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

Contrariwise, the Lord abhorreth idleness and negligence in our callings, esteeming them that are slothful, more brutish and without understanding, then the dumb & brute creatures, and therefore sendeth them to their School to be instructed by them. ^aGo to the Ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. And therefore it is condemned in the ^bScriptures; ^creproved in the Parable; Why stand ye here idle? Forbidden in all our affairs, ^dBe not slothful in business; Matched and ranked with wasting our own goods, and stealing from other men; for he that is slothful in his work, is the brother of him that is a great waster; and the Apostle implieth ^eby that Antithesis, Let him that stole, steal no more, but let him labour with his ⁶hands; that an idle person is no better then a thief. For he robbeth the poor of their right, who depriveth them by his sloth of that relief, which he might yield unto them out of his honest labour. And finally, to be wicked and slothful, are words of like signification, and fit to describe a person desperately naught and designed to destruction. Whereof it is that our Saviour joineth them together in the Parable of the talents; Thou