A94156:904
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature…
The Christian-man's calling: or, A treatise of making religion ones business. Wherein the nature and necessity of it is discovered. : As also the Christian directed how he may perform it in [brace] religious duties, natural actions, his particular vocation, his family directions, and his own recreations. / By George Swinnock ...
London: printed for T.P., 1662
Treatise › Chapter 24: How a Christian may exercise himself to Godliness in his Apparel and Sleep.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
There is another thing to be avoided about Apparel, 1and that is curiosity and wasteful expense of time. Excessive out ward neatness is often accompanied with excessive inward nastiness. Seneca speaketh of some that spend all their morning, inter pectinem & speculum; between the comb and the glass, and are more troubled at a tangle in their hair, then at a disorder in the Common-wealth. How many in our days spend the whole Forenoon in decking their dying bodies, and leave no time to dress their immortal souls, they spend that precious time between the comb and the glass, 2which should be spent between Prayer and Scripture; These painted carcasses will tell us, that if they can but dress themselves by dinner time, it is as much as they desire. Alas poor souls, what will they do when they come to enter into their eternal estates, when time shall be no more! A dying bed (if their consciences be but awakened) will teach them to value time at an higher rate, and make them know that a commodity of such worth is not to be wasted.
There is another thing to be avoided about Apparel, 1and that is curiosity and wastful expence of time. Excessive out ward neatness is often accompanied with excessive inward nastiness. Seneca speaketh of some that spend all their morning, inter pectinem & speculum; between the comb and the glass, and are more troubled at a tangle in their hair, then at a disorder in the Common-wealth. How many in our days spend the whole Forenoon in decking their dying bodies, and leave no time to dress their immortal souls, they spend that precious time between the comb and the glass, 2which should be spent between Prayer and Scripture; These painted carcasses will tell us, that if they can but dress themselves by dinner time, it is as much as they desire. Alas poor souls, what will they do when they come to enter into their eternal estates, when time shall be no more! A dying bed (if their consciences be but awakened) will teach them to value time at an higher rate, and make them know that a commodity of such worth is not to be wasted.
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