I am from China. I tries to read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. I met a question in a sentence. The sentence is in the paragraph below.
Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher’s dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich.
The sentence is "Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel".
Does "Mindful of John Wesley’s strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling" mean "Simon was aware that John Wesley very harshly criticized using many words to describe purchases and sales in the writing"?
Does "the putting on of gold and costly apparel" mean "Simon dressed himself in gold and expensive clothes "?
Does the word "as" in "as the putting on of gold and costly apparel" have the same meaning as the word "as" in the sentence "A flat stone was used as a table"?
http://www.penfield.edu/webpages/jgarbarino/files/to_kill_a_mockingbird_text.pdf
Best Answer
There's three issues here, complex sentence structure, a use of ornate, Biblically inspired language, and some playful, allusive indirection, all of which are distinctively typical of the educated Southern American mode of speaking and writing. It also helps to know that John Wesley was the founder of Methodism, a Christian Protestant denomination founded in England, but influential in America.
The joke here is that Simon interpreted narrowly a statement of John Wesley's that was probably meant as general advice against being too concerned with the pursuit of money.
This second part of the sentence isn't as hard to parse, but it makes some allusions. "Gold and costly apparel" is a quote from a John Wesley sermon, which in turn alludes to a passage from 1 Timothy 2:9 (The Bible, New Testament) that warns against taking too much pride in your clothing and appearance.