SECTION V. 45 -want of those virtues scarce ever appeared in the ruin offamilies, and a bankrupt was almost an unknown name amóngst them : such a man would have borne a long and heavy load of infamy, and. have been excommunicated at once, and cast out of the church with abhorrence, in our lathers days,unless,he could with the greatest evidence have made it appear, that some sudden overwhelming distress, some ruinous providence, or some sur- prizing loss had been the occasion of it, But how stands the case now ? Is not bankruptcy reckoned too small a crime amongst the dissenters as well as amongst their neighbours ? And that where there can be found no other reason for it, but that they have lived too fast, they have affected the luxuries of life in their dress and furniture, food, equipage and attendance, and would vie with their neighbours in spleñdor, grandeur and expence, where the circumstances of their estate er trade have not been able to afford it ? Or perhaps they have fre- quented taverns early and late, they have habituated themselves to a morning whet, to prepareafor some luxurious dish at noon ; they have indulged their pleasures and neglected their shop, they have trifled away their time in idle company, and left.the business of the proper hour undone ; or it may be they, have sought to grow rich at once by plunging themselves into trade anddebt beyond all proportion of their own estate, or possibility of pay- ment, if they should meet with any disappointing accident ;. and they have too often assumed the character of the wicked, who bor- rows when he knows not how to pay again, and run onborrowing without end, and without measure, so long as they could find any artifice to support credit ; they have supplied their shops with goods, their table with costly provisions, their houses with rich furniture, and their family with shining apparel out of the purse of their 'credulous neighbour, and perhaps made him pay their heavy scores in the tavern also., A man who should have been found in thepractice of half these vices, would never have been called a.disseñter in the days of our fathers ; and it is a heavy shame, and an insupportable disgrace, that there should. be any such characters in our day that should 'wear the name of a nonconformist': But it is well there is purity of discipline enough in our churches to refuse them at the table of the Lard. I proceed now to the sixth and last thing wherein the pro- testant dissenters were wont eminently to distinguish themselves, and that is in their abstaining from those gayer vanities and dan- gerous diversions of their .age, which border so near upon vice and irreligion, that sometimes it is pretty hard to separate them ; such are many of .our midnight assemblies, midnight balls, lewd and profane comedies, masquerades, public gaining tables and deep play, and such like places and methods of modern diversion, where temptations aboard- and surprize the unwary, where virtt:e e
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