A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 287 pages of information about A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3.

A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 287 pages of information about A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3.
you will not come under the discipline of fashion?  And who is Fashion?  Is she not of all mistresses the most imperious, and unreasonable, and cruel?  You may be pleased with her for a while, but you will eventually feel her chains.  With her iron whip, brandished over your head, she will issue out her commands, and you must obey them.  She will drive you, without mercy, through all her corruptive customs, and through all her chameleon changes, and this against your judgment and against your will.  Do you keep an equipage?  You must alter the very shape of your carriage, if she prescribes it.  Is the livery of your postilion plain?  You must make it of as many colours as she dictates.  If you yourself wear corbeau or raven colour to-day, you must change it, if she orders you, to that of puce, or the flea, to-morrow.  But it is not only, in your equipage and your dress, that she will put you under her control.  She will make you obedient to her in your address and manners.  She will force upon you rules for your intercourse with others.  She will point out to you her amusements, and make you follow them.  She will place you under her cruel laws of honour, from which she will disown you, if you swerve.  Now I beseech you, tell me, which you think you would prefer, the discipline of the goddess Fashion, or that of the good old mistress, which you may have wished to leave?  The one kindly points out to you, and invites and warns you to avoid, every dangerous precipice, that may be before you.  The other is not satisfied, but with your destruction.  She will force you, for a single word, uttered in a thoughtless moment, to run the hazard of your life, or to lose what she calls your character.  The one, by preserving you in innocence, preserves you happy.  The greater your obedience to her, the greater is your freedom; and it is the best species of freedom, because it is freedom from the pollutions of the world.  The other awakens your conscience, and calls out its stings.  The more obedient you are to her, the greater is your slavery, and it is the worst species of slavery, because it is often slavery to vice.  In consequence of the freedom which the one bestows upon you, you are made capable of enjoying nature and its various beauties, and by the contemplation of these, of partaking of an endless feast.  In consequence of the freedom which the one bestows upon you, you are made capable of enjoying nature, and its various beauties, and, by the contemplation, of these, of partaking of an endless feast.  In consequence of the slavery to which the other reduces you, you are cramped as to such enjoyments.  By accustoming you to be pleased with ridiculous and corruptive objects, and silly and corruptive changes, she confines your relish to worthless things.  She palsies your vision, and she corrupts your taste.  You see nature before you, and you can take no pleasure in it.  Thus she unfits you for the most rational of the enjoyments of the world, in which you are designed to live.

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A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.