Of pride, Satan’s chief engine to bring on presumption.—What pride is, and how it prepares men for sinning presumptuously.—Considerations against pride.—The remedies for its cure.—Pride kindled by a confidence of privileges and popular applause.
The aims of Satan in this temptation being thus explained, I must now offer to your consideration the means by which he sought to bring his end about, which we have noted already, was pride: this he endeavoured to raise up in him two ways:—
(1.) First, By urging to him the privileges of his condition, as taking himself to be the Son of God.
(2.) Secondly, By offering him the occasion of popular applause; to which purpose he brought him into the holy city, where he might be sure of many spectators. I shall hence note,
Obs. 10. That pride is Satan’s proper engine to bring men on to presumption.
If we should trace the history of presumptuous sins, we shall ever find it to have been so. Adam’s first sin was a high presumption against God’s express command, but pride was the stair by which he knew they must ascend to it; and therefore he used this argument to corrupt the hearts of our first parents, ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ The presumption of Uzziah in burning incense upon the altar, was from his pride, 2 Chron. xxvi. 16, ‘His heart was lifted up, because he was become strong.’ David’s presumption in numbering the people was from hence. Thus might we run through many instances. But Satan’s own case may be instead of all. His first sin, though we have but conjecture what it was particularly, is concluded by all to have been highly presumptuous, and the Scripture expressly asserts that it was his pride that brought him to it. 1 Tim. iii. 6, ‘He that is lifted up with pride, falls into the condemnation of the devil.’ And in the general we are told by the prophet, Hab. ii. 4, ‘that the soul that is lifted up,’ cannot be so upright as patiently to wait upon God in a way of believing, but it will be presuming to evade a trouble by indirect contrivances.
To explain the observation, I shall do no more but shew what pride is, and how fit it is to beget presumption.
Pride is a self-idolising, an over-valuation or admiration of ourselves, upon a real or supposed excellency, inward or outward, appertaining to us. It is in Scripture frequently expressed by the lifting up or exaltation of the soul. And this is done, upon the consideration of any kind of thing, which we apprehend makes us excel others; so that inward gifts of mind, as knowledge, humility, courage, &c., or outward gifts of the body, as beauty, strength, activity, &c., or additional advantages of riches, honour, authority, &c., or anything well done by us, &c., may all be abused to beget and nourish pride, and to fill us with high and lofty thoughts concerning ourselves; and being thus blown up, we are fitted for any presumptuous undertaking. For,
(1.) First, The mind thus corrupted begets to itself apprehensions of a self-sufficiency: and therefore, as it is not apt to remember from what fountain all those excellencies come, and to what ends they are to serve; so it brings them to a contempt of others, and to a confidence of themselves. Thus are men by degrees so intoxicated by their own humour, that they mount up to irrational and absurd conceits, fancying that they are more than they are, and that they can do far more than is possible for them to accomplish, till at last they become apparently foolish in the pursuit of their imaginations. I need not instance in the follies of Alexander, who being elated in mind, would be Jupiter’s son, and go like Hercules in a lion’s skin. Or in the mad frenzies of Caius, who as he would need fancy himself a god, so would he change his godship when he pleased: to-day he would wear a lion’s skin and club, and then he must be Hercules; to-morrow in another garb he conceits himself Apollo; a caduceus made him Mercury, a sword and helmet made him Mars, &c. Or in Xerxes, who would whip the seas, and fetter Neptune. The Scripture affords enough of this nature, as the boast of Nebuchadnezzar; ‘Is not this great Babel that I have built?’ In the insolency of Nineveh, Zeph. ii. 15, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’ The blasphemy of Tyre, Ezek. xxviii. 2, who set her heart ‘as the heart of God, saying, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God.’ The arrogancy of Sennacherib, Isa. xxxvi. 19, 20, ‘Where are the gods of Hamath ... that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’ Though all pride in all men ariseth not to so great a height of madness, yet it is the nature of it, and none have any of it without this humour of conceiting themselves above themselves, which strangely prepares them for any presumption.
(2.) Secondly, He that is proud, as he looks upon himself in a flattering glass, and measures himself by the length of his shadow; so doth he contemn and undervalue things that lie before his attempts as easy and small. Hence doth he put himself upon things that are far beyond him. David notes the working of a proud heart, Ps. cxxxi. 1, in this particular, ‘Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me,’ shewing that it is the guise of pride to outbid itself in its attempts.