God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Those whom God chooses are chosen out from among all others. They who are chosen were in the same sinful condition, the same misery as the whole of the race. They were alike partakers of corruption, morally and spiritually destitute of anything good. They were, like all others, at enmity with God, serving Satan, deserving of death and condemnation, without righteousness. There is no distinction between elect and non-elect prior to the distinction that election makes.
Pride is one chief cause of undue anger. It is because men are proud, and exalt themselves in their own hearts, that they are revengeful, and are apt to be excited, and to make great things out of little ones that may be against themselves. Yea, they even treat as vices things that are in themselves virtues, when they think their honor is touched, or when their will is crossed. And it is pride that makes men so unreasonable and rash in their anger, and raises it to such a high degree, and continues it so long, and often keeps it up in the form of habitual malice… If men sought not chiefly their own private and selfish interests, but the glory of God and the common good, then their spirit would be a great deal more stirred up in God's cause than in their own; and they would not be prone to hasty, rash, inconsiderate, immoderate, and long-continued wrath, with any who might have injured or provoked them; but they would in a great measure forget themselves for God's sake, and from their zeal for the honor of Christ. The end they would aim at, would be, not making themselves great, or getting their own will, but the glory of God and the good of their fellow-beings.
