N01536:29
Fair dealing between debtor and creditor. A very brief essay upon the caution to…
Fair dealing between debtor and creditor. A very brief essay upon the caution to be used, about coming in to debt, and getting out of it. Offered at Boston-lecture; 5. d. XI. m. 1715/16. / By Cotton Mather, D.D. & F.R.S. ; [Two lines of quotation]
Boston: printed by B. Green for Samuel Gerrish, 1716
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
A Man that would not be Sinfully in Debt ought to have a Spirit reconciled unto a Low and Mean Condition in the World, if this be what the Glorious GOD shall call him to.
A grand Cause of Peoples running into Debt, is this; They cannot bear the Humiliations of a Low and a Mean Condition in the World. Especially, They that have sometimes Lived in more of Splendour; these oftentimes find themselves very unable to bear a Reduced Condition. This 'tis, that causes them to run into Debt. for the Supply of their Carnal Appetites. Hence 'tis, that Some who Live upon other Mens Estates, go so far in their Extravagancy, as to Live Higher than their Creditors themselves can do. Those Flags of Pride, if I may be so bold, Are they Paid for? With what Face can you pretend unto them, while they are not so?
A grand Cause of Peoples running into Debt, is this; They cannot bear the Humiliations of a Low and a Mean Condition in the World. Especially, They that have sometimes Lived in more of Splendor; these oftentimes find themselves very unable to bear a Reduced Condition. This 'tis, that causes them to run into Debt. for the Supply of their Carnal Appetites. Hence 'tis, that Some who Live upon other Mens Estates, go so far in their Extravagancy, as to Live Higher than their Creditors themselves can do. Those Flags of Pride, if I may be so bold, Are they Paid for? With what Face can you pretend unto them, while they are not so?
But, first, it is a Position, which I hope, no Good Man will question; If a Man cannot keep out of a Low and Mean Condition, without a plain wrong to the Estates of other Men, he is then most Evidently called of GOD into a Low and Mean Condition. Man, The Glorious GOD, whose thou art, and whose are all thy ways, now Stakes thee down to a Low and Mean Condition. Thy Straits are what the Glorious GOD has ordered for thee. It should be a Principle with a Good Man, I may not have, what I cannot have. And in Pursuance of this Principle he should go on; I cannot have what it will be a wrong unto other People for me to have.