Sloth is a thing that is easily discerned: the signs of it are, 1. When the very thought of labour is troublesome and unpleasing, and ease seems sweet. 2. When duty is omitted hereby and left undone. 3. When the easy part of duty is culled out, and the harder part is cast aside. 4. When the judgment will not believe, that laborious duty is a duty at all. 5. When that which you do, is done with an ill will, and with a constant weariness of mind, and there is no alacrity or pleasure in your work. 6. When you do no more in much time, than you might do in less, if you had a willing, ready mind. 7. When the backward mind is shifting it off with excuses, or finding something else to do, or at least delaying it. 8. When you choose a condition of greater ease and smaller labour, before a laborious condition of life which in other respects is better for you. As when a servant had rather live in an ungodly family where there is more ease (and fulness) to be had, than in a place of greatest advantage for the soul, where there is more labour (and want). 9. When little impediments discourage or stop you. "The slothful saith, there is a lion in the way," Prov. xxvi. 13; xxii. 13. "His way is an hedge of thorns," Prov. xv. 19. "He will not plough by reason of cold," Prov. xx. 4. 10. When you make a great matter of a little business. It cannot be done but with such preparation, and so much ado, that shows a slothful mind in the doer. Even the "putting his hand to his mouth," and "pulling it out of his bosom," is a business with the sluggard; that is, he maketh a great matter of a little one, Prov. xxvi. 15; xix. 24. 11. Lastly, The fruits of slothfulness use to detect it, in soul, and body, and estate; for it corrupteth, impoverisheth, and ruineth all. The weeds of his field or garden, the vices of his soul, the sins of his life, the duties omitted, or sleepily performed, the disorders of his family or charge, and usually, or oft, his poverty, do detect him, Prov. xxiv. 30; xii. 24, 27.[573]
By this much it is easy to discern the impudent folly of the quakers and some ignorant rustics, that rail against magistrates and ministers for living idly, because they do not plough or thrash, or use some mechanic trade or labour; as if the labour of their highest calling were no labour, but mere idleness. Thus proud men speak evil of that which they understand not! Had they tried it, they would have found that the work of a faithful minister is further distant from idleness than a thrasher is. Doth not Christ and the Holy Ghost oft call them "labourers, fellow-labourers with Christ, and workmen, and their work a labour?" Luke x. 27; 1 Cor. iii. 9; 1 Tim. v. 17, 18; 2 Tim. ii. 15; Matt. x. 10; 1 Cor. iii. 13-15; ix. 1; Eph. iv. 12; Phil. ii. 30.
Hence also you may see, 1. That though all that can must labour, yet there is great diversity of labours; and all men are not to do the same work. Magistrates, and pastors, and lawyers, and physicians, must labour diligently; but they are not all bound to plough, and thrash, and use the more servile labours of their inferiors. 2. That every man must labour in the works of his own calling, "and do his own business," 1 Thess. iv. 11; 2 Thess. iii. 11; and take that for the best employment for him, which God doth call him to, and not presume to step out of his place, and take the work of other men's callings out of their hands. 3. That a man that is paid for his labour by another, (as lawyers, physicians, schoolmasters, servants,) do rob them by their idleness, when they withhold from them any part of that which they are paid for.
_Direct._ I. The first help against sloth, is to be well acquainted with the greatness of the sin. For no wonder if it be committed by them that think it small. First, therefore, I shall tell you what it is.
1. God himself reckoneth it with heinous sins. "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness," Ezek. xvi. 49, (the very character of the debauched part of the gentry,) is said to have been Sodom's sin, that was consumed with fire from heaven. And the Thessalonians were forbidden to keep company with such as lived disorderly and did not work.[574]
2. Idleness is a temporary destruction (as to their use) of all the faculties of mind and body which should be exercised. It is contrary to nature; for nature made our faculties for use. You bury yourselves alive. If it be a sin to hide God's lesser talents, what is it to bury ourselves and all our powers? If it be pity to see a dead man, because he is unuseful to the world; is it not pity and shame to see one voluntarily dead, that maketh himself useless by his sloth? Should not the church-yard be the dwelling of the slothful, that he may be nearest them in place that he is nearest to in quality?