less understanding. 7. Stupid sleep. 8. Epilepsies, or fallings and reelings, and beastly vomitings. The least of these, even when the tongue begins to be untied, is a degree of drunkenness.

But that we may avoid the sin of intemperance in meats and drinks, besides the former rules or measures, these counsels also may be useful.

Rules for obtaining Temperance.

1. Be not often present at feasts, nor at all in dissolute company, when it may be avoided: for variety of pleasing objects steals away the heart of man: and company is either violent or enticing; and we are weak and complying, or perhaps desirous enough to be abused. But if you be unavoidably or indiscreetly engaged, let not mistaken civility or good nature engage thee either to the temptation of staying (if thou understandest thy weakness) or the sin of drinking. inordinately.

2. Be severe in your judgment concerning your proportions, and let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts, and while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass has disabled him from well discerning his present condition and neighbour danger. While men think themselves wise, they become fools: they think they shall taste the aconite and not die, or crown their heads with juice of poppy and not be drowsy; and if they drink off the whole vintage, still they think they can swallow another gob

let *. But remember this, whenever you begin to consider whether you may safely take one draught more, it is then high time to give over. Let that be accounted a sign late enough to break off: for every reason to doubt, is a sufficient reason to part the

company.

3. Come not to table but when thy need invites thee; and if thou beest in health, leave something of thy appetite unfilled, something of thy natural heat unemployed, that it may secure thy digestion, and serve other needs of nature or the spirit.

4. Propound to thyself (if thou beest in a capacity) a constant rule of living, of eating and drinking: which, though it may not be fit to observe scrupulously, least it become a snare to thy conscience, or endanger thy health upon every accidental violence; yet let not thy rule be broken often, nor much, but upon great necessity and in small degrees.

5. Never urge any man to eat or drink beyond his own limits and his own desires. He that does otherwise is drunk with his brother's surfeit, and reels and falls with his intemperance; that is, the sin of drunkenness is upon both their scores, they both lie wallowing in the guilt.

6. Use St. Paul's instruments of sobriety: Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of

* Senec. Ep. 83. Chi ha bevuto tutto il mare, puo bere anche

un trano.

Nil interest, faveas sceleri, an illud facias. Senec.

salvation. Faith, hope, and charity, are the best weapons in the world to fight against intemperance. The faith of the Mahometans forbids them to drink wine, and they abstain religiously, as the sons of Rechab: and the faith of Christ forbids drunkenness to us, and therefore is infinitely more powerful to suppress this vice, when we remember that we are Christians, and to abstain from drunkenness and gluttony is part of the faith and discipline of Jesus, and that with these vices neither our love to God, nor our hopes of heaven can possibly consist; and therefore when these enter the heart, the others go out at the mouth: for this is the devil that is cast out by fasting and prayer, which are the proper actions of these graces.

7. As a pursuance of this rule, it is a good advice; that as we begin and end all our times of eating with prayer and thanksgiving; so at the meal we remove and carry up our mind and spirit to the celestial table, often thinking of it, and often desiring it; that by inkindling thy desire to heavenly banquets, thou mayest be indifferent and less passionate for the earthly.

8. Mingle discourses pious, or in some sense profitable, and in all senses charitable and innocent, with thy meal, as occasion is ministered.

9. Let

doth

your drink so serve your meat, as your meat your health; that it be apt to convey and digest it, and refresh the spirits: but let it never go beyond such a refreshment as may a little lighten the present load of a sad or troubled spirit: never to inconvenience, lightness, sottishness, vanity, or intemperance:

and know that the loosing the bands of the tongue, and the very first dissolution of its duty, is one degree of the intemperance.

10. In all cases be careful that you be not brought under the power of such things which otherwise are lawful enough in the use. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any thing, said St. Paul. And to be perpetually longing, and impatiently desirous of any thing, so that a man cannot abstain from it, is to lose a man's liberty, and to become a servant of meat and drink, or smoke. And I wish this last instance were more considered by persons who little suspect themselves guilty of intemperance, though their desires are strong and impatient, and the use of it perpetual and unreasonable to all purposes, but that they have made it habitual and necessary, as intemperance itself is made to some

men.

11. Use those advices which are prescribed as instruments to suppress voluptuousness in the foregoing section.

SECT. III.

of Chastity.

READER, stay, and read not the advices of the following section, unless thou hast a chaste spirit, or desirest to be chaste, or at least are apt to consider whether you ought or no. For there are some spirits so atheistical, and some so wholly possessed with a spirit of uncleanness, that they turn the most prudent and chaste discourses into dirt and filthy apprehensions; like choleric stomachs, changing

their very cordials and medicines into bitterness; and in a literal sense turning the grace of God into wantonness. They study cases of conscience in the matter of carnal sins, not to avoid, but to learn ways how to offend God and pollute their own spirits; and search their houses with a sun-beam, that they may be instructed in all the corners of nastiness. I have used all the care I could in the following periods, that I might neither be wanting to assist those that need it, nor yet minister any occasion of fancy or vainer thoughts to those that need them not. If any man will snatch the pure taper from my hand, and hold it to the devil, he will only burn his own fingers, but shall not rob me of the reward of my care and good intentión, since I have taken heed how to express the following duties, and given him caution how to read them.

Chastity is that duty which was mystically intended by God in the law of circumcision. It is the cir cumcision of the heart, the cutting off all superfluity of naughtiness, and a suppression of all irregular desires in the matter of sensual or carnal pleasure. I call all desires irregular and sinful that are not sanctified: 1. By the holy institution, or by being within the protection of marriage; 2. by being within the order of nature; 3. by being within the moderation of Christian modesty. Against the first are fornication, adultery, and all voluntary pollutions of either sex. Against the second are all unnatural lusts and incestuous mixtures. Against the third is all immoderate use of permitted beds, concerning which judgment is to be made as concerning meats and drinks: there being no certain degree of frequency or intention prescribed to all persons, but it is to be ruled as the other actions of a man, by proportion to the end, by the dignity of the person in the honour and severity of