8. If you visit Flavia on the Sunday you will always meet good company: you will know what is doing in the world; you will hear the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in fashion. Flavia thinks they are Atheists that play at cards on the Sunday; but she will tell you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish, who lives too high, and who is in debt; if you would know what is the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what cloaths she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one another in their hearts, though they appear so kind in public, you must visit Flavia on the Sunday. But still she has so great a regard for the holiness of the day, that she has turned a poor old widow out of her house, as a prophane wretch, for having been found once mending her cloaths on the Sunday night.
Thus lives Flavia; and if she lives ten years longer, she will have spent about fifteen hundred and sixty Sundays after this manner. She will have wore about two hundred different suits of cloaths. Out of this thirty years of her life, fifteen of them will have been disposed of in bed; and of the remaining fifteen, about fourteen of them will have been consumed in eating, drinking, dressing, visiting, conversation, reading and hearing plays and romances; at operas, assemblies, balls, and diversions. For you may reckon all the time she is up, thus spent, except about an hour and half that is disposed of at church, most Sundays in the year. With great management, and under mighty rules of œconomy, she will have spent sixty hundred pounds upon herself, bating only some shillings, crowns, or half crowns, that have gone from her in accidental charities.
9. I shall not take upon me to say, that it is impossible for Flavia to be saved; but thus much must be said, that her whole life is in direct opposition to all those tempers and practices which the gospel has made necessary to salvation.
*If you was to hear her say, that she had lived all her life like Anna the prophetess, who departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day, you would look upon her as very extravagant; and yet this would be no greater an extravagance, than for her to say, that she had been striving to enter in at the straight gate, or making any one doctrine of the gospel a rule of her life.
*She may as well say, that she lived with our Saviour when he was upon earth, as that she has lived in imitation of him, or made it any part of her care to live in such tempers, as he required of all those that would be his disciples. She may as truly say, that she has every day washed the saints feet, as that she has lived in Christian humility and poverty of Spirit; and as reasonably think, that she has taught a charity-school, as that she has lived in works of charity. She has as much reason to think, that she has been a sentinel in an army, as that she has lived in watching and self-denial. And it may as fairly be said, that she lived by the labour of her hands, as that she had given all diligence to make her calling and election sure.
10. And here it is to be well observed, that the poor, vain turn of mind, the folly and vanity of this whole life of Flavia, is all owing to the manner of using her estate. It is this that has formed her spirit, that has given life to every idle temper, that has supported every trifling passion, and kept her from all thoughts of a prudent, useful, and devout life.
When her parents died, she had no thoughts about her two hundred pounds a year; but that she had so much money to do what she would with, to spend upon herself, and purchase the pleasures and gratifications of all her passions.
And it is this setting out, this false judgment, and indiscreet use of her fortune, that has filled her whole life with the same indiscretion, and kept her from thinking of what is right, and wise, and pious in every thing else.
If you have seen her delighted in plays and romances, in scandal and backbiting, easily flattered, and soon affronted; if you have seen her devoted to pleasures and diversions, a slave to every passion in its turn, nice in every thing that concerned her body or dress, careless of every thing that might benefit her soul, always wanting some new entertainment, and ready for every happy invention in shew or dress, it was because she had purchased all these tempers with her yearly revenue.
11. She might have been humble, serious, devout, a lover of good books, an admirer of prayer and retirement, careful of her time, diligent in good works, full of charity and the love of God; but that the imprudent use of her estate forced all the contrary tempers upon her.