God for his guardian, and knows that he approves of his cause, does not care
CHAPTER 5: Persecution Reproach and the Worlds Praise
God for his guardian, and knows that he approves of his cause, does not care much about everything that men can put before him. So when we are in this world, let it be enough for us that God recognizes us as his servants, and that we walk so far before him, that the reproaches of the world will not be able to turn us aside, and cause us to decline from the right path. Now this doctrine is very necessary for us today, not only because the practice of it is very rare, but also because we would not otherwise be able to discern that it is to serve to God. Because we will see a lot of people, and and although their number is great, if it is that we will see some who will live virtuously, and not can we accuse them of neither avarice nor plunder, neither lewdness nor intemperance. Thus then a life which will be approved: but nevertheless which is it what holds them in such a bridle? It's that they want to be in reputation and honor. Here, in short, is where all the virtue and nobility of this world is to have some integrity in appearance:
but there is only smoke in their case, especially let them look at men. And so, already they received their reward, as we will see here after. For when we have tried to live without reproach, and when we have given no opportunity to anyone to speak ill of us, nor to be a detractor, and yet it is necessary that we are degraded, that we are mocked, bitten, and flayed by slander (so to speak) that we accuse one of being a hypocrite, the other that he did not carry out his work faithfully, that (in short) we are burdened with all slander, if notwithstanding we still continue our way, then we will know the truth that we serve God. And why? We despise all the glory of the world: here then is a good examination, to discover that there is a good will in us, and that we are inflamed with a zeal for the service of God, when we can come with heads held high, to protest that we have not acted with a divided heart, and that the vanities of this world have not transported us, so that we have not always followed the path which he showed us, because he commanded and approved it.
Now all the more we must carefully observe what is being shown to us here, namely,, that if we are blamed for the wicked, we nevertheless do not fail to always follow the path that God proposes to us, and that we constantly persist until God declares himself to be our guarantor, and that he, in the face of shining our innocence, as we have already alleged the promise given to us in the Psalm. Now concerning the excommunication of which it is here spoken, today we see what our Lord Jesus Christ declares. Because the Pope with all his sequel, and the whole corrupt body of the clergy, will hold us like dogs: and we see the thunderbolts of their excommunications which they level against us: well, it is