The cure of church-divisions, or, Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being…

The common exercise of this Religious or spiritual Pride is first about our Knowledge, and secondly about our Godliness or Goodness.

1 Pride of our understandings, worketh thus: First, a man that was formerly in darkness, is much affected with the new-come light, and perceiveth that he knoweth much more than he did before: And then he groweth to a carnal and corrupt estimation of it, valuing it more as Nature is pleased with it, than as it is sanctified by it: Delighting in knowledge for it self, more than for the purity, Love and heavenliness which it should effect. Then he looketh about him on the ignorant sort of people, who know not what he knoweth, and seeth how far they are below him: And he thinketh with himself, what a difference hath God made between Me and Them: And because Thankfulness is a duty, he observeth not how Pride doth twist it self with it, and creep in under the protection of its name: And how Thankfulness and Pride have the same expressions, and both of them say, I thank thee O Father that thou h•st hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes: I thank thee O God that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican, Luk. 18. 11. And then he is so taken up with the things which he knoweth, that he perceiveth not what knowledge yet he wanteth. And the deep affection which his knowledge worketh in him, or the tickling pleasure which he hath in knowing, joined with this ignorance of ⟨p. 11⟩his ignorance in other things, doth make him over-confident of all his apprehensions, as if every thing which he imagineth were an absolute certainty: And so he wanteth that humble suspicion of his own understanding, which a true acquaintance with his ignorance would have caused in him: And thus he groweth to over-value all his own conceivings; and to under-value all the opinions and reasonings of others, which are contrary to his own: And thence he proceeds to corrupt his Religion with such mis-apprehensions; and his rash unsuspected understanding entertains one error first, and then that lets in many more; till he have espoused a self-chosen frame of doctrine, instead of the sacred truths of God, and method of the Gospel: And from hence he proceedeth to choose his Religious exercises also, according to these mis-apprehensions: These make him Duties which are no Duties, and sins which are no sins: And thus he calleth evil, good, and good, evil; and putteth darkness for light, and light for darkness;