Part 445

_Thief_ III. The next thief or time-waster is inordinate adorning of the body. The poor may thank God that they are free also from the temptations to this, and can quickly dress them and go about their business; but many ladies and gallants are so guilty of this vice, that I wonder conscience is so patient with them.[293] O poor neglected, undressed souls! O filthy consciences, never cleansed from your pollutions by the Spirit or blood of Christ! Have you not better use for precious hours, than to be washing, and pinning, and dressing, and curling, and spotting, and powdering, till ten or eleven o'clock in the morning, when honest labourers have done one half of their day's work? While you are in health, were not six o'clock in the morning a fitter hour for you to be dressed, that you might draw near to the most holy God in holy prayer, and read his word, and set your souls, and then your families, in order for the duties of the following day? I do not say that you may go no neater than poor labouring people, or that you may bestow no more time than they in dressing you: but I say, that for your souls, and in your callings, you are bound by God to be as diligent as they; and have no more time given you to lose than they, and that you should spend as little of it in neatifying you as you can, and be sensible that else the loss is your own: and that abundance of precious hours which your pride consumeth, will lie heavy one day upon your consciences; and then you shall confess, I say, you shall confess it with aching hearts, that the duties you owed to God and man, and the care of your souls, and of your families, should have been preferred before your appearing neat and spruce to men. If you have but a journey to go, you can rise earlier and be sooner dressed; but for the good of your souls, and the redeeming of your precious time, you cannot. Oh that God would but show you what greater work you have to do with those precious hours! and how it will cut your hearts to think of them at last! If you lay but hopelessly sick of a consumption, you would be cured it is like of this proud disease, and bestow less of your time in adorning the flesh, which is hasting to the grave and rottenness! And cannot you now see how time and life consume? and what cause you have, with all your care and diligence, to use it better before it is gone? I know they that are so much worse than childish, as prodigally to cast away so many hours in making themselves fine for the sight of men, and be not ashamed to come forth and show their sin to others, will scarce want words to excuse their crime, and prove it lawful, be they sense or nonsense. But conscience itself shall answer all, when time is gone, and make you wish you had been wiser. You know not, ladies and gallants, how precious a thing time is: you little feel what a price yourselves will set upon it at the last: you little consider what you have to do with it: you see not how it hasteth, and how near you stand to vast eternity! You little know how despised time will look a wakened conscience in the face! or what it is to be found unready to die! I know you lay not to heart these things; for if you did, you could not, I say, you could not so lightly cast away your time. If all were true that you say, that indeed your place and honour requireth, that your precious morning hours be thus spent, I profess to you, I should pity you more than galley-slaves, and I would bless me from such a place and honour, and make haste into the course and company of the poor, and think them happy that may better spend their time. But indeed your excuses are frivolous and untrue, and do but show that pride hath prevailed to captivate your reason to its service. For we know lords and ladies, as great as the rest of you, (though alas, too few,) that can be quickly up and dressed, and spend their early hours in prayer and adorning their souls, and can be content to come forth in a plain and incurious attire; and yet are so far from being derided, or thought the worse by any whose judgment is much to be regarded, that they are taken justly for the honour of their order: and if it were not that some few such keep up the honour of your rank, I will not tell you how little in point of morality it would be honoured.