Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
Read Chapter 5
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
What he is saying is that if we live well and honestly we should also express this in good conduct. This is what it is to live in the Spirit: to have an unblemished life. We walk in the Spirit if we study peace. For this is what engenders love. It is, on the other hand, empty glory to seek a victory where there is no prize, so that someone would end up having only a zeal for strife and spiritual competition. These things tend toward discord and wrangling.
Let us not be desirous of vain-glory. Whoever seeks the praises of men seeks a vain thing. He pursues a bubble, swollen by wind, but void of all substance. The only true and lasting glory which alone can satisfy the mind, is with God. S. Jerome says: "They are desirous of solid glory who seek the approval of God, and that praise which is due to virtue."
Provoking one another. To broils, lawsuits, and other contests. The thirst for praise and eminence gives birth to these rivalries and to envy: while Pompey will not brook an equal, nor Caesar a superior.
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Let us not be vainglorious, which is the cause of all evils, provoking one another to contentions and strife, envying one another, for from vainglory comes envy and from envy all these countless evils.
There is, too, another chief spur of impatience, the lust of revenge, dealing with the business either of glory or else of malice. But "glory "on the one hand, is everywhere "vain; "
