A saint or a brute the certain necessity and excellency of holiness, &c. ...…

3. If Wisdom suffice not, let the best and honestest men be witnesses. Who better then Christ, then his Apostles, then all the holy Martyrs and Confessors of the Church, and all the Doctors and faithful Ministers of Christ? which side think you were they on that laid down their lives for the cause of Christ? sure they that would rather burn at a stake, or suffer all the scorns and torments of the world, then forsake a Holy heavenly life, did take it to be better then all the pleasures or profits of the world. Sure all the holy Doctors and Pastors of the Church that lived so Holy lives themselves, and spent their days in Praying, and watching, and meditating, and preparing for the life to come, contemning all the vanities of the world, did think that this was the Better ⟨p. 118⟩part, which they followed after with so much diligence and patience as they did.

Hear me a few words, you proud and self-conceited sinners, that will plead for your ungodly ways, and plead against a holy life, and quarrel with the most faithful administrations of you• Pastors: It is a matter of Everlasting moment that you and we do differ about: and which of us is liker to be in the right? I confess I am a weak and ignorant man; but is the sottish ungodly quarreller any wiser then I am? How camest thou man to thy knowledge, that thou thinkest thy self wiser then me, and all the Pastors of the Church? My Knowledge that is but little, hath cost me almost forty years hard study? Hast thou read and meditated and studied more? Hadst thou better helps and means of Knowledge? God usually giveth his gifts in the painful use of means. If I should think my self wiser in thy trade, and able to control thee, thou wouldst judge me a self-conceited fool. What hast thou done for thy knowledge that I have not done? Hast thou prayed for it day and night? So have I. Hast thou had any private way of Learning that no man knoweth? Truly I have marvelled at the •aces of many ignorant careless men, that they do not blush when we have thus expostulated with them, when they quarrel with their Teachers, and set against them with as brazen a face as if they were all Doctors, or had studied forty years, and we were as they are: Yea as if they were wiser thn all the Apostles, Doctors and Pastors of the Church. Were it not a wonder indeed if God should give more knowledge about the matters of salvation to a sensual voluptuous Gentleman, or to an idle drone, or a fellow that scarce ever read over the Bible, and to such as live a worldly fleshly and ungodly life, then to all his Ministers and Servants that love his Laws, and meditate in them day and night, and live in Prayer, and other holy exercises, and make it their daily care and business, to conform their hearts and lives to the holy Doctrine which they study? Surely God will sooner reveal his mind to a diligent searcher, that feareth and loveth him, then to a lustful Epicure, or a drunken, swearing, worldly sot. He that every day abuseth the Holy Ghost that should be his Teacher, is not so likely to come to Knowledge, as he that humbly learneth and obeyeth him. It is strange evidence that most wicked men do give us to prove themselves wiser then their Teachers: