Anne Dutton's Letters On Spiritual Subjects

Ann Dutton's Letters On Spiritual Subjects

Dear Sir:

As pride is a sin that abides and works in all Christians in this world, let us all then, as the servants of Christ, trusting in Him - our victorious, sin-pardoning, sin-subduing and grace-giving Master - watch and oppose the enemy whenever attacked fiercely.

1. The sin of pride is the child of unbelief. Pride springs from a disbelief of God to be what He is, in His immense and essential glory, in His infinite, underived, all-comprehending, incomprehensible self-sufficiency; and from a vain conceit of the creature's being that which indeed it is not - that the creature is something independent of God. Whereas, without His all-supporting and all-supplying hand, it would soon sink into its first nothing, and be, as in and of itself it is, a mere vacuity, less than nothing, and vanity.

2. The sin of pride which turned myriads of angels of light into legions of black devils, and that for this they were hurled down from heaven to the bottomless pit of hell.

3. Pride was the sin which cast down Adam, and in him all his posterity, even to the last, from the height of created, natural, and princely excellency, into an unsearchable depth of spiritual slavery, and the just desert of eternal misery.

4. Pride is a sin by which the whole law of God, in each of its ten commandments, is broken.

5. This sin of pride, as it springs from gospel-unbelief, is directly opposite to the gospel of Christ. Pride rejects the Saviour, in whole or in part, and would rival it, in extreme vanity, with the Lord of glory. Pride would rob the Saviour of His invaluable crown, who died in the sinner's room, to raise him from death to that eternal life of a seat with Him of His high and everlasting throne. Yes, pride is directly contrary to the great design of God the Father in the gospel, which is, to make Himself an everlasting name, to display the exceeding riches of His free grace, in the whole and in every part of a sinner's salvation and bliss, to the eternal praise of His own glory.

But pride - horrid pride - will not endure that the Lord should have the entire glory of His saving grace, of His free, rich, boundless grace, but sets up wretched self in Jehovah's place, to nullify, as much as in it lies, the sinner-saving, the God-glorifying, project of eternity! Pride sets up the creature as a co-partner with the Creator; a creature of time, a mere nothing, upon a level with the eternal I AM! Yes, pride excludes God - the everlasting God - and takes to a man, Jehovah's essential, eternal throne, and in the height of insolence, says, "I Am! And there is none besides me!"

6. Pride renders the creature, man, though new-created in Christ, after the image of His purity, and as such, bearing upon him a fresh impress of divine glory, the most unlike to the Holy Jesus, who, by way of eminence, and to an all-surpassing excellence, was meek and lowly!

7. Pride makes a member of Christ to bear upon him the horrid image of the devil! Nothing gives such a hellish visage to a spirit of heavenly extraction as the sin of pride, the spawn of the old serpent, the infernal abomination!

8. This sin of pride, the first-born of unbelief, as springing from it, and living in it as a branch from and in the life of the root, is a pregnant monster that contains in itself, and is fertile to bring forth, a fullness of sin.

This horrid sin of pride will make the Lord's friends to behave as His enemies, yes, to fight against Him with His own mercies. This monster, pride - this hellish sin -will excite a man to render hatred to God for His greatest love, to wound His honor, to pierce His heart, to stab to death His infinite life, by those choicest favors which it turns into the keenest daggers, which, in his immense bounty, he bestows upon the most unworthy, and with which he crowns, unto life and immortal glory, the most rebellious subjects, who, for renewed acts of enmity, deserve to die-continually and eternally.

Then, if pride is so great a sin, and has in it such a fullness of malignity against God and man, no wonder that the people of God are tempted to it by satan, who hates God, who hates us. Hence we may learn to admire the infinite wisdom and love of God, which devised and provided a way, by and through the death of His only Son, to save His people from this abominable sin - to save them from its dominion here, by grace - and from its very being hereafter in glory!

We hence admire the invincible strength of Jehovah's favor. We learn the infinite merit of the Redeemer's blood which atoned for this sin of an infinite guilt, and reconciled such "children of pride", to an infinitely holy God, and which cleanses us continually from the filthy stains of this deep iniquity. And let endless wonder strike our hearts unto rising praises at and for the Omnipotent grace of the Holy Spirit - Who has begun in us pride's destruction, and will perform it to our soul's perfection, and full and everlasting joy and glory.

Pride is such a great iniquity, let us bewail it bitterly; humble ourselves before God, on account of it, deeply; and entreat forgiving and subduing grace constantly. Let us set ourselves against price with all our might to oppose it and destroy it. Let us be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

The good will of Him that dwelt in the bush be with you, and prosper you exceedingly, until time fades into eternal glory.

Anne Dutton~

(The End)