persuade himself to do in secret. He is more bountiful in gifts that tend to keep up the credit of his liberality, than he is to truly indigent persons: it is not the good that is done, but the honour which he expecteth by it, which is his principal motive. He had rather be scant in works of greatest secret charity, than in apparel, and a comely port, and the entertaining of friends, or any thing that is for ostentation, and for himself.

Sign XIV. A proud man would have as great a dependence of others upon him as he can. He would have the estates, and lives, and welfare of all others at his will and power; that he might be much feared, and loved, and thanked, and that many may be beholden to him as the god or great benefactor of the world. He is not contented that good is done, and men's wants supplied, unless he have the doing of it, that so he may have the praise. If he save his enemy, it is but to make him beholden to him, and be said to have given him his life. Fain he would be taken to be as the sun to the world, which mankind cannot be without.

Sign XV. A proud man is very patient when men ascribe to him that which he knoweth to be above his due, though it be to the injury of God. He can easily forgive those that value and love him more than he deserveth, though they sin in doing it. He is seldom offended with any for over-praising him; nor for reverencing or honouring him too much; nor for setting him too high, or for giving or ascribing too much power to him; nor for obeying him before God himself. He careth not how much love, and honour, and praises, and thanks he hath; when an humble soul saith, as Psal. cxv. 1, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give the glory:" and as the angel to John, that would have worshipped him, "See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow-servant." They know God will not give "his glory to another," Isa. xlii. 8. "In his temple every one speaketh of his glory," Psal. xxix. 9. But of themselves they say, "I am a worm and no man," Psal. xxii. 6. I am less "than the least of all thy mercies," Gen. xxxii. 10; "less than the least of all saints," Eph. iii. 8; the chiefest of sinners, 1 Tim. i. 15: how unfit am I for so much love, and praise, and honour!

Sign XVI. A proud man would have his reason to be the rule of all the world, or at least, of all that he hath to do with. If there were laws or canons to be made, he would have the making of them: he would have all men take his counsel, as an oracle: he would have all the world of his opinion; and sets more by those that thus esteem him and are of his opinion, and yield to all that he saith and doth, than by those that most earnestly desire to conform their minds to the word of God, and differ from him in the understanding of any part of it. He loveth them better that inquire of him and take his word, than them that inquire of the word of God. Though he cannot deny but it is God's prerogative to be infallible, and the rule of the world.

Sign XVII. A proud man affecteth the reputation of God's immutability as well as his infallibility. He will stand to an error when once he hath vented it, and resist the truth when once he hath appeared against it, to avoid the dishonour of being accounted mutable, or one that formerly was deceived. His pride keepeth him from repenting of any fault or error that he can but find a cloak for. If he have done wrong to God and mischief to the church, he will do as much more to make it good, and justify it by any cruelty or violence. If he have once done you wrong, he will do more for fear of seeming to have wronged you. If he have slandered you, he will stab or hang you if he can, to justify his slander, rather than seem so mutable as to retract it.

Sign XVIII. A proud man affecteth a participation of God's omniscience, and is eager to know more than God revealeth (if he be an inquiring man whose pride runneth this way). Thus our first parents sinned, by desiring to be as God in knowledge. This hath filled the world with proud contentions, and the church with divisions; while proud wits heretically make things unrevealed the matter of their ostentation, imposition, censures, or furious disputes; while humble souls are taken up in studying and practising things revealed, and keep themselves within God's bounds, as knowing that God best knoweth the measure fittest for them, and that knowledge is to be desired and sought, but so far as it is useful to our serving or enjoying God, and the good which truth revealeth to us; and that knowledge may else become our sorrow, Eccl. i. 1, 8, and truth the instrument to torment us, as it doth the miserable souls in hell.

Sign XIX. A proud man is discontented with his degree, especially if it be low. He would be higher in power, and honour, and wealth; yea, he is never so high but he would fain be one step higher. If he had a kingdom, he would have another: and if he had the dominions of the Turkish or Tartarian emperor, he would desire to enlarge them, and to have more; and would not be satisfied till he had all the world. Men feel not this in their low condition; they think, If I had but so much or so much, I would be content: but this is their ignorance of the insatiable pride that dwelleth in them. Do you not see the greatest emperors on earth still seeking to be greater. Every man naturally would be a pope, the universal monarch of the world. And every such pope would have both swords, and have princes and people wholly at their will: and when they have no mind to hurt, they would have power to hurt; that all the world might hold their estates, and liberties, and lives, as by their clemency and gift, and they might be as God to other men. And if they had attained this, pride would not stop, till it had caused them to aspire to all the prerogatives of God, and to depose him, and dethrone him of his Godhead and majesty, that they might have his place.

Sign XX. A proud man would fain have God's independency. Though need make him stoop, yet he would willingly be beholden to none. Not only because in prudence he would keep his liberty, and not be unnecessarily the servant of men, nor under obligations to serve them in any evil way (for so the humblest would fain be independent); but because he would be so great, and high, as to scorn to lean on any other. Thus you see how pride is that great idolatry that sets up man as in the place of God.

Signs of the next Degrees of Pride as against God.

Sign I. A proud heart is very hardly brought to see the greatness of its sins, or to know its emptiness of grace, or to be convinced of its unpardoned, miserable state, or of the justice of God if he should damn it to everlasting torments.[212] Concerning others it may confess all this; but hardly of itself. Its own unbelief and averseness from God and holiness, seemeth to it a small and tolerable fault; its own pride, and lust, and worldliness, and sensuality, seem not to be so bad as to deserve damnation; much less the smallest sin which it committeth. Though customarily they may say that God were just, if he did condemn them, yet they believe it not at the heart. The most convincing preacher shall have much ado to bring a proud man heartily to confess that he is an enemy to God, a child of wrath, and under the guilt of all his sins, and sure to be condemned unless he be converted. He will confess that he is a sinner, or any thing else which the most godly must confess, or which doth not conclude him to be in a damnable, unrenewed state. But to make an ungodly man know that he is ungodly, and an impenitent person know that he is impenitent, and an unsanctified person know that he is unsanctified, is wonderful hard, because that pride hath dominion in them. "Are we blind also?" say the proud, incorrigible Pharisees to Christ, John ix. 40.