1599 Geneva Bible: "Bridling Pride"

1 Corinthians 4:7 “(i) For who seperateth thee? And what hast thou, that thou hast not received? If thou hast received it, why rejoicest thou, as though (ii) thou hadst no received it?”

i.He shows a good means to bridle pride: first, if you consider how to rightly view yourself as a distinct person out of the number of others, seeing that you are a man yourself: again, if you consider that although you do have something more than other men have, yet you only have it because of God's bountifulness and goodness to you. And does a wise man boast of another man's goodness like it was his own, and even more so, does he brag of it over against God?
ii.There is nothing than in us of nature, that is worthy of reward: but all that we have, we have it by the grace of God, which the Pelagians* and half-Pelagians* will not confess.

*Pelagians were men who followed the teachings of Pelagius, a 1st century Theologian, which (in brief) taught this: that man is perfectly able to save himself with out any help or work of God. God is needed. Half-Pelagians on the other hand say that God's grace is necessary to save men but it can not do it alone with out the man doing something too. In this system, neither God nor man can save men alone but both must co-operate with each other.


[The above quoted scripture and accompanying Troy-paraphrased notes are taken from the 1599 Geneva Bible. A version of this great Bible, with modern spelling, may be purchased from the following link]