332 ERRORS IN PRAYER. were not intended as individual portraits, but as specimens of a class. The proud man does not perhaps always thank God that he is not guilty of adultery or extortion, to which vices he may have little temptation ; nor does he glory in paying tithes and taxes, to which the law would compel him. Yet is he never disposed, like the Pharisee, to proclaim the catalogue of his own vir- tues ? to bring in his comparative claims, as if it were a good thing to be better than the bad ? Is he never disposed to carry in his eye, (as if he would remind his Maker of his superiority,) certain per- sons who are possibly less the objects of Divine displeasure than he, by his pride and selfishness, may have rendered him- self; altliough his regularity in the forms of devotion may have made him more respectable in the world, than the poor reprobatedbeing whom he praises God he does not resemble ? It is the lowly abase- ment, the touching self-condemnation, the avowed poverty, the pleaded misery
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