CHAP. VI.

How the imprudent use of an estate corrupts all the tempers, and fills the heart with poor and ridiculous passions; represented in the character of Flavia.

1.IT has already been observed, that a religious care is to be used in the manner ♦of spending our money or estate; because the manner of spending our estate makes so great a part of our common life, and is so much the business of every day, that, according as we are wise or imprudent in this, the whole course of our lives will be wise, or full of folly.

Persons that receive instructions of piety with pleasure, often wonder that they make no farther progress in that religion which they so much admire.

Now the reason is this: religion lives only in their head, but something else has possession of their hearts; and therefore, they continue from year to year mere admirers and praisers of piety, without ever coming up to its precepts.

2. If it be asked, why religion does not get possession of their hearts? It is not because they live in gross sins or debaucheries; but because their hearts are constantly employed, perverted, and kept in a wrong state, by the indiscreet use of such things as are lawful.

The use and enjoyment of their estates is lawful, and therefore it never comes into their heads to imagine any danger from that quarter. They never reflect that there is a vain and imprudent use of their estates: which, though it does nor destroy like gross sins, yet so disorders the heart, and supports it in such sensuality and dullness, as makes it incapable of receiving the life and spirit of piety.

For our souls may be rendered incapable of all virtue, merely by the use of innocent and lawful things.

3. What is more innocent than rest? And yet what more dangerous than sloth and idleness? What is more lawful than eating and drinking? And yet what more destructive of all virtue, and fruitful of all vice, than sensuality.

Now, it is for want of exactness in the use of these innocent and lawful things, that religion cannot get possession of our hearts: and it is in the right management of ourselves, as to these things, that the art of holy living chiefly consists.

4. Gross sins are plainly seen, and easily avoided by persons that profess religion: but the indiscreet use of innocent and lawful things, as it does not shock our consciences, so it is difficult to make people at all sensible of the danger of it.

A gentleman that expends all his estate in sports, and a woman that lays out all her fortune upon herself, can hardly be persuaded that the spirit of religion cannot subsist in such a way of life.

These persons may live free from debaucheries; they may be friends of religion, so far as to praise and speak well of it: but it cannot govern their hearts, and be the spirit of their actions, till they change their way of life.

For a woman that loves dress, that thinks no expence too great to bestow upon the adorning of her person, cannot stop there; for that temper draws a thousand other follies along with it, and will render the whole course of her life, her business, her conversation, her hopes, her fears, her taste, her pleasures and diversions, all suitable to it.

5. *Flavia and Miranda are two maiden sisters, that have each of them two hundred pounds a year: they buried their parents twenty years ago, and have since that time spent their estate as they pleased.

*Flavia has been the wonder of all her friends, for her excellent management, in making so surprizing a figure in so moderate a fortune. Several ladies that have twice her fortune, are not able to be always so genteel, and so constant at all places of pleasure and expence. She has every thing that is in the fashion, and is in every place where there is any diversion. Flavia is very orthodox; she talks warmly against heretics and schismatics, is generally at church, and often at the sacrament. She once commended a sermon that was against the vanity of dress, and thought it was very just against Lucinda, whom she takes to be a great deal finer than she need be. If any one asks Flavia to do some thing in charity, if she likes the person that makes the proposal, or happens to be in a right temper, she will toss him half a crown, or a crown; and tell him, if he knew what a long millener’s bill she had just received, he would think it a great deal for her to give. A quarter of a year after this, she hears a sermon upon the necessity of charity; she thinks the man preaches well; that it is a very proper subject; that people want much to be put in mind of it; but she applies nothing to herself, because she remembers that she gave a crown some time ago when she could so ill spare it.

6. As for poor people themselves, she will admit of no complaints from them: she is very positive they are all cheats and liars, and will say any thing to get relief; and therefore, it must be a sin to encourage them in their evil ways.

You would think Flavia had the tenderest conscience in the world, if you was to see how scrupulous she is of the guilt and danger of giving amiss.

7. She buys all books of wit and humour, and has made an expensive collection of all our English poets. For she says, one cannot have a true taste of any of them, without being conversant with them all.

She will sometimes read a book of piety, if it is a short one, if it is much commended for stile and language, and she can tell where to borrow it.

Flavia is very idle, and yet very fond of fine work. This makes her often sit working in bed until noon, and be told many a long story before she is up; so that I need not tell you her morning devotions are not always rightly performed.

Flavia would be a miracle of piety, if she was but half so careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a pimple in her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep her room two or three days; and she thinks they are very rash people, that don’t take care of things in time. This makes her so over-careful of her health, that she never thinks she is well enough; and so over-indulgent, that she can never be really well. So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping-draughts and waking-draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.

8. If you visit Flavia on the Sunday you will always meet good company: you will know what is doing in the world; you will hear the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted that week, 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 that 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, what ill-natured things he says to her when nobody 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 day, 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. She will have wore about two hundred different suits of cloaths. Out of this 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; at operas, assemblies, balls, and diversions. For you may reckon all the time she is up, thus spent, except about an hour and 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 sixty hundred pounds upon herself, bating only some shillings, crowns, or half crowns, that have gone from her in accidental charities.

9. I shall not take upon me to say, that it is impossible for Flavia to be saved; but thus much must be said, that 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 straight gate, or making any one doctrine 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 has as much reason to think, that she has been a sentinel in an army, as that she has lived in watching and self-denial. And it may as fairly be said, that she lived by the labour of her hands, as that she had given all diligence to make her calling and election sure.

10. And here it is to be well observed, that the poor, vain turn of mind, the folly and vanity of this whole life of Flavia, is all owing to the manner of using her estate. It is this that has formed her spirit, that has given life to every idle temper, that has supported every trifling passion, and kept her from all thoughts of a prudent, useful, and devout life.

When her parents died, she had no thoughts about her two hundred pounds a year; but that she had so much money to do what she would with, to spend upon herself, and purchase the pleasures and gratifications of all her passions.

And it is this setting out, this false judgment, and indiscreet use of her fortune, that has filled her whole life with the same indiscretion, and kept her from thinking of what is right, and wise, and pious in every thing else.

If you have seen her delighted in plays and romances, in scandal and backbiting, easily flattered, and soon affronted; if you have seen her devoted to pleasures and diversions, a slave to every passion in its turn, nice in every thing that concerned her body or dress, careless of every thing that might benefit her soul, always wanting some new entertainment, and ready for every happy invention in shew or dress, it was because she had purchased all these tempers with her yearly revenue.

11. She might have been humble, serious, devout, a lover of good books, an admirer of prayer and retirement, careful of her time, diligent in good works, full of charity and the love of God; but that the imprudent use of her estate forced all the contrary tempers upon her.

And it was no wonder that she should turn her time, her mind, her health and strength to the same uses that she turned her fortune. It is owing to her being wrong in so great an article of life, that you can see nothing wise, or pious, in any other part of it.

12. And as Flavia is undone by the unreasonable use of her fortune; so the lowness of most peoples virtue, the imperfections of their piety, and the disorders of their passions, are generally owing to their imprudent use of lawful things.

More people are kept from a true sense of religion, by a regular kind of sensuality than by gross drunkenness. More men live regardless of the great duties of piety, through too great a concern for worldly goods, than through direct injustice.

13. This man would perhaps be devout, if he was not a virtuoso. Another is deaf to all the motives to piety, by indulging an idle, slothful temper.

Could you cure this man of his curiosity and inquisitive temper, or that of his false satisfaction and thirst after learning, you need do no more to make them both become men of great piety.

If this woman would make fewer visits, or that not be always talking, they would neither of them find it hard to be affected with religion.

Would we therefore make a real progress in religion, we must not only abhor gross and notorious sins; but regulate the innocent and lawful parts of our behaviour, and put the common actions of life under the rules of discretion and piety.