You must therefore no more conform to these ways of the world, than you must conform to the vices of the world. You must no more spend with those that idly waste their money as their own humour leads them, than you must drink with the drunken; because a course of such expences is no more consistent with a life of _charity_, than excess in drinking is consistent with a _life of sobriety_. When therefore any one tells you of the lawfulness of expensive apparel, or the innocency of pleasing yourself with costly satisfactions, only imagine that the same person was to tell you, that you need not do works of charity, that Christ does not require you to do good to your poor brethren, as unto him, and then you will see the wickedness of such advice; for, to tell you that you may live in such expences, as make it impossible for you to live in the exercise of good works, is the same thing as telling you, that you need not have any care about such good works themselves. CHAP. VI. _How the imprudent use of an estate corrupts all the tempers, and fills the heart with poor and ridiculous passions; represented in the character of |Flavia|._ 1. IT has already been observed, that a religious care is to be used in the manner ♦of spending our _money_ or _estate_; because the manner of spending our estate makes so great a part of our common life, and is so much the business of every day, that, according as we are wise or imprudent in this, the _whole course_ of our _lives_ will be wise, or full of folly. ♦ duplicate word ‘of’ removed Persons that receive instructions of piety with _pleasure_, often wonder that they make no farther progress in that religion which they so much _admire_. Now the reason is this: religion lives only in their _head_, but something else has possession of their hearts; and therefore, they continue from _year_ to _year_ mere _admirers_ and _praisers_ of piety, without ever coming up to its precepts. 2. If it be asked, why religion does not get possession of their hearts? It is not because they live in _gross sins_ or _debaucheries_; but because their _hearts_ are constantly _employed_, _perverted_, and kept in a wrong state, by the _indiscreet use_ of such things as are _lawful_. The use and enjoyment of their estates is _lawful_, and therefore it never comes into their heads to imagine any danger from that quarter. They never reflect that there is a _vain_ and _imprudent_ use of their estates: which, though it does nor destroy like _gross sins_, yet so _disorders_ the heart, and supports it in such _sensuality_ and _dullness_, as makes it incapable of receiving the life and spirit of piety. For our souls may be rendered incapable of all virtue, merely by the use of _innocent_ and _lawful_ things.