Humility

. From a view of the greatness and majesty of God, and of the frailty and vileness of man compared together: this was what humbled Job, and brought him to a right sense of things, and to a suitable behavior under the providence of God towards him; when, having contended with God, he is called upon by him out of the whirlwind to answer; and, being confounded with a sense of God’s greatness and his own vileness, replied, “Behold, I am vile; What shall I answer thee?” and still more plainly and fully, having observed the omnipotence and omniscience of God, thus humbly expresses himself, “I have heard of thee, by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes!” .

 From a spiritual knowledge of divine things; natural knowledge “puffeth up;” the wise philosophers among the heathens, with all their boasted morality, were as full of pride as men could well be; their characters are, “proud boasters,”  a Pharisee, with all his knowledge of the law and of righteousness, is a vain empty man, and is proud of what he does not truly understand; and so he will remain, till he comes to know Christ and him crucified: and then he will “count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord,” whom he only then will determine to know, and in whom he will glory; no man is truly humble till he learns that mortifying lesson, “If any among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise” .

. From an experimental knowledge of the gospel scheme; the tendency of which is, to stain the pride of man, to abase the creature, and exalt the riches of divine grace; to prevent men from glorying in anything of themselves, and to exclude all boasting in them: it places salvation entirely on the grace of God, to the exclusion of works, as the cause of it; the Spirit of God, in the gospel, blows a blast upon all the goodliness of men; and such who are evangelized by it, or cast into a gospel mould, that form of doctrine into which they are experimentally delivered, are always humble, meek, and lowly minded. I say experimentally, because men may have notions of evangelical doctrine, and be proud of these notions, not having a true experience of them.