Oh, how unseemly in a Christian are murmurings, envyings, and
such like! If we look beneath the surface we shall find the root
of these things to be unmortified pride, and a conscience not
purged.
Pride never stoops but to take a higher flight.
The drunkard, the murderer, the idolater, cannot enter into the
kingdom of heaven. The sins of such are counted great even by
the natural conscience; but covetousness, who condemns it? Yet
the man who thirsts for gold is alike with the murderer accursed
from God.
Satan gets no more advantage over us than we allow him.
It is one of Satan's great aims to seduce the children of God
and the servants of Christ into error; if he cannot do that,
he will tempt them to keep back part of the truth, or to dwell
upon any other part rather than Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
The sum of man's excellency is "dust and ashes:" nevertheless,
Satan deludes men into thinking themselves something; he helps
them to carnal self-amendment and self-improvement, and so makes
them blind to their true state before God.