Some formal Devotions are (perhaps) necessary to some of These, to preserve them even in their own good esteem; and they that can regularly find half an Hour, or an Hour in a Day 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 nearest Relations oftentimes are hardly brought to look upon her after such a dishonour done by her to their Family; whilst the Fault of her more guilty Brother finds but a very moderate reproof from them; and in a little while, it may be, becomes the Subject of their Mirth and Raillery.  And why still is this wrong plac’d distinction made, but because