The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

9. Pride is usually attended with vain curiosity: curiosity in ornaments, in fashions, in distressings, in attendance, in furniture, in rooms, and in abundance of small inconsiderable circumstances. The proud (who go this lower way) do make a great matter of so many such trifles, that their minds have no room for the greatest things. They do not only trouble themselves ⟨p. 462⟩with many things, while the one thing needful is the more neglected (Luke 10.42.) but all about them must be partakers of the trouble. What abundance of trades doth Pride maintain? and how many are continually at work to serve it?

But the lowly who mind not vain ostentation, do save themselves all this unprofitable pains: They can avoid undecent sordidness, at a cheaper rate than by proud curiosity. They are accurate and curious in greater matters, in doing good, in securing their salvation, in escaping sin, and in pleasing God; which will one day prove a wiser curiosity, than to be curious in courtship, and complements, and dressings, and other impertinent childish things: Though the least just decency is not to be neglected in its place, it is foolish pride to prefer it before things of importance and necessity. Mans mind and time are not sufficient for all things: Somewhat must be omitted; and its wisdom which chooseth to omit the least, and folly which chooseth to omit the greatest. As in Learning, they prove the soundest Scholars who spend their studies on the most excellent and useful parts of learning; whilst those that too much study things superfluous, are ever empty of necessary knowledge: It is so also in the actions of our lives: As Paul so vehemently condemneth vain jangling about unnecessary and unedifying questions, though yet truth was not contemptible in those matters: so also vain curiosity, and unedifying diligence (though about things not altogether contemptible) is but the perilous diversion of the mind, from greater things, 1 Tim. 1.6, 7