and whose employment is the same with the work of the sheep or the calf, always to eat; their loves are the lusts of the lower belly; and their portion is in the lower regions to eternal ages, where their thirst, and their hunger, and their torment, shall be infinite.

4. Intemperance is a perfect destruction of wisdom. Παχεῖα γαστὴρ λεπτὸν οὐ τίκτει νόον, " A full-gorged belly never produced a sprightly mind:" and therefore these kind of men are called yaorépes apyaì, "slow bellies," so St. Paul concerning the intemperate Cretans out of their own poet: they are like the tigers of Brazil, which when they are empty, are bold, and swift, and full of sagacity; but being full, sneak away from the barking of a village-dog. So are these men, wise in the morning, quick and fit for business; but when the sun gives the sign to spread the tables, and intemperance brings in the messes, and drunkenness fills the bowls, then the man falls away, and leaves a beast in his room; nay, worse, vɛkúαç μɛσaúxevaç, they are dead all but their throat and belly, so Aristophanes hath fitted them with a character, "Carcasses above half way." Plotinus descends one step lower yet; affirming such persons, dπodevoρwoñvai, "to be made trees," whose whole employment and life is nothing but to feed and suck juices from the bowels of their nurse and mother; and indeed commonly they talk as trees in a wind and tempest, the noise is great and querulous, but it signifies nothing but trouble and disturbance. A full meal is like Sisera's banquet, at the end of which there is a nail struck into a man's head: ὡς συγκολλῶσα καὶ οἶον καθηλοῦσα τὴν ψυχὴν πρὸς τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἀπόλαυσιν, so Porphyry; “ it knocks a man down, and nails his soul to the sensual mixtures of the body." For what wisdom can be expected from them, whose soul dwells in clouds of meat, and floats up and down in wine, like the spilled cups which fell from their hands, when they could lift them to their heads no longer? πολλάκις γὰρ ἐν οἴνου κύμασί τις ναυαγεί : it is a perfect shipwreck of a man, the pilot is drunk, and the helm dashed in pieces, and the ship first reels, and by swallowing too much is itself swallowed up at last. And therefore the Navis Agrigentina, the madness of the young fellows of Agrigentum, who being drunk, fancied themselves in a storm, and the house the ship, was more than the wild fancy of their cups;

it was really so, they were all cast away, they were broken in pieces by the foul disorder of the storm.

Hinc Vini atque somni degener socordia,
Libido sordens, inverecundus lepos,
Variæque pestes languidorum sensuum.
Hinc et frequenti marcida oblectamine
Scintilla mentis intorpescit nobilis,

Animusque pigris stertit in præcordiis 1.

'The senses languish, the spark of Divinity that dwells within is quenched; and the mind snorts, dead with sleep and fulness in the fouler regions of the belly.'

So have I seen the eye of the world looking upon a fenny bottom, and drinking up too free draughts of moisture, gathered them into cloud, and that cloud crept about his face, and made him first look red, and then covered him with darkness and an artificial night so is our reason at a feast,

Putrem resudans crapulam

Obstrangulatæ mentis ingenium premit.

The clouds gather about the head, and according to the method and period of the children, and productions of darkness, it first grows red, and that redness turns into an obscurity, and a thick mist, and reason is lost to all use and profitableness of wise and sober discourses ; αναθυμίασις θολωδεστέρα οὖσα ἐπισκοτεῖ τῇ ψυχῇ, “ a cloud of folly and distraction darkens the soul," and makes it crass and material, polluted and heavy, clogged and laden like the body: uxǹ kálvdρos ταῖς ἐκ τοῦ οἴνου ἀναθυμιάσεσι καὶ νεφέλαις δίκην σώματος ποιουμένη. μévn. And there cannot be any thing said worse, reason turns into folly, wine and flesh into a knot of clouds, the soul itself into a body,' and the spirit into corrupted meat; there is nothing left but the rewards and portions of a fool to be reaped and enjoyed there, where flesh and corruption shall dwell to eternal ages; and therefore in Scripture such men are called βαρυκάρδιοι. “ Hesternis vitiis animum quoque prægravant:" Their heads are gross, their souls are emerged in matter, and drowned in the moistures of an unwholesome cloud; they are dull of hearing, slow in apprehension, and to action they are as unable as the hands of a child, who too hastily hath broken the enclosures of his first dwelling.

Prudent. hym. de Jejun.

a Clem. Alexand.

But temperance is reason's girdle, and passion's bridle; σῶα φρόνησις, so Homer in Stobæus ; that is σωφροσύνη ; “ prudence is safe," while the man is temperate; and therefore σώφρον is opposed τῷ χαλίφρονι, "A temperate man is no fool;" for temperance is the owppoviσrýpiov, such as Plato appointed to night-walkers, a prison to restrain their inordi- . nations; it is ῥώμη ψυχής, as Pythagoras calls it; κρηπὶς ἀρετῆς, so Socrates ; κόσμος ἀγαθῶν πάντων, so Plato; ἀσφά λɛla twv KaλXίorwv ɛwv, so Jamblichus; it is "the strength of the soul, the foundation of virtue, the ornament of all good things, and the corroborative of all excellent habits."

5. After all this, I shall the less need to add, that intemperance is a dishonour, and disreputation to the nature, and the person, and the manners of a man. But naturally men

are ashamed of it, and the needs of nature shall be the veil for their gluttony, and the night shall cover their drunkenness : τέγγε πνεύμονα οἴνῳ, τὸ γὰρ ἄστρον περιστέλλεται, which the Apostle rightly renders, "They that are drunk, are drunk in the night;" but the priests of Heliopolis never did sacrifice to the sun with wine; meaning, that this is so great a dishonour, that the sun ought not to see it; and they that think there is no other eye but the sun that sees them, may cover their shame by choosing their time; just as children do their danger by winking hard, and not looking on. Σκυθίζειν, καὶ ζωρότερον πιεῖν, καὶ δεινῶς φαγεῖν, " Το drink sweet drinks and hot, to quaff great draughts, and to eat greedily;" Theoprastus makes them characters of a clown.

3. And now that I have told you the foulness of the epicure's feasts and principles, it will be fit that I describe the measures of our eating and drinking, that the needs of nature may neither become the cover to an intemperate dish, nor the freer refreshment of our persons be changed into scruples, that neither our virtue nor our conscience fall into an evil snare.

1. The first measure of our eating and drinking, is our “ natural needs,” μὴτε ἀλγεῖν κατὰ σῶμα, μήτε ταράττεσθαι κατὰ ux; these are the measures of nature, that the body be free from pain, and the soul from violence.' Hunger, and thirst, and cold, are the natural diseases of the body; and

b Alcæus.

e Cap. 4.

food and raiment are their remedies, and therefore are the

measures.

In quantum sitis atque fames et frigora poscunt,
Quantum, Epicure, tibi parvis suffecit in hortis.

But in this there are two cautions. 1. Hunger and thirst are only to be extinguished while they are violent and troublesome, and are not to be provided for to the utmost extent and possibilities of nature; a man is not hungry so long till he can eat no more, but till its sharpness and trouble is over, and he that does not leave some reserves for temperance, gives all that he can to nature, and nothing at all to grace; for God hath given a latitude in desires and degrees of appetite; and when he hath done, he laid restraint upon it in some whole instances, and of some parts in every instance; that man might have something to serve God of his own, and something to distinguish him from a beast in the use of their common faculties. Beasts cannot refrain, but fill all the capacity when they can; and if a man does so, he does what becomes a beast, and not a man. And therefore there are some little symptoms of this inordination, by which a man may perceive himself to have transgressed his measures; "ructation, uneasy loads, singing, looser pratings, importune drowsiness, provocation of others to equal and full chalices;" and though in every accident of this signification it is hard for another to pronounce that the man hath sinned, yet by these he may suspect himself, and learn the next time to hold the bridle harder.

2. "This hunger must be natural," not artificial and provoked; for many men make necessities to themselves, and then think they are bound to provide for them. It is necessary to some men to have garments made of the Calabrian fleece, stained with the blood of the murex, and to get money to buy pearls round and orient; 'scelerata hoc fecit culpa;' but it is the man's luxury that made it so; and by the same principle it is, that in meats, what is abundant to nature is defective and beggarly to art; and when nature willingly rises from table, when the first course of flesh plain and natural is done, then art, and sophistry, and adulterate dishes, invite him to taste and die, utxoi rivoç ioμèv σáρkes, μέχρι τινος τῆς γῆς κύπτομεν; well may a sober man wonder

d Juv. xiv. 319.

e Chrysost.

that men should be so much in love with earth and corruption, the parent of rottenness and a disease, that even then, when by all laws witches and enchanters, murderers and manstealers, are chastised and restrained with the iron hands of death; yet that men should at great charges give pensions to an order of men, whose trade it is to rob them of their temperance, and wittily to destroy their health; katwpepełc καὶ χαμαιζήλους καὶ τοὺς ἐκ τῆς γῆς κενολογοῦντας, the Greek fathers call' such persons;

➖➖ curvæ in terris animæ et cœlestium inanes;

people bowed down to the earth; "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God:" Aretinas mentes,' so Antidamus calls them, men framed in the furnaces of Etruria," Aretine spirits," beginning and ending in flesh and filthiness; dirt and clay all over. But go to the crib, thou glutton, and there it will be found that when the charger is clean, yet nature's rules were not prevaricated; the beast eats up all his provisions because they are natural and simple; or if he leaves any, it is because he desires no more than till his needs be served; and neither can a man (unless he be diseased in body or in spirit, in affection or in habit) eat more of natural and simple food than to the satisfaction of his natural necessities. He that drinks a draught or two of water and cools his thirst, drinks no more till his thirst returns; but he that drinks wine, drinks again longer than it is needful, even so long as it is pleasant. Nature best provides for herself when she spreads her own table; but when men have gotten superinduced habits, and new necessities, art that brought them in, must maintain them, but " wantonness and folly wait at the table, and sickness and death take away."

2. Reason is the second measure, or rather the rule whereby we judge of intemperance; for whatsoever loads of meat and drink make the reason useless or troubled, are effects of this deformity; not that reason is the adequate measure; for a man may be intemperate upon other causes, though he do not force his understanding, and trouble his head. Some are strong to drink, and can eat like a wolf, and love to do so, as fire to destroy the stubble; such were those harlots in the comedy," Quæ cum amatore suo cum cœnant, liguriunt:" These persons are to take their accounts from f Viz. ab Areto, unde sicut ex aliis Etruriæ figulinis, testacea vasa Romam deferebant. 5 Eunuch. 5. 4. 14.