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The
reproof by Diogenes is not more known, than just, upon flatterers; that as
tyrants are the worst of all wild beasts, so are they, of all tame [Plutarch].
And yet there is, and the same very common, a worse beast, than
either of them severally – to wit, a monster gendered of them both.
Men flatter their superiors, or others able to oppose them; to the
intent they may tyrannize over their inferiors the more freely, without
danger, or fear, and so, become both flatterers and tyrants.
A man needs no other flatterer than his own partial heart to infatuate
him. Notwithstanding, though
few would rather buy a false, than a true glass to see their faces in, yet
how few are thee so truly hating their own vices, as they had not rather
seek, or at least, entertain such friends, as may rather cover their
faults by flatteries, than cure them by faithful reproofs.
And this benefit, men of a poor and despised condition may set
against diver miseries incident thereunto, that they are thereby out of
danger of being much flattered. Every
one will be bold to a call a poor man, fool, or knave, and to speak of and
to him all the ill which he knows, and more also.
Whereas the rich and mighty in the world are, for the most part,
soothed up to their destruction; as the fat ox is clawed [scratched] by
the same hand that strikes him down.
And this is just from God upon the most of them, because they
desire rather to be pleased by flatteries, than bettered by hearing the
truth. Few coming near
David’s order, will say as he did, “Let the righteous smite me, it
shall be a kindness: let him reprove me, it shall be a precious oil.”
Psa. cxli.5. Where yet the
excuse is not nothing, which the philosopher makes; that as worms soonest
breed in soft and sweet woods, so gentle and noble spirits do most easily
admit flatteries [Plutarch].
He that reads the epistles dedicatory of learned men’s books in all
faculties, divinity not excepted, if either he knew not the contrary, by
experience, or suspected not, how easily ambition, the canker of learning,
and mother of flattery, might grow in learned men’s breasts, would soon
be brought to think, that almost all the great men in the world were so
good, so virtuous, so religious, such, and so wise, and worthy patriots,
as nothing more could be wished or hoped for.
But how oft, God and men know, whilst they labor to honor many of
them unjustly, do they most justly shame themselves, in proclaiming those
things of their benefactors to the world, with all confidence, which a
modest man that knows the persons, cannot read without blushing; and
giving men just cause to suspect, as Lactantius speaks of a philosopher in
Bithynia, writing against Christians, and pouring out himself into the
praises of persecuting princes, that ofttimes they write their books
rather to flatter in their prefaces, than for other matters prosecuted in
the treatises themselves [Lactantius].
Flattery is in all cases and persons a base sin, and which will make one
man dog-like, to fawn upon another, for a morsel of bread.
Prov. Xxviii.21. But in the ministers of God’s holy Word, above all other
men, it is most pernicious. For
whereas in other cases a man makes himself a claw-back [a flatterer or
sycophant], in this he makes God himself, in whose name he speaks, no
better, what in him lies: besides, that he turns into deadly poison the
only sovereign medicine of the soul.
This made the apostle “take God to witness, that he never used
flattering words,” 1 Thess. Ii.5; and to protest against others, that
they in doing it, “served not the Lord Jesus, but their own bellies.”
Rom. xvi.18. Such are
not to be accounted the servants of Christ, whom they make their stales
[decoys]; nor yet of their flattered lords and masters, how loud soever
they profess themselves their obedient servants; but they have a base
master, whom they serve, and are ashamed to own, their belly, and the
devil in it. It is not for
nothing that the prophets, and apostles have so thundered against the
flatterers of the mighty, who both look so much for it, as that they think
themselves half maligned, and envied, if they be but sparingly flattered
[Seneca], and yet are so deeply endangered by it. Here notwithstanding, we must beware, that to avoid the note
of flatterers we become not railers, affecting to “speak evil of
dignities,” Jude 8, either in pride, as many scorn to flatter, that is,
love to revile, or out of discontentment in ourselves, or to nourish it in
others. |
