These are the six vices that rob the man of good beginning. Because of six other vices the slothful cannot have good beginning or amendment. They are the bad habits of an evil servant, who causes that no good man shall receive him (them) into his service when he is so slothful, untrue, careless, forgetful, slack, and failing. The first vice is untruth. For when God sets in the heart of man goodwill to do well, then comes the devil and says to him: ‘Thou shalt easily recover it; thou art young and strong; thou shalt live long,’ and so the devil makes him to cease from doing well. Afterwards comes sloth; for he that does well and does it delayingly, it is no wonder if he does it slothfully. That is a vice whereby all the world is besmutted, (as) whoever takes good heed [may see]. For few folk there are that are diligent in what they are bound to do as regards God and their neighbour. After sloth is forgetting. For whoever is slothful often forgets. Because of these two sins of forgetting it often befalls that he cannot be shriven; he forgets his shortcomings and his sins, which is great peril. For none can have forgiveness without true shrift, which produces repentance of heart, confession of mouth, obedience in deed; that is, amending and reparation. There is no man so good that, if he saw well his own shortcomings, would not find enough to say each day in his shrift. But sloth and forgetting make the sinners blind, so that they see not in the book of their conscience. 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. THE SIX POINTS OF SLOTH THAT BRING MAN TO HIS END.