_Direct._ XIII. Be not too censorious of others for different fashions of apparel. Be as plain and modest yourselves as you can; but lay no greater stress on the fashions of others than there is cause. If they be grossly impudent, disown such fashions and seek to reform them: but to carp at every one that goeth finer than yourselves, or to censure them as proud, because their fashions are not like yours, may be of worse signification than the fashions you find fault with. I have oft observed more pride in such censures, than I could observe in the fashions which they censured. When you have your eye upon every fashion that is not according to your breeding, or the custom of your rank or place, and are presently branding such as proud or vain, it showeth an arrogant mind, that steppeth up in the judgment-seat, and sentenceth those that you have nothing to do with, before they are heard, or you know their reasons. Perhaps their fashion was as common among the modest sort where they have lived, as your fashion is among those that you have conversed with. Custom and common opinion do put much of the signification upon fashions of apparel.
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I should next have given you special directions about the using of your estates;[613] about your dwellings; about your meat and drink; and about your honour or good name. But being loth the book should prove too tedious, I shall refer you to what is said before, against covetousness, pride, and gluttony, &c.; and what is said before and after, of works of charity and family government.
As to sacred habits, and the different garbs, laws, orders of life, diet, &c. of those called religious orders among the papists, regular and secular, whether and how far such are lawful or sinful, they are handled so largely in the controversies of protestants and papists, that I shall pass them by. Only remembering the words of the clergy of Ravenna to Carolus Junior, king of France, inter Epist. Hincmari Rhemensis, _Discernendi a plebe vel cæteris sumus, doctrina non veste, conversatione non habitu, mentis puritate non cultu. Docendi enim potius sunt populi, quam ludendi, nec imponendum est eorum oculis, sed mentibus præcepta sunt infundenda._