to employ in private
upon this, and in reading some pious Book, together with, it may be, a
certain Number of Chapters in the Bible, need nothing more to make
them be cry'd up for great examples to the Age they live in; as if all
this while there were no Precepts for these People in the Gospel,
concerning the improvement of their Time, and Talents, as things
whereof they must one Day be accountable. For others it may be they
cannot but see that there are such Commands; but the Sacred Law of
Fashion has made endless Idle Visits, and less Innocent
Entertainments, the indispensibly constant Employment of those of
their Condition: and when they are grown Old in the perpetually
repeated round of such Impertinence and Folly, they have but labour'd
much in their Calling.

Another Instance how little many, who profess to believe the
Scriptures, do apparently look upon them as the Rule of their Actions,
we have in regard of the Precept _not to Covet_; which is as much
forbidden by the Law of God as _not to Steal_, or Cozen a Man of what
is his property: And yet the same Parents who have bred their Children
in such a Sense of the Enormity of these last Vices, as that they
oftentimes seem to them like things that they are Naturally uncapable
of, are so far from teaching them to restrain their Exorbitant
Desires, that very oft they themselves with care inspire these into
them: Whence it is sufficiently clear that the difference made between
Stealing and Cheating, or Coveting (alike forbidden by the Law of God)
is from hence, That Ambition is thought a Passion becoming some Ranks
of Men, but Cheating or Stealing not Vices proper for a Gentleman. A
distinction that must needs refer to some other Rule than that of the
Gospel; which therefore is not That which, as a Divine Law, does
prescribe to such Men the Measures of their Actions.

To bring but one instance more of the Commands of Christ being
comply'd with but so far only, as they do comply with some other Rule
prefer'd thereto by such as yet pretend to be Christians; _Chastity_
(for example) is, according to the Gospel, a Duty to both Sexes, yet a
Transgression herein, even with the aggravation of wronging another
Man, and possibly a whole Family thereby, is ordinarily talk'd as
lightly of, as if it was but a Peccadillo in a Young Man, altho' a far
less Criminal Offence against this Duty in a Maid shall in the
Opinion of the same Persons brand her with perpetual Infamy: The
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