'Wise in this world.'--Paul.

Mr. Worldly-Wiseman has a long history behind him on which we cannot now
enter at any length. As a child, the little worldling, it was observed,
took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming
mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he
became a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourished
like his. 'Nothing of news,' says his biographer in another place,
'nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration or talk of alteration could
at any time be set on foot in the town but be sure Mr. Worldly-Wiseman
would be at the head or tail of it. But, to be sure, he would always
decline those he deemed to be the weakest, and stood always with those,
in his way of thinking, that he supposed were the strongest side.' He
was a man, it was often remarked, of but one book also. Sunday and
Saturday he was to be found deep in _The Architect of Fortune_; _or_,
_Advancement in Life_, a book written by its author so as to 'come home
to all men's business and bosoms.' He drove over scrupulously once a
Sunday to the State church, of which he was one of the most determined
pillars. He had set his mind on being Lord Mayor of the town before
long, and he was determined that his eldest son should be called Sir
Worldly-Wiseman after him, and he chose his church accordingly. Another
of his biographers in this connection wrote of him thus: 'Our Lord Mayor
parted his religion betwixt his conscience and his purse, and he went to
church not to serve God, but to please the king. The face of the law
made him wear the mask of the Gospel, which he used not as a means to
save his soul, but his charges.' Such, in a short word, was this
'sottish man' who crossed over the field to meet with our pilgrim when he
was walking solitary by himself after his escape from the slough.