THE PERIL OF SLACKNESS.
Afterwards comes slackness, which comes of want of heart, and of evil habit, which so binds the man that with difficulty he gives himself to well-doing. Sometimes it comes of ignorance and of foolish heat, whereby the man so starves his heart and his body by fasts and by vigils and by other deeds, that he falls into feebleness and into such sickness that he cannot labour in God’s service, and perishes in the slackness because he has neither taste nor devotion for well-doing. Afterwards comes weariness, which makes the man become weary and worse from day to day, until he is quite defeated and overcome with weariness. And this is the sixth vice of the evil servant, that he fails ere he come to the end or to his term, and one can say, whoever serves and serves not fully, he loses his reward.