What is virtue but a medicine, and vice but a wound?--Yea, we have so
often deeply wounded ourselves with medicine, that God hath been fain
to make wounds medicinable; to cure by vice where virtue hath
stricken; to suffer the just man to fall, that being raised he may be
taught what power it was which upheld him standing. I am not afraid to
affirm it boldly with St. Augustine, that men puffed up through a
proud opinion of their own sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at
the hands of God, and are assisted with his grace when with his grace
they are _not_ assisted, but permitted (and that grievously) to
transgress. Whereby, as they were through over-great liking of
themselves supplanted (_tripped up_), so the dislike of that which did
supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer. Ask the very
soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly itself make you this answer:
My eager protestations made in the glory of my spiritual strength I am
ashamed of. But my shame and the tears, with which my presumption and
my weakness were bewailed, recur in the songs of my thanksgiving. My
Strength had been my ruin, my Fall hath proved my stay.[83]
[83] Hooker 'On the Nature of Pride,' Works, p. 521.--ED.