¹ You say, “You _do testify against it_ in the congregation.” Against what? “Against gay and gaudy apparel.” I grant it. But this is not the thing I speak of. You quite mistake my mark. Do you testify against the _costliness_ of their apparel, however plain and grave it may be? Against the _price_ of the velvet, the linen, the silk, or raiment of whatever kind? If you do this frequently and explicitly, you are clear. If not, own and amend the fault. It is easy to discern how your people fell into this snare of the devil. You were at first a poor, despised, afflicted people. Then, what some of you had to spare, was little enough to relieve the needy members of your own society. In a few years you increased in goods, and were able to relieve more than your _own_ poor. But you did not bestow all that you had to spare from them, on the poor belonging to other societies. It remained either to lay it up, or to expend it in superfluities. Some chose one way, and some the other. * Lay this deeply to heart, ye who are now a poor, despised, afflicted people. Hitherto ye are not able to relieve your own poor. But if ever _your_ substance increase, see that ye be not straitened in your own bowels, that ye fall not ♦into the same snare of the devil. Before any of you either lay up treasures on earth, or indulge needless expence of any kind, I pray the Lord God to scatter you to the corners of the earth, and blot out your name from under heaven! ♦ “in” replaced with “into” per Errata I fix this charge upon every _preacher_, in particular, who saw a young woman, daughter to one of the _Quakers_ in _London_, going to be married in apparel suitable to her diamond buckle, which cost a hundred guineas. Could you see this, and not call heaven and earth to witness against it? Then I witness against thee, in the name of the Lord, thou art a _blind leader of the blind_: thou _strainest a gnat and swallowest a camel_! Verily the sin both of teachers and hearers, is herein exceeding great. And the little attempts toward plainness of apparel, which are still observable among you (I mean, in the _colour_ and _form_ of your cloaths, and the _manner of_ putting them on) only testify against you, that you were once what you know in your hearts you are not now. 8. I come now to your main principle, “We are all to be _taught of_ God, to be _inspired_ and _led by his Spirit_. And then we shall _worship_ him, not with dead _form_, but _in spirit and in truth_.”