The Difficulty with Legalists

If they are told that they trust too much to their own strength and righteousness, they go about to strive to bring themselves off from it, and it may be, think they have done it, when they only do the same thing under a new disguise.

--Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative, in Works, Yale ed., 4:165-66

A pattern of my own life, many times. Only heart-softening mercy from the great Friend can break the cycle.