A guide to godliness or a Treatise of a Christian life showing the dutiesA guide to godlynesse or a Treatise of a Christian life shewing the duties

But let us know that this wasteful expense of our precious time in sloth and sluggishness, is very displeasing to God, who hath lent it unto us that we should spend it in his service; and that this account will not well pass at the day of Judgement, when God shall find it written in the book of our consciences, so much time consumed in superfluous sleep, and so little employed in the necessary duties of Gods service, prayer, reading, hearing, meditation; in the religious duties which we owe to our charge and family, or in the works of charity and mercy, help and comfort which we are bound to perform unto one another, as being children of the same Father, & fellow members of the same body. At which day fearful will the estate be of those nice wantons and idle sluggards, who divide the morning between sloth and pride, having scarce time, after they are risen out of their beds, to paint and dress themselves before they come to dinner, utterly neglecting all duties of Gods service, and the honest labours of a lawful calling. But it was not my purpose to have touched their abuses, who have learned to out-face all that admonish them, & to put off all that can be said, with some merry jest or scornful smile, like the fool, laughing with great jollity when they are going to the stocks, and are ready to be called to the bar, and carried out to execution; but only to admonish those who desire to lead a Christian life, that they avoid such wasteful expenses of precious time, consuming those good hours in superfluous sleep, which being well employed, would make them rich in grace, and thrice happy in this life and the World to come. Which whosoever would do, they must carefully observe these two rules; first, they must be temperate in their meats