'What a world this is,' he writes ... 'altogether carried with fooleries and vanities both men and women ... putting on gold, gay apparel, plaiting the hair, men and women they are powdering it, making their backs as if they were bags of meal, and they look so strange that they cannot look at one another. Pride hath puffed up every one, they are out of the fear of God, men and women, young and old, one puffs up another, they are not in the fashion of the world else, they are not in esteem else, they shall not be respected else, if they have not gold and silver upon their backs, or his hair be not powdered. If he have a company of ribbons hung about his waist, red or white, or black or yellow, and about his knees, and gets a Company in his hat, and powders his hair, then he is a brave man, then he is accepted, then he is no Quaker.... Likewise the women having their gold, their spots on their faces, noses, cheeks, foreheads, having their rings on their fingers, wearing gold, having their cuffs doubled under and about like a butcher with white sleeves' (how pretty they must have been!), 'having their ribbons tied about their hands, and three or four gold laces about their clothes, "this is no Quaker," say they.... Now are not all these that have got these ribbons hung about their arms, backs, waists, knees, hats, hands, like unto fiddlers' boys, and shew that you are gotten into the basest contemptible life as be in the fashion of the fiddlers' boys and stage-players, and quite out of the paths and steeps of solid men.... And further to get a pair of breeches like a coat and hang them about with points up almost to the middle, and a pair of double cuffs upon his hands, and a feather in his cap, and to say, "Here's a gentleman, bow before him, put off your hats, bow, get a company of fiddlers, a set of music and women to dance, this is a brave fellow, up in the chamber without and up in the chamber within," are these your fine Christians? "Yea," say they. "Yea but," say the serious people, "they are not of Christ's life." And to see such a company as are in the fashions of the world ... get a couple of bowls in their hands or tables [dice] or shovel-board, or a horse with a Company of ribbons on his head as he hath on his own, and a ring in his ear; and so go to horse-racing to spoil the creature. Oh these are gentlemen, these are bred up gentlemen! these are brave fellows and they must have their recreation, and pleasures are lawful. These are bad Christians and shew that they are gluttoned with the creature and then the flesh rejoiceth!'