more bold than any other's holiness — made Daniel not only as bold as a lion, but also to daunt the lions with his boldness. Luther was a man of great holiness, and a man of great boldness : witness his standing out against all the world ; and when the emperor sent for him to Worms, and his friends dissuaded him from going, as some- times Paul's did him, ' Go,' said he, ' I will surely go, since I am sent for, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ ; yea, though I knew that there were as many devils in Worms to resist me, as there be tiles to cover the houses, yet I would go.'i And when the same author and his associates were threatened with many dangers from opposers on all hands, he lets fall this heroic and magnanimous speech, ' Come let us sing the 46th Psalm, and then let them do their worst.' Latimer 2 was a man of much holiness, counting the darkness and profaneness of those times wherein he lived, and a man of much courage and bold- ness ; witness his presenting to King Henry the Eighth, for a New Year's gift, a New Testament wrapt up in a napkin, with this posie or motto about it, ' Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.' Dr Taylor, the martyr, was a very holy man, and being persuaded by some of his friends not to appear before Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Win- chester, but to fly ; * Fly you,' said he, ' and do according to your con- sciences, but as for myself I am fully determined, by God's grace, to go to the bishop, and to tell him to his beard that he doth naught' 3 Colonus, the Dutch martyr, called to the judge that had sentenced him to death, and desired him to lay his hand upon his heart, and then asked him whose heart did most beat, his or the judge's ; here was a man of a heroic spirit indeed. Basil was a man of great holi- ness, and a man of a most masculine arid courageous spirit. When the emperor sent to him to subscribe to the Arian heresy, and to engage him, promised him great preferment, to which he replied, ' Alas, these speeches are fit to catch little children withal, that look after such things, but we that are nourished and taught by the holy Scriptures are readier to suffer a thousand deaths than to suffer one syl- lable or tittle of the Scripture to be altered : ' and when the emperor threatened him with imprisonment, banishment, death, he answered, * Let him threaten boys with such fray-bugs, as for my part I am resolved that neither menaces nor flatteries shall silence me, or draw me to betray a good cause, or a good conscience.'^ Charles the Ninth, king of France, who had a deep hand in that barbarous and bloody massacre of many thousands of the saints in France ; soon after that horrid tragical and perfidious slaughter was over he called the Prince of Conde, and proposed to him these three things, ' Either to go to mass, or to die presently, or to suffer perpetual imprisonment ;' to which he returned this noble, bold, and heroic answer, viz., ' That by God's help he would never choose the first, and for either of the other two he left to the king's pleasure and God's providence.' ^ John, Duke of Saxony, was eminent in Christianity, and he did heroically assert and maintain the cause of God against all opposition in three imperial assemblies ; and when it was told him that he should lose the favour
1 [Foxe] Acts and Mon. 776. = Ihid., 1594. =• Ibid., 1380.
* Hist. Tripart., lib. vii. cap. 36. " The history of France in the year 1572.
362 THE NECESSITY, EXCELLENCY, RARITY, [HeB. XII. 14.
of the Pope, and the emperor, and all the world besides, if he stuck so fast to the Lutheran cause, to which he gave this noble answer, 'Here are two ways,' said he, ' I must serve God or the world, and which of these do you think is the better ? ' and so put them off with this plea- sant indignation ; and when the States of the empire forbid all Lutheran sermons, he presently prepared to be gone, and professed boldly, ' that he would not stay there where he might not have liberty to serve Grod.* And thus you see by all these famous instances that the more eminent any persons are in holiness, the more bold, resolute, courageous, and heroical they will be for God, and for the things of God ; and therefore, as ever you would be men of high courage and resolution for God, labour to be high in holiness. Such men who in all ages have been eminent in holiness have been like Shammah, one of David's worthies, who stood and defended the field when all the rest fled. But,