Honor rises with God's gifts; the dead are not served as masters but followed as fellow heirs
Rivet next warns that we should raise the degrees of observance and veneration in proportion to the gifts God has given such persons and to their greater or lesser excellence. We are not to make the praises due them all equal, but to give each what is his own, according to the measure we recognize in him.
But we do not serve with servitude properly so called anyone who has no need of our works and to whom we can be of no use.
For we are not the servants of the saints who have died. We are to be sharers of the same inheritance with them, and to press on in their footsteps as far as we can.
That is what they most wanted while they lived on earth, when they went before us by example, imitating Christ so that we might imitate them.
Latin
XL. Postea vero monet, pro ratione donorum Dei in talibus, & excellentiae majoris vel minoris, nos etiam augere observantiae & venerationis gradus: & laudes iis debitas non aequare, sed cuique pro ea quam in eo agnoscimus mensura, tribuere quod suum est. Neminem vero qui opera nostra non habet opus, & cui non potest usui esse, nos colere servitute proprie dicta. Nec enim nos Sanctorum qui obierunt servos esse, sed ejusdem haereditatis consortes futuros, eorumque vestigia, quantum possumus, etiam premere: quod maxime voluerunt, dum in terris versantes, exemplo praeiverunt, Christum imitando, ut eos imitaremur.