BY correction God taketh down the pride of man’s heart. There is not a greater obstruction to saving knowledge than pride and self-opinion, whereby man either thinks he knoweth enough, or, that not worth the learning which God teacheth; therefore, it is proclaimed before the Word, “Hear and give ear, be not proud; for the Lord hath spoken,” Jer. xiii., 15. In divine matters, as well as human, “only by pride cometh contention,” Prov. xiii., 10. It is pride which raiseth objections against the Word, and disputeth the commands when it should obey them. The proud men in Jeremiah, Jer. xliii., 2, when they could elude the message of God by His prophet no longer, do at length stiffen into downright rebellion: first they shift, “Thou speakest falsely,” ver. 2, and then they resolve, “As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee,” Jer. xliv., 16, which means: Be it Baruch, or be it God, we will have none of it; “but we will certainly do whatsoever goeth forth out of our own mouth.” Such a masterpiece of obdurance is the heart of man, that it stands like a mountain before the Word, and cannot be moved, till God come with His instruments of affliction, and digging down those mountains (as it is proclaimed before the gospel, Luke iii., 5), casteth them into a level; and then God may stand, as it were, upon even ground, and talk with man. This pride of heart speaketh loud in the wicked, and whispereth too audibly even in the godly; it is a folly bound up even in the hearts of God’s children, till the correction driveth it out; and the proud stomach being broken, the poor bleeding wretch cries out: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
—Case’s Correction, Instruction: The Bod and the Word.