The third sort, are too many Lords, Knights, and Gentlemen, that think because they have enough to maintain them, that it is lawful to live an idle life. Or if they do any thing that's profitable to the Commonwealth, it is rather as a recreation, than as a Calling: Now and then an hour in the midst of their pleasures and idleness, is the most. It is a miserable life that this sort of persons live: even in the sins of Sodom (which cry for the vengeance of Sodom) Pride, Fullness of bread, and Idleness. As if these persons that have most wages should do God the least work: and they that have most of his stock in their hands should make the least use of it; or those that are obliged to God by the greatest mercies, should do least in manifesting their thankfulness or fidelity! what incongruities are these? Who should be so busy and laborious, as those that have the greatest account to make, and those that are to be exemplary to the rest? Truly Gentlemen, I must deal plainly with you, that Idleness and the expression of it among the most of you, in hunting, and hawking, and bowling, and complementing, and visitations, and vain discoursings, and excess of drinking, and tedious meals, is become the common shame of your order; and must be corrected before your honour or consciences can be recovered: And I am so far from any partiality in this censure of you, that I must tell you, if I knew one of my own profession that were guilty but of the tenth part of some of your Idleness, I would do my best to ⟨p. 190⟩rid the Church of him, and have him cast out among the sensual. And you may do well sometime to ask your selves, whence it comes to pass that Negligent idle Ministers must be sequestered and turned out of all, and Idle Magistrates let alone? One reason is because Gentlemen can better cheap compel a Minister to painfulness than themselves, and punish Ministers for negligence than themselves. And another reason is, because all faithful Ministers themselves in love to the Church are the seekers of this severity: but Magistrates are few of them so self-denying & forward to seek for such severity against the idle and negligent of their own order. But doth not your calling require diligence as well as ours? It is a brutish, ungrateful conceit of any man to think that he may live idly, because he is rich.
The third sort, are too many Lords, Knights, and Gentlemen, that think because they have enough to maintain them, that it is lawful to live an idle life. Or if they do any thing that's profitable to the Commonwealth, it is rather as a recreation, than as a Calling: Now and then an hour in the midst of their peasures and idleness, is the most. It is a miserable life that this sort of persons live: even in the sins of Sodom (which cry for the vengeance of Sodom) Pride, Fulness of bread, and Idleness. As if these persons that have most wages should do God the least work: and they that have most of his stock in their hands should make the least use of it; or those that are obliged to God by the greatest mercies, should do least in manifesting their thankfulness or fidelity! what incongruities are these? Who should be so busie and laborious, as those that have the greatest account to make, and those that are to be exemplary to the rest? Truly Gentlemen, I must deal plainly with you, that Idleness and the expression of it among the most of you, in hunting, and hawking, and bowling, and complementing, and visitations, and vain discoursings, and excess of drinking, and tedious meals, is become the common shame of your order; and must be corrected before your honour or consciences can be recovered: And I am so far from any partiality in this censure of you, that I must tell you, if I knew onē of my own profession that were guilty but of the tenth part of some of your Idleness, I would do my best to ⟨p. 190⟩rid the Church of him, and have him cast out among the sensual. And you may do well sometime to ask your selves, whence it comes to pass that Negligent idle Ministers must be sequestred and turned out of all, and Idle Magistrates let alone? One reason is because Gentlemen can better cheap compel a Minister to painfulness than themselves, and punish Ministers for negligence than themselves. And another reason is, because all faithful Ministers themselves in love to the Church are the seekers of this severity: but Magistrates are few of them so self-denying & forward to seek for such severity against the idle and negligent of their own order. But doth not your calling require diligence as well as ours? It is a brutish, ungrateful conceit of any man to think that he may live idly, because he is rich.
