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

§. Sect. 3 That recreations are profitable and necessary.

Neither is recreation only allowed as lawful, but also enjoined as profitable and necessary. It is profitable, because it enableth us to hold out in our labours, and to perform all good duties with more vigour, and in much greater perfection. For as the strings of a Lute let down & remitted, do sound sweeter when they are raised again to their full pitch; and as our fields, being every year sowed, become at length more barren in bearing, but being sometime laid fallow, repay the Husbandmans patience and forbearance with double increase: so our bodies and minds, if ¹they have no remission from our labours, will make but dull music; if we do not sometimes let them lye fallow, and give them a Summer-tilth of seasonable recreation, they will remit much of their vigour, and become quickly more barren, to bring forth any good fruits; whereas by timely remission, they will afterwards make more harmonious melody, and double their fruitfulness, if, languishing with labour, we refresh them, and repair their strength with some pleasant intermission. And as recreation in these respects is very profitable, so also is it no less necessary: for if (like bows) we should always stand upon our bent; we would in a while prove stark slugs; and if (like Lute strings) we should always have our strength stretched to the highest pitch; it would not only be deadened and dull, but still in danger to crack and fail. We are not made of God fit instruments for perpetual motion, but rest is to hold interchangeable course with it. The which is to be understood, not only of our bodies, but also of our minds; for both of them have but a finite virtue, and their powers and faculties proportioned unto finite actions and operations: and therefore as they cannot do things above their strength, so neither can they continue in doing beyond their time; or if they do, they are soon wearied and spent, and forced to leave their labour upon the necessity of impotency, which we would not intermit upon the choice of discretion. But chiefly this falleth out in the studies and labours of our minds, when as they are exercised about intellectual objects, and intentively bent upon discourses of reason.