Folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in low place.
Ver. 6. Folly is set in great dignity.] Sedes prima et vita ima, a these suit not. Dignitas in indigno est ornamentum in luto. Royalty itself, without righteousness, is but eminent dishonour. When a fool is set in dignity, it is, saith one, b as when a handful of hay is set up to give light, which with smoke and smell offendeth all that are near. When as the worthy sit in low place, it is as when a goodly candle (that on a table would give a comfortable and comely light) is put under a bushel.
And the rich in low place,] i.e., The wise, as appears by the opposition, who, in true account, are the only rich, Jam 2:5 "rich in faith," 1Ti 6:18 "rich in good works," Luk 12:21 rich to Godward, who hath highly honoured and advanced them, though vilipended and underrated by men; digni etiam qui ditentur, worthy they are also to be set in highest places, as being drained from the dregs, and sifted from the brans of the common sort of people. Dignity should wait upon desert, as it did here in England, in King Edward VI's days, that aureum saeculum, in quo honores melioribus dabantur, as Seneca c hath it, that golden age in which honours were bestowed on those that best deserved them. But in case it prove otherwise, as it often doth - the golden bishopric of Carthage fell to the lot of leaden Aurelius, and little Hippo to great St Augustine; Damasus, the scholar, was advanced to the see of Rome when Jerome, his master, ended his days in his cell at Bethlehem - yet virtue is its own competent encouragement, and will rather choose to lie in the dust than to rise by wickedness. Cato said he had rather men should question why he had no statue or monument erected in honour of him, than why he had. The wise historian observed that the statues of Brutus and Cassius, eo praefulgebant quod non visebantur, d were the more glorious and illustrious, because they were not brought out with other images in a solemn procession at the funeral of Germanicus. God pleaseth himself, saith Basil, in beholding a hidden pearl in a disrespected body. e A rich stone is of no less worth when locked up in a wicker casket, than when it is set in a royal diadem.
a Salvian.
b Cartwright.
c Sen. Epist., 91.
d Tacit. Annal.
e Abstrusum in despecto corpore margaritum conspicatus.