have erred through Strong Drink they are swallowed up of Wine Hos 4. 11. Whoredom Wine and new Wine take away the Heart One Lust calls upon another as one Souldier doth upon another in Fighting or as those did 2 King 3. 23. Now therefore Moab to the spoil Solomon joineth giving the Heart to Wine and giving it to folly both together Eccles 2. 3. and commonly those that serve one of these Masters serve the other also and this is thought by some to be the beginning of Solomons Apostacy Drunkenness in a Minister is no less unseemly than in a Magistrate and 't is severely forbidden in both God absolutely forbids any Priest to drink Wine or Strong Drink in their approaches and addresses unto him Lev. 10. 9. Ezek. 44. 21. There are none more affected than such as those that will be Drunk with them for company If they will saith God Prophesy of Wine and Strong Drink these shall be the Prophets for them Mic. 2. 11. yea God complains of such Isa 56. 12. Come say they we will fetch Wine and we will fill our selves with strong Drink and to morrow shall be as this day and much more abundant Esa 56. 12. But a Wo is pronounced against such Isa 28. 1. Wo unto the Crown of Pride to the Drunkards of Ephraim and Christ gives his Disciples a Caution and doubtless not without need and if they needed who doth not Luke 21. 34. Take heed lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeting and Drunkenness and the cares of this World and that day come upon you at unawares The best of us have Corruptions within which if watered with Temptations without will produce this as well as other Sins Tit. 1. 7. A Bishop must be blameless the Steward of God not selfwilled not soon angry not given to Wine c. And indeed how is that man fit to rule the Church that cannot rule his own Family nay his own appetite or can he be a guide that goes himself so far out of the way or how can any man void of Reason rule his Children Servants or any under his charge when he is made a Beast and Drink rules him Nay what calling is that man fit for in this condition for in every calling there is some labour or some care or some thing or other requisit which a Drunken man is unfit for Now if the Devil can get such as these in Office especially in the Magistracy or Ministry and he will do it if his own wit or his Instruments Interest can do it what a deal of service do they do him Court fashions spread themselves over the Countrey what an influence had the Kings of Israel and Judah over the People as they were wicked or as they were good so reformation or deformation was promoted when Rulers themselves are wicked they are a shelter to impiety and terror to good works yea what Duty either to God or Man is a Drunkard fit for what can he do can he Pray Alas he cannot speak or at least speak sence or Reason and suppose he could How loathsom do you think such a Prayer would be to God that is performed that is accompanied with belching and vomiting What will he Pray for for the Pardon of that Sin he never intends to leave and for those Graces he never intends to act or exercise or can he hear or read or meditate Alas his condition suffers it not His Heart is made sick with Bottles of Wine Hos 7. 5. The like we may say of any Duty or Office to God or Man or any Imployment for his own good and the good of others therefore I may well say of him he is an unuseful and unprofitable Creature good for nothing but to do just like Pharaohs lean Kine that eat up the fat ones they devour what should keep others If therefore now you would not be disabled for any business for your self or others for any Calling or Business for any imployment in the Commonwealth nay for any Duty to God or Man in your general or particular Calling if you would not be rendered useless worthless and unprofitable if you would not live meerly like a Drone good for nothing but to devour to fill and empty if you would not live undesired and die unlamented take heed of this Swinish Sin which will certainly thus render you useless Consid 8. As Drunkenness unfits a man to live so it unfits a man to die and Wo to that man that is neither fit to live nor to die and yet oft-times it hastens his Death and puts a Period to his Life and unhappy is that man whom the World is weary of and Heaven disclames What is said of the Bloody and deceitful men may well be said of the Drunkard He doth not live out half his days Many of our Gallants or Roaring-Boys as they stile themselves are cut off in the flower of their age in the prime of their youth while their bones are full of marrow and when they end their Roaring on Earth it is to be feared they sing the second part in Hell many by Drinking other mens Healths lose their own yea oft-times Life and all a Hellish custom hatched there invented by the Devil as a Shooinghorn to Drunkenness and Excess and as some of the Fathers write A Custom derived from the Pagans and Infidels to us and was in use amongst them and was a Drink-Offering Sacrificed on their Knees to their Dunghil-Deities to the Devil himself as part of that Service Homage Worship Devotion Fealty they paid to him and the Devils seem unwilling that this Ceremony should be left off or any circumstance thereunto belonging it must be upon their Knees and sometimes attended with the breaking of the Glasses burning of their Hats Coats or other Garments c. What prodigious madness Hellish folly is this and to make the Sacrifice compleat it must be powdered or salted with horrid Blasphemies Damnings and Rammings as if they had been in Hell to learn the the exact language of the Devil and the damned and t is to be feared that many drink Healths of Damnation here that they shall be pledging in Hell to all eternity for God is more dishonoured the Creatures more abused and devoured the Devil more obeyed served and adored by this than almost any other Sin Their Healths are oft-times made to great men whom they adore making Gods of them and Beasts of themselves and hence many times grow quarrels strifes debates fightings stabbings and death it self yea I suppose there are more Drunken quarrels occasioned by their Healths than by any other thing whatsoever Whores excepted sometimes they chalenge the Field sometimes they give each other the lye and the stab and oft-times comes to bloodshed for when the Drink is in the Wit is out and the greatest friends in a moment prove the greatest enemies and those that even now professed the greatest amity suddenly shew the greatest enmity and sheath
three more in Germany for the like offence were all found dead the next morning In Almain in the year 1580 one drinking a Health to God stretching his hand towards Heaven with a cup of Wine was dead in that posture neither by strength could be removed the other by the people was hanged on Gibbets before the door I have heard also of some struck suddenly dead in the very act some drowned some scalded to death some choaked with the Drink some broke their necks some lying in the way were slain by Carts some in their Drink murthered their Parents many that have caught surfets and died upon them he that would read more examples of this nature may find them in Beard 's Theatre of Gods Judgments and in Mr. Clearks Treatise upon the same subject but the experience of our own times may spare us that labour for who is so great a stranger in the neighbourhood he lives in but may add examples of this nature how oft do we hear and see men struck dead in the very act or suddenly after with Surfeits or otherwise were it but convenient the time the place the persons names might be produced and no man of discretion that takes any notice of Gods dealings in the world but may add some experience which shews Gods hatred of this detestable Vice for I think he hath not more eminently appeared against any Sin except it be against Atheism Blasphemy Adultery or Persecution of the power of Godliness than against this If therefore you would not be guilty of your own death and become the object of Gods infinite hatred and dreadful Judgments If you would not run violently upon your own destruction and force God to cut you off as an unprofitable unuseful member beware of this Sin for doubtless 't is the ready way to temporal and eternal death and if death arrest you by such a Sergeant as this your case is lamentable Consid 10. But the greatest danger is yet behind and that is the loss of the Soul which is ten thousand times greater than the loss of life Skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life yet the Soul is in more danger than it and where this Sin is predominant 't is a sad sign of an ungracious heart and that the wrath of God hangs over their heads God pronounceth wo to such and who then can speak peace Wo to the Crown of Pride the Drunkards of Ephraim Wo to those that rise early to drink strong drink and continue till night till Wine enflame them Wo to those that are mighty to drink Wine and men of strength to mingle strong Drink Wo to him that giveth his neighbour drink and putteth the Bottle to him and maketh him drunk Doth God speak in earnest or in jest or can he or will he make good his threatnings If so what a woful condition are Drunkards in 't is for this Sin that Hell hath enlarged her self and opened her mouth without measure Isa 5. 14. These are the men Whose end is destruction whose God is their Belly whose glory is their shame who mind earthly things Phil. 3. 19. They Sacrifice to nothing else but the Creature Thus saith the Lord to such drink and be drunken and spew and fall and never rise again this is spoken to those that make it their business to drink and make others drunk also Jer. 25. 27. These are plying the Devils work and he is preparing them their wages which he will pay them at the day Those that now so profusely spend and wast Gods good Creatures given by him for an higher end the time is coming and will not be long if Repentance prevent not they will not be able to purchase one drop of water to cool their tongues Remember this all ye that forget God lest he tear you in pieces when there is none to deliver Without Repentance Hell will be your portion and the place of your habitation and endless easeless and remediless Torments are the wages which the Devil pays to his miserable Servants for their most faithful service see the doom of your elder Brother Matth. 24. 49. c. that neglecting the duty God required at his hands to give his fellow-servants meat in due season and doing the work the Devil enjoyned him in beating them and eating and drinking with the Drunkards He was cut in sunder and his portion appointed him with Hypocrites and that unfaithful unprofitable Servant that hid his Talent in the earth was cast out into utter darkness where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Matth. 25. 30. and if only those shall have the sentence of absolution at the last day that have fed the hungry clothed the naked relieved the stranger c. Mat. 25. 34 c. What will become of you that spend the poor's part yea and pluck the very meat from the mouths of your Wives and Children and make many others want meat by your extravagancies you know not but some may this day be in Hell tormented in those flames for those very Sins which you occasioned them to commit and no doubt many more will be which may be a sad reflexion upon your own heart If God should give you repentance this may be a Corasive to you you help to destroy men but cannot give repentance but if you repent not the blood of their souls will be required at your hand and did you know the price of this blood you would beware The time is coming a separation will be made between the precious and the vile and though the Wheat and the Tares grow together ere long they shall be separated the wheat shall be gathered into barns but the tares shall be bundled up Swearers with Swearers and Drunkards with Drunkards and burnt with unquenchable fire Drunkenness is compared by some to Chain-shot it sends men to Hell by clusters some other sins to single Bullets that kills but one at once There are many that have knowledge enough in other things and yet know not the way to Heaven they can search Natures Garden from end to end but cannot search their own hearts they are well skill'd abroad strangers at home They are like the Lamiae a sort of Witches that were blind at home quick-sighted abroad They are skilled in all Courts but the Court of Conscience but let them have never so much knowledge they are really fools to sell their souls to Satan for so low a value as a belly-full of Ale They are worse than Esau that sold his birth-right for a Mess of Pottage or a King I have read of that lost his Kingdom for a Draught of Water Can we imagine those are Christians that cannot deny themselves in a Cup of Drink when they have enough before The first Lesson in Christs School is Self-denial and if we deny not forsake not Father Mother Wife and Children yea hate all and our own lives we cannot be his Disciple Can those men lay down
difference The Family you live in hath been a House of Prayer and will you now make it a Cage of unclean Birds You have been warn'd of the Devils Temptations and the Worlds Allurements you have seen the difference between those that have resisted them and those that yielded to them Consider in whether of their cases you would rather be when death calls you and whether a day spen in Prayer or a day spent in an Ale-house wil then bring most comfort you have lived under the powerful means of Grace all your days and heard thousands of Sermons besides other Ordinances and are all those lost Remember what Christ saith of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum It shall be more tollerable for Tire and Sidon or Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment than for them A fruitless Tree in the Vineyard is more in danger than if it grew in the Desert Others may say I never knew the danger of such a course my Parents rather incouraged me then otherwise but what can you say or what excuse can you make Aggra 2. The many Convictions which you had upon your Spirit will witness against you that yours is not a sin of ignorance but against knowledge and conscience and those sins as they make the greatest gashes in the Soul so they will make the greatest noise in the Conscience those that sin ignorantly are to be pittied but those that sin wilfully deserve to be punished He that know not his Masters will and doth things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes but he that knows his Masters will and doth it not shall be beaten with many Some ignorant Souls may perswade themselves that Drinking and Swilling is the chiefest happiness but I dare appeal to your Consciences in cool blood whether you do not know to the contrary you have been better instructed and and doubtless have felt a better rellish in something else God hath sent you into his Vineyard to work and will you leave your work before the evening when the time of receiving your wages comes you have been planted in the Vineyard hedg'd about with Gods providence watered with the Dew of Heaven and he hath expected fruit year by year and will you still be barren or worse than barren will you bring forth wild Grapes Grapes of Sodom whose clusters are bitter what could he have done for his Vineyard that he hath not done for us Well ere long he will pluck up his hedg and take away his fence he will lay by his Basket and take up his Axe he will bid cut him down why cumbreth he the ground Lucifers punishment shall be greater because he was an Angel and Julians because he was a Christian and Judas because he was a Disciple and Capernaum Corazin and Bethsaida because they enjoyed the means which others wanted If you have knowledge in the head and not grace in the heart you will carry your own Mittimus to prison with you or like Vriah Letters to cut your own Throat you sin with a Candle in your hand when others ignorance may excuse them a tanto though not a toto your knowledge will encrease your guilt and heighten your torments Aggra 3. Nay you your self have made a profession of Religion and owned your Baptismal Vow you have held out a Lamp in your hand but 't is to be feared have no Oyl in your Vessel the want of which now makes your Lamp shine so dim and you to walk in darkness you performed many duties and put up many prayers and made many promises to God and Man of your Reformation Oh let it not be to tell the World how far a Hipocrite may go and fall short of Heaven and let them know whatever you said you meant nothing less With what face can you ever call God Father or ever beg for mercy at his hands thus to use him or beg power against sin when you mind nothing less than a Reformation Are you inded willing to lose all the pains that ere you have taken in Heavens way now you have born the burthen and heat of the day and for ought you know the time of your receiving reward is at hand Many a day and many an hour you have spent in Prayer Humiliation Hearing Reading Christian Conference Meditation and such like Duties and will you now out-run and lose them all Shall all your Petitions be lost as foolish Boys lose their Arrows shoot them and then mind them no more If a Righteous Man turn from his Righteousness he shall die in his sin Ezek. 3. 20. all his Righteousness shall not be remembred Is the way of Holiness too severe or will heaven be had upon easier terms or were the Godly from the beginning of the world all deceived which took Holiness to be the only way to Happiness and is there a nearer way found out than they dreamed of and was Christ himself deceived that told us the way was narrow and the gate strait that led to Life and few there be that find it or was the Holy Ghost mistaken when he said Drunkards Whoremasters Swearers c. should never enter Heaven Or can you imagine you may dance with the Devil all day and sup with Christ at night or do the Devils work and receive Christs wages or are you willing to take up with the Hypocrites a portion or do you love your company so well that you will go to Hell for company you carry your own condemnation with you If Religion be not good why did you profess it if it be why do you not practice it Or doth Religion teach you such courses I know some will be apt to charge Religion with it from your practice and say see what your professors are they will be drunk as well as others but the Apostle tells us Titus 2. 12. That the grace of God that bringeth Salvation teacheth us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Have you found out a better master better work and better wages 't is well but praise in the parting The world hates you because of your profession and will you make God hate you for your Hypocrisie Would you reconcile God and the World it will never be or would you have your good things both here and hereafter You will find the mistake you must renounce the one or the other Heaven will not be had in a Vicious Course of Life Aggra 4. This course of life in you that have been a professor of Religion is exceeding injurious both to God and man if you never had pretended better none would have expected better at your hands but to be wounded in the house of our friend to have one with whom we took sweet counsel together and walked to the house of God in company he lift up the heel against us this would trouble a David himself The former hopes you gave us the noise you made in the world of
you may find in three parables in Luke 15. of the lost Sheep the lost groat and the prodigal Son It was he that lost the Sheep and seeks till he finds it and then receiveth he is the Father of the prodigal Son and his prodigality was his trouble as may easily appear by his rejoycing at his return yea Christ tells us there is joy in the presence of the Angels when a sinner returneth and if there could be sorrow in Heaven sure it would be at their revolting back the resisting the motions of Gods Spirit is called a grieving of or a quenching of it and if each Saint have his Guardian Angel as some imagine and it may seem probable for they are guarded by the Angels we may imagine they rejoyce when we do well and as far as they are capable are troubled at our falls and slips and what sorrow and sadness also must this be to your relations put your self into their condition how sad would it be to you to have a Child the only hope of the Family to ruin himself and his posterity to have a young fellow take such extravagant courses to have a Brother or a Sister thus debaucht what grief is it to a Godly Minister that travelled in Birth till he thought Christ had been formed in you and then suddenly see all his hopes dasht all his exhortations admonitions reproofs prayers c. lost upon you how may it trouble and shame him that ever you were of his society your Christian Friends and those of your society how may it trouble them that you are gone from them and with Demas have chosen the World before Christ to think what will become of you and of your Family and of your poor Soul when death shall seperate it from your Body and where you will stop that are running down the hill so fast and whether of a professor you may not as others have done turn persecutor for those that forsake God no wonder if they forsake their Friends also and those that hate God will hate his Image also I wish this be no more than my own surmise and fears In a word There are none that carry the face of honest men but will be troubled at this your Apostacy and there are none but the Devil and his Instruments your Pot-Companions and Brethren in Iniquity that will rejoyce that you are brought back again into the Devils slavery These are the Dalilah's that hugg you in their bosome while they betray you these are the Syrens that by their Song intend to wrack and ruin you and if you think this is your only way to happiness ere long you will find your mistake and your judgment will alter Aggra 7. In this course of life you lead the loss of your precious time which is given you for an higher end is no small aggravation to your fall for though you meet with other considerable losses by this extravagant course of yours yet no temporal loss is comparable to this this cannot be redeemed with Silver nor Gold Jems nor Jewels nay if the World were sold to its worth it could not call back one day that is past and yet alass how prodigal are many of their time as if they knew not how to waste it fast enough they drink and play and rail it away nay go purposely to drive away time that did they but know the value of it would prize it at a higher rate but the time is coming you will know the worth of it by the want of it God hath placed you in his Vineyard given you work to do and sufficient time to do it in if you idle away this time and your work be undone what wages do you expect Amongst other Talents he hath given you this Talent of time if either you not use it or abuse it what can you expect but the doom of the unprofitable servant that hid his Talent in the Earth You have a little time in the World to spend and 't is but a little and one of these days they will say of you He is dead also for you see younger and stronger are gone before you and your turn may be next how as you spend this time so it will fare with you to eternity This is the Harvest of the Soul if you lay not in provision for the Winter with the Bee you are like to want with the Grasshopper this is the market day to lay in provision for the following week and to buy Oyl if this season be let slip the door will be shut against you and we know not how soon this day may be over which will never dawn again you have a great deal of work to do and work of great concernment if it be not finished in the time you are undone you are in a race and your Soul is the prize you run for and will you either stand still or run back you are in the field fighting with cruel blood-thirsty enemies who will make no truce with you but upon more unreasonable terms than Nahash the Ammonite offered to the men of Jabesh Gilead Which was to thrust out all their right eyes and lay it as a reproach on all Israel 1 Sam. 11. 2. But the Devil will make no truce but the everlasting destruction of Soul and Body And will you cast by your Armour and yield to his mercy and revolt from him that will warrant you the Victory if you will but keep the field you are in a journey on life and death and will you now turn back or run after Butterflies when the Sun grows low and you have far to go when you must be sure to tread these weary steps back again or lose your life Much of your time is already spent and your work undone and what you have done you are again plucking down and making your work every day more and harder Consider you will repent or not repent If you do not repent you are undone for no unrepenting sinner shall come to Heaven if you do repent it will cost you more pains dolour trouble and grief than ever the pleasure of your sin was worth you must vomit up all those sweet morsels which you have swallowed with so much delight Eternity lies before you and one of these days Death will open the door and let you in What apprehensions then will you have of these courses when you see an infinite Ocean of eternity before you and all your friends and pleasures departing from you and forsaking you Now what good will your merry company do you what comfort can they bring where are now your merry meetings and your drunken revels Will the thoughts of them chear up your hearts those that were your Councellors and Consorts in your Vanity now will be your Companions in your Misery Those for whose sakes you lost your Soul your God your Glory what will they what can they do for you if you miscarry together you will curse the time that ever