The care and love of all mankind are either directed to God or themselves. Those that love God above all, are ever humbling self to his commands, and only love self in subserviency to him that is Lord of all. But those who are declined from that love to God, are lovers of themselves more than God: for supreme love must centre in one of these two. To that inordinate self-love, the apostle rightly joins proud and high-minded. (2 Tim. iii. 2, 4.) For no sooner had the angels declined their love, duty and reverence to God, than they inordinately loved and valued themselves; which made them exceed their station, and aspire above the order of their creation. This was their pride, and this sad defection their dismal fall; who are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day of God.
II. Pride, that pernicious evil, which begins this chapter, did also begin the misery of mankind: a most mischievous quality; and so commonly known by its motions and sad effects, that every unmortified breast carries its definition in it. However, I will say, in short, that pride is an excess of self-love, joined with an undervaluing of others, and a desire of dominion over them: the most troublesome thing in the world. There are four things by which it hath made itself best known to mankind, the consequences of which have brought a misery equal to its evil. The first is, an inordinate pursuit of knowledge; the second, an ambitious craving and seeking after power; the third, an extreme desire of personal respect and deference: the last excess is that of worldly furniture and ornaments. To the just and true witness of the eternal God, placed in the souls of all people, I appeal as to the truth of these things.
III. To the first, it is plain, that an inordinate desire of knowledge introduced man's misery, and brought an universal lapse from the glory of his primitive state. Adam would needs be wiser than God had made him. It did not serve his turn to know his Creator, and give him that holy homage his being and innocency naturally engaged and excited him too; nor to have an understanding above all the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, joined with a power to rule over all the visible creation of God; but he must be as wise as God too. This unwarrantable search, and as foolish as unjust ambition, made him unworthy of the blessings he received from God. This drives him out of paradise; and instead of being lord of the whole world, Adam becomes the wretchedest vagabond of the earth.