the wisdom of others : so that to bring him to sound wisdom and discretion is indeed a hopeless task. If he will not deli- berate and weigh matters for himself, or listen to instruction and advice from others ; and if the means used to rectify his views do but confirm him the more in his delusions, there is indeed no hope of him : and " you luay even bray him in a mortar, and he will remain the same ; his conceit and folly will not depart from him^"]
The declaration in our text will be found still more weighty, if considered, II. With a more especial reference to religion —
A man that carries his conceit into religion is in- deed in a most deplorable state —
[Truth, in general, is too pure and refined to obtain ready admittance into such a mind as his ; but religious truth is alto- gether folly in his eyes. " The natural man," even though not blinded by that measure of conceit of which we have been speaking, " receiveth not the things of the Spii'it of God ; for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them, be- cause they are spiritually discerned''." But where, in addition to the natural blindness of the human mind, there is a large measure of overweening conceit, the state of that man is bad indeed; because every truth of the Gospel not only offends him, but offends him in proportion to its sublimity and importance. The total corruption of our nature, the necessity of a new birth by the operation of the Spirit of God, justification by faith in the Lord Jesus, and an entire dedication of the soul to God, all appear to him extravagant and absurd : he sees no occasion for such humiliating and self-denying doctrines ; nor will he believe them, whatever testimony be adduced from the Holy Scriptures in support of them. In vain are God's express declarations brought before him : he believes his own conceits in preference to them : and every person that would persuade him to examine with candour, he regards as a weak visionary, and a deluded fanatic. Such a person, therefore, is never likely to come to the knowledge of the truth.
But, besides the obstacles which he meets with from the sublimity of the truths, and the blindness of his own mind, he has another sovirce of blindness peculiar to himself: for God is particularly offended by such conduct, in reference to his revealed will; and he will "give such an one up to his own delusions, to believe a lie*'," and to harden himself in his impenitence and luibelief : and if once a man have provoked God so to withdraw his Holy Spirit from him, and to surrender him up to the power
a Prov. xxvii. 22. ^ 1 Cor. ii. 14. '^ 2 Thcss. ii. 11, 12.