Wesley Corpus

If it is not, do not make your person remarkable; rather let it lie hid in common apparel. On every account, it is your wisdom to recommend yourself to the eye of the mind; but especially to the eye of God, who reads the secrets of your hearts, and in whose sight the incorruptible ornaments alone are of great price. But if you would recommend yourself by dress, is anything com parable to plain neatness? What kind of persons are those to whom you could be recommended by gay or costly appa rel? None that are any way likely to make you happy; this pleases only the silliest and worst of men. At most, it gratifies only the silliest and worst principle in those who are of a nobler character. 7. To you, whom God has entrusted with a more pleasing form, those ornaments are quite needless: The adorning thee with so much art Is but a barbarous skill ; 'Tis like the poisoning of a dart, Too apt before to kill. That is, to express ourselves in plain English, without any figure of poetry, it only tends to drag them into death ever lasting, who were going fast enough before, by additional provocations to lust, or, at least, inordinate affection. Did you actually design to raise either of these in those who looked upon you? What! while you and they were in the more immediate presence of God? What profaneness and inhumanity mixed together ! But if you designed it not, did you not foresee it? You might have done so without any extraordinary sagacity. “Nay, I did not care or think about it.” And do you say this by way of excuse? You “scatter abroad arrows, firebrands, and death,” and do not care or think about it ! 8. O let us walk more charitably and more wisely for the time to come ! Let us all cast aside, from this very hour, whatever does not become men and women professing godliness; whatever does not spring from the love and fear of God, and minister thereto. Let our seriousness “shine before men,” not our dress. Let all who see us know that we are not of this world. Let our adorning be that which fadeth not away; cven righteousness and true holiness.