Acquired Judgment - Actual Experience

Ray Ortlund post:  The amazing difference

“Dear Sir,

To be enabled to form a clear, consistent and comprehensive judgment of the truths revealed in the Scripture is a great privilege.  But they who possess it are exposed to the temptation to think too highly of themselves and too meanly of others, especially of those who not only refuse to adopt their sentiments but venture to oppose them.  We see few controversial writings, however excellent in other respects, but are tinctured with this spirit of self-superiority. . . . I know nothing as a means more likely to correct this evil than a serious consideration of the amazing difference between our acquired judgment and our actual experience, or in other words how little influence our knowledge and judgment have upon our own conduct. . . . If we estimate our knowledge by its effects and value it no farther than it is experiential and operative (which is the proper standard for testing it), we shall find it so faint and feeble as hardly to deserve the name.”

John Newton, Works (Edinburgh, 1988), I:245-246.  Style updated, italics added.