Chapter 23.—Rule Regarding the Narrative of Sins of Great Men.

33.  And when he reads of the sins of great men, although he may be able to see and to trace out in them a figure of things to come, let him yet put the literal fact to this use also, to teach him not to dare to vaunt himself in his own good deeds, and in comparison with his own righteousness, to despise others as sinners, when he sees in the case of men so eminent both the storms that are to be avoided and the shipwrecks that are to be wept over.  For the sins of these men were recorded to this end, that men might everywhere and always tremble at that saying of the apostle:  “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”^18791879    1 Cor. x. 12.  For there is hardly a page of Scripture on which it is not clearly written that God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble.^18801880    Comp. Jas. iv. 6 and 1 Pet. v. 6.