Peter Cartwright says: When I joined the Methodist Episcopal church in 1801, her ministers and members were a plain people; plain in dress and address. You could know a Methodist preacher by his plain dress as far as you could see him. The members were plain, very plain in dress. They wore no jewelry, nor were they permitted to wear jewelry, or superfluous ornament, or extravagant dress of any kind, and this was the rule by which we worked, whether poor or rich, young or old; and although we knew then as well as we know now, that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ did not consist in dress, or cut of the garment, yet we then knew, and know now, that the extravagant dress and superfluous ornaments engender pride, and lead to many hurtful lusts, directly at war with that humility and godly example that becomes our relation to Christ, that so pre-eminently becomes Christians.
Moreover, when we look around us, and see the perishing millions of our fallen race dying in their sins, for the want of a preached gospel, and that this gospel is not sent to them for want of means to support the missionary, may we not well question whether we are doing right in the sight of God in adorning our bodies with all this costly extravagant dressing? Would it not be more Godlike or Christianlike to give our money, laid out for these unnecessary ornaments, to send the gospel to the poor perishing millions, and would not the simple fund that might be created by disposing of the ornaments of the members of the Methodist church alone, send the gospel to hundreds of thousands who must perish in all probability, for the want of this little Christian sacrifice by the professed lovers of Christ? The apostle James says, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."