Part 94 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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Part 95 HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness
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(11.) Eleventhly, To provoke you to labor after higher degrees of holiness, consider that the more holiness any man attains to—the more bold, courageous, resolute, manly, and heroic that man will be for God and godliness. 2 Cor. 1:8-12. Holiness ennobles the heart, it raises the heart; and the higher the springs of holiness rises in the heart—the higher it raises the heart, and the more it steels the heart for God and godliness. The more holiness any man has, the more resolutely he will set himself against sin, and the more divinely he will scorn the world, and the more courageously he will trample upon temptations, and the more heroic he will be under all his afflictions. Men of greatest holiness have been men of greatest boldness; witness Nehemiah, the three Hebrew children, Daniel, and all the holy prophets and apostles. Proverbs 28:1, "The wicked flee when no man pursues—but the righteous are as bold as a lion," yes, as a young lion, as the Hebrew has it, which is in his hot blood and fears nothing.
Great 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. When the emperor sent for him to trial at Worms, and his friends dissuaded him from going, he said, "I will surely go, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; yes, 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!" And when Luther 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 was a man of much holiness, counting the darkness and profaneness of those times wherein he lived, and a man of much courage and boldness; witness his presenting to the adulterous King Henry the Eighth, for a New Year's gift, a New Testament with this motto wrapped around it, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge!"
Taylor, the martyr, was a very holy man, and being persuaded by some of his friends not to appear before Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester—but to flee. "You flee," said he, "and do according to your consciences—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 does evil."
Colonus, the Dutch martyr, called to the judge who had sentenced him to death—asked the judge to lay his hand upon his heart, and then asked him whose heart beat faster, his or the judge's. Here was a man of a heroic spirit indeed.
Basil was a man of great holiness, and a man of a most manly and courageous spirit. When the emperor sent to him to subscribe to the Arian heresy, and to engage him, promised him great preferment, to which Basil replied, "Alas, your speeches are fit to catch little children with—who mind such things—but we who are nourished and taught by the holy Scriptures are readier to suffer a thousand deaths than to allow one syllable or tittle of the Scripture to be altered!" And when the emperor threatened him with imprisonment, banishment, and death, he answered, "Let him threaten children with such things; as for my part, I am resolved that neither threatenings 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 tragic 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 immediately; or to suffer perpetual imprisonment." To which he returned this noble, bold, and heroic answer, namely, "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. When it was told him that he would lose the favor of the Pope, and the emperor, and all the world besides, if he stuck so fast to the Lutheran cause; 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 pleasant 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 God.
And thus you see by all these famous instances that the more eminent any people are in holiness, the more bold, resolute, courageous, and heroic 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, labor 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,
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