The prophecy of Haggai, interpreted and applied in sundry sermonsThe prophesie of Haggai, interpreted and applyed in sundry sermons

imagining so many difficulties, and adversaries to come against us if we should set our selves about it, as though we were the persons described by Solomon, The slothful man saith a Lyon is in the way, a Lyon ¹in the streets, as the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the sluggard on his bed; the slothful man hideth his hand in his bosom and it grieveth him to put it again to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit then seven men that can render a reason. But these are slothful men; Saint Paul is of another mind, of another spirit who fought with beasts at Ephesus, ²and was not afraid to meet a Lyon in the streets of Rome, from ⟨p. 54⟩whose mouth he also saith that the Lord delivered him, yea who was contented that he might do this work, to suffer imprisonment, stripes, hunger, nakedness, even death as it were often, as he showeth in the 2 to the Corinthians 11. furnished indeed with a greater measure of grace then all or any of us are to look for; but according to the measure which we have received we ³must all learn to take pains in our calling and state, to build this house. It is a general rule of the Apostle, That he who will not labour let him not eat, there are indeed divers and sundry vocations amongst men, but they are all ordained by God to furnish us that we may be better able to travel in this work: So that there are none exempt from labour, no not gentlemen, and Princes for it is not enough for one of them to say, I will not, ⁴I need not labour, I can live on my lands; for so could Adam have said in paradise more truly, when God set him in it to manure and till it, that we might learn that not Adam himself (though all things yielded their increase to him without his labour) yet that he was not by God created to be idle. Now if that Adam were not then to be idle when he had need neither to labour for maintenance of himself nor yet was fit to fall into wickedness through idleness: how much more necessary is it for us to learn that we bestow our selves in some profitable and lawful labour, on whom this burden through the sin of Adam is laid that we should eat our bread in the sweat of our brows? and