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| They are Proud Who Think They are Able, by Their Own Righteousness, to Be Cleansed So as to See God.
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Chapter 15.—They are Proud
Who Think They are Able, by Their Own Righteousness, to Be Cleansed
So as to See God.
20. There are, however, some who
think themselves capable of being cleansed by their own
righteousness, so as to contemplate God, and to dwell in God; whom
their very pride itself stains above all others. For there is
no sin to which the divine law is more opposed, and over
which that proudest of spirits, who is a mediator to things below,
but a barrier against things above, receives a greater right of
mastery: unless either his secret snares be avoided by going
another way, or if he rage openly by means of a sinful people
(which Amalek, being interpreted, means), and forbid by fighting
the passage to the land of promise, he be overcome by the cross of
the Lord, which is prefigured by the holding out of the hands of
Moses.522
For these
persons promise themselves cleansing by their own righteousness for
this reason, because some of them have been able to penetrate with
the eye of the mind beyond the whole creature, and to touch, though
it be in ever so small a part, the light of the unchangeable truth;
a thing which they deride many Christians for being not yet able to
do, who, in the meantime, live by faith alone. But of what use is
it for the proud man, who on that account is ashamed to embark upon
the ship of wood,523
| 523 [The wood of the cross is meant.
One of the ancient symbols of the church was a
ship.—W.G.T.S.] | to behold
from afar his country beyond the sea? Or how can it hurt the humble
man not to behold it from so great a distance, when he is actually
coming to it by that wood upon which the other disdains to be
borne?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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