CHAPTER IV.
How we may know whether we are acting with Self-Distrust and Trust in God.
ONE who is presumptuous oftentimes imagines that he has gained this spirit of self-distrust and trust in God, when he has really nothing of the kind. You may learn this by the way he takes his falls.
If after a fall you give way to despondency and vexation, and despairingly complain that you can make no progress, such feelings evidently show that you have been trusting in yourself and not in God.
And if your sadness and discouragement is much, then, there can be no doubt, that your trust in self was much, and your trust in God but little. For he who much distrusts himself and trusts in God, when he falls, is not surprised at it, neither does he become sad, bitter, and desponding; because he knows his fall is owing to his own weakness, and the little trust he placed in God.
On the other hand, as he grows in self-distrust, so more and more does he humbly trust in God; and hating intensely his sin and the rebellious passions which caused his fall, and mourning over it with a deep, calm, and meek sorrow,
