And, in reality, it will generally be found, that the first objection and the last to an unacceptable pastor, is, that he is proud, that he is too wise for familiarity, and will not descend to the level with common understandings.
Such is the consequence of too high an esteem of our own powers and knowledge; it makes us in youth negligent, and in age useless; it teaches us too soon to be satisfied with our attainments; or it makes our attainments unpleasing, unpopular, and ineffectual; it neither suffers us to learn, nor to teach; but withholds us from those by whom we might be instructed, and drives those from us whom we might instruct. It is, therefore, necessary to obviate these evils, by inquiring,
Secondly: By what means this pernicious conceit of wisdom may be avoided or suppressed.
It might be imagined, if daily experience did not show us how vainly judgments are formed of real life, from speculative principles, that it might be easy for any man to extirpate a high conceit of human learning from his own heart, or that of another; since one great purpose of knowledge is to show us our own defects, follies, and miseries; yet, whatever be the reason, we find none more subject to this fault, than those whose course of life ought more particularly to exempt them from it.
For the suppression of this vain conceit, so injurious to the professors of learning, many considerations might be added to those which have already been drawn from its effects. The reasons, indeed, why every man should be humble, are inseparably connected with human nature; for what can any man see, either within or without himself, that does not afford him some reason to remark his own ignorance, imbecility, and meanness? But on these reflections it is less proper to insist, because they have been explained already by almost every writer upon moral and religious duties, and because, in reality, the pride which requires our chief caution is not so much absolute, as comparative. No man so much values himself upon the general prerogatives of human nature, as upon his
