♦4. “O! but one may be as humble in velvet and embroidery, as another is in sackcloth.” True: for a person may wear sackcloth, and have no humility at all. The heart may be filled with pride and vanity, whatever the raiment be. Again; women under the yoke of unbelieving parents or husbands, as well as men in office, may on several occasions be _constrained_, to put on gold or costly apparel. And in cases of this kind, plain experience shews, that the baleful influence of it is suspended. So that wherever it is not our choice but our cross, it may consist with godliness, with a meek and quiet spirit, with lowliness of heart, with Christian seriousness. But it is not true, that any one can _chuse_ this, from a single eye to please God; or consequently, without sustaining great loss, as to lowliness and every other Christian temper.
♦ Points ‘7 & 8’ replaced with ‘4 & 5’
♦5. But however this be, can you be adorned at the same time with _costly apparel_, and with _good works_? That is, in the _same degree_ as you might have been, had you bestowed less cost on your apparel? You know this is impossible: the more you expend on the one, the less you have to expend on the other. Costliness of apparel, in every branch, is therefore immediately, directly, inevitably destructive of good works. You see a brother, for whom Christ died, ready to perish for want of needful cloathing. You would give it him gladly: but alas! _It is corban, whereby he might have been profited._ It is given already: not indeed for the service of God; not to the treasury of the temple: but either to please the folly of others, or to feed vanity, or the lust of the eye in yourself. Now (even suppose these were harmless tempers, yet) what an unspeakable loss is this, if it be really true, that _every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour_! If there is indeed a reward in heaven, for every work of faith, for every degree of the labour of love!
2_dly._ 1. As to the _advice_ subjoined, it is easy to observe, that all those smaller things are, in their degree, liable to the same objections as the greater. If they are gay, showy, pleasing to the eye, the putting them on does not spring from a single view to please God. It neither flows from, nor tends to advance a meek and quiet spirit. It does not arise from, nor any way promote, real, vital godliness.
2. And if they are in any wise costly, if they are purchased with any unnecessary expence, they cannot but in proportion to that expence, be destructive of good works. Of consequence they are destructive of that charity, which is fed thereby: hardening our heart against the cry of the poor and needy, by inuring us to shut up our bowels of compassion toward them.
3. At least, all unnecessary expences of this kind, whether small or great, are senseless and foolish. This we may defy any man living to get over, if he allows there is another world. For there is no reward in heaven for laying out your money in ornaments or costly apparel: whereas you may have an eternal reward, for whatever you expend on earth.
4. Consider this more closely. Here are two ways proposed of laying out such a sum of money. I may lay it out in expensive apparel for myself, or in necessary clothing for my neighbour. The former will please my own eye, or that of others: the latter will please God. Now suppose there were no more harm in one than in the other, in that which pleases man, than in that which pleases God: is there as much good in it? If they are equally innocent, are they equally wise? By the one, I gratify the desire of the eye, and gain a pleasure that perishes in the using: by the other, I gain a larger share of those pleasures that are at God’s right hand for evermore. By the former I obtain the applause of man; by the latter, the praise of God. In this way, I meet with the admiration of fools: in that, I hear from the Judge of All, _Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy_ Lord.
5. Brethren, whatever ye are accounted by men, I would not have you fools in God’s account. _Walk ye circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise_; not in those ways which God _may possibly forgive_; (to put things in the most favourable light) but in those which he _will certainly reward. In wickedness be ye children_ still; _but in understanding be ye men_. I want to see a visible body of people, who are a standing example of this wisdom; a pattern of doing all things, great and small, with an eye to God and eternity.