Direct. IV. Take heed of excess of meat, and drink, and sleep; for these drown the senses, and dull the spirits, and load you with a burden of flesh or humours, and greatly undispose the body to all diligent, useful labours: a full belly and drowsy brain are unfit for work. It will seem work enough to such, to carry the load of flesh or phlegm which they have gathered. A pampered body is more disposed to lust and wantonness, than to work.
Direct. V. A manlike resolution is an effectual course against sloth. Resolve and it will be done. Give not way to a slothful disposition. Be up and doing: you can do it if you do but resolve. To this end, be never without God's quickening motives (before mentioned) on your minds. Think what a sin and shame it is to waste your time; to live like the dead; to bury a rational soul in flesh; to be a slave to so base a thing as sloth; to neglect all God's work while he supporteth and maintaineth you, and looketh on; to live in sloth, with such miserable souls, so near to judgment and eternity. Such thoughts well set home will make you stir, when a drowsy soul makes an idle body.
Direct. VI. Take pleasure in your work, and then you will not be slothful in it. Your very horse will go heavily where he goeth unwillingly, and will go freely when he goeth thither where he would be. Either your work is good or bad: if it be bad, avoid it; if it be good, why should you not take pleasure in it? It should be pleasant to do good.
Direct. VII. To this end be sure to do all your work as that which God requireth of you, and that which he hath promised to reward; and believe his acceptance of your meanest labours which are done in obedience to his will. Is it not a delightful thing to serve so great and good a Master, and to do that which God accepteth and promiseth to reward? This interest of God in your lowest, and hardest, and servilest labour, doth make it honourable, and should make it sweet.
Direct. VIII. Suffer not your fancies to run after sensual, vain delights; for these will make you weary of your callings. No wonder if foolish youths be idle, whose minds are set upon their sports; nor is it wonder that sensual gentlemen live idly, who glut themselves with corrupting pleasures. The idleness of such sensualists is more unexcusable than other men's, because it is not the labour itself that they are against, but only such labour as is honest and profitable: for they can bestow more labour in play, or dancing, or running, or hunting, or any vanity, than their work required; and it is the folly and sickness of their minds that is the cause, and not any disability in their bodies: the busiest in evil are slothfullest to good.
Direct. IX. Mortify the flesh, and keep it in an obedient dependence on the soul, and you will not be captivated by sloth. For idleness is but one way of flesh-pleasing: he that is a sensual slave to his flesh, will please it in the way that it most desireth; one man in fornication, and another in ambition, and another in ease; but he that hath overcome and mortified the flesh, hath mastered this with the rest of its concupiscence.
Direct. X. Remember still that time is short, and death makes haste, and judgment will be just, and that all must be judged according to what they have done in the body; and that your souls are precious, and heaven is glorious, and hell is terrible, and work is various and great, and hinderances are many; and that it is not idleness, but labour, that is comfortable in the reviews of time; and this will powerfully expel your sloth.
Direct. XI. Call yourselves daily or frequently to account how you spend your time, and what work you do, and how you do it. Suffer not one hour or moment so to pass, as you cannot give your consciences a just account of it.
Direct. XII. Lastly, watch against the slothfulness of those that are under your charges as well as against your own: some persons of honour and greatness are diligent themselves, and bestow their time for the service of God, their king and country, and their souls and families (and I would we had more such): but if, in the mean time, their wives and children and many of their servants spend most of the day and year in idleness, and they are guilty of it, for want of a thorough endeavour to reform it, their burden will be found greater at last than they imagined. In a word, though the labour and diligence of a believing saint, and not that of a covetous worldling, is it that tends to save the soul, and diligence in doing evil is but a making haste to hell; yet sloth in itself is so great a nourisher of vice, and deadly an enemy to all that is good; and idleness is such a course and swarm of sin, that all your understandings, resolution, and authority, should be used to cure it in yourselves and others.