The divine life in three treatises

2. From a laziness of mind and weariness of duty: when slothful unprofitable servants hide their talents, pretending their fear of the austerity of their Lord. Its easier to run away from our work, then do it: and to go out of the reach of ignorance, malice, contradiction and ungodliness, than to encounter them, and conquer them by Truth and Holy lives. So many persons as we converse with, so many are there to whom we owe some duty: And this is not so easy as it is to over-run our work, and to hide our selves in some Wilderness or Cell, whilst others are fighting the battles of the Lord. 3. Or it may proceed from mere impatience: When men cannot bear the frown, and scorns, and violence of the ungodly, they fly from sufferings, which by patience they should overcome. 4. Or it may come from humour and mutability of mind, and discontent with ones condition: Many retire from humane converse to please a discontented passionate mind; or expecting to find that in privacy, which in public they could ⟨p. 344⟩not find, nor is anywhere to be found on earth. 5. And some do it in Melancholy, merely to please a sick imagination, which is vexed in company, and a little easeth it self in living as the possessed man among the Tombs. •. And sometimes it proceedeth from self-ignorance, and an unhumbled state of a soul: When men think much better of themselves than others, they think they can more comfortably converse with themselves than with others: Whereas if they well understood that they are the worst or greatest enemies, or troubles to themselves, they would more fear their own company than other mens: They would then consider what proud, and fleshly, and worldly, and selfish, and disordered hearts they are like to carry with them into their solitude, and there to be annoyed with from day to day: And that the nearest enemy is the worst, and the nearest trouble is the greatest.

2. From a laziness of minde and weariness of duty: when slothful unprofitable servants hide their talents, pretending their fear of the austerity of their Lord. Its easier to run away from our work, then do it: and to go out of the reach of ignorance, malice, contradiction and ungodliness, than to encounter them, and conquer them by Truth and Holy lives. So many persons as we converse with, so many are there to whom we owe some duty: And this is not so easie as it is to over-run our work, and to hide our selves in some Wilderness or Cell, whilst others are fighting the battels of the Lord. 3. Or it may proceed from meer impatience: When men cancannot bear the frown, and scorns, and violence of the ungodly, they fly from sufferings, which by patience they should overcome. 4. Or it may come from humour and mutability of mind, and discontent with ones condition: Many retire from humane converse to please a discontented passionate mind; or expecting to finde that in privacy, which in publick they could