ON PRIDE. I. What manner of man David was, chosen in the people of God as prophet and king, and with how great mercy and how supreme a dignity of meekness he was endowed, I think, dearest one, that you have come to know from the testimonies of the sacred volumes. Let your prudence then attend to how that man, well-pleasing to God, dreaded this most wicked spirit of vainglory, lest it should creep upon him. For, beholding what kind and how great were the good things which the grace of God daily bestowed upon him — that is, so many victories over foreign nations, so great an abundance of riches, vengeance upon his rivals, an innumerable multitude among his citizens, gentleness in judgments, and finally the prophecy of the Holy Spirit unto the knowledge of all things to come;
yet lest self-exaltation, using some vainglory amid these so great goods, should puff him up, he prays to God more attentively, saying: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There the workers of iniquity fell: they were driven out, and could not stand' (Ps. 35:12-13). Let us therefore see what this is which he said: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me.' The foot in man, as far as reason indicates, although it is the extremity of the body, is yet as it were a kind of foundation, the beginning of the rising posture, from which also, as though built up, the height of the formed flesh rises together. What then he says, 'Let not the foot of pride come to me,' is as if he were to say:
'Let not the beginning of pride come to me,' that is, vainglory, from whose foundation that ruinous loftiness of pride is produced. For one is generated from the other, and their nearness is scarcely recognized, perhaps, by the discernment of a few. For from whatever good men have gloried too much, this immediately follows: that they attribute that very good not to God the giver, but to their own power. II. Vainglory therefore is to be delighted by human praises: but pride is for the good for which someone is praised to be applied to himself, not to God. And vainglory indeed is nourished by another's estimation, but pride by vainglory. When once a man has grown accustomed, through the assents of others, that he is great, it is necessary that he himself also assent to this for himself.
That wretchedness which is worse follows after: because whatever he has determined about himself even by his own testimony, however false it be, no persuasion will be able to wring it from him; and for this reason, incorrigible in mind, despising others, he daily admires himself alone, judging that alone irreproachable and perfect which he himself has come to think. This therefore was what King David besought, lest it should creep upon him; lest perchance, by some persuasion, the inducement of empty praise should make him ascribe this — that he was so great — not to divine grace, but to his own power. III. But what follows men inflated with the spirit of pride, the same prophet has joined in the very next words. For when he had said: 'Let not the foot of pride come to me,' he immediately added:
'And let not the hand of the sinner move me.' For he knew that an instability of sins straightway follows all pride. So indeed it is. For whoever is distended with the swelling of pride, in this imitates the glory of God, that no one is like to him: as though truly profane, who rises up to the injury of God, he is forsaken by Him, handed over into the hands of sinners, into the works of unclean deeds, so that, bent down by the shameful disgraces of the passions, he may learn that he is earth and ashes, and may, humbled, acknowledge that which, puffed up, he could not see in himself. Whence also Solomon says: 'He who exalts his heart is unclean before God' (Prov. 16:18; 18:12). IV. But what King David followed after this, let us see.
'There,' he says, 'fell all the workers of iniquity: they were driven out, and could not stand.' He evidently shows that in pride is the first ruin of all the wicked. And the same is also written elsewhere: 'The beginning of sin is pride' (Sir. 10:15). And that this may be more openly demonstrated, let us recall the downfall of that first angel, who, named Lucifer for the splendour of his beauty, from that sublime and blessed place of the angels, by no other vice than this alone of pride, slipped down into the lower regions. Because, when among the other supernal powers he stood pre-eminent by the light of his more brilliant beauty, he believed himself to obtain this not by the benefit of his Creator, but by his own power;
and as though he needed the help of no one, like God he judged himself thus similar to Him, saying: 'I will set my seat in the north, and I will be like the Most High' (Isa. 14:13-14). For this thought alone cast him down: for soon, deserted by God, whose protection he believed he did not need, suddenly made weak and wretched, he both felt the mutability of his nature which he had not acknowledged, and lost the gift of God which he possessed. After this, also seeing man, made by God from the dust, substituted in the place of blessedness which he himself had lost, instigated by envy, he assailed him with the same weapon of pride by which he himself was cast down. For to himself he had said: 'I will be like the Most High.' To Eve he said: 'You shall be as gods' (Gen. 3:5).
And they, coveting this, for no other cause but only that they might become gods, transgressed the commandment of God. O how great is the blindness in the appetite for vainglory! Man did not see so manifest a deceit, in which to those that fell, the likeness of God is promised in reversed manner not from obedience to Him, but from contempt. V. Behold, this is the savoured destruction of that first poison, which, smeared round with the most bitter honey of empty boasting, deceived both angel and man. In this both the heavenly and the earthly creature fell. For this they were driven out from their seats, the one from heaven, the other from paradise; and they could not stand, because they fell grievously. What sort of evil pride is, then, which King David openly feared, he himself has shown by setting forth the causes of these ruins.
VI. All kinds of sins, that is, luxury, avarice, adultery, and any others there may be, although in all these too God is angered, yet He still executes vengeance upon such things either through angels or through men. But pride, not through any other whatever, but through Himself, deserves to have God as its adversary. For so it is written: 'But God resists the proud' (1 Pet. 5:5; Jas. 4:6). For the other vices are turned back either upon those very ones who have committed them, or are seen to be perpetrated against other men. But this swelling of pride properly strives against God, and therefore endures Him as its enemy;
because, stretching itself toward what is on high, it here always seeks that which is proper to Him alone. But although generally this blight of pride is dangerous, yet it is not more to be feared by others than by those who have attained either spiritually to the perfection of virtues, or carnally to an abundance of riches and the highest titles of honour. For in those it becomes the greater, the greater also is he who is proud. Nor is it content to have overthrown the base also or the common people, but it settles by ambushes even among those who are greatest: of whom, the higher the rank, the higher also the ruin. Whence also Scripture commemorates this concerning that same spirit of pride: 'And his food,' it says, 'is choice' (Hab. 1:16).
It assails choice and exalted men. To them it suggests that they are great, that they lack nothing, that whatever they do, think, or speak, all of it is wisdom and all of it prudence. To these, if anything useful comes about, with God governing it, immediately attributing it to their own powers and their own industry, they cry out: 'I did this, I said this, I devised this'; and, as though all stood amazed, having stolen away the glory of God, they put themselves forward to His likeness as objects of admiration. From these God, by a just judgment, withdrawing His supports, hands them over, as the Apostle says, to a reprobate sense, so that they do or think things which are not fitting (Rom. 1:28).
Because, although they know that God's providence is present in all things, yet they do not magnify God or give thanks, but, glorying in themselves, they become vain in their reasonings. Saying that they are wise, they are fools; boasting that they are stable, unconquered, powerful, they prove to be weak, conquered and impotent. VII.
Since these things are so, it is most manifestly ascertained that with all vigilance and with all the industry of the heart the appetite for vainglory is to be fled by us, lest perchance, if the venomous contagion of the disease should creep even once into the inner chambers of our heart, in all the prosperity of our works, growing up by the most subtle delight of human praises, out of the abundance of its wickedness it should bring forth that most vile and crueller offspring of pride. And when both of these, founded on pestilent roots, have filled up the secret places of the human mind, they may from every side, with the appearance of their ambush changed, fall upon us unforeseen. For to those who have given themselves to spiritual pursuits, vainglory soon flatters them concerning their fasting, their vigils, their reading.
for their solitude of the wilderness, their patience, their silence. And if this first solicitation be not at once detected by the eye of a circumspect mind, a more dreadful pride follows close behind it as its companion; which lies to them that they are both holier and better than all, and sells them, as it were, the notion that they stand on the highest summit of perfection, by their own stability of virtue, as though never about to fall. But to those who are still in the delights of carnal passions by which they creep upon them, once they have obtained for themselves the dwellings of human minds, then they cause to sprout up a manifold tinder of vices from both. For vainglory generates of itself presumption
of all novelties, the inventions of false dogmas, the tortures of questions, contentions, heresies, sects, schisms. But pride begets indignation, envy, contempt, detraction, murmuring, and — more execrable than all these — blasphemy. If anyone desires in truth to root out the cause of these evils, let him first cut away their origins and roots from himself. For thus the offshoots of all vices can be utterly rooted out, if their very seeds too, before they germinate, are plucked up.