If you visit _Flavia_ on the LORD’s day, you will always meet good company; you will know what is doing in the world, and who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted that week, and which is the finest song in the opera; who was intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are _Atheists_ who play at cards on the _Sunday_; but she will tell you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish, who lives too high, and who is in debt; if you would know what is the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if you would know how late _Belinda_ comes home at night, what cloaths she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross _Lucius_ is to his wife, and what ill-natured things he says to her, when no body hears him; if you would know how they hate one another in their hearts, though they appear so kind in public; you must visit _Flavia_ on the _Sunday_. But still, she has so great a regard for the holiness of the _Sunday_, that she has turned a poor old widow out of her house, as a prophane wretch, for having been found once mending her cloaths on the _Sunday_ night.
Thus lives _Flavia_; and if she lives ten years longer, she will have spent about fifteen hundred and sixty _Sundays_ after this manner; and she will have worn about two hundred different suits of cloaths. Out of these _thirty years_ of her life, _fifteen_ of them will have been disposed of in bed; and of the remaining _fifteen_, about _fourteen_ of them will have been consumed in eating, drinking, dressing, visiting, conversation, reading and hearing plays and romances, and attending at operas, assemblies, balls and diversions. For you may reckon all the time she is up, to be thus spent, except about an hour and a half, that is disposed of at church, most _Sundays_ in the year. With great management, and under mighty rules of œconomy, she will have spent _six_ thousand pounds upon herself, except some few shillings, crowns or half crowns, that have gone from her in accidental charities.
I shall not take upon me to say, that it is impossible for Flavia _ever_ to be saved; but thus much must be said, that she has no grounds from scripture to think she is at present in the way of salvation. For her whole life is in direct opposition to all those tempers and practices, which the gospel has made necessary to salvation.
If you was to hear her say, that she had lived all her life like _Anna_ the prophetess, “who departed not from the temple, but served GOD with fastings and prayers night and day,” you would look upon her as very extravagant; and yet this would be no greater an extravagance, than for her to say, that she had been “striving to enter in at the strait gate,” or making any one doctrine or precept of the gospel, a rule of her life.
She may as well say, that she lived with our Saviour when he was upon earth, as that she has lived in imitation of him, or made it any part of her care to live in such tempers, as he required of all those that would be his disciples. She may as truly say, that she has every day _washed the Saints feet_, as that she has lived in christian humility and _poverty of spirit_; and as reasonably think, that she has taught a _charity school_, as that she has lived in works of charity. She hath as much reason to think, that she has been a _centinel_ in an army, as that she has lived in watching and self-denial. And it may as fairly be said, that she had lived by the labour of her hands, as that she had given all diligence to make her calling and election sure.
Now though the irregular trifling spirit of this character, belongs I hope but to few people, yet many may here learn some instruction from it, and perhaps see something of their own spirit in it.