“I know this, that when God the Holy Spirit gives a man a view of himself, he is utterly loathsome in his own esteem.
One of the cardinals of the olden times—when cardinals were sometimes saints—happened to pass by a meadow where he saw a shepherd leaning on his crook, weeping. He stopped to ask the lad what made him weep. The lad replied by pointing to the ground, for just at his feet there was a toad.
‘I was weeping,’ said he, ‘to think that God should have made me, a creature so infinitely superior to this loathsome reptile at my feet, and that I should have made myself such a creature that this loathsome thing is superior to me, because it has never sinned.’
As the cardinal went his way, he said, ‘Verily, has it happened, that the foolish and unlearned enter into the kingdom of Heaven before us, for this peasant has found out the Truth of God.’
Vipers nor toads are more venomous or more loathsome to men than man must be to God, or would be to himself if he could see himself with the eyes of the Truth of God, and if the veil of pride were once lifted from his eyes. The image of God in man is all obliterated. We have ashes for beauty, shame for glory, rottenness for health and Hell for Heaven.” (C. H. Spurgeon, Sermon #468, Volume 8, “Ezekiel’s Deserted Infant.”)
