VI. But a proud man in power is very mischievous; for his pride is the more dangerous by his greatness, since from ambition in private men, it becomes tyranny in him: it would reign alone; nay live so, rather than have competitors: _Aut Cæsar, aut nullus_. Reason must not check it, nor rules of law limit it; and either it can do no wrong, or it is sedition to complain of the wrong that it does. The men of this temper would have nothing thought amiss they do; at least, they count it dangerous to allow it to be so, though so it be; for that would imply they had erred, which it is always matter of state to deny: no, they will rather choose to perish obstinately, than by acknowledging, yield away the reputation of better judging to inferiors, though it were their prudence to do so. And indeed, it is all the satisfaction that proud great men make to the world for the miseries they often bring upon it, that, first or last, upon a division, they leave their real interest to follow some one excess of humour, and are almost ever destroyed by it. This is the end pride gives proud men, and the ruin it brings upon them, after it has punished others by them. VII. But above all things, pride is intolerable in men pretending to religion; and of them in ministers; for they are names of the greatest contradiction. I speak without respect or anger, to persons or parties; for I only touch upon the bad of all. What shall pride do with religion, that rebukes it? Or ambition with ministers, whose very office is humility? And yet there are but too many of them, that, besides an equal guilt with others in the fleshly pride of the world, are even proud of that name and office, which ought always to remind them of self-denial. Yea, they use it as the beggars do the name of God and Christ, only to get by it: placing to their own account the advantages of that reverend profession, and thereby making their function but a political handle to raise themselves to the great preferments of the world. But O then! how can such be his ministers, that said, "My kingdom is not of this world"? (John, xviii. 36.) Who, of mankind, more self-conceited than these men? If contradicted, as arrogant and angry, as if it were their calling to be so. Counsel one of them, he scorns you: reprove him, and he is almost ready to excommunicate you: 'I am a minister and an elder:' flying thither to secure himself from the reach of just censure, which indeed exposes him but the more to it: and therefore his fault cannot be the less, by how much it is worse in a minister to do ill, and spurn at reproof, than an ordinary man.