of humility. The apostle found need to caveat this, Rom. xi. 18-20, "Boast
not," "be not high minded, but fear,"--"thou standest by faith," and chap.
xii. 16, "Mind not high things," "be not wise in your own conceits," and 1
Cor. viii. 2, "If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth
nothing as he ought to know." All which gives us a plain demonstration of
this, that self gloriation and complacency, in reflection upon ourselves,
is both the greatest ignorance and the worst sacrilege. It is an argument
of greater ignorance for a man to think he knows than not to know indeed.
It is the worst and most dangerous ignorance, to have such an opinion of
our knowledge, gifts, and graces, for that puffs up, swells with empty
wind, and makes a vain tumour and then it is great sacrilege, a robbing of
the honour that is due to God. For what hast thou that thou hast not
received? That appropriating of these things to ourselves as ours, is an
impropriating of them from their right owner, that is, God, 1 Cor. iv. 7.
For if thou didst apprehend that thou received it, where then is glorying?
I would desire then, that whenever you happen to reflect upon yourselves,
and observe any advantage, either natural or spiritual, in yourselves,
that you may think this word sounds from heaven, "Let him that glorieth
glory in the Lord." Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and so not
the learned man in his learning, nor the eloquent man in his speaking nor
the ingenious man in his quickness nor the good man in his goodness. All
these things though sweet, yet will surfeit, gloriation in them is neither
glory nor gain, neither honourable nor profitable.

Then the stream of gloriation flows in the channel of bodily gifts as
might, strength of body, beauty and comeliness of parts, and other such
endowments which, besides that it is as irrational as the former, is a
sacrilegious impropriation of the most free and arbitrary gifts of God to
ourselves, it is withal absurd, in that it is not so truly of ourselves.
These bodily ornaments and endowments do not perfect or better a man as a
man, they are but the alterable qualities of the vessel or tabernacle of a
man, in which other baser creatures may far excel him. How many comely and
beautiful souls are lodged within obscure and ugly cottages or bodies of
clay, which will be taken down! And the great advantage is, that the soul
of a man, which is a man, cannot be defiled from without, that is, fr