you pass upon yourself, or else you may incur no little harm. For although by this knowledge of your own wickedness you may surpass another, who in his blindness imagines himself to be something, yet you will lose much, and make yourself worse than he is in the motives of your heart, if you desire to be esteemed by men, and to pass for that which you know you are not.
If, then, you wish that this knowledge of your sinfulness and vileness may protect you from your enemies, and make you dear to God, you must not only strive to despise yourself, as unworthy of all good, and deserving of all evil, but you must love to be despised by others, detesting their compliments, delighting in their blame, and stooping, whenever an opportunity offers, to do that which others regard with contempt.
And, lest you should be deterred from this wholesome exercise, pay no account to the judgment which others may form of you, but go on with what you are doing, with the simple view of your own self-abasement and discipline; beware, however, of that presumptuous spirit and subtle pride, which oftentimes, under some specious pretext, causes us to disregard the opinions of others.
Keep firm and recollected within yourself, if at any time it should happen to you to be loved, or regarded as good by others, for some grace which God has bestowed upon you, and do
