The fitness of apparel consisteth in these things: 1. That it be fitted to your bodies (as your shoe to your foot, your hat to your head, &c.) 2. That it be suited to your sex; that men wear not apparel proper to women, nor women that which is proper to men. 3. That it be suited to your age; the young and the old being usually hereby somewhat distinguished. 4. That it be suited to your estate, or not above it. 5. That it be suited to your place or office. 6. That it be suited to your use and service. As, 1. To cover your nakedness so far as health, or modesty, or decency require. 2. To keep you from cold. 3. And from hurt in your labour (as the shoe doth the foot, the glove the hand, &c.) 4. For sober ornament, as aforesaid.
Direct. II. Among the ends and uses of apparel the greatest is to be preferred: the ornament being the least, is not to be pretended against any of the rest. Therefore they that for ornament, 1. Will go naked, in any part which should be covered; or, 2. Will go coldly to the hurt or hazard of their health (as our semi-Evites, or half-naked gallants do); 3. Or will either hurt our bodies, (as our strait-laced fashionists,) or disable themselves from their labour, or travel, or fit exercise, lest they should be hurt by their clothes, which are fitted more to sight than use; all these cross the ends of clothing.
Direct. III. Affect not singularity in your apparel; that is, to be odd and observably distinct from all those of your own rank and quality; unless their fashions be evil and intolerable, (in pride, immodesty, levity, &c.) and then your singularity is your duty. An unnecessary affectation of singularity showeth, 1. A weakness of judgment. 2. A pride of that which you affect. 3. And a placing of duty in things indifferent. And on the contrary, an imitating of proud or immodest fashions, 1. Encourageth others in the sin. 2. Showeth a carnal, proud, or temporizing mind, that will displease God himself to humour men, and avoid their contempt and disesteem.
Direct. IV. Run not into sordid vileness, or nastiness, or ridiculous, humorous, squalid fashions, under pretence of avoiding pride. For, 1. This will betray a great weakness of judgment. 2. It will make your judgment, to men that discern it, the more contemptible and useless to them in other things. 3. It will harden them in their excess, while they think nothing but humour, folly, or superstition doth reprove them. 4. You sin by dishonouring human nature. God hath put a special honour upon man, and would have us do so ourselves; and therefore hath appointed clothing since the fall: as nakedness, so over sordid or ridiculous clothing, wrongeth God in his creature.
Direct. V. Be much more suspicious of pride and excess in apparel, as the more common and dangerous extreme. For nature is incomparably more prone to this, than the other; and many hundreds, if not thousands, sin in excess, for one that sinneth in the defect; and this way of sinning is more perilous. Here I shall show you, 1. How pride in apparel appeareth. 2. What is the sinfulness of it.
1. Pride appeareth in apparel, when the matter of it is too costly. 2. When in the fashion you are desirous to be imitating those that are above your estate or rank; and when you so fit your apparel, as to make you seem some higher or richer person than you are. 3. When you are over-curious in the matter, shape, or dress, and make a greater matter of it than you ought: as if your comeliness were a more desirable thing than it is, or as if some meanness or disliked fashion were intolerable. 4. When your curiosity taketh up more time in dressing you, than is due to so small a matter, while far greater matters are neglected. 5. When you make too great a difference between your private and your public habit; going plain when no strangers see you, and being excessively careful when you go abroad, or when strangers visit you. These show that pride which consisteth in a desire to appear either richer or comelier than you are.
Besides these, there is a pride which maketh men desirous to seem more learned than they are; which showeth itself in affecting as the titles, so the habits of the learned: which hath some aggravations above the former.
And there is a pride which consisteth in a desire to seem more grave and reverend than you are: thus Christ blameth the Pharisees' affectation of long garments, Mark xii. 38. When you shall wear a habit of more gravity than you have, it is hypocrisy.
And there is a pride which consisteth in a desire to seem more mortified than you are, and more holy.[609] And so to affect those discriminating vestments which signify more of these than you have, is proud hypocrisy: and thus vile clothing is often the effect of pride; and if men fall into that sort of pride, as to desire to be noted as most mortified persons, this is as suitable a badge for them, as bravery is for those that are proud of their comeliness, and grave clothing of those that are proud of their gravity.
How pride of gravity and holiness appeareth about apparel.