Evil Consequents to Drunkenness.
The evils and sad consequents of drunkenness (the consideration
of which are as so many arguments to avoid the sin) are to this sense reckoned by
the writers of holy Scripture, and other wise personages of the world. 1. It causeth
woes and mischief,7878Prov. xxiii. 29; Ecclus. xxxi. 26. wounds and sorrow,
sin and shame;7979Multa faciunt ebrii quibus sobrii erubescunt.
Senec. Ep. 83, 17. it maketh bitterness
of spirit, brawling and quarrelling; it increaseth rage and lesseneth strength;
it maketh red eyes, and a loost and babbling tongue. 2. It particularly ministers
to lust, and yet disables the body; so that in effect it makes man wanton as a satyr,
and impotent as age. And Solomon, in enumerating the evils of this vice, adds this
to the account,8080Prov. xxiii. 33. ‘thine eyes shall
behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things: as if the drunkard
were only desire, and then impatience, muttering and enjoying like an eunuch embracing
a woman. 3. It besots and hinders the actions of the understanding, making a man
brutish in his passions, and a fool in his reason; and differs nothing from madness
but that it is voluntary, and so is an equal evil in nature, and a worse in manners.8181Insaniae comes est ira, contubernalis ebrietas.—Plutarch
— Corpus onustum Hesternis vitiis animum quoque praegravat.—Horat. Ebrietas est
voluntaria insania.—Senec.
4. It takes off all the guards, and lets loose the reins of all those evils to which
a man is by is nature or by his evil customs inclined, and from which he is restrained
by reason and severe principles. Drunkenness calls off the watchmen from their towers;
and then all the evils that can proceed from a loose heart and an untied tongue,
and a dissolute spirit, and an unguarded unlimited will, all that we may put upon
the accounts of drunkenness. 5. It extinguisheth and quenches the Spirit of God
and with wine at the same time. And therefore St. Paul makes them exclusive of each
other:8282Ephes. v. 18. ‘Be not drunk with wine wherein
is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.’ And since Joseph’s cup was put into Benjamin’s
sack, no man had a divining goblet. 6. It opens all the sanctuaries of nature, and
discovers the nakedness of the soul, all its weaknesses and follies; it multiplies
sins and discovers them; it makes a man incapable of being a private friend or a
public counsellor. 7. It taketh a man’s soul into slavery and imprisonment more
than any vice whatever,8383Prov. xxxi. 4. because it
disarms a man of all his reason and his wisdom, whereby he might be cured, and therefore
commonly it grows upon him with age; a drunkard being still more a fool and less
a man. I need not add any sad examples, since all story and all ages have too many
of them. Amnon was slain by his brother Absalom when he was warm and high with wine.
Simon, the high-priest, and two of his sons, were slain by their brother at a drunken
feast. Holofernes was drunk when Judith slew him; and all the great things that
Daniel spake of Alexander8484Alexandrum intemperantia bibendi, et ille
Herculanus ac fatalis scyphus perdidit.—Senec. Ep. 1xxxiii. 21. were drowned
with a surfeit of one night’s intemperance: and the drunkenness of Noah and Lot
are upon record to eternal ages, that in those early instances, and righteous persons,
and less criminal drunkenness than is that of Christians in this period of the world,
God might show that very great evils are prepared to punish this vice; no less than
shame, and slavery, and incest; the first upon Noah, the second upon one of his
sons, and the third in the person of Lot.
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