conflicts and temptations of Conscience which still rack and torture ill Womens minds when they come to die for tho God casts her on her Bed of sickness and pain yet he will be sure to lift her up with the arms of mercy and bless her with the assurance of a perfect state of Bliss after her painful life is ended for tho Death be the wages of Sin yet a Pious death is but the passage to a Heavenly Life And a Religious vertuous Woman at her death will as certainly enter into a state of eternal Felicity as an impious vain and wicked one will into that of deserved misery Solomon says That the fear of God is not only the beginning of wisdom but the end of it for it teacheth you to regulate your desires and purifie your actions as it will make you live well in order to die so So that indeed our good actions concur in their influence towards the happiness of our souls as the Sun does in motion to the Dial the Dial is not the true cause of the Suns motion to it yet by the Suns shining on the Dial you may truly Judge of the true motion of the Sun. But leaving aside that dispute whether good works can only merit Heaven or not as the Papists teach I am sure living a pious vertuous life in the faith of the holy Jesus will certainly carry you there this all Ladies know but few will practise or so much as think of I mean as you ought for you usually defer all thoughts of the other World till you are just parting out of this when alas the time present is only yours for that past is no more and that to come is not yet so that you do but live between them both the present being the only time you can properly call yours for God well knowing what great Prodigals you are of it is so providently merciful as to trust you only with a Minute at a Time for as he gives you one so he still takes away the other as a Lesson of instruction not to rely on any time but the present and to perform all your Christian duties in it as the only time appointed you by God for it And Ladies if you will but employ this present time as you ought you will certainly find time enough in it to enjoy both the delights of this World and to secure you the felicities of the next By this all our vain Ladies may easily know and joyfully conclude that there needs no great difficulty in obtaining Heaven since it only requires as I have told you a strict pious and vertuous life to compass it which may easily be done if you will but spend half so much time in serving your God as you daily wast in looking on your Glass in praying for your Soul as in setting out your Face which must certainly nay perhaps suddenly stink rot and be eaten up by nasty Worms And really supposing there was no such place of Bliss as Heaven for the Godly nor yet of Torment as Hell for the wicked yet a pious vertuous life cannot but be more healthful for the body and more satisfactory to the mind than excess pride and vanity can be to either Next 't is worth your consideration to think how little true content most of you can find in this World and how little time 't is you can enjoy that little you do desire for such considerations cannot but render you somewhat sensible of your great and extravagant folly in all your ludicrous sports and pastimes unskilfully gaming away your souls so as in a manner to set Eternity against a Moment I mean the Momentary pleasures of this life which cannot last before the joys of Heaven which are everlasting and sure there can be nothing more foolish than to rely on the duration of your abode on Earth as any solid and lasting possession there being nothing more frail and tottering than the Basis your life stands on for tho you are never so healthful yet you cannot but find in your self some marks and symptoms of Mortality which may serve as Advertisements of the instability of this your earthly being which is subject to a thousand Diseases and a torrent of Accidents especially in you fine young Ladies whose bodies are so tenderly built and nicely composed as the leaving off a Hood or wanting of a Skarf the least crum of Bread that sticks in your Throats or the smallest stop in the course of your Blood I had almost said or motion of your Tongues puts the whole Oeconomy of your body in disorder if not utter ruin witness as an instance of this accidental mortality Pope Adrian who as story says was choaked with a Flie nay your very food the support and maintainer of your life ought to be a Memorandum of your Mortality since you cannot live without it and if sleep be the Image of death you are by the very necessities of your nature to die every night during the few days you live But whether you live long or die early you must certainly Die and you are in this as well as in all things else to submit your will to Gods and to bend your greatest endeavors and fix your strongest resolutions in an intire obedince to it which if you truly and heartily do you must learn the great vertue and Christian perfection of self-denial and despise all those worldly flatteries and enjoyments mortifie all your excess of vanity and extravagant pleasures that you may become truly amiable pure and holy in the sight of God when you live in compliance to his holy Laws and submit in all things to his good will and pleasure who is all love and beauty itself in the highest measure and perfection and therefore the least spot or impurity in your lives is a direct violence and contradiction to the most excellent nature and being of an infinitely pure and holy God. And now before I quite finish this Discourse let me beg one of you Ladies to suppose your ' self to be in the actual possession of all the worldly pleasures you can fancy that you enjoy as great honours as your ambition can aspire unto and as much Beauty and Riches as your vain and Covetous humor can thirst after and as many rarities as your appetite can wish for and that your Gallant was as kind handsom and constant as you could wish In a word that you thought him as beautiful as you think your self pray do but now consider what all these will amount to at the hour of death and in order to it reflect a little seriously what a weak Basis your life stands on for according to the common Law of the Land a Life is valued but at seven Years purchase and many times by the course of Nature a Life does not last half so long Next if you will but condescend so far to mortifie your self as to go and visit one of these Lovers of vanity and railliers of Religion
beauty Riches carries its troubles as well as delights for there 's great labour in procuring Wealth trouble in defending and preserving it and also great Cares in the well spending it whilst one lives and well disposing of it when we die and so if we look over and search into most Worldly pleasures and vanities we shall find them as contrary to the true repose of this life as they are to the felicities of the next Certainly there is some great Charm in this thing called Praise that tickles the ear inflames the heart raises the spirits enlivens the resolution deludes the reason flatters the hopes and deceives the sight by giving a false gloss and making a counterfeit representation of things for the Bait of Praises for which both Men and Women so strive and eagerly pursue is still painted and set out in the brightest and most oriental charming Colours that are imaginable to allure our eyes inflame our hearts and enliven our ambition But the Hook that is hid in this Bait that is the great dangers hardships and thousands of vexatious disappointments that one must necessarily meet and run thorow in the pursuit of this Idol folly is so obscure artificially drawn as 't is not commonly seen but very ordinarily felt by many in some to their loss of Life and to others of their greatest satisfactions in it And now to put my last finishing Touch to this Picture of Praise the Mistris and Darling of the whole World methinks we ought not to wonder that this adored beauty is so Coy in her Carriage and so difficult to be gain'd if we do but reflect tho in a wholesail manner the sad oversights great mistakes and blind pursuits of its followers of whom I shall only say in general that some are so eager in gazing at it others so over earnest in their seeking it as really most oversee the right way to it which is by true Piety constant Charity and a daily practice of Vertue and Godliness in all their actions And no wonder that such as will not take these blessed Guides should miserably miss their way to it and be sadly defeated in their hopes of it And now having done with my Discourse of Praise give me leave to change the Scene and to pass by the uncertainty of your meeting it tho to reflect on the certainty of deaths meeting you and the terrors that then appear at the end of a vain wicked life and to beg the vain young Ladies Company for a little time that I might lead their thoughts into the sad and dismal Regions of Mortality that they may now consider it to prevent it hereafter from surprizing them and that they may carry their thoughts to the Grave before their friends carry their Bodies The Seasons of our Lives resemble exactly those of the Year the Summer of our Life swallows up the Spring of our Youth and the Autumn of our Age makes us to decline as the Sun does daily of its vigorous heat and influence till all the fair days and various productions of natures beauty at last yeild to old Age Winter as their Grave for as the Apostle says 'T is appointed for every Man once to die and one day is still the death of the other and tho many things may keep back the thoughts of deaths coming yet nothing can retard the time of his approach And now I must humbly beg our vain modish Ladies pardon if I here a little mind them of the sad concluding Scene of their Life and in how miserable a condition some of them must necessarily be in when they come to die and have wasted all their Life in Vanity and Sin little considering Reputation and less fearing Scandal little valuing Conscience and less esteeming Eternity It has often come into my mind that the sad end of such vain Womens Lives is like the last Scene of their Loves to their Gallants which is just as an Ague turned upside down the cold fit after the hot for when the fiery passions of youthful Love are changed through their Inconstancy or worn out by Age or wasted by Sickness for you know that Loves-vanity is but of a short date it either vanishes in the act and is nipped in its gay and vigorous blossom like the tender-leav'd Plants by a cold Northern-wind or else grows wrinkled and impotent like crooked and deform'd shrubs for want of sap and moisture and so grows loathsom and deformed as the grim Jaws of Death that will too at last come with a dreadful stroak to level all our fair Cedars to the ground and make your beauty Ladies to consume away like a Moth fretting a Garment every Woman is therefore but vanity and when you are thus brought to your Death-beds of pain and languishing O then Consider what a sad condition you must needs be in when you will find all your fond beauty and vanity going off the Stage when your life is just expiring when the scorching thoughts of your past vain life come to inflame your mind more fiercely than the burning Feaver can your body and that the remembrance of your past extravagant pride and vanity will torment your troubled Conscience more than ever before they pleased your sensual appetite and that the shivering fit of guilt not only seizes your heart but pierceth your very soul with sad and sober thoughts of your past sins and the strict account that you must soon give of them and of the terrible punishments that you must justly suffer for them when perhaps you cannot comfort your afflicted Conscience with the assurance of having so much as performed in your whole life one pious act or charitable deed when you had both time and means to have performed thousands and so as too many of you do lose the blessings of the other World meerly for slighting Gods mercies in this And farther 't will be well worth the consideration of our vain Ladies that when they lie a dying the sins of their life will flie about their troubled minds as naturally as sparks do about fire and will lighten them to a clear sight of their pride and vanity and their greatest trouble when they are leaving this World is what will become of them when they are out of it and truly it will not be without great cause since their Consciences will then assure them that their Bodily pain in this Life will be but the Prologue or first step to their Souls eternal misery in the next Whereas a pious young Lady who with holy David makes a covenant with her Eyes that they should not behold vanity but observe Gods commandments as her chief study and delight by truly living in his fear she will certainly die in his favour and will find at her death that her good Conscience will be her real friend and true comforter and furnish her with a chearful readiness to submit her will to Gods which will never fail to protect her against all those spiritual
enjoy comfort of true devotion and felicity upon earth as an earnest of more blessed comforts and happiness they do expect in the other World. And who by leading such a constant religious and unmarried Life the world must plainly see that such Widows have no particular fondness for any Man in the world since their dear Husbands are out of it and that they do still shew a constant affection real esteem and memory of their Husbands vertues and reputation and by a particular kindness continued to all their Husbands Relations and Friends as much as if they had been now actually living and could be made sensible of the effects of their good or ill nature towards them I say such a vertuous and discreet carriage in Widows is a most clear demonstration that Loves do not expire with their Husbands Lives and certainly such an affection must be more real and less byassed as to all appearances than the love of any living Wife can possible be since that may only look counterfeit and be disguised by wearing a Mask of self-interest or design rather than of true affection or value and may be reckoned on the account of living in good esteem or reputation as to the world or be counterfeited for an outward seeming kindness to her Husband tho she has no real inward one in order to live at peace and quiet at home both for her Childrens good and for her own and families ease But a Widow that continues as I have said consonant kindness to her Husbands memory and Relations and lives in the state of a private and religious widowhood such a one can expect no return or hope for any praise or advantage but from the just commendation of her vertue while she lives or indeed the more certain comfort and assurance of her eternal happiness when she comes to die But mortifying Discourses of this nature I am sure must be far from making any agreeable musick to the fine young Widows but it may be sound harsh and unpleasant as well as useless and unliking many of the fine gay young Widows making the day of their Husbands death the joyful Birthday of their own freedom And there are few of these brisk witty sort of Widows that are not so great Philosophers in the Politicks of Marriage and so persectly read in all parts of Scripture tending to that point as to be wisely able to extract out of it the vertue of Patience and to possess it in so high a degree and great measure as to be able to raise to themselves satisfactory Arguments of all sizes degrees and qualities whatsoever to arm themselves against the loss of a Husband of any kind be he good or bad poor or rich so as to render his death at least easie if not pleasing by arguing and reasoning with themselves after this manner If my Husband was good and vertuous and made a holy end suitable to his religious life sure I ought not to mourn for it but rejoyce at it that he is gone to Heaven and that I have in a manner half my self there before hand and therefore it must argue want of Charity kindness and good nature to lament and mourn for his happiness in living and dying so well If my Husband was wicked lewd and prophane I have a double reason to rejoyce for his death first that the world is rid of so bad a Man and I of so ill a Husband and am no more oblig'd to lie every night with so much wickedness in my bosom and that we are now no more one flesh who were so far from being of one mind and humor and I have also this second means of extracting this heavenly advantage by it that having experimented the slavish misery of serving the Creature I am now or at least ought to be the more ready and willing to dedicate all my remnant of Life only to the service of my Creator whose service is still perfect freedom and everlasting felicity If my Husband was poor and needy I have reason to be glad he is intirely delivered from the great misery of want and that his poverty is dead and buried with him for none ever feels want in the Grave But if my Husband died Rich I have great reason to rejoyce that he has left me so and has given me by his death what he denied me all his life the incontroulable Treasure of his Wealth and that I have now the range of the whole Kingdom to ramble over and spend it after what kind of manner and with what sort of Company as I fancy most and love best and by being a Widow I am become the perfect Empress of my own Will instead of being confin'd at home a Subject to my Husbands and sure none can relish with more gusto the ease and liberty and the many pleasures of freedom than she that 's newly deliver'd from the bondage of a Marriage confinement and therefore what Seneca said of Vertue that there 's no Passion or Affliction in the World that Vertue has not a Remedy for The same may be said in reference to most young Widows love to their Husbands let their passionate kindness for them be seemingly never so great whilst they live yet they will be sure to find Remedies for their overmuch mourning for their death And therefore I shall advise Husbands never to Antidate their trouble by fearing that their death will produce a long sadness in their Wives at the common rate Marriage-Love now goes there 's no great fear of it since in most Wives their good Jointure-Rents outweigh their Love-sighs or at least Counterpoise all their formal Mourning for there is really so little pure Love in many of our Marriages now adays as Husband and Wifes Love is but of the same nature of that of great Sovereign Princes whose Love is but meer Interest and a Husbands death to many of our Wives is become as Repentance for Sin which cannot come so soon or late but it still brings Comfort with it And now lest you may take my speaking against Widows Marrying to be but a kind of raillying Discourse fit only to entertain but not to convince and that my reasons against Widows Marrying are but meer Romantick pleasant to be read but needless to be believ'd I will wave my own weak reasonings and quote you some Scripture ones that seem not to favour Widows Marrying but rather the contrary to continue as they are and for their encouragement to it propounds to them great advantages by it which are these The first is out of the Old Testament Lev. 22.13 If a Priests Daughter be Married she must not eat of the Offerings of holy Things but if the Priests Daughter be a Widow she may eat as in her Touth that is as if she had been never Married and was a Maid which was a priviledge Women had by living Widows under the Mosaick Law and which would not have it seems been granted had she been made unclean
read that the Romans were so very cautious and wise as to banish out of their Republick such as should attempt to give any new advice in it and I fancy the reason for it was that they believed there were more bad than good Men in their Republic and therefore such more forward to receive ill Advice than hearken to good Counsel And since I put no Name here I will venture to say 'T were well the same Rule were used as to Dresses and that any one that brought into England a new fashion'd Dress according to the Paris Mode might be banished it because 't is most certain there are more of our young Men and Women extravagantly given than vertuously inclin'd and consequently more apt to imitate a new Mode especially if a French Dress than any sober decent Apparel of their own Country Growth for indeed it may be truly said of our English following French fashions what a Writer said of Aristotle that whatsoever indigested notions he vomited up there were many young Philosophers ready to lick them up I am sure what extravagant fashions the French wear too many people are apt to approve and follow Really I cannot now but laugh as well as wonder when I think how our young English Nobility and Gentry are tied and confined to the strict Rules of the French fashions for our English Judgments in that grand affair of Dresses are only admitted to imitate and approve and many imitate what they do not approve for their Fancies are not allow'd to invent or choose scarce add or diminish but we must forsooth with an implicit Faith reverence what the French wear and to be as infallible a rule to our English Modes as a Church Decree is a Guide to those of the Roman Faith. In a word our young Gallants are grown so very vain in their Apparel and Dresses that desiring to see change and excess of vanity we need but look on one anothers vain change of Dresses being almost as diverse as the Persons that wear them and therefore 't is impossible to view them all but I can give you in a line this exact and true Character of them That our Modes are become the effects of our vain fantastick Prodigality and more irregular Inconstancy Indeed all our vain expensive French Dresses may make the Ladies or Gallants finer but never better or worser for Embroidered Clothes to our Bodies are but like flowers of Rhetoric in Speeches they make the words sound the sweeter but render not the sense the better it may please the Ear but it does not improve the Judgment Or like silver Dishes on a Table they may shew their own Costliness but they make no addition or goodness to the Meat they contain whatever they may do to the fancy of the Eater or Observer Really if we would but allow Conscience or Reason a Vote in this affair we should soon be assured by them that there appears more true wisdom and satisfaction in giving one Penny as an Alms-deed for Christ's sake than in laying out many Pounds on bravery for our own more real fine in Clothing one that 's naked on a pious account of true Charity than by bedawbing twenty footmen in Gold or Silver rich Liveries on the score either of vanity or Fashion and that because it suits the London or Paris Mode For I esteem Livery men excepting those that are really necessary to a Mans person and Quality but just so many Porters that are hired to carry about a Mans pride and folly and the several Colours of his Liveries to be but so many Lures and Jack Puddings to draw mens Eyes to behold a fair shew not only of his own Pride but often of his Merchants loss for 't is now grown no common wonder especially in London to see young Sparks Clothes and their Footmens Liveries to last longer in their Merchants books than on their own or Footmens backs and they turned off before the Books are Crossed out In a word I wish our French fashions may not prove fatal follies by being soon naturalized into English Customs for then let them be never so costly ridiculous and vain like blackness among the Aethiopians the commonness may remove their deformity but can never smother the prejudices against them I will now only add this Consideration to conclude all in reference to our fine young Frenchefied Ladies and that is that they would seriously reflect on the end of all their fine Modish Dresses and their greater loss of pretious time they wast about them which occasions their minding so much the fineness of their Bodies as many of them neglect by it the care of their Souls the best and only lasting part and therefore they should remember that they must die certainly tho they now live pleasantly and then all their plenty of fine rich Frenchefied Dresses will be contained in one poor Winding Sheet and their exact slender shape in a Coffin and all their fine Gallants and constant admirers will leave them at the Grave where their Bodies will be only fit to be enjoyed by nasty worms This young Ladies is the true Epilogue to the sad Tragedy of your vain Dresses and what 's yet worse than all your Souls will be in as sad a condition as your Bodies after death without a hearty Repentance which can never be without a real amendment in abandoning not only great Sins but vain excesses as well in Dresses as wasting time about them and that you come to esteem them as Solomon did the pleasures of this World only as vanity of vanities Therefore all you young Ladies that desire to cloath your Souls in a Heavenly dress adorn your Lives with constant Piety and your Bodies with modest and decent Clothing such as wasts not too much of your time or Estate but wear still what is most generally worn and then you may be sure that few persons will either gaze or laugh at you THE ELEVENTH DISCOURSE Of Worldly Praises which all Ladies love to receive but few strive to merit with the sad end of it and them when they come to Die. WOrldly Praise is a Subject I shall write little of for these two Reasons first that I need not write for it and next that I dare not write against it for as on the one hand it would be vain and superfluous to make that my business to commend what all Praise so on the other side it would argue a great folly to write against that all the World writes for therefore to prevent all I can writing superfluously or foolishly I shall only glance this Discourse on the Worlds high esteem and eager ambition after vain Praises the desires of gaining it being as inseparable from most Men and Womens Actions as Light is from the Sun or heat from fire and shall only name the common ways to it and the usual end of it and them when they come to die Praise is that great Idol which all people in the World