Volume 1 / Part 4 — PART IV.

Directions for governing the Taste and Appetite.

Tit. 1. Directions against Gluttony.

The most that is necessary to be said to acquaint you with the nature and evil of this sin, is said before in chapter iv. part vii. against flesh-pleasing. But something more particularly must be said, 1. To show you what is and what is not the sin of gluttony. 2. To show you the causes of it. 3. The odiousness of it. And, 4. To acquaint you with the more particular helps and means against it.

I. Gluttony is a voluntary excess in eating, for the pleasing of the appetite, or some other carnal end.[395] Here note, 1. The matter. 2. The end or effect of this excess. (1.) It is sometimes an excess in quantity, when more is eaten than is meet. (2.) Or else it may be an excess in the delicious quantity, when more regard is had to the delight and sweetness than is meet. (3.) Or it may be an excess in the frequency and ordinary unseasonableness of eating; when men eat too oft, and sit at it too long. (4.) It may be an excess in the costliness or price; when men feed themselves at too high rates. (5.) Or it may be an excess of curiosity in the dressing, and saucing, and ordering of all. 2. And it is usually for some carnal end. Whether it may be properly called gluttony, if a man should think that at a sacrifice of thanksgiving he were bound to eat inordinately, and so made the service of God his end, we need not inquire (though I see not but it may have that name). For that is a case that is more rare; and it is undoubtedly a sin: and it is gluttony, if it be done for the pleasing of others that are importunate with you. But the common gluttony is when it is done for the pleasing of the appetite, with such a pleasure, as is no help to health or duty, but usually a hurt to body or soul; the body being hurt by the excess, the soul is hurt by the inordinate pleasure.[396]

Yea, it is a kind of gluttony and excess, when men will not fast or abstain when they are required, from that which at other times they may use with abstinence and without blame. If a man use not to eat excessively nor deliciously, yet if he will not abstain from his temperate diet, either at a public fast, or when his lust requireth him to take down his body, or when his physician would diet him for his health, and his disease else would be increased by what he eateth, this is an inordinate eating and excess to that person, at that time. Or if the delight that the appetite hath in one sort of meat, which is hurtful to the body, prevail against reason and health so with the person that he will not forbear it, it is a degree of gulosity or gluttony, though for quantity and quality it be in itself but mean and ordinary.

By this you may see, 1. That it is not the same quantity which is an excess in one, which is in another. A labouring man may eat somewhat more than one that doth not labour; and a strong and healthful body, more than the weak and sick. It must be an excess in quantity, as to that particular person at that time, which is, when to please his appetite he eateth more than is profitable to his health or duty. 2. So also the frequency must be considered with the quality of the person; for one person may rationally eat a little and often, for his health, and another may luxuriously eat ofter than is profitable to health. Eccl. x. 16, 17, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning. Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness." 3. And in point of costliness, the same measure is not to be set to a prince and to a ploughman; that is luxurious excess in one, which may be temperance and frugality in another. But yet, unprofitable cost, which, all things considered, would do more good another way, is excess in whomsoever. 4. And in curiosity of diet a difference must be allowed: the happier healthful man need not be so curious as the sick; and the happy ploughman need not be so curious, as state and expectation somewhat require the noble and the rich to be. 5. And for length of time, though unnecessary sitting out time at meat be a sin in any, yet the happy poor man is not obliged to spend all out so much this way, as the rich may do. 6. And it is not all delight in meat, or pleasing the appetite, that is a sin;[397] but only that which is made men's end, and not referred to a higher end; even when the delight itself doth not tend to health, nor alacrity in duty, nor is used to that end, but to please the flesh and tempt unto excess. 7. And it is not necessary that we measure the profitableness of quantity or quality by the present and immediate benefits; but by the more remote, sometimes: so merciful is God, that he alloweth us that which is truly for our good, and forbiddeth us but that which doth us hurt, or at least, no good. 8. All sin in eating is not gluttony; but only such as are here described.

II. The causes of gluttony are these: 1. The chiefest is an inordinate appetite, together with a fleshly mind and will, which is set upon flesh-pleasing as its felicity. "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh," Rom. viii. 6, 7. This gulosity, which Clemens Alexandrinus calleth the throat devil, and the belly devil is the first cause.[398]

2. The next cause is, the want of strong reason, faith, and a spiritual appetite and mind, which should call off the glutton, and take him up with higher pleasures; even such as are more manly, and in which his real happiness doth consist. "They that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit," Rom. viii. 6. Reason alone may do something to call up a man from this felicity of a beast, (as appeareth by the philosopher's assaults upon the epicures,) but faith and love, which feast the soul with sweeter delicates, must do the cure.

3. Gluttony is much increased by use: when the appetite is used to be satisfied, it will be the more importunate and impetuous; whereas a custom of temperance maketh it easy, and makes excess a matter of no delight, but burden. I remember myself, that when I first set upon the use of Cornaro's and Lessius's diet, as it is called, (which I did for a time, for some special reasons,) it seemed a little hard for two or three days; but within a week it became a pleasure, and another sort, or more was not desirable. And I think almost all that use one dish only, and a small quantity, do find that more is a trouble and not a temptation to them: so great a matter is use (unless it be with very strong and labouring persons).

4. Idleness and want of diligence in a calling is a great cause of luxury and gluttony. Though labour cause a healthful appetite, yet it cureth a beastly, sensual mind. An idle person hath leisure to think of his guts, what to eat and what to drink, and to be longing after this and that; whereas a man that is wholly taken up in lawful business, especially such as findeth employment for the mind as well as for the body, hath no leisure for such thoughts. He that is close at his studies, or other calling, hath somewhat else to think on than his appetite.

5. Another incentive of gluttony is the pride of rich men, who, to be accounted good housekeepers, and to live at such rates as are agreeable to their grandeur, do make their houses shops of sin, and as bad as alehouses; making their tables a snare both to themselves and others, by fulness, variety, deliciousness, costliness, and curiosity of fare. It is the honour of their houses that a man may drink excessively in their cellars when he please: and that their tables have excellent provisions for gluttony, and put all that sit at them upon the trial of their temperance, whether a bait so near them, and so studiously fitted, can tempt them to break the bounds and measure which God hath set them.[399] It is a lamentable thing when such as have the rule of others, and influence on the common people, shall think their honour lieth upon their sin; yea, upon such a constant course of sinning; and shall think it a dishonour to them to live in sweet and wholesome temperance, and to see that those about them do the like. And all this is, either because they overvalue the esteem and talk of fleshly epicures, cannot bear the censure of a swine; or else because they are themselves of the same mind, and are such as glory in their shame, Phil. iii. 18, 19.

6. Another incentive is the custom of urging and importuning others to eat still more and more; as if it were a necessary act of friendship. People are grown so uncharitable and selfish, that they suspect one another, and think they are not welcome, if they be not urged thus to eat; and those that invite them think they must do it to avoid the suspicion of such a sordid mind. And I deny not but it is fit to urge any to that which it is fit for them to do; and if we see that modesty maketh them eat less than is best for them, we may persuade them to eat more. But now, without any due disrespect to what is best for them, men think it a necessary compliment to provoke others more and more to eat, till they peremptorily refuse it: but amongst the familiarest friends, there is scarce any that will admonish one another against excess, and advise them to stop when they have enough, and tell them how easy it is to stop when they have enough, and tell them how easy it is to step beyond our bounds, and how much more prone we are to exceed, than to come short: and so custom and compliment are preferred before temperance and honest fidelity. You will say, What will men think of us if we should not persuade them to eat, much more if we should desire them to eat no more? I answer, 1. Regard your duty more than what men think of you. Prefer virtue before the thoughts or breath of men. 2. But yet if you do it wisely, the wise and good will think much the better of you. You may easily let them see that you do it not in sordid sparing, but in love of temperance and of them; if you speak but when there is need either for eating more or less; and if your discourse be first in general for temperance, and apply it not till you see that they need help in the application. 3. It is undeniable that healthful persons are much more prone to excess, than to the defect in eating, and that nature is very much bent to luxury and gluttony, I think as much as to any one sin; and it is as sure that it is a beastly, breeding, odious sin. And if this be so, is it not clear that we should do a great deal more to help one another against such luxury, than to provoke them to it? Had we not a greater regard to men's favour, and fancies, and reports, than to God and the good of their souls, the case were soon decided.

7. Another cause of gluttony is, that rich men are not acquainted with the true use of riches, nor think of the account which they must make to God of all they have.[400] They think that their riches are their own, and that they may use them as they please; or that they are given them as plentiful provisions for their flesh, and they may use them for themselves, to satisfy their own desires, as long as they drop some crumbs, or scraps, or small matters to the poor. They think they may be saved just in the same way that the rich man in Luke xvi. was damned; and he that would have warned his five brethren that they come not to that place of torment, is yet himself no warning to his followers. They are clothed in purple and fine linen or silk, and fare sumptuously or deliciously every day; and have their good things in this life, and perhaps think they merit by giving the scraps to Lazarus (which it is like that rich man also did). But God will one day make them know, that the richest were but his stewards, and should have made a better distribution of his provisions, and a better improvement of his talents; and that they had nothing of all their riches given them for any hurtful or unprofitable pleasing of their appetites, nor had more allowance for luxury than the poor. If they knew the right use of riches, it would reform them.

8. Another cause of gluttony is their unacquaintedness with those rational and spiritual exercises in which the delightful fruits of abstinence do most appear. A man that is but a painful, serious student, in any noble study whatsoever, doth find a great deal of serenity and aptitude come by temperance, and a great deal of cloudy mistiness on his mind and dulness on his invention come by fulness and excess: and a man that is used to holy contemplations, meditation, reading, prayer, self-examination, or any spiritual converse above, or with his heart, doth easily find a very great difference; how abstinence helpeth, and luxury and fulness hinder him. Now these epicures have no acquaintance with any such holy or manly works, nor any mind of them, and are therefore unacquainted with the sweetness and benefit of abstinence; and having no taste or trial of its benefits, they cannot value it. They have nothing to do when they rise from eating, but a little talk about their worldly business, or compliment and talk with company which expect them, or go to their sports to empty their paunches for another meal, and quicken their appetites lest luxury should decay: as the Israelites worshipped the golden calf, (and as the heathens their god Bacchus,) Exod. xxxii. 6, "They sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."[401] Their diet is fitted to their work; their idle or worldly lives agree with gluttony; but were they accustomed to better work, they would find a necessity of a better diet.

9. Another great cause of gluttony is, men's beastly ignorance of what is hurtful or helpful to their very health:[402] they make their appetites their rule for the quantity and quality of their food: and they think that nature teacheth them so to do, because it giveth them such an appetite, and because it is the measure to a beast: and to prove themselves beasts, they therefore take it for their measure; as if their natures were not rational, but only sensitive; or nature had not given them reason to be the superior and governor of sense. As if they knew not that God giveth the brutes an appetite more bounded, because they have not reason to bound it; and giveth them not the temptation of your delicate varieties; or giveth them a concoction answerable to their appetites; and yet giveth man to be the rational governor of those of them that are for his special service and apt to exceed: and if his swine, his horses, and his cattle were all left to their appetites, they would live but a little while.[403] If promiscuous generating be not lawful in mankind, which is lawful in brutes, why should they not confess the same of the appetite. Men have so much love of life and fear of death, that if they did but know how much their gluttony doth hasten their death, it would do more to restrain it with the most, than the fear of death eternal doth. But they judge of their digestion by their present feeling: if they feel not their stomachs sick, or disposed to vomit, or if no present pain correct them, they think they have eaten no more than doth them good. But of this more anon in the directions.

10. Another great cause of gluttony is, that it is grown the commonest custom, and being not known, is in no disgrace, unless men eat till they spew, or to some extraordinary measure. And so the measure which every man seeth another use, he thinketh is moderation, and is fit for him: whereas the ignorance of physic and matters of their own health, hath made gluttony almost as common as eating, with those that are not restrained by want or sickness. And so every man is an example of evil to another, and encourage one another in the sin. If gluttony were but in as much disgrace as whoredom, yea, or as drunkenness is, and as easily known, and as commonly taken notice of, it would contribute much to a common reformation.

III. The Greatness of the Sin of Gluttony.

To know the greatness of the sin, is the chief part of the cure, with those that do but believe that there is a God: I shall therefore next tell you of its nature, effects, and accidents, which make it great, and therefore should make it odious to all.

1. Luxury and gluttony is a sin exceeding contrary to the love of God: it is idolatry: it hath the heart, which God should have; and therefore gluttons are commonly and well called belly-gods, and god-bellies, because that love, that care, that delight, that service and diligence which God should have, is given by the glutton to his belly and his throat.[404] He loveth the pleasing of his appetite better than the pleasing of God; his dishes are more delightful to him than any holy exercise is; his thoughts are more frequent and more sweet of his belly than of God or godliness; his care and labour are more that he may be pleased in meats and drinks, than that he may secure his salvation, and be justified and sanctified. And, indeed, the Scripture giveth them this name, Phil. iii. 19, "Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, who glory in their shame, who mind earthly things," being enemies to the cross of Christ, that is, to bearing the cross for Christ, and to the crucifying of the flesh, and to the mortifying, suffering parts of religion. Nay, such a devouring idol is the belly, that it swalloweth up more by intemperance and excess than all other idols in the world do. And remember that the very life of the sin is in the appetite and heart: when a man's heart is set upon his belly, though he fare never so hardly through necessity, he is a glutton in heart. When you make a great matter of it, what you shall eat and drink as to the delight, and when you take it for a great loss or suffering if you fare hardly, and are troubled at it, and your thoughts and talk are of your belly, and you have not that indifferency whether your fare be coarse or pleasant, (so it be wholesome,) as all temperate persons have, this is the heart of gluttony, and is the heart's forsaking of God, and making the appetite its god.

2. Gluttony is self-murder; though it kill not suddenly, it killeth surely; like the dropsy, which killeth as it filleth, by degrees.[405] Very many of the wisest physicians do believe that of those who overlive their childhood, there is scarce one of twenty, yea, or of a hundred that dieth, but gluttony or excess in eating or drinking is a principal cause of their death, though not the most immediate cause. It is thought to kill a hundred to one of all that die at age. And it will not let them die easily and quickly, but tormenteth them first with manifold diseases while they live. You eat more than nature can perfectly concoct, and because you feel it not trouble you or make you sick, you think it hurts you not; whereas it doth by degrees first alter and vitiate the temperament of the blood and humours, making it a crude, unconcocted, unnatural thing, unfit for the due nutrition of the parts; turning the nourishing mass into a burdensome, excrementitious mixture, abounding with saline or tartareous matter, and consisting more of a pituitous slime, or redundant serosity, than of that sweet, nutrimental milk of nature, quickened with those spirits and well-proportioned heat, which should make it fit to be the oil of life. And our candle either sparkleth away with salt, or runs away because there is some thief in it, or goeth out because the oil is turned into water, or presently wasteth and runs about through the inconsistent softness of its oil: hence it is that one part is tainted with corruption, and another consumeth as destitute of fit nutriment; and the vessels secretly obstructed by the grossness or other unfitness of the blood to run its circle and perform its offices, is the cause of a multitude of lamentable diseases. The frigid distempers of the brain, the soporous and comatous effects, the lethargy, carus, and apoplexy, the palsy, convulsion, epilepsy, vertigo, catarrhs, the head-ache, and oft the phrensy and madness, come all from these effects of gluttony and excess, which are made upon the blood and humours. The asthma usually, and the phthisis or consumption, and the pleurisy and peripneumony, and the hemoptoic passion, often come from hence. Yea the very syncopes or swooning, palpitations of the heart, and faintings, which men think rather come from weakness, do usually come either from oppression of nature by these secret excrements or putrilaginous blood, or else from a weakness contracted by the inaptitude of the blood to nourish us, being vitiated by excess. The loathing of meat and want of appetite is ordinarily from the crudities or distempers caused by this excess; yea, the very canine appetite which would still have more, is caused by a viciousness in the humours thus contracted. The pains of the stomach, vomitings, the cholera, hiccoughs, inflammations, thirsts, are usually from this cause. The wind cholic, the iliac passion, looseness, and fluxes, the tenesmus and ulcers, the worms and other troubles in those parts, are usually from hence. The obstructions of the liver, the jaundice, inflammations, abscesses and ulcers, schirrus, and dropsy, are commonly from hence. Hence also usually are inflammations, pains, obstructions, and schirrus of the spleen. Hence commonly is the stone, nephritic torments, and stoppages of urine, and ulcers of the reins and bladder. Hence commonly is the scorbute and most of the fevers which are found in the world, and bring such multitudes to the grave. Even those that immediately are caused by colds, distempers of the air or infections, are oft caused principally by long excess, which vitiateth the humours, and prepareth them for the disease. Hence also are gouts and hysterical affects, and diseases of the eyes and other exterior parts. So that we may well say that gluttony enricheth landlords, filleth the churchyards, and hasteneth multitudes untimely to their ends.[406] Perhaps you will say that the most temperate have diseases: to which experience teacheth me to answer, that usually children are permitted to be voracious and gluttonous, either in quantity or in quality, eating raw fruits and things unwholesome; and so when gluttony hath bred the disease, or laid in the matter, then all the temperance that can be used is little enough to keep it under all their life after. And abundance that have been brought to the doors of death by excess, have been preserved after many years to a competent age by abstinence, and many totally freed from their diseases. Read Cornaro's Treatise of himself, and Lessius, and Sir William Vaughan, &c. (Though yet I persuade none without necessity to their exceeding strictness.) Judge now what a murderer gluttony is, and what an enemy to mankind.

3. Gluttony is also a deadly enemy to the mind, and to all the noble employments of reason, both religious, civil, and artificial.[407] It unfits men for any close and serious studies, and therefore tends to nourish ignorance, and keep men fools. It greatly unfits men for hearing God's word, or reading, or praying, or meditating, or any holy work, and makes them have more mind to sleep; or so undisposeth and dulleth them, that they have no life or fitness for their duty; but a clear head, not troubled with their drowsy vapours, will do more and get more in an hour, than a full-bellied beast will do in many. So that gluttony is as much an enemy to all religious and manly studies, as drunkenness is an enemy to a garrison, where the drunken soldiers are disabled to resist the enemy.

4. Gluttony is also an enemy to diligence, in every honest trade and calling; for it dulleth the body as well as the mind. It maketh men heavy, and drowsy, and slothful, and go about their business as if they carried a coat of lead, and were in fetters; they have no vivacity and alacrity, and are fitter to sleep or play than work.[408]

5. Gluttony is the immediate symptom of a carnal mind, and of the damnable sin of flesh-pleasing, before described; and a carnal mind is the very sum of iniquity, and the proper name of an unregenerate state; "It is enmity against God, and neither is nor can be subject to his law:" so that they that are thus "in the flesh cannot please God; and they that walk after the flesh shall die," Rom. viii. 6-8, 13. The filthiest sins of lechers, and misers, and thieves, are but to please the flesh: and who serveth it more than the glutton doth?

6. Gluttony is the breeder and feeder of all other lusts: sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus: it pampereth the flesh to feed it, and make it a sacrifice for lust. As dunging the ground doth make it fruitful, especially of weeds; so doth gluttony fill the mind with the weeds and vermin of filthy thoughts, and filthy desires, and words, and deeds.[409]

7. Gluttony is a base and beastly kind of sin. For a man to place his happiness in the pleasure of a swine, and to make his reason serve his throat, or sink into his guts; as if he were but a hogshead to be filled and emptied, or a sink for liquor to run through into the channel; or as if he were made only to carry meat from the table to the dunghill; how base a kind of life is this! yea, many beasts will not eat and drink excessively as the gluttonous epicure will do.[410]

8. Gluttony is a prodigal consumer and devourer of the creatures of God. What is he worthy of, that would take meat and drink and cast it away into the channel?[411] nay, that would be at a great deal of cost and curiosity to get the pleasantest meat he could procure, to cast away? The glutton doth worse. It were better of the two to throw all his excesses into the sink or ditch, for then they would not first hurt his body. And are the creatures of God of no more worth? Are they given you to do worse than cast them away? Would you have your children use their provisions thus?

9. Gluttony is a most unthankful sin, that takes God's mercies, and spews them as it were in his face;[412] and carrieth his provisions over to his enemy, even to the strengthening of fleshly lusts; and turneth them all against himself! You could not have a bit but from his liberality and blessing; and will you use it to provoke him and dishonour him?

10. Gluttony is a sin which turneth your own mercies, and wealth, and food, into your snare, and to your deadly ruin. Thou pleasest thy throat, and poisonest thy soul.[413] It were better for thee a thousand times that thou hadst lived on scraps, and in the poorest manner, than thus to have turned thy plenty to thy damnable sin. "When thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord," Deut. vi. 11, 12. "Feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord?" Prov. xxx. 9. "So they did eat and were filled, for he gave them their own desire; they were not estranged from their lust," Psal. lxxv. 29, 30.

11. Gluttony is a great time-wasting sin. What a deal of time is spent in getting the money that is laid out to please the throat! and then by servants in preparing for it; and then in long sitting at meat and feastings; and not a little in taking physic to carry it away again, or to ease or cure the diseases which it causeth; besides all the time which is lost in languishing sickness, or cut off by untimely death. Thus they live to eat, and eat to frustrate and to shorten life.

12. It is a thief that robbeth you of your estates, and devoureth that which is given you for better uses, and for which you must give account to God. It is a costly sin, and consumeth more than would serve to many better purposes. How great a part of the riches of most kingdoms are spent in luxury and excess![414]

13. It is a sin that is a great enemy to the common good: princes and commonwealths have reason to hate it, and restrain it as the enemy of their safety. Men have not money to defray the public charges, necessary to the safety of the land, because they consume it on their guts: armies and navies must be unpaid, and fortifications neglected, and all that tendeth to the glory of a people must be opposed as against their personal interest, because all is too little for the throat. No great works can be done to the honour of the nation or the public good; no schools or alms-houses built or endowed, no colleges erected, no hospitals, nor any excellent work, because the guts devour it all. If it were known how much of the treasure of the land is thrown down the sink by epicures of all degrees, this sin would be frowned into more disgrace.

14. Gluttony and excess is a sin greatly aggravated by the necessities of the poor. What an incongruity is it, that one member of Christ (as he would be thought) should be feeding himself deliciously every day, and abounding with abused superfluities, whilst another is starving and pining in a cottage, or begging at the door! and that some families should do worse than cast their delicates and abundance to the dogs, whilst thousands at that time are ready to famish, and are fain to feed on such unwholesome food, as killeth them as soon as luxury kills the epicure! Do these men believe that they shall be judged according to their feeding of the poor?[415] Or do they take themselves to be members of the same body with those whose sufferings they so little feel? 1 Cor. xii. 26. It may be you will say, I do relieve many of the poor. But are there not more yet to be relieved? As long as there are any in distress, it is the greater sin for you to be luxurious. Deut. xv. 7, 8, "If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren in the land——thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand against thy poor brother, but thou shalt open thy hand wide unto him," &c. Nay, how often are the poor oppressed to satisfy luxurious appetites! Abundance must have hard bargains and hard usage, and toil like horses, and scarce be able to get bread for their families, that they may bring in all to belly-god landlords, who consume the fruit of other men's labour upon their devouring flesh.

15. And it is the heinouser sin because of the common calamities of the church and servants of Christ throughout the world. One part of the church is oppressed by the Turk, and another by the pope, and many countries wasted by the cruelties of armies, and persecuted by proud, impious enemies; and is it fit then for others to be wallowing in sensuality and gluttony? Amos vi. 1, 3-6, "Woe to them that are at ease in Zion—ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near—that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, that chant to the sound of the viol—that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph." It is a time of great humiliation, and are you now given up to fleshly luxury? Read Isa. xxii. 12-14, "And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth; and behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die.—Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord of hosts."

16. Luxury is a sin most unseemly for men in so great misery, and incongruous to the state of the gluttonous themselves. O man, if thou hadst but a true sight of thy sin and misery, of death and judgment, and of the dreadful God whom thou dost offend, thou wouldst perceive that fasting, and prayer, and tears become one in thy condition much better than glutting thy devouring flesh. What! a man unpardoned, unsanctified, in the power of Satan, ready to be damned if thus thou die, (for so I must suppose of a glutton,) for such a man to be taking his fleshly pleasure! For a Dives to be faring sumptuously every day, that must shortly want a drop of water to cool his tongue, is as foolish as for a thief to feast before he goeth to hanging: yea, and much more. For you might yet prevent your misery; and another posture doth better beseem you to that end: "Fasting" and "crying mightily to God," is fitter to your state. See Jonah iii. 8; Joel i. 14; ii. 15.

17. Gluttony is a sin so much the greater, by how much the more will and delight you have in the committing of it. The sweetest, most voluntary and beloved sin is (cæteris paribus) the greatest; and few are more pleasant and beloved than this.

18. Those are the worst sins, that have least repentance; but gluttony is so far from being truly repented of by the luxurious epicure, that he loveth it, and careth and contriveth how to commit it, and buyeth it with the price of much of his estate.

19. It is the greater sin, because it is so frequently committed; men live in it as their daily practice and delight; they live for it, and make it the end of other sins: it is not a sin that they seldom fall into, but it is almost as familiar with them, as to eat and drink: being turned into beasts, they live like beasts continually.

20. Lastly, it is a spreading sin, and therefore is become common, even the sin of countries, of rich and poor; for both sorts love their bellies, though both have not the like provision for them. And they are so far from taking warning one of another, that they are encouraged one by another; and the sin is scarce noted in one of a hundred that daily liveth in it: nor is there almost any that reprove it, or help one another against it, (unless by impoverishing each other,) but most by persuasions and examples do encourage it (though some much more than others): so that by this time you may see that it is no rare, nor venial, little sin.

And now you may see also, that it is no wonder if no one of the commandments expressly forbid this sin, (not only because it is a sin against ourselves directly, but also,) because it is against every one also of the commandments. And think not that either riches or poverty will excuse it, when even princes are restrained so much as from unseasonable eating, Eccles. x. 16. If it was one of the great sins that Sodom was burnt with fire for, judge whether England be in no danger by it. Read, O England, and know thyself, and tremble: Ezek. xvi. 49, "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom; pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness, was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy."

IV. The Directions or Helps against it.

Direct. I. Mortify the flesh, according to the directions, chap. iv. part vii. Subdue its inclinations and desires; and learn to esteem and use it but as a servant. Think what a pitiful price a little gluttonous pleasure of the throat is, for a man to sell his God and his salvation for.[416] Learn to be indifferent whether your meat be pleasing to your appetite or not; and make no great matter of it: remember still what an odious, swinish, damning sin it is, for a man's heart to be set upon his belly. "All that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts," Gal. v. 24.

Direct. II. Live faithfully to God, and upon spiritual, durable delights. And then you will fetch the measure of your eating and drinking from their tendency to that higher end.[417] There is no using any inferior thing aright, till you have first well resolved of your end, and use it as a means thereto, and mark how far it is a means.

Direct. III. See all your food as provided and given you by God, and beg it and the blessing of it at his hand, and then it will much restrain you from using it against him. He is a wretch indeed that will take his food as from his father's hand, and throw it in his face, though perhaps a petulant child would do so by a fellow-servant: he that thinketh he is most beholden to himself for his plenty, will say as the fool, Luke xii. 19, 20, "Soul, take thy ease, eat, drink, and be merry, thou hast enough laid up for many years." But he that perceives it is the hand of God that reacheth it to him, will use it more reverently. It is a horrid aggravation of the gluttony of this age, that they play the hypocrites in it, and first (for custom) crave God's blessing on their meat, and then sit down and sin against him with it: such are the prayers of hypocritical sensualists. But a serious discerning of God as the giver, would teach you "whether you eat or drink to do all to his glory" from whom it comes.[418]

Direct. IV. See by faith the blood of Christ as the purchasing cause of all you have; and then sure you will bear more reverence to his blood, than to cast the fruit of it into the sink of sensuality, and to do worse than throw it upon the dunghill. What! must Christ be a sacrifice to God, and die to recover you the mercies which you had forfeited, and now will you cast them to the dogs? and please a sinful appetite with them? Did he die to purchase you provisions for your lusts, and to serve the flesh with?

Direct. V. Forget not how the first sin came into the world, even by eating the forbidden fruit. And let the slain creatures whose lives are lost for you, remember you of that sin which brought the burden on them for your sakes. And then every piece of flesh that you see, will appear to you as with this caution written upon it: O sin not as your first parents sinned by pleasing of your appetite; for this our death, and your devouring the flesh of your fellow-creatures, is the fruit of that sin, and warneth you to be temperate. Revel not to excess in your fellow-creatures' lives.

Direct. VI. Keep an obedient, tender conscience, not scrupulously perplexing yourselves about every bit you eat, (as melancholy persons do,) but checking your appetite, and telling you of God's commands, and teaching you to fear all sensual excess. It is a graceless, disobedient, senseless heart that maketh men so boldly obey their appetite; when the fear of God is not in their hearts, no wonder if they "feed" and "feast themselves without fear," Jude 12. Either they make a small matter of sin in the general, or at least of this in particular: it is usually the same persons that fear not to spend their time in idleness, sports, or vanity, and to live in worldliness or fleshly lusts, who live in gluttony to feed all this. The belly is a brute, that sticks not much upon reason: where conscience is asleep and seared, reason and Scripture do little move a sensual belly-god; and any thing will serve instead of reason to prove it lawful, and to answer all that is said against it. There is no disputing the case with a man that is asleep; especially if his guts and appetite be awake: you may almost as well bring reason and Scripture to keep a swine from over-eating, or persuade a hungry dog from a bone, as to take off a glutton from the pleasing of his throat, if he be once grown blockish, and have mastered his conscience by unbelief, or stilled it with a stupifying opiate. His taste then serveth instead of reason, and against reason; then he saith, I feel it do me good; (that is, he feeleth that it pleaseth his appetite, as a swine feeleth that his meat doth him good when he is ready to burst;) and this answereth all that can be said against it. Then he can sacrifice his time and treasure to his belly, and make a jest of the abstinence and temperance of sober men, as if it were but a needless self-afflicting, or fit only for some weak and sickly persons. If the constant fear and obedience of God do not rule the soul, the appetite will be unruled; and if a tender conscience be not porter, the throat will be common for any thing that the appetite requireth. One sight of heaven or hell, to awaken their reason and sleepy consciences, would be the best remedy to convince them of the odiousness and danger of this sin.

Direct. VII. Understand well what is most conducible to your health; and let that be the ordinary measure of your diet for quantity, and quality, and time.[419] Sure your nature itself, if you are yet men, should have nothing to say against this measure, and consequently against all the rest of the directions which suppose it: nature hath given you reason as well as appetite, and reason telleth you, that your health is more to be regarded than your appetite. I hope you will not say, that God is too strict with you, or would diet you too hardly, as long as he alloweth you (ordinarily) to choose that (when you can have it lawfully) which is most for your own health, and forbiddeth you nothing but that which hurteth you. What heathen or infidel that is not either mad or swinish, will not allow this measure and choice, as well as christians? Yea, if you believe not a life to come, methinks you should be loth to shorten this life which now you have. God would but keep you from hurting yourselves by your excess, as you would keep your children or your swine. Though he hath a further end in it, and so must you, namely, that a healthful body may be serviceable to a holy soul, in your Master's work; yet it is the health of your bodies which is to be your nearest and immediate end and measure.

The measure of eating.

It is a very great oversight in the education of youth, that they be not taught betimes some common and necessary precepts about diet, acquainting them what tendeth to health and life, and what to sickness, pain, and death; and it were no unprofitable or unnecessary thing, if princes took a course that all their subjects might have some such common needful precepts familiarly known; (as if it were in the books that children first learn to read in, together with the precepts of their moral duty;) for it is certain, that men love not death or sickness, and that all men love their health and life; and therefore those that fear not God, would be much restrained from excess by the fear of sickness and of death: and what an advantage this would be to the commonwealth, you may easily perceive, when you consider what a mass of treasure it would save, besides the lives, and health, and strength of so many subjects.[420] And it is certain, that most people have no considerable knowledge, what measure is best for them; but the common rule that they judge by is their appetite. They think they have eaten enough, when they have eaten as long as they have list; and not before. If they could eat more with an appetite, and not be sick after it, they never think they have been guilty of gluttony or excess.

First, therefore, you must know, that appetite is not to be your rule or measure, either for quantity, quality, or time.[421] For, 1. It is irrational, and reason is your ruling faculty, if you are men. 2. It dependeth on the temperature of the body, and the humours and diseases of it, and not merely on the natural need of meat. A man in a dropsy is most thirsty, that hath least cause to drink: though frequently in a putrid or malignant fever, a draught of cold drink would probably be death, yet the appetite desireth it nevertheless. Stomachs that have acid humours, have commonly a strong appetite, be the digestion never so weak, and most of them could eat with an appetite above twice as much as they ought to eat. And on the contrary, some others desire not so much as is necessary to their sustenance, and must be urged to eat against their appetite. 3. Most healthful people in the world have an appetite to much more than nature can well digest, and would kill themselves if they pleased their appetites; for God never gave man his appetite to be the measure of his eating or drinking, but to make that grateful to him, which reason biddeth him take. 4. Man's appetite is not now so sound and regular as it was before the fall; but is grown more rebellious and unruly, and diseased as the body is: and therefore it is now much more unfit to be our measure, than it was before the fall. 5. You see it even in swine, and many greedy children, that would presently kill themselves, if they had not the reason of others to rule them. 6. Poison itself may be as delightful to the appetite as food; and dangerous meats, as those that are most wholesome. So that it is most certain, that appetite is not fit to be the measure of a man. Yet this is true withal, that when reason hath nothing against it, then an appetite showeth what nature taketh to be most agreeable to itself; and reason therefore hath something for it (if it have nothing against it); because it showeth what the stomach is like best to close with and digest; and it is some help to reason to discern when it is prepared for food.

Secondly, it is certain also, that the present feeling of ease or sickness, is no certain rule to judge of your digestion, or your measure by; for though some tender, relaxed, windy stomachs, are sick or troubled when they are overcharged, or exceed their measure, yet with the most it is not so; unless they exceed to very swinishness, they are not sick upon it, nor feel any hurt at present by less excesses, but only the imperfection of concoction doth vitiate the humours, and prepare for sicknesses by degrees (as is aforesaid); and one feeleth it a month after in some diseased evacuations; and another a twelvemonth after; and another not of many years, till it have turned to some uncurable disease (for the diseases that are bred by so long preparations are ordinarily much more uncurable, than those that come but from sudden accidents and alterations, in a cleaner body). Therefore to say, I feel it do me no harm, and therefore it is no excess, is the saying of an idiot, that hath no foreseeing reason, and resisteth not an enemy while he is garrisoning, fortifying, and arming himself, but only when it comes to blows: or like him that would go into a pesthouse, and say, I feel it do me no harm; but within few days or weeks he will feel it. As if the beginning of a consumption were no hurt to them, because they feel it not! Thus living like a beast, will at last make men judge like beasts; and brutify their brains as well as their bellies.

Rules for the measure of eating.

Thirdly, it is certain also, that the common custom and opinion is no certain rule; nay, certainly it is an erring rule; for judging by appetite hath brought men ordinarily to take excess to be but temperance. All these then are false measures.

If I should here presume to give you any rules for judging of a right measure, physicians would think I went beyond my calling, and some of them might be offended at a design that tendeth so much to their impoverishing, and those that serve the greedy worm would be more offended. Therefore I shall only give you these general intimations. 1. Nature is content with a little; but appetite is never content till it have drowned nature.[422] 2. It is the perfection of concoction, and goodness of the nutriment, that is more conducible to health, than the quantity. 3. Nature will easilier overcome twice the quantity of some light and passable nourishment, than half so much of gross and heavy meats. (Therefore those that prescribe just twelve ounces a day, without differencing meats that so much differ, do much mistake.) 4. A healthful, strong body must have more than the weak and sickly. 5. Middle-aged persons must have more than old folks or children.[423] 6. Hard labourers must have more than easy labourers; and these more than the idle, or students, or any that stir but little. 7. A body of close pores, that evacuateth little by sweat or transpiration, must have less, especially of moisture, than another. 8. So must a cold and phlegmatic constitution. 9. So must a stomach that corrupteth its food, and casteth it forth by periodical bilious evacuations. 10. That which troubleth the stomach in the digestion is too much, or too bad, unless with very weak, sickly persons. 11. So is that too much or bad which maketh you more dull for study, or more heavy and unfit for labour (unless some disease be the principal cause.) 12. A body that by excess is already filled with crudities, should take less than another, that nature may have time to digest and waste them. 13. Every one should labour to know the temperature of their own bodies, and what diseases they are most inclined to, and so have the judgment of their physician or some skilful person, to give them such directions as are suitable to their own particular temperature and diseases. 14. Hard labourers err more in the quality than the quantity, partly through poverty, partly through ignorance, and partly through appetite, while they refuse that which is more wholesome (as mere bread and beer) if it be less pleasing to them. 15. If I may presume to conjecture, ordinarily very hard labourers exceed in quantity about a fourth part; shopkeepers and persons of easier trades do ordinarily exceed about a third part; voluptuous gentlemen and their serving men, and other servants of theirs that have no hard labour, do usually exceed about half in half (but still I except persons that are extraordinarily temperate through weakness, or through wisdom); and the same gentlemen usually exceed in variety, costliness, curiosity, and time, much more than they do in quantity (so that they are gluttons of the first magnitude). The children of those that govern not their appetites, but let them eat and drink as much and as often as they desire it, do usually exceed above half in half, and lay the foundation of the diseases and miseries of all their lives.[424] All this is about the truth, though the belly believe it not.

When you are once grown wise enough what in measure, and time, and quality, is fittest for your health, go not beyond that upon any importunity of appetite, or of friends; for all that is beyond that, is gluttony and sensuality, in its degree.

Direct. VIII. If you can lawfully avoid it, make not your table a snare of temptation to yourselves or others. I know a greedy appetite will make any table that hath but necessaries, a snare to itself; but do not you unnecessarily become devils, or tempters to yourselves or others.[425] 1. For quality, study not deliciousness too much: unless for some weak, distempered stomachs, the best meat is that which leaveth behind it in the mouth, neither a troublesome loathing, nor an eager appetite after more, for the taste's sake; but such as bread is, that leaveth the palate in an indifferent moderation. The curious inventions of new and delicious dishes, merely to please the appetite, is gluttony inviting to greater gluttony; excess in quality to invite to excess in quantity.

Object. But, you will say, I shall be thought niggardly or sordid, and reproached behind my back, if my table be so fitted to the temperate and abstinent.

Answ. This is the pleading of pride for gluttony; rather than you will be talked against by belly-gods, or ignorant, fleshly people, you will sin against God, and prepare a feast or sacrifice for Bacchus or Venus. The ancient christians were torn with beasts, because they would not cast a little frankincense into the fire on the altar of an idol; and will you feed so many idol bellies so liberally to avoid their censure? Did not I tell you, that gulosity is an irrational vice? Good and temperate persons will speak well of you for it; and do you more regard the judgment and esteem of belly-gods?[426]

Object. But it is not only riotous, luxurious persons that I mean; I have no such at my table; but it will be the matter of obloquy even to good people, and those that are sober.

Answ. I told you some measure of gluttony is become a common sin; and many are tainted with it through custom, that otherwise are good and sober: but shall they therefore be left as uncurable? or shall they make all others as bad as they? And must we all commit that sin, which some sober people are grown to favour? You bear their censures about different opinions in religion, and other matters of difference; and why not here? The deluded quakers may be witnesses against you, that while they run into the contrary extreme, can bear the deepest censures of all the world about them. And cannot you for honest temperance and sobriety, bear the censures of some distempered or guilty persons that are of another mind; certainly in this they are no temperate persons, when they plead for excess, and the baits of sensuality and intemperance.

2. For variety also, make not your table unnecessarily a snare: have no greater variety, than the weakness of stomachs, or variety of appetites doth require. Unnecessary variety and pleasantness of meats, are the devil's great instruments to draw men to gluttony: (and I would wish no good people to be his cooks or caterers:) when the very brutish appetite itself begins to say of one dish, I have enough, then comes another to tempt it unto more excess, and another after that to more. All this that I have said, I have the concurrent judgment of physicians in, who condemn fulness and variety, as the great enemies of health, and nurseries of diseases. And is not the concurrent judgment of physicians more valuable about matters of health, than your private opinions, or appetites? yet when sickness requireth variety, it is necessary.

3. Sit not too long at meat: for beside the sin of wasting time, it is but the way to tice down a little and a little more: and he that would be temperate, if he sat but a quarter of an hour, (which is ordinarily enough,) will exceed when he hath the temptation of half an hour (which is enough for the entertainment of strangers); much more when you must sit out an hour (which is too much of all conscience): though greedy eating is not good, yet sober feeding may satisfy nature in a little time.

4. See that your provisions be not more costly than is necessary: though I know there must be a difference allowed for persons and times, yet see that no cost be bestowed unnecessarily; and let sober reason, and not pride and gluttony, judge of the necessity: we commonly call him the rich glutton, Luke xvi. that fared sumptuously every day; it is not said that he did eat any more than other men, but that he fared sumptuously.[427] You cannot answer it comfortably to God, to lay that out upon the belly, which might do more good another way: it is a horrid sin to spend such store of wealth unnecessarily upon the belly, as is ordinarily done. The cheapest diet (cæteris paribus) must be preferred.

Object. But the scandal of covetousness must be avoided as well as gluttony. Folks will say, that all this is done merely from a miserable, worldly mind.

Answ. 1. It is easier to bear that censure than the displeasure of God. 2. No scandal must be avoided by sin; it is a scandal taken and not given. 3. With temperate persons your excess is much more scandalous. 4. I will teach you a cure for this in the next direction.

Object. But what if I set variety and plenty on my table? May not men choose whether they will eat too much? Do you think men are swine, that know not when they have enough?

Answ. Yes, we see by certain experience, that most men know not when they have enough, and do exceed when they think they do not. There is not one of many, but is much more prone to exceed, than to come short, and abundance sin in excess, for one that sinneth by defect: and is sin so small a matter with you, that you will lay snares before men, and then say, They may take heed? So men may choose whether they will go into a whore-house, and yet the pope doth scarce deal honestly to license them at Rome; much less is it well to prepare them, and invite men to them. Will you excuse the devil for tempting Eve with the forbidden fruit, because she might choose whether she would meddle with it? What doth that on your table, which is purposely cooked to the tempting of the appetite, and is fitted to draw men to gulosity and excess, and is no way needful? "Woe to him that layeth a stumblingblock before the blind!" "Let no man put a stumblingblock in his brother's way." It is the wicked's curse, "Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock." And it was Balaam's sin, that he taught Balak to tempt Israel, or lay a stumblingblock before them.[428]

Direct. IX. Resolve to bestow the cost of such superfluities upon the poor, or some other charitable use; that so it become not a sacrifice to the belly. Let the greatest and needfullest uses be first served; it is no time for you to be glutting your appetites, and wallowing in excess, when any (yea, so many) about you, do want even clothes and bread. If you do thus lay out all upon the poor, which you spare from feeding your own and other men's excess, then none can say that your sparing is through covetous niggardice; and so that reproach is taken off. The price of one feast will buy bread for a great many poor people. It is small thanks to you to give to the poor some leavings, when your bellies are first glutted with as much as the appetite desired: this costeth you nothing: a swine will leave that to another which he cannot eat. But if you will a little pinch your flesh, or deny yourselves, and live more sparingly and thriftily, that you may have the more to give to the poor, this is commendable indeed.

Direct. X. Do not over-persuade any to eat when there is no need, but rather help one another against running into excess; by seasonable discourses of the sinfulness of gluttony, and of the excellency of abstinence, and by friendly watchings over and warning one another. Satan and the flesh, and its unavoidable baits, are temptation strong enough; we need not by unhappy kindness to add more.

Direct. XI. When you feel your appetites eager, against reason and conscience, check them, and resolve that they shall not be pleased. Unresolvedness keepeth up the temptation; if you would but resolve once, you would be quiet: but when the devil findeth you yielding, or wavering, or unresolved, he will never give you rest: Prov. xxiii. 1-3, "When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite: be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat." The words translated, "if thou be a man given to appetite," (agreeable to the Septuagint and the Arabic,) are translated by Montanus, and in the vulgar Latin, and the Chaldee Paraphrase, if thou have the power of thy own soul, or be master of thy soul, Compos animæ, show that thou art master of thyself by abstinence. Instead of, "put a knife to thy throat," that is, threaten thyself into abstinence, the Syriac and divers expositors translate it, Thou dost, or, lest thou dost put a knife to thy throat, that is, Thou art as bad as cutting thy throat; or destroying thyself, when thou art gluttonously feeding thyself. Keep up resolution and the power of reason.

Direct. XII. Remember what thy body is, and what it will shortly be, and how loathsome and vile it will be in the dust. And then think how far such a body should be pampered and pleased; and at what rates.[429] Pay not too dear for a feast for worms: look into the grave, and see what is the end of all your pleasant meats and drinks; of all your curious, costly fare. You may see there the skulls cast up, and the ugly hole of that mouth which devoured so many sweet, delicious morsels; but there is none of the pleasure of it now left. Oh wonderful folly! that men can so easily, so eagerly, so obstinately, waste their estates, and neglect their souls, and displease their God, and in effect even sell their hopes of heaven, for so small and sordid a delight, as the pleasing of such a piece of flesh, that must shortly have so vile an end! Was it worth so much care, and toil, and cost, and the casting away of your salvation, to pamper that body a little while that must shortly be such a loathsome carcass?[430] Methinks one sight of a skull or a grave, should make you think gluttony and luxury madness. Eccles. vii. 2, "It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to heart." David saith of the wicked, "Let me not eat of their dainties;" but, "let the righteous smite me and reprove me," Psal. cxli. 4, 5. So dangerous a thing is feasting even among friends, where of itself it is lawful, that Job thought it a season for his fears and sacrifice; Job i. 4, 5, "And his sons went and feasted in their houses every one his day, and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them." But Job sacrificed for them, saying, "It may be my sons have sinned, and cursed" (that is, thought provokingly, unreverently, unholily, or contemptuously of) "God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually." A funeral is a safer place for you than a feast.

Direct. XIII. Go into the houses of the poor sometimes, and see what provision they live upon, and what time they spend at meat; and then bethink you, whether their diet or yours do tend more to the mortification of fleshly lusts? and whether theirs will not be as sweet as yours at the last? and whether mere riches should make so great a difference in eating and drinking between them and you? I know that where they want what is necessary to their health, it is lawful for you to exceed them, and be thankful; but not so as to forget their wants, nor so as to turn your plenty to excess. The very sight now and then of a poor man's diet and manner of life would do you good: seeing affecteth more than hearsay.

Direct. XIV. Look upon the ancient christians, the patterns of abstinence, and think whether their lives were like to yours. They were much in fastings and abstinence, and strangers to gluttony and excess; they were so prone to excess of abstinence, rather than excess of meat, that abundance of them lived in wildernesses or cells, upon roots, or upon bread and water: (from the imitation of whom, in a formal, hypocritical manner, came the swarms of friars that are now in the world:) and will you commend their holiness and abstinence, and yet be so far from any serious imitation of them, that you will, in gluttony and excess, oppose yourselves directly against them?

I have now detected the odiousness of this sin, and told you if you are willing how you may best avoid it: if all this will not serve, but there be "any profane person among you like Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright," Heb. xii. 16,[431] who for the pleasing of his throat will sell his soul, let him know that God hath another kind of cure for such: he may cast thee into poverty, where thou shalt be a glutton only in desire, but not have to satisfy thy desire; he may shortly cast thee into those diseases, which shall make thee loathe thy pleasant fare, and wish thou hadst the poor man's fare and appetite; and make thee say of all the baits of thy sensuality, "I have no pleasure in them," Eccles. xii. 1. The case will be altered with thee when all thy wealth, and friends, and greatness cannot keep thy pampered carcass from corruption, nor procure thy soul a comfort equal to a drop of water to cool thy tongue, tormented in the flames of God's displeasure: then all the comfort thou canst procure from God and conscience will be but this sad memento, "Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted and thou art tormented," Luke xvi. 25. James v. 1, 5, "Go to now, ye rich men; weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you—Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter: ye have condemned and killed the just," &c.

Yet after all this, I shall remember you that you run not into the contrary extreme: place not more religion in external abstinence and fastings than you ought: know your own condition, and how far either fasting or eating is really a help or a hinderance to you in those greater things which are their ends, and so far use them.[432] A decaying body must be carefully supported: an unruly body must be carefully subdued: the same medicines serve not for contrary tempers and diseases: to think, that abstaining from flesh, and glutting yourselves with fish and other meats, is acceptable to God; or that mere abstaining so many hours in a week, and serving your appetite on the rest, is meritorious; or that abstinence from meat will prove you holy, without an abstinence from sin, all this is self-deluding error. Nor must you raise a great many of perplexing scruples about all that you eat or drink, to no edification, but merely to your vexation; but in cheerful temperance preserve your health, and subdue concupiscence.

Tit. 2. Directions against Drunkenness, and all Excess of Drink.

I. The most that I have said against gluttony will serve against excess of drink also, therefore I need not repeat it. Drunkenness, in the largest sense, extendeth both to the affection and to the effect: and so he is a drunkard (that is, reputatively, in the sight of God) who would drink too much if he had it, and is not restrained by his will, but by necessity.

Drunkenness in the effect or act, is sometimes taken more largely, sometimes more strictly. Largely taken, it signifieth all drinking to excess to please the appetite. Two things here make up the crime: 1. Love of the drink, or pleasing the appetite, which we call gulosity. 2. Excess in drinking; which excess may be in quantity or quality.

Drunkenness strictly taken, signifieth drinking till reason have received some hurt: and of this there be many degrees. He that hath in the least degree disturbed his reason, and disabled or hindered it from its proper office, is drunken in that degree: and he that hath overturned it, or quite disabled it, is stark drunk, or drunk in a greater degree.

All excess of drink is sinful gulosity or sensuality, of the same nature with gluttony, and falls under all my last reproofs and directions. And in some persons that can sit it out, and bear much drink without intoxication, the sin may be greater than in some others, that by a smaller quantity are drunk by a surprise, before they are aware; but yet, cæteris paribus, the overthrow of the understanding maketh the sin to be much the greater; for it hath all the evil that the other degrees have, with more. It is a voluptuous excess in drink to the depravation of reason. Gulosity is the general nature of it: excess is the matter: depravation of reason is its special form.

It is excess of drinking, when you do drink more than, according to the judgment of sound reason, doth tend to fit your body mediately or immediately for its proper duty, without a greater hurt. Sometimes the immediate benefit is most to be regarded (as, if a man had some present duty of very great moment to perform). The present benefit consisteth, 1. In the abatement of such a troublesome thirst or pain, as hindereth you from doing your duty. 2. In adding that refocillation and alacrity to the spirits, as maketh them fitter instruments for the operations of the mind and body. That measure which doth one or both of these without greater hurt is not too great. I say, without greater hurt; because if any should in a dropsy or a fever prefer a little present ease and alacrity before his health and life, it were excess. Or if any man ordinarily drink more than nature will well digest, and which causeth the inconcoction of his meat, and consequently crudities, and consequently a dunghill of phlegm and vicious humours fit to engender many diseases, this is excess of drinking, though he feel it ease him and make him cheerful for the present time. And this is the common case of most bibbers or tipplers that are not stark drunkards: they feel a present ease from thirst, and perhaps a little alacrity of spirits, and therefore they think that measure is no excess, which yet tendeth to crudities and diseases, and the destruction of their health and life.

Therefore (except in some great, extraordinary case of necessity) it is not so much the present, as the future foreseen effects, which must direct you to know your measure. Reason can foresee, though appetite cannot. Future effects are usually great and long; when present effects may be small and short. He that will do that which tendeth to the hurt of his health for the present easing or pleasing of his thirsty appetite, doth sin against reason, and play the beast. You should be so well acquainted with your bodies, and the means of your own health, as to know first whether the enduring of the thirst, or the drinking to quench it, is like to be the more hurtful to your health, and more a hinderance to your duty.

And for the present alacrity which strong drink bringeth to some, you must foresee that you purchase it not at too dear a rate, by a longer dulness or disablement afterwards: and take heed that you take not an alien, counterfeit hilarity, consisting in mere sensual delight, for that serenity and just alacrity of the spirits as doth fit you for your duty. For this also is a usual (and wilful) self-deceit of sensualists: they make themselves believe that a cup of sack or strong drink giveth them a true assistant alacrity, when it only causeth a sensual delight, which doth more hinder and corrupt the mind, than truly further it in its duty: and differeth from true alacrity as paint from beauty, or as a fever doth from our natural heat.

You see then that intemperance in drinking is of two sorts: 1. Bibbing, or drinking too much. 2. Drunkenness (in various degrees). And these intemperate bibbers are of several sorts. (1.) Those, that when they have over-heated themselves, or are feverish, or have any ordinary diseased thirst, will please their appetites, though it be to their hurt; and will venture their health rather than endure the thirst. Though in fevers, dropsies, coughs, it should be the greatest enemy to them, yet they are such beastly servants to their appetites, that drink they must, whatever come of it: though physicians forbid them, and friends dissuade them, they have so much of the brute and so little of the man, that appetite is quite too hard for reason with them. These are of two sorts: one sort keep the soundness of their reason, though they have lost all the strength and power of it, for want of a resolved will; and these confess that they should abstain, but tell you, they cannot, they are not so much men. The other sort have given up their very reason (such as it is) to the service of their appetites: and these will not believe (till the cough, or gout, or dropsy, &c. make them believe it) that their measure of drinking is too much, or that it will do them hurt; but say, that it would hurt them more to forbear it; some through real ignorance, and some made willingly ignorant by their appetites.

(2.) Another sort of bibbers there are, much worse than those, who have no great, diseased thirst to excuse their gulosity, but call it a thirst whenever their appetite would have drink; and use themselves ordinarily to satisfy such an appetite, and drink almost as oft as the throat desireth it, and say, it is but to quench their thirst; and never charge themselves with intemperance for it. These may be known from the first sort of bibbers by the quality of their drink: it is cold small beer that the first sort desire, to quench a real thirst; when reason bids them endure it, if other means will not quench it. But it is wine, or strong drink, or some drink that hath a delicious gust, which the second sort of bibbers use, to please the appetite, which they call their thirst. And of these luxurious tipplers, next to stark drunkards, there are also divers degrees, some being less guilty, and some more.[433]

1. The lowest degree are they that will never ordinarily drink but at meals: but they will then drink more than nature requireth, or than is profitable to their health.

2. The second degree are they, that use to drink between meals, when their appetite desireth it, to the hindering of concoction, and the increase of crudities and catarrhs, and to the secret, gradual vitiating of their humours, and generating of many diseases; and this without any true necessity, or the approbation of sound reason, or any wise physician: yet they tipple but at home, where you may find the pot by them at unseasonable times.

3. The third degree are many poor men that have not drink at home, and when they come to a gentleman's house, or a feast, or perhaps an alehouse, they will pour in for the present to excess, though not to drunkenness, and think it is no harm, because it is but seldom; and they drink so small drink all the rest of the year, that they think such a fit as this sometimes is medicinal to them, and tendeth to their health.

4. Another rank of bibbers are those, that though they haunt not alehouses or taverns, yet have a throat for every health or pledging cup that reacheth not to drunkenness; and use ordinarily to drink many unnecessary cups in a day to pledge (as they call it) those that drink to them; and custom and compliment are all their excuse.

5. Another degree of bibbers are common alehouse haunters, that love to be there, and to sit many hours perhaps in a day, with a pot by them, tippling, and drinking one to another. And if they have any bargain to make, or any friend to meet, the alehouse or tavern must be the place, where tippling may be one part of their work.

6. The highest degree are they, that are not apt to be stark drunk, and therefore think themselves less faulty, while they sit at it, and make others drunk, and are strong themselves to bear away more than others can bear. They have the drunkard's appetite, and measure, and pleasure, though they have not his giddiness and loss of wit.

(3.) And of those that are truly drunken also, there are many degrees and kinds. As some will be drunk with less and some with more; so some are only possessed with a little diseased levity, and talkativeness, more than they had before: some also have distempered eyes, and stammering tongues: some also proceed to unsteady, reeling heads, and stumbling feet, and unfitness for their callings: some go further, to sick and vomiting stomachs, or else to sleepy heads: and some proceed to stark madness, quarrelling, railing, bawling, hooting, ranting, roaring, or talking nonsense, or doing mischief: the furious sort being like mad dogs that must be tied; and the sottish, prating, and spewing sort being commonly the derision of the boys in the streets.

II. Having told you what tippling and drunkenness is, I shall briefly tell you their causes; but briefly, because you may gather most of them from what is said of the causes of gluttony. 1. The first and grand causes are these three concurrent: a beastly, raging appetite or gulosity; a weakness of reason and resolution to rule it; and a want of faith to strengthen reason, and of holiness to strengthen resolution. These are the very cause of all.

2. Another cause is, their not knowing that their excess and tippling is really a hurt or danger to their health. And they are ignorant of this from many causes. One is, because they have been bred up among ignorant people, and never taught to know what is good or bad for their own bodies, but only by the common talk of the mistaken vulgar. Another is, because their appetite so mastereth their very reason, that they can choose to believe that which they would not have to be true. Another reason is, because they are of healthful bodies, and therefore feel no hurt at present, and presume that they shall feel none hereafter, and see some abstemious persons weaker than they (who began not to be abstemious till some chronical disease had first invaded them). And thus they do by their bodies just as wicked men do by their souls: they judge all by present feeling, and have not wisdom enough to take things foreseen into their deliberation and accounts: that which will be a great while hence they take for nothing, or an uncertain something next to nothing. As heaven and hell move not ungodly men, because they seem a great way off; so, while they feel themselves in health, they are not moved with the threatening of sickness: the cup is in their hands, and therefore they will not set it by, for fear of they know not what, that will befall them you know not when. As the thief that was told he should answer it at the day of judgment, said, he would take the other cow too, if he should stay unpunished till then; so these belly-gods think, they will take the other cup, if they shall but stay till so long hence. And thus because this temporal punishment of their gulosity is not speedily exercised, the hearts of men are fully set in them to please their appetites.

3. Another cause of tippling and drunkenness is, a wicked heart, that loveth the company of wicked men, and the foolish talk, and cards, and dice, by which they are entertained. One sin enticeth down another:[434] it is a delight to prate over a pot, or rant and game, and drive away all thoughts that savour of sound reason, or the fear of God, or the care of their salvation. Many of them will say, it is not for love of the drink, but of the company, that they use the alehouse; an excuse that maketh their sin much worse, and showeth them to be exceeding wicked. To love the company of wicked men, and love to hear their lewd and idle, foolish talk, and to game and sport out your time with them, besides your tippling, this showeth a wicked, fleshly heart, much worse than if you loved the drink alone. Such company as you love best, such are your own dispositions: if you were no tipplers or drunkards, it is a certain sign of an ungodly person, to love ungodly company better than the company of wise and godly men, that may edify you in the fear of God.

4. Another cause of tippling is idleness, when they have not the constant employments of their callings to take them up. Some of them make it their chief excuse that they do it to pass away the time. Blind wretches! that are so near eternity, and can find no better uses for their time. To these I spoke before, chap. v. part i.

5. Another cause is the wicked neglect of their duties to their own families; making no conscience of loving their own relations, and teaching them the fear of God; nor following their business: and so they take no pleasure to be at home; the company of wife, and children, and servants is no delight to them, but they must go to an alehouse or tavern for more suitable company. Thus one sin bringeth on another.

6. Another cause is the ill management of matters at home with their own consciences; when they have brought themselves into so terrible and sad a case, that they dare not be much alone, nor soberly think of their own condition, nor seriously look towards another world; but fly from themselves, and seek a place to hide them from their consciences, forgetting that sin will find them out. They run to an alehouse, as Saul to his music, to drink away melancholy, and drown the noise of a guilty, self-accusing mind; and to drive away all thoughts of God, and heaven, and sin, and hell, and death, and judgment, till it be too late. As if they were resolved to be damned, and therefore resolved not to think of their misery nor the remedy. But though they dare venture upon hell itself, the sots dare not venture upon the serious thoughts of it! Either there is a hell, or there is none: if there be none, why shouldst thou be afraid to think of it? If there be a hell, (as thou wilt find it if thou hold on but a little longer,) will not the feeling be more intolerable than the thoughts of it? And is not the fore-thinking on it a necessary and cheap prevention of the feeling? Oh how much wiser a course were it to retire yourselves in secret, and there look before you to eternity, and hear what conscience hath first to say to you concerning your life past, your sin and misery, and then what God hath to say to you of the remedy. You will one day find, that this is a more necessary work, than any that you had at the alehouse, and that you had greater business with God and conscience, than with your idle companions.

7. Another cause is the custom of pledging those that drink to you, and of drinking healths, by which the laws of the devil and the alehouse do impose upon them the measures of excess, and make it their duty to disregard their duty to God: so lamentable a thing it is, to be the tractable slaves of men, and intractable rebels against God! Plutarch mentions one that being invited to a feast, made a stop when he heard that they compelled men to drink after meat, and asked whether they compelled them to eat too? apprehending that he went in danger of his belly. And it seems to be but custom that maketh it appear less ridiculous or odious to constrain men to drinking than to eating.

8. Another great cause of excess is, the devil's way of drawing them on by degrees: he doth not tempt them directly to be drunk, but to drink one cup more, and then another and another, so that the worst that he seemeth to desire of them is, but to "drink a little more." And thus, as Solomon saith of the fornicator, they yield to the flatterer, and go on as the "ox to the slaughter, and as the fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life," Prov. vii. 21-23.

III. The greatness of this sin appeareth in what is said before of gluttony. More specially, 1. Think how base a master thou dost serve, being thus a slave to thy throat. What a beastly thing it is, and worse than beastly! for few beasts but a swine will be forced to drink more than doth them good. How low and poor is that man's reason that is not able to command his throat!

2. Think how thou consumest the creatures of God, that are given for service, and not for gulosity and luxury. The earth shall be a witness against thee, that it bore that fruit for better uses, which thou mispendest on thy sin. Thy servants and cattle that labour for it shall be witnesses against thee. Thou offerest the creatures of God as a sacrifice to the devil, for drunkenness and tippling is his service. It were less folly to do as Diogenes did, who, when they gave him a large cup of wine, threw it under the table that it might do him no harm. Thou makest thyself like caterpillars, and foxes, and wolves, and other destroying creatures, that live to do mischief, and consume that which should nourish man; and therefore are pursued as unfit to live. Thou art to the commonwealth as mice in the granary, or weeds in the corn. It is a great part of the work of faithful magistrates to weed out such as thou.

3. Thou robbest the poor, consuming that on thy throat which should maintain them. If thou have any thing to spare, it will comfort thee more at last, to have given it to the needy, than that a greedy throat devoured it. The covetous is much better in this than the drunkard and luxurious; for he is a gatherer, and the other is a scatterer.[435] The commonwealth maintaineth a double or treble charge in such as thou art. As the same pasture will keep many sheep which will keep but one horse; so the same country may keep many temperate persons, which will keep but a few gluttons and drunkards. The worldling makes provision cheaper by getting and sparing; but the drunkard and glutton make it dearer by wasting. The covetous man, that scrapeth together for himself, doth ofttimes gather for one that will pity the poor when he is dead, Prov. xxviii. 8; but the drunkard and riotous devour it while they are alive. One is like a hog that is good for something at last, though his feeding yield no profit while he liveth; the other is like devouring vermin, that leave nothing to pay for what they did consume. The one is like a pike among the fishes, who payeth when he is dead for that which he devoured alive; but the other is like the sink or channel, that repayeth you nothing but stink and dirt, for all that you cast into it.

4. Thou drawest poverty and ruin upon thyself. Besides the value which thou wastest, God usually joineth with the prodigal by his judgments, and scattereth as fast as he. Prov. xxi. 17, "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich." "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth," Prov. xi. 24. But this is not the issue of thy scattering. Prov. xxiii. 19-21, "Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thy heart in the way. Be not amongst wine-bibbers, amongst riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags."[436]

5. Thou art an enemy to thy family. Thou grievest thy friends. Thou impoverishest thy children, and robbest those whom thou art bound to make provision for. Thou fillest thy house with discontents and brawlings, and banishest all quietness and fear of God. A discontented or a brawling wife, and ragged, dissolute, untaught children, are often signs that a drunkard or riotous person is the master of the family.

6. Thou art a heinous consumer of thy precious time. This is far worse than the wasting of thy estate. Oh that thou didst but know, as thou shalt know at last, what those hours are worth, which thou wastest over thy pots! and how much greater work thou hadst to lay it out upon! How many thousands in hell are wishing now in vain, that they had those hours again to spend in prayer and repentance which they spent in the alehouse, and senselessly cast away with their companions in sin! Is the glass turned upon thee, and death posting towards thee, to put an end to all thy time, and lay thee where thou must dwell for ever; and yet canst thou sit tippling and prating away thy time, as if this were all that thou hadst to do with it? Oh what a wonder of sottishness and stupidity is a hardened sinner, that can live so much below his reason! The senses' neglect of thy soul's concernment, and greater matters, is the great part of thy sin, more than the drunkenness itself.

7. How base a price dost thou set upon thy Saviour and salvation, that wilt not forbear so much as a cup of drink for them! The smallness of the thing showeth the smallness of thy love to God, and the smallness of thy regard to his word and to thy soul. Is that loving God as God, when thou lovest a cup of drink better? Art thou not ashamed of thy hypocrisy, when thou sayest thou lovest God above all, when thou lovest him not so well as thy wine and ale? Surely he that loveth him not above ale, loveth him not above all! Thy choice showeth what thou lovest best, more certainly than thy tongue doth. It is the dish that a man greedily eateth of that he loveth, and not that which he commendeth but will not meddle with. God trieth men's love to him, by their keeping his commandments.[437] It was the aggravation of the first sin, that they would not deny so small a thing as the forbidden fruit, in obedience to God! And so it is of thine, that wilt not leave a forbidden cup for him! O miserable wretch! dost thou not know that thou canst not be Christ's disciple, if thou forsake not all for him, and hate not even thy life in comparison of him, and wouldst not rather die than forsake him? Luke xiv. 26, 33. And art thou like to lay down thy life for him that wilt not leave a cup of drink for him? Canst thou burn at a stake for him, that canst not leave an alehouse, or vain company, or excess for him? What a sentence of condemnation dost thou pass upon thyself! Wilt thou sell thy God and thy soul for so small a matter as a cup of drink? Never delude thyself to say, I hope I do not so, when thou knowest that God hath told thee in his word, that "drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God," 1 Cor. vi. 10. Nay, God hath commanded those that will come to heaven, to have no familiarity with thee upon earth; "no, not so much as to eat" with thee! 1 Cor. v. 11. Read what Christ himself saith, Matt. xxiv. 48-51, "But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and to drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Read Deut. xxix. 19, 20: If when thou "hearest the words of God's curse, thou bless thyself in thy heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart, to add drunkenness to thirst; the Lord will not spare that man, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against him, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord shall separate him to evil." Thou seest here how God will spice thy cups.