As God is worthy in regard of his infinite excellency, so it is due to him, because whatsoever excellency and honor there is in the nobility of your birth, it is he that hath made between men: the rainbow is but a common vapor, it is the sun that gilds it, that enamels it with so many colors, we are but a vapor, it is the Lord that hath shined upon us and our father’s house and hath put more beauty, more lustre upon us, than upon other vapors. I may say in this respect, as Saint Paul says in another case; who makes thee to differ? was not the lump of all mankind in the hand of the Lord, as the clay in the hand of the potter, to make one to this outward honor, and another to meanness and baseness as he pleases: he might have ordered as we might have been, not only of the most beggarly and miserable brood but might have begotten a toad or a serpent, or any other of the vilest creature that lives upon the earth: that honor we have, God hath put upon us, and therefore it is his, the glory of it is infinitely due unto him.
There is no such way to add glory to your nobility, as to be willing to use it or deny it for God. This proceeds from a noble principle indeed, wheresoever it is. It is nature that causes the one kind of nobility, but it is the grace of God, a sparkled of the divine nature, a ray of the very glory of God himself, shining into the soul, that is the cause of the other. Tertullian says of Augustus, that the name of piety was more esteemed of him than the name of power: and Hierom writing the praise of Marcella a noble woman, says of her: that he will not make mention of her family, nor the honour of her blood, what Proconsuls and other great men she had to her ancestors; he says he would praise nothing but what was her own, and especially commends her in this, that she was so much the more noble, in as much, as riches and nobility being contemned, she was made the more noble in her poverty and humility. [Jeremiah Burroughs]
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Real nobility is Power, piety and/or poverty?
July 11, 2007On Affliction
July 8, 2006God does not afflict a man or woman because He does not love them, but it can never be said that God does not suffer a man or woman to sin because He does not love them. There are many a man or woman who goes on prosperously, and does not meet with such afflictions as others meet with; and the reason is because God does not have such a love for them as to other men. But it cannot be said thusly, that there are such men who keep themselves from sin that others wallow in, and therefore, they do it because God does not have such a love for them as for others. It cannot be said to be so, but it may be said that such are not as afflicted as others because God does not love them as much as others. [Jeremiah Burroughs]
