e in the sight of God and all the glorious
company of heaven, who as perfectly stand and behold it as those
foolish people do. And they are in number more than a hundred to
one; and of that hundred, every one a hundred times more to be
regarded and esteemed than a hundred such whole rabbles of the
other.

And now, if a man would be so mad as to be ashamed, for fear of the
rebuke that he should have of such rebukeful beasts, to confess the
faith of Christ, then, with fleeing from a shadow of shame, he
would fall into a true shame--and a deadly painful shame indeed!
For then hath our Saviour made a sure promise that he will show
himself ashamed of that man before the Father of heaven and all his
holy angels, saying in the ninth chapter of Luke, "He who is
ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed
when he shall come in the majesty of himself and of his Father and
of his holy angels." And what manner of shameful shame shall that
be, then? If a man's cheeks glow sometimes for shame in this world,
they will fall on fire for shame when Christ shall show himself
ashamed of them there!

The blessed apostles reckoned it for great glory to suffer for
Christ's faith the thing that we worldly wretched fools think to be
villainy and shame. For they, when they were scourged, with despite
and shame, and thereupon commanded to speak no more of the name of
Christ, "went their way from the council joyful and glad that God
had vouchsafed to do them the worship to suffer shameful despite
for the name of Jesus." And so proud were they of the shame and
villainous pain put unto them, that for all the forbidding of that
great council assembled, they ceased not every day to preach out
the name of Jesus still--not only in the temple, out of which they
were set and whipped for the same before, but also, to double it
with, they went preaching the name about from house to house, too.

Since we regard so greatly the estimation of worldly folk, I wish
that we would, among the many wicked things that they do, regard
also some such as are good. For it is a manner among them, in many
places, that some by handicraft, some by merchandise, some by other
kinds of living, arise and come forward in the world. And commonly
folk are in their youth set forth to suitable masters, under whom
they are brought up and grow. But now, whensoever they find a
servant such that he disdaineth to do such things as his master did
while he was him