Prosperity can make people forget their deliverance
especially proud and prosperous human beings
Deuteronomy 8 offers a particularly apt biblical comparison. Israel is warned that full meals, good houses and multiplying silver may lead to forgetting the God who delivered it from slavery (8:11–14). The temptation is to credit prosperity entirely to one's own power (8:17–18). Material success is therefore compatible with moral and spiritual danger; it does not certify its possessor's virtue. That is the distinction Chesterton carries into the following discussion of privileged rulers.
Paul similarly turns Israel's failures into a warning addressed to Christians: ‘let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version). In context, the warning follows a recollection of shared spiritual privileges that did not prevent disobedience (10:1–11). These passages clarify the structure of Chesterton's argument: benefits already received create no immunity from corruption. Neither passage is quoted here, and the correspondence does not establish a specific allusion. The personified Christianity speaks Chesterton's summary, not a recovered biblical speech. Text checked in the Project Gutenberg King James Bible, ebook 10; translation first published 1611.
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