A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

2. Naturally action is the end of all our powers; and the power were vain, but in respect to the act: to be able to understand, to read, to write, to go, &c. were little worth, if it were not that we may do the things that we are enabled to.

3. It is for action that God maintaineth us and our abilities: work is the moral as well as the natural end of power. It is the act by the power that is commanded us.

4. It is action that God is most served and honoured by: not so much by our being able to do good, but by our doing it. Who will keep a servant that is able to work and will not? Will his mere ability answer your expectation?

5. The public welfare, or the good of many, is to be valued above our own. Every man therefore is bound to do all the good he can to others, especially for the church and commonwealth. And this is not done by idleness, but by labour. As the bees labour to replenish their hive, so man, being a sociable creature, must labour for the good of the society which he belongs to, in which his own is contained as a part.

6. Labour is necessary for the preservation of the faculties of the mind. (1.) The labour of the mind is necessary hereto, because unexercised abilities will decay; as iron not used will consume with rust. Idleness makes men fools and dullards, and spoileth that little ability which they have. (2.) And the exercise of the body is ordinarily necessary, because of the mind's dependence on the body, and acting according to its temperature and disposition: it is exceedingly helped or hindered by the body.

7. Labour is needful to our health and life: the body itself will quickly fall into mortal diseases without it (except in some very few persons of extraordinary soundness).[570] Next to abstinence, labour is the chief preserver of health. It stirreth up the natural heat and spirits, which perform the chief offices for the life of man: it is the proper bellows for this vital fire: it helpeth all the concoctions of nature: it attenuateth that which is too gross: it purifieth that which beginneth to corrupt: it openeth obstructions: it keepeth the mass of blood and other nutritious humours in their proper temperament, fit for motion, circulation, and nutrition; it helpeth them all in the discharge of their natural offices: it helpeth the parts to attract each one its proper nutriment, and promoteth every fermentation and assimilation by which nature maintaineth the transitory, still-consuming oil and mass: it excelleth art in the preparation, alteration, and expulsion of all the excrementitious matter, which being retained would be the matter of manifold diseases; and powerfully fighteth against all the enemies of health. In a word, it doth incomparably excel the help of the most skilful physicians and excellent medicines in the world, for the preventing of most diseases incident to man: (and consequently to the benefit of the soul itself, which cheerfully useth a cheerful and well-tempered body; and useth a languishing, sickly body, as the rider useth a tired horse, or as we use a sick or lazy servant, or a blunted knife, or a clock or watch that is out of order). I speak all this of bodily labour, which is necessary to the body, and consequently to the mind; for want of which abundance grow melancholy, and abundance grow sluggish and good for nothing, and abundance cherish filthy lusts, and millions yearly turn to earth before their time. For want of bodily labour, a multitude of the idle gentry, and rich people, and young people that are slothful, do heap up in the secret receptacles of the body a dunghill of unconcocted and excrementitious filth, and vitiate all the mass of humours which should be the fuel and oil of life, and die by thousands of untimely deaths, (of fevers, palsies, convulsions, apoplexies, dropsies, consumptions, gout, &c.) more miserably than if thieves had murdered them by the highway, because it is their own doing, and by their sloth they kill themselves. For want of bodily exercise and labour interposed, abundance of students and sedentary persons fill themselves with diseases, and hasten their death, and causelessly blame their hard studies for that which was caused by their bodily sloth. The hardest studies will do little harm to most men, if they do but by convenient, interposed bodily labour, keep all the humours in their just temperament; when by a sluggish walk now and then, instead of labour and sweat, they defraud themselves. If the world knew but the benefit of temperance and labour to the maintaining of man's health and life, and the mischiefs of excess of meat and drink, and idleness, the love of health and life would do that with them, which God's authority will not do.

8. Labour and diligence do keep the mind upon a lawful employment, and therefore keep out many dangerous temptations, and keep the thoughts from vanity and sin; and also keepeth out vain words, and preserveth the soul from many sins, which a life of idleness and sloth doth cherish. It helpeth even unlearned persons more effectually to restrain their thoughts and words from sin, than the greatest knowledge and diligent watchfulness can do in an idle kind of life.

9. Diligent labour mortifieth the flesh, and keepeth under its luxurious inclinations, and subdueth that pride, and lust, and brutish sensuality which is cherished by an idle life.

10. Lastly, It is God's appointed means for the getting of our daily bread; and as it is a more real honour to get our bread ourselves, than to receive it by the gift of our friends or parents, so is it more comfortable to a well-informed mind. We may best believe that we have our food and provisions in mercy, and that they shall be blest to us, when we have them in God's appointed way; who hath said, "If any man will not work, neither should he eat," 2 Thess. iii.

Direct. II. As labour is thus necessary, so understand how needful a stated calling is, for the right performance of your labours. A calling is a stated ordinary course of labour. This is very needful for these reasons: 1. Out of a calling a man's labours are but occasional, or unconstant, and so more time is spent in idleness than in labour. 2. A man is best skilled in that which he is used to. 3. And he will be best provided for it with instruments and necessaries. 4. Therefore he doth it better than he could do another work, and so wrongeth not others, but attaineth more the ends of his labour. 5. And he doth it more easily; when a man unused, and unskilled, and unfurnished, toileth himself much in doing little. 6. And he will do his work more orderly, when another is in continual confusion, and his business knoweth not its time and place, but one part contradicts another. Therefore some certain calling or trade of life is best for every man.