IX. But our last reason is of most weight with me, and because argumentum ad hominem, it is most heavy with our despisers, which is this: it should not therefore be urged upon us, because it is a most extravagant piece of pride in a mortal man to require or expect from his fellow-creature a more civil speech or grateful language, than he is wont to give to the immortal God and his Creator in all his worship to him. Art thou, O man, greater than he that made thee? Canst thou approach the God of thy breath and great Judge of thy life with thou and thee, and when thou risest off thy knees, scorn a Christian for giving to thee, poor mushroom of the earth, no better language than thou hast given to God but just before? An arrogancy not to be easily equalled! But again, it has either too much or too little respect; if too much, do not reproach and be angry, but gravely and humbly refuse it; if too little, why dost thou show to God no more? O whither is man gone! To what a pitch does he soar! He would be used more civilly by us than he uses God; which is to have us make more than a God of him: but he shall want worshippers of us, as well as he wants the divinity in himself that deserves to be worshipped. Certain we are, that the Spirit of God seeks not these respects, much less pleads for them, or would be wroth with any that conscientiously refuse to give them. But that this vain generation is guilty of using them, to gratify a vain mind, is too palpable. What capping, what cringing, what scraping, what vain, unmeant words, most hyperbolical expressions, compliments, gross flatteries, and plain lies, under the name of civilities, are men and women guilty of in conversation! Ah! my friends! whence fetch you these examples? What part of all the writings of the holy men of God warrants these things? But, to come nearer to your own profession, is Christ your example herein, whose name you pretend to bear; or those saints of old that lived in desolate places, of whom the world was not worthy: (Heb. xi. 38:) or do you think you follow the practice of those Christians that, in obedience to their Master's life and doctrine, forsook the respect of persons, and relinquished the fashions, honour, and glory of this transitory world; whose qualifications lay not in external gestures, respects, and compliments, but in a meek and quiet spirit, (1 Pet. iii. 4,) adorned with temperance, virtue, modesty, gravity, patience, and brotherly kindness; which were the tokens of true honour, and only badges of respect and nobility in those Christian times? O no. But is it not to expose ourselves both to your contempt and fury, that we imitate them, and not you? And tell us, pray, are not romances, plays, masks, gaming, fiddlers, &c. the entertainments that most delight you? Had you the spirit of Christianity indeed, could you consume your most precious little time in so many unnecessary visits, games, and pastimes; in your vain compliments, courtships, feigned stories, flatteries, and fruitless novelties, and what not; invented and used to your diversion, to make you easy in your forgetfulness of God: which never was the Christian way of living, but entertainment of the heathens that knew not God? Oh! were you truly touched with a sense of your sins, and in any measure born again; did you take up the cross of Jesus and live under it, these, which so much please your wanton and sensual nature, would find no place with you. This is not seeking the things that are above, (Col. iii. 1,) to have the heart thus set on things that are below; nor working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, to spend your days in vanity. This is not crying with Elihu, "I know not to give flattering titles to men; for in so doing my Maker would soon take me away." This is not to deny self, and lay up a more hidden and enduring substance, an eternal inheritance in the heavens, that will not pass away. Well, my friends, whatever you think, your plea of custom will find no place at God's tribunal: the light of Christ in your own hearts will overrule it; and this Spirit, against which we testify, shall then appear to be what we say it is. Say not I am serious about slight things; but beware you of levity in serious things.
X. Before I close, I shall add a few testimonies from men of general credit, in favour of our nonconformity to the world in this particular.
Luther, the great reformer, whose sayings were oracles with the age he lived in, and of no less reputation now, with many that object against us, was so far from condemning our plain speech, that in his Ludus, he sports himself with you to a single person as an incongruous and ridiculous speech, viz. Magister, vos estis iratus? Master, are you angry? As absurd with him in Latin, as My masters, art thou angry? is in English. Erasmus, a learned man, and an exact critic in speech, than whom I know not any we may so properly refer the grammar of the matter to, not only derides it, but bestows a whole discourse upon rendering it absurd: plainly manifesting that it is impossible to preserve numbers if you, the only word for more than one, be used to express one: as also, that the original of this corruption was the corruption of flattery. Lipsius affirms of the ancient Romans, "That the manner of greeting now in vogue was not in use amongst them." To conclude: Howel, in his History of France, gives us an ingenious account of its original; where he not only assures us, "That anciently the peasants thou'd their kings, but that pride and flattery first put inferiors upon paying a plural respect to the single person of every superior, and superiors upon receiving it." And though we had not the practice of God and man so undeniably to justify our plain and homely speech, yet, since we are persuaded that its original was from pride and flattery, we cannot in conscience use it. And however we may be censured as singular by those loose and airy minds, that through the continual love of earthly pleasures, consider not the true rise and tendency of words and things; yet to us whom God has convinced by his light and Spirit in our hearts of the folly and evil of such courses, and brought into a spiritual discerning of the nature and ground of the world's fashions, they appear to be fruits of pride and flattery; and we dare not continue in such vain compliances to earthly minds, lest we offend God, and burden our consciences. But having been sincerely affected with the reproofs of instruction, and our hearts being brought into a watchful subjection to the righteous law of JESUS, so as to bring our deeds to the light, (John, iii. 19-21,) to see in whom they are wrought, if in God or not; we cannot, we dare not conform ourselves to the fashions of the world that pass away; knowing assuredly, that "for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." (Matt. xii. 36.)
XI. Wherefore, reader, whether thou art a night-walking Nicodemus, or a scoffing scribe; one that would visit the blessed Messiah, but in the dark customs of the world, that thou mightest pass as undiscerned, for fear of bearing his reproachful cross; or else a favourer of Haman's pride, and countest these testimonies but a foolish singularity; I must say, Divine love enjoins me to be a messenger of truth to thee, and a faithful witness against the evil of this degenerate world, as in other, so in these things; in which the spirit of vanity and lust hath got so great a head, and lived so long uncontrolled, that it hath impudence enough to term its darkness light, and to call its evil offspring by the names due to a better nature, the more easily to deceive people into the practice of them. And truly, so very blind and insensible are most of what spirit they are, and ignorant of the meek and self-denying life of holy Jesus, whose name they profess; that to call each other Rabbi, that is, master; to bow to men, which I call worship; and to greet with flattering titles, and to do their fellow-creatures homage; to scorn that language to themselves that they give to God, and to spend their time and estate to gratify their wanton minds; the customs of the Gentiles, that knew not God, pass with them for civility, good-breeding, decency, recreation, accomplishments, &c. O that man would consider, since there are but two spirits, one good, the other evil, which of them it is that inclines the world to these things; and whether it be Nicodemus or Mordecai in thee, that doth befriend these despised Christians, which makes thee ashamed to disown that openly in conversation with the world, which the true light hath made vanity and sin to thee in secret! Or if thou art a despiser, tell me, I pray thee, what dost thou think thy mockery, anger, or contempt dost most resemble, proud Haman, or good Mordecai? My friend, know that no man hath more delighted in, or been prodigal of those vanities called civilities than myself; and could I have covered my conscience under the fashions of the world, truly I had found a shelter from showers of reproach that have fallen very often and thick upon me; but had I, with Joseph, conformed to Egypt's customs, I had sinned against my God and lost my peace. But I would not have thee think it is a mere thou or title simply or nakedly in themselves we boggle at, or that we would beget or set up any form inconsistent with sincerity or true civility: there is but too much of that; but the esteem and value the vain minds of men do put upon them, that ought to be crossed and stripped of their delights, constrains us to testify so steadily against them. And this know, from the sense God's Holy Spirit hath begotten in us, that that which requires these customs, and begets fear to leave them, and pleads for them, and is displeased, if not used and paid, is the spirit of pride and flattery in the ground; though frequency, use, or generosity may have abated its strength in some: and this being discovered by the light that now shines from heaven in the hearts of the despised Christians I have communion with, necessitates them to this testimony; and myself, as one of them and for them, in a reproof of the unfaithful, who would walk undiscerned, though convinced to the contrary; and for an allay to the proud despisers, who scorn us as a people guilty of affectation and singularity. For the eternal God, who is great amongst us, and on his way in the earth to make his power known, will root up every plant that his right hand hath not planted. Wherefore let me beseech thee, reader, to consider the foregoing reasons, which were mostly given me from the Lord, in that time, when my condescension to these fashions would have been purchased at almost any rate; but the certain sense I had of their contrariety to the meek and self-denying life of holy JESUS, required of me my disuse of them, and faithful testimony against them. I speak the truth in Christ; I lie not: I would not have brought myself under censure and disdain for them, could I, with peace of conscience, have kept my belief under a worldly behaviour. It was extremely irksome to me to decline, and expose myself; but having an assured and repeated sense of the original of these vain customs, that they rise from pride, self-love, and flattery, I dared not gratify that mind in myself or others. And for this reason it is, that I am earnest with my readers to be cautious how they reprove us on this occasion; and do once more entreat them that they would seriously weigh in themselves, whether it be the spirit of the world or of the Father, that is so angry with our honest, plain, and harmless thou and thee: that so every plant that God our heavenly Father hath not planted in the sons and daughters of men may be rooted up.
CHAPTER XI.
1. Pride leads people to an excessive value of their persons.—2. It is plain, from the racket that is made about blood and families: also in the case of shape and beauty.—3. Blood no nobility, but virtue.—4. Virtue no upstart: antiquity no nobility without it, else age and blood would bar virtue in the present age.—5. God teaches the true sense of nobility, who made of one blood all nations; there is the original of all blood.—6. These men of blood, out of their feathers, look like other men.—7. This is not said to reject, but humble the gentleman: the advantages of that condition above others. An exhortation to recover their lost economy in families, out of interest and credit.—8. But the author has a higher motive; the gospel, and the excellencies of it, which they profess.—9. The pride of persons respecting shape and beauty: the washes, patches, paintings, dresses, &c. This excess would keep the poor: the mischiefs that attend it.—10. But pride in the old and homely yet more hateful: that it is usual. The madness of it. Counsel to the beautiful to get their souls like their bodies; and to the homely to supply want of that in the adornment of their lasting part, their souls, with holiness. Nothing homely with God but sin. The blessedness of those that wear Christ's yoke and cross, and are crucified to the world.
I. But pride stops not here; she excites people to an excessive value and care of their persons: they must have great and punctual attendance, stately furniture, rich and exact apparel. All which help to make up that pride of life that John tells us is not of the Father, but of the world. (1 John, ii. 16.) A sin God charged upon the haughty daughters of Zion, (Isaiah, iii.) and on the proud prince and people of Tyrus. (Ezek. xxvii. xxviii.) Read these chapters, and measure this age by their sins, and what is coming on these nations by their judgments. But at the present I shall only touch upon the first, viz. the excessive value people have of their persons; leaving the rest to be considered under the last head of this discourse, which is luxury, where they may be not improperly placed.
II. That people are generally proud of their persons is too visible and troublesome; especially if they have any pretence either to blood or beauty; the one has raised many quarrels among men, and the other among women, and men too often for their sakes and at their excitements. But to the first: What a pother has this noble blood made in the world:—antiquity of name or family, whose father, or mother, great grandfather, or great grandmother was best descended or allied:—what stock or what clan they came of:—what coat of arms they gave:—which had, of right, the precedence! But methinks nothing of man's folly has less show of reason to palliate it.