“Some people are full of talk against legal doctrines, legal preaching and the legal spirit. Yet they may understand very little of what they are talking against. A legal spirit is far more subtle than they imagine. It can lurk, operate, and prevail in their hearts even while they are inveighing against it. For as long as a man is not emptied of himself and of his own righteousness and goodness, he will have a legal spirit. A spirit of pride in one’s own righteousness, morality, holiness, affection, experience, faith, humiliation or any other goodness, is a legal spirit. It is even possible to have a self-righteous spirit about one’s own humility and to be self-confident about one’s own abasement. But he whose heart is subject to Christian humility has a very different attitude
Christians who are real saints and the greatest in the Kingdom, humble themselves as a little child. They look upon themselves as children in grace.
- Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections
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