X. Before I close, I shall add a few testimonies from men of general credit, in favour of our nonconformity to the world in this particular.
Luther, the great reformer, whose sayings were oracles with the age he lived in, and of no less reputation now, with many that object against us, was so far from condemning our plain speech, that in his Ludus, he sports himself with _you_ to a single person as an incongruous and ridiculous speech, viz. _Magister, vos estis iratus?_ Master, are you angry? As absurd with him in Latin, as My masters, art thou angry? is in English. Erasmus, a learned man, and an exact critic in speech, than whom I know not any we may so properly refer the grammar of the matter to, not only derides it, but bestows a whole discourse upon rendering it absurd: plainly manifesting that it is impossible to preserve numbers if _you_, the only word for more than one, be used to express _one_: as also, that the original of this corruption was the corruption of flattery. Lipsius affirms of the ancient Romans, "That the manner of greeting now in vogue was not in use amongst them." To conclude: Howel, in his History of France, gives us an ingenious account of its original; where he not only assures us, "That anciently the peasants thou'd their kings, but that pride and flattery first put inferiors upon paying a plural respect to the single person of every superior, and superiors upon receiving it." And though we had not the practice of God and man so undeniably to justify our plain and homely speech, yet, since we are persuaded that its original was from pride and flattery, we cannot in conscience use it. And however we may be censured as singular by those loose and airy minds, that through the continual love of earthly pleasures, consider not the true rise and tendency of words and things; yet to us whom God has convinced by his light and Spirit in our hearts of the folly and evil of such courses, and brought into a spiritual discerning of the nature and ground of the world's fashions, they appear to be fruits of pride and flattery; and we dare not continue in such vain compliances to earthly minds, lest we offend God, and burden our consciences. But having been sincerely affected with the reproofs of instruction, and our hearts being brought into a watchful subjection to the righteous law of JESUS, so as to bring our deeds to the light, (John, iii. 19-21,) to see in whom they are wrought, if in God or not; we cannot, we dare not conform ourselves to the fashions of the world that pass away; knowing assuredly, that "for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." (Matt. xii. 36.)