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

I thought not meet to pass by this necessary reproof of the contempt of Holiness, which this Land hath been so guilty of, and which hath undone so many souls, and made such desolations in the Land. And now you shall see, that I am able to make good the grounds of this reproof, and that Holiness is no Dishonourable thing.

1. The Holy servants of the Lord have the most Honourable Master in all the world. This only is sufficient to weigh down all the Honours of the world, if it were ten thousand worlds. When the builders of the Temple were asked their names, by the Officers of King Darius, Ezra 5. 10, 11. their answer was [We are the servants of the God of Heaven and Earth.] No King on Earth, no Angel in Heaven hath a more honourable Master. To be the highest Officer of the greatest Prince, is a Title as much more base then this, as man is baser then the Infinite God. If God can not put sufficient Honour on those that are Related to him, tell us, who can? When Moses went to Pharaoh for the Israelites deliverance, he was to speak in the name of the Lord; and when Pharaoh spake contemptuously of the Lord, as one that he knew not and would not obey, how wondrously doth God vindicate his honour & his people! Let other men be called Knights, and Lords, and Kings, and Emperors; may I but be truly called the servant of the God of Heaven, I shall not envy them their honours! Our relation to so glorious a Majesty doth put an unexpressible Honour upon the poorest person and the lowest works. A servant of the Lord is more Honourable in rag•, in a smoky cottage, or the meanest state▪ then the Emperor of Constantinople or Tartary is in all their Wealth and Worldly Glory▪ And if you think not so your selves, why do you so much honour them when they are dead? What was Peter and Paul, and the rest of the Apostles, but poor despised men in the ⟨p. 238⟩world, that travailed about to preach the Gospel? and what was their honour but to be the Holy Servants of the Lords? Yet now they are dead, you are desirous to keep Holy days in an honourable memorial of them: and Kings and Princes reverence their names. What were the Martyrs whose memories are now so Honourable with us, but a company of hated persecuted men, that were used by others as Butchers do their beasts, and worse? But because they were the servants of the Lord, and suffered for his truth and cause, their names are honourable, and the names of their greatest persecutors do even stink.