V. If those things were convenient in themselves, which is a step nearer necessity than mere indifferency, yet when by circumstances they become prejudicial, such conveniency itself ought to be put off; much more what is but indifferent should be denied. People ought not to weigh their private satisfactions more than a public good; nor please themselves in too free a use of indifferent things, at the cost of being so really prejudicial to the public as they certainly are, whose use of them, if no worse, becomes exemplary to others, and begets an impatience in their minds to have the like. Wherefore it is both reasonable and incumbent on all to make only such things necessary as tend to life and godliness, and to employ their freedom with most advantage to their neighbours. (2 Pet. i. 3.) So that here is a two-fold obligation; the one not to be exemplary in the use of such things, which though they may use them, yet not without giving too much countenance to the abuse and excessive vanity of their neighbours. The other obligation is, that they ought so far to condescend to such religious people, who are offended at these fashions, and that kind of conversation as to reject them. (Rom. xiv. 1, to the end.) VI. Now those who, notwithstanding what I have urged, will yet proceed; what is it but that they have so involved themselves and their affections in them, that it is hardly possible to reform them; and that for all their many protestations against their fondness to such fopperies, they really love them more than Christ and his cross. Such cannot seek the good of others, who do so little respect their own. For, after a serious consideration, what vanity, pride, idleness, expense of time and estates have been and yet are! How many persons debauched from their first sobriety, and women from their natural sweetness and innocency to loose, airy, wanton, and many times more enormous practices! How many plentiful estates have been overrun by numerous debts, chastity ensnared by accursed lustful intrigues; youthful health overtaken by the hasty seizure of unnatural distempers, and the remaining days of such spent upon a rack of their vice's procuring, and so made slaves to the unmerciful but necessary effects of their own inordinate pleasures! in which agony they vow the greatest temperance, but are no sooner out of it, than in their vice again. (Lam. iv. 5; Job, xxi. 13, 14; Psalm lv. 23; xxxvii. 10; Eccl. viii. 12; Psalm xxxvii. 1, 2; Prov. ii. 22.)