Pride’s Potency

We would do well to note pride’s peculiarly destructive power. In his Advice to Young Converts, Jonathan Edwards called pride

“the worst viper that is in the heart” and “the greatest disturber of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ.”

He ranked pride as the most difficult sin to root out, and

“the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts.”

Despite this thorough understanding of its ugliness, Edwards himself constantly battled his own pride (a fact which gives me hope, knowing I’m not alone in this struggle).

“What a foolish, silly, miserable, blind, deceived poor worm am I, when pride works,”

Edwards once wrote in his diary. In his sermons and in his vast writings he constantly warned against pride, especially spiritual pride, which he viewed as the greatest cause of the premature ending of the Great Awakening, the revival that had brought so much spiritual vitality to the church in Edward’s day.