f pestilent humours. True greatness of spirit is inwardly
and throughout solid, firm from the bottom, and the foundation of it is
truth. Which of the two do ye think hath the better spirit, he that calls
dust, dust, and accounts of dung as dung, or he that, upon a false
imagination, thinks dust and dung is gold and silver, esteems himself a
rich man, and raises up himself above others? Humility is only true
magnanimity, for it digs down low, that it may set and establish the
foundation of true worth. It is true, it is lowly, and bows down low. But
as the water that comes from a height, the lower it comes down the higher
it ascends up again, so the humble spirit, the lower it fall in its own
estimation, the higher it is raised in real worth and in God's estimation.
"He that humbles himself shall be exalted, and he that exalts himself
shall be abased," Matt. xxiii. 12. He is like a growing tree, the deeper
the roots go down in the earth, the higher the tree grows above ground, as
Jacob's ladder, the foot of it is fastened in the earth, but the top of it
reaches the heaven. And this is the sure way to ascend to heaven. Pride
would fly up upon its own wings. But the humble man will enter at the
lowest step, and so goes up by degrees, and in the end is made manifest.
Pride catches a fall,(422) and humility is raised on high; it descended
that it might ascend. "A man's pride shall bring him low, but honour shall
uphold the humble in spirit," Prov. xxix. 23. "Pride goeth before
destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." But "before honour is
humility," Prov. xvi. 18. and xviii. 12. The first week of creation, as it
were, afforded two signal examples of this wise permutation of divine
justice, angels cast out of heaven, and man out of paradise, a high and
wretched aim at wisdom brought both as low as hell. The pride of angels
and men was but the rising up to a height, or climbing up a steep to the
pinnacle of glory, that they might catch the lower fall. But the last week
of the creation, to speak so, shall afford us rare and eminent
demonstrations of the other, poor, wretched, and miserable sinners lifted
up to heaven by humility, when angels were thrown down from heaven for
pride. What a strange sight, an angel, once so glorious, so low, and a
sinner, once so wretched and miserable, so high! Truly may any man
conclude within himself, "Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the
lowly, than to divide the spoil with the