A tradesman may justly think, that it is agreeable to the will of God for him to sell such things as are useful in life; such as help both himself and others to a reasonable support, and enable them to assist those that want to be assisted: but if instead of this, it be his chief end in it to grow rich, that he may live in figure and indulgence, and be able to retire from business to idleness and luxury, his trade, as to him, loses all its innocency, and is so far from being an acceptable service to God, that it is only a more plausible course of covetousness, self-love, and ambition. For such a one turns the necessities of his employment into pride and covetousness, just as the sot and epicure turn the necessities of eating and drinking into gluttony and drunkenness. Now he that is up early and late, that sweats and labours for those ends that he may be some time or other rich, and live in pleasure and indulgence, lives no more to the glory of God than he that plays and games for the same ends. For though there is a great difference between trading and gaming; yet most of that difference is lost, when men trade with the same desires and tempers, and for the same ends that others game. Charity and fine dressing are things very different; but if men give alms for the same reasons that others dress fine, only to be seen and admired, charity is then but like the vanity of fine cloaths. In like manner, if the same motives make some people industrious in their trades, which makes others constant at gaming, such pains are but like the pains of gaming.
9. *Calidus has traded above thirty years in the greatest city of the kingdom; he has been so many years constantly increasing his trade and his fortune. Every hour of the day is with him an hour of business; and though he eats and drinks very heartily, yet every meal seems to be in a hurry, and he would say grace if he had time. Calidus ends every day at the tavern; but has not leisure to be there till near nine o’clock. He is always forced to drink a good hearty glass, to drive thoughts of business out of his head, and make his spirits drowsy enough for sleep. He does business all the time that he is rising, and has settled several matters, before he can get to his compting-house. His prayers are a short ejaculation or two, which he never misses in stormy weather, because he has always something or other at sea. Calidus will tell you with great pleasure, that he has been in this hurry for so many years, and that it must have killed him long ago, but that it has been a rule with him, to get out of the town every Saturday, and make the Sunday a day of quiet and good refreshment in the country.
*He is now so rich that he would leave off his business, and amuse his old age with building and furnishing a fine house in the country; but that he is afraid he should grow melancholy, if he was to quit his business. He will tell you with great gravity, that it is a dangerous thing for a man, that has been used to get money, ever to leave it off. If thoughts of religion happen at any time to steal into his head, Calidus contents himself with thinking, that he never was a friend to heretics and infidels; that he has always been civil to the minister of his parish, and very often given something to the charity-schools.
10. *Now this way of life is at such a distance from all the doctrines and discipline of Christianity, that no one can live in it through ignorance or frailty. Calidus can no more imagine, that he is born again of the Spirit[¹]; that he is in Christ a new creature[²]; that he lives here as a stranger and pilgrim, setting his affections upon things above, and laying up treasures in heaven[³]. He can no more imagine this, than he can think that he has been all his life an apostle, working miracles, and preaching the gospel.
[¹] John iii.
[²] 1 Pet. ii. 11.
[³] Coloss. iii. 1.
It must also be owned, that the generality of trading people, especially in great towns, are too much like Calidus. You see them all the week buried in business, unable to think of any thing else; and then spending the Sunday in idleness and refreshment, in wandering into the country, in such visits and jovial meetings as make it often the worst day of the week.
11. Now they do not live thus, because they cannot support themselves with less care and application to business; but they live thus because they want to grow rich in their trades, and to maintain their families in some such figure and degree of finery, as a reasonable Christian has no occasion for. Take away but this temper, and then people of all trades will find themselves at leisure to live every day like Christians, to be careful of every duty of the gospel, to live in a visible course of religion, and be every day strict observers both of private and public prayer.
Now the only way to do this, is, for people to consider their trade as something that they are to devote to the glory of God, something that they are to do only in such a manner, as that they may make it a duty to him. Nothing can be right in business, that is not under these rules. The apostle commands servants, to be obedient to their masters in singleness of heart as unto Christ: not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart[¹]. With good-will, doing service as unto the Lord, and not unto men[²].