"A good
sermon of Mr. Gifford's at our church, upon 'Seek ye first
the kingdom of heaven.' A very excellent and persuasive,
good and moral sermon. He showed, like a wise man, that
righteousness is a surer moral way of being rich than sin and
villainy." It is thus that respect. able people desire to
have their Greathearts address them, telling, in mild
accents, how you may make the best of both worlds, and be a
moral hero without courage, kindness, or troublesome
reflection; and thus the Gospel, cleared of Eastern metaphor,
becomes a manual of worldly prudence, and a handybook for
Pepys and the successful merchant.
The respectability of Pepys was deeply grained. He has no
idea of truth except for the Diary. He has no care that a
thing shall be, if it but appear; gives out that he has
inherited a good estate, when he has seemingly got nothing
but a lawsuit; and is pleased to be thought liberal when he
knows he has been mean. He is conscientiously ostentatious.
I say conscientiously, with reason. He could never have been
taken for a fop, like Pen, but arrayed himself in a manner
nicely suitable to his position. For long he hesitated to
assume the famous periwig; for a public man should travel
gravely with the fashions not foppishly before, nor dowdily
behind, the central movement of his age. For long he durst
not keep a carriage; that, in his circumstances would have
been improper; but a time comes, with the growth of his
fortune, when the impropriety has shifted to the other side,
and he is "ashamed to be seen in a hackney.
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