Wesley Corpus

seen of men.” 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 shows, 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 quict spirit, with lowliness of heart, with Christian serious ness. But it is not true that any one can choose this from a single eye to please God; or, consequently, without sustain ing great loss as to lowliness and every other Christian temper. 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 there fore immediately, directly, inevitably destructive of good works. You see a brother, for whom Christ died, ready to perish for want of needful clothing. 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 be indeed a reward in heaven for every work of faith, for every degree of the labour of lovel IV. 1. As to the advice subjoined, it is easy to observe, that all those smaller things are, in their degree, liable to the sanc objections as the greater.