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20. There are, however, some who think themselves capable of being
cleansed by their own righteousness, so as to contemplate God, and to
dwell in God; whom their very pride itself stains above all others.
For there is no sin to which the divine law is more opposed, and over
which that proudest of spirits, who is a mediator to things below, but
a barrier against things above, receives a greater right of mastery:
unless either his secret snares be avoided by going another way, or if
he rage openly by means of a sinful people (which Amalek, being
interpreted, means), and forbid by fighting the passage to the land
of promise, he be overcome by the cross of the Lord, which is
prefigured by the holding out of the hands of Moses. For these
persons promise themselves cleansing by their own righteousness for this
reason, because some of them have been able to penetrate with the eye
of the mind beyond the whole creature, and to touch, though it be in
ever so small a part, the light of the unchangeable truth; a thing
which they deride many Christians for being not yet able to do, who,
in the meantime, live by faith alone. But of what use is it for the
proud man, who on that account is ashamed to embark upon the ship of
wood, to behold from afar his country beyond the sea? Or how can it
hurt the humble man not to behold it from so great a distance, when he
is actually coming to it by that wood upon which the other disdains to
be borne?
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