By this you may see, 1. That it is not sloth or sinful idleness to omit a labour which we are unable to perform: as for the sick, and aged, and weak to be averse to labour through the power of an unresistible disease or weakness; or when nature is already wearied by as much labour as it can bear. 2. Or when reason alloweth and requireth us to forbear our usual labour for our health, or for some other sufficient cause. 3. Or when we are unwillingly restrained and hindered by others; as by imprisonment, or denial of opportunity: as if the magistrate forcibly hinder a preacher, or physician, or lawyer from that which otherwise he should do. 4. Or if a mistake or sinful error only keep a man from his labour, it is a sin, but not this sin of sloth; so also if any sensual vice or pleasure besides this love of ease take him off. 5. If it be a backwardness only to such labour as is no duty to us, it is but a natural and not a vicious sloth. But involuntary averseness to the labour of our duty through indulgence of fleshly ease, is the sinful sloth or laziness which we speak of.
[Sidenote: The aggravations of it.]
Sloth and idleness thus described is a sin in all; but a far greater sin in some than in others.[572] And you may thus know what sloth it is that is the most sinful. 1. The more sloth is subjected in the mind itself, and the less it is subjected in the body, the greater is the sin. For the mind is the nobler part, and immediate seat of sin. 2. The smaller the bodily distempers or temptations are which seduce the mind, the greater is the sin; for it shows the mind to be the more corrupted and tainted with the disease of sloth. He that is under an unresistible indisposition of body, sinneth not at all (unless as he voluntarily contracted that disease). But if the body's indisposition to labour be great, but yet not unresistible, it is a sin to yield to it; but so much the smaller sin, _cæteris paribus_, as the bodily disease is greater. He that hath some scorbutical lassitude, or phlegmatic heaviness and dulness, doth sin if he strive not against it as much as he can, and as in reason he should: it is not every bodily indisposition that will excuse a man from all labour, as long as he is able to labour notwithstanding that disease; but if the disease be great, so that he resisteth his lassitude with a great deal of labour, the sin is the less: but he that hath a body sound and able, that hath no disease to indispose him, sinneth most of all if he be slothful, as showing the most corrupted mind. 3. He is most sinfully slothful who is most voluntarily slothful. As he that endeavoureth least against it, and he that most loveth it, and would not leave it; and he that is least troubled at it, and least repenteth and lamenteth it, and contriveth to accommodate his sloth. 4. The sloth is, _cæteris paribus_, the worst, which most prevaileth to the omission or negligent performance of our duty; but that sloth which doth but indispose us, but is so far conquered by our resistance, as not to keep us from our duty, or not much and often, is the smaller sin. 5. That is the most sinful sloth, _cæteris paribus_, which is against the greatest duties: to be backward to the most holy duties, (as praying, and hearing or reading the word of God, &c.) or to duties of public consequence, is a greater sin than to be lazily backward to a common, toilsome work. 6. That is the most sinful sloth and idleness which is committed against the greatest motives to labour and diligence: therefore, in that respect, a poor man's sloth is more sinful than a rich man's, because he is under the pressure of necessity; and in another respect the rich man's sloth is worst, because he burieth the greatest talents, and is idle when he hath the greatest wages. A man that hath many children sinneth more than another by his idleness, because he wrongeth them all whom he must provide for. A magistrate or pastor of the church doth sin more incomparably than common people, if they be slothful; because they betray the souls of men, or sin against the good of many. As it is a greater sin to be lazy in quenching a fire in the city, than in a common, needless business; so it is a greater sin to be slothful in the working out our salvation, and making our calling and election sure, when God, and Christ, and heaven, and hell are the motives to rouse us up to duty, and when the time is so short, in which all our work for eternity must be done, I say, it is a far greater sin, than to be slothful when only corporal wants or benefits are the motives which we resist. Yet indeed the will of God is resisted in all, who forbiddeth us to be "slothful in business," Rom. xii. 11.
[Sidenote: The signs of sloth.]