London's lamentation, or, A serious discourse concerning the late fiery dispensation that turned our…

First, There was among many Professors of the Gospel in §1London, too great a conformity to the fashions of the world; how many professing men in that great City were dressed up like fantastical Antics, and women like Bartholomew-babies, to the dishonour of God, the shame of Religion, the hardening of the wicked, the grieving of the weak, and the provoking of divine Justice? When Darius changed the fashion of his Scabbard from the Persian manner into the Mode of the Greeks, the Chaldean Astrologers prognosticated that the Persian Monarchy should be translated to them whose fashion he counterfeited. Certainly that Nation may fear a scourge from that Nation or Nations whose fashions they follow. Zepha. 1. 8. And it shall come to pass in the day of the Lords Sacrifice, that I will punish the Princes and the Kings children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel. This is a stinging and a flaming check against all Fashion-mongers, against all such as seem to have consulted with French, Italian, Persian, and all Outlandish Monsters to advise them of all their several modes and fashions of vice, and that are so dextrous at following of them, that they are more complete in them then their pattern•. Certainly, if ever such Wantons be saved, 'twill be by fire: Strange apparel is part of the Old man, that must be put off, if ever men or women intend to go to Heaven. What dreadful things are thundered out against those proud curious Dames of Jerusalem, by the Prophet Isaiah, who being himself a Courtier, inveighs ¹as punctually against the noble vanity of Apparel, as if he had even then viewed the Ladies Ward-robes? And those vanities of theirs brought desolating and destroying Judgments upon them. And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet ²smell there shall be a stink, and instead of a girdle a rent, and ⟨p. 57⟩instead of well-set hair baldness, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sack-cloth, and burning of instead beauty. Thy men sh•ll fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn, and she being desolate, shall sit upon the ground. As light and slight as many make of vain Apparel; yet Cyrian and Augustine draw up this Conclusion, That superfluous Apparel is worse then Whoredom, because Whoredom only corrupts Chastity, but this corrupts Nature.