o God, and truly this is the last
stronghold that holds out longest against God, when others may be beaten
down or surrendered. Possibly a man may attain to this, to despise these
lower things, as below his natural dignity and the excellency of his
spirit. Some may renounce much of that friendship with worldly and
temporal things, as being sordid and base, but the enmity gets into this
strong and invisible tower of darkness, self love and pride and therefore
the apostle John makes this the last and chiefest, the pride of life, 1
John ii. 16. When the lusts of the eyes and flesh are in some measure
abated this is but growing, and what decreaseth of these, seems to
accresce(188) unto this, as if self love and pride did feed and nourish
itself upon the ashes or consumption of other vices. Yea, it draws sap
from graces and virtues, and grows thereby, till at length it kill that
which nourished it, and indeed the apostle James seems to proceed to this,
ver 5, 6 when he minds us that God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace
to the humble. "Doth the scripture say this in vain?" saith he. Is not
self amity as well enmity as the amity of the world? And therefore God
opposes himself unto it, as the very grand enmity. Self is the great lord,
the arch rebel, the head of all opposition, that in which they do all
centre, and when all the inferior soldiers are captives, or killed this is
last in the field, it lives first in opposition and dies last, _primum
vivens et ultimum moriens_. When a man is separated from many things, yet
he may be but more conjoined to himself, and so the further disjoined from
God. Of all these vile rags of the old man, this is nearest the skin, and
last put off, of all the members, self is the heart, first alive, and last
alive. When enmity is constrained to render up the outward members of the
body, to yield them to a more smooth and fair carriage to a civil
behaviour, when the mind itself is forced to yield unto some light of
truth and knowledge of the gospel, yet the enmity retires into the heart,
and fortifies it the stronger, by self love and self estimation, as in
winter the encompassing cold makes the heat to combine itself together in
the bowels of the earth, and by this means the springs are hotter than in
summer, so the surrounding light of the gospel, or education, or natural
honesty, drives the heat and strength of enmity inward, where it fortifies
itself more. This is that accursed antiperistasis