Let all drunkards henceforth confider, what a voluntary madness the fin of drunkenness is, how it unmans them, and fets them below the very brutes. A grave father calls it rightly, * "A diftemper of the head, a fubverfion of the fenfes, a tempeft in the tongue, the form of the body, the fhipwreck of virtue, the lofs of time, a wilful madnefs, à pleasant evil, a fugared poifon, a fweet fin, which he that hath, hath not himself; and he that commits it, doth not only commit fin, but himself is altogether fin." It is a fin at which the most fober Heathens blaflied. The policy of the Spartans was more commendable than their piety in making men drunk, that their children might gaze upon them as a monster, and be scared for ever from fuch an horrid practice. He that is maftered by drunkenness, can never be mafter of his own counfels. Both reafon and religion cendemn this courfe. Make a pause therefore where you are, and rather throw that wine or beer upon the ground, which elfe will caft thy body upon the ground, and thy foul and body into helle CHAP. V. Containing the refult and ifjue of the third confultation with reafont, upon the cafe of uncleannefs; and the true report of the determina tion of every man's reafon, with respect thereunto. THE HE bountiful and indulgent God hath made more abun $1. dant provision for the pleasure and delight of rational, than of brutal beings: And his wife and righteous laws order and limit their pleasures to their great advantage; his allowance under thofe reftrictions being large and full enough. Both reafon and experience affure us, that the trueft pleasures are most freely and honourably to be enjoyed within the pale and boundary of his laws; and that there are none fit for the enjoyment of a man or Christian, to be found without, or beyond them. That prudent owner provides beft for his cattle, who puts them into inclofed fragrant fields, where they have plenty of proper and pleafant food, fweet and pure fprings of water, the pleafant covert of fhady trees, and all that is either neceffary or convenient for them; altho' thofe fields be fo inclosed within pales or walls, that they cannot ftray without thofe boundaries, into other men's ground, to be by • Turbatio capitis, fubverfio fenfus, tempeftas linguæ, procella corporis, naufragium virtutis, amiffio temporis, infania bluntaria, blande damon, dulce venenum, fuave peccatum, quam qui babet, feipfam non babet, quam qui facit, puscatum non tantum facit, fed ipfe totus eft pecca tum. them impounded, and brought back lank, tired, and dirty, to their owner; or by ftraying into waftes and wilderneffes, fall a prey (as ftragglers ufe to do) to wolves and lions. God envies not any true, rational, and proper pleasure to men or women; when he bounds them in by his command, within the allowance whereof, fufficient provision is made for the benefit and delight of propagation. And though it be all men's duty to tremble at the awful folemnity, yet it would be any man's fin to repine and murmer at the ftrictness and severity of his command, delivered with thunder and lightning from mount Sinai, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Man's honourable liberty, and God's wife and just restraint and limitation thereof, are both fet together before our eyes, in that one fcripture, Heb. xiii. 4. " Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Here is a liberal allowance granted, and a fevere punishment threatned for the inordinacies and exorbitancies of boundlefs and ungovernable lufts. God will judge with temporal judgments in this world; and upon impenitent perfiftents, with eternal judgments in the world to come. 2. Such is the corruption of man's nature by the fall, that it hates inclosures, restraints, and limitations. These things which were intended to regulate, ferve only to fharpen and enrage their fenfual ap petite. No fruit fo fweet to corrupt nature, as forbidden fruit. Nitimur in vetitum femper, cupimusque negata. The very reftraint of evil, makes it look like a pleafant and defirable good. Sons of Belial can endure no yoke of restraint. There is a great truth in that obfervation of the divine Herbert, That if God had laid all common, man himself would have been the inclofer. For his reafon and experience would have plainly informed him of the great and manifold advantages of diftinction and propriety. How many quarrels and barbarous murders have been occafioned by whores! which by keeping within God's bounds and rules, had been both honeftly and honourably prevented. Were men left to that liberty brutes are, to fcatter their lufts promifcuously, fathers would not know their own children, nor children their fathers; whereby both their duties and comforts would be prefcinded together. Such mischiefs as thefe, would make men glad of that inclofure, which the laws of God have made for them. But behold with admiration the perverfe wickedrefs of corrupt nature, manifefted in this, that because God hath inclosed and fecured their relations to them by his laws, (which inclosure is every way to their advantage;) yet this makes their lufts the more head-firong and outrageous, and they cannot take that comfort in their own, because their own, that they think to find in another's, becaufe another's. Remarkable to this purpofe is that relation of Mr Firmin's, which VOL. VI. 3 T Real Chriftian, p. 60. he recieved from his near relation, who was minifter to the company of English merchants in Pruffia. The conful, or governer of that company, being a married man, and that to a very proper and comely woman, was yet enflaved to others, not to be compared with his own wife for comeliness. This minister dealt with him about it. One argument he urged, was this; That of all men he had the least temptation, having a wife fo comely, that few women were like her. He anfwered, yea, were fhe not my wife, I could love her. Had the been his whore, he could have loved her; he thought none like her; but because she was his wife, hedged in by God, he cared not for her. O what hearts have men, that they should ever think that to be best for them which is most cross to God! Why fhould ftolen waters be fweeter than thofe of our own fountains! All §3. God's choice muft needs be far better for us, than our own. Ordinate and lawful pleasures and enjoyments, are far better and fweeter, than exorbitant and forbidden ones. And the reafon is evident and undeniable: For amongst all the operations of the mind, its reflex acts are the acts that beft relifh pleasure. And indeed, without felf-reflection, a man cannot tell whether he delights or no. fense of pleasure implies fome reflection of the mind: and thofe pleafures of a man muft needs be the sweetest, which afford the sweetest reflections upon them afterward; and those the bafeft pleasures, which are accompanied and followed with prefent regret, or the stinging and cutting reflections of the confcience upon them afterwards. 1. Lawful and ordinate enjoyments, are as honey without the fting. Forbidden pleasures, are embittered and extinguished by thefe regrets and reflections of the confcience. They are like thofe pleasant fruits, which the Spaniards found in the Indies, which were sweet to the tafte, but fo environed and armed on every fide with dangerous briers and thorns, that they tore not only their clothes off their backs, but the fkin off their flesh, to come at them; and therefore they called them comfits in hell. And fuch are all forbidden, and unlawful pleafures. A merchant (faith the fore-mentioned author *) dining with the friars at Dantzick, his entertainment was very noble. After he had dined, and feen all, the merchant fell to commending their pleasant life. Yea, faid one of the friars to him, we live gallantly indeed, if we had any body to go to hell for us when we die. You fee what mingles with men's fenfual and finful lufts. 2. Your honour is fecured, by keeping within God's bounds and limits: Marriage is honourable in all. Here guilt can neither wrong your consciences, nor infamy your reputations. Fornicators and adulterers go up and down the world, as men burnt in the hånd: Their confcience lafhes them within; and men point at them abroad. They are a terror to themselves, and a scorn to men. 3. The health of the body is fecured by chafte and regular enjoy. * Real Chriftian, p. 63. ments, but expofed to deftruction the other way. God hath plagued the inordinacy of men's lufts, with most strange and horrid difeafes. That Morbus Gallicus, Sudor Anglicus, and Plica Polonica, were judgments fent immediately by God's own hand, as the witnesses of his high difpleasure, against the bold and daring contemners of his. facred and awful command. Thus, as Prov. v. II. "They mourn at laft, when their flesh and body are confumed." Other fins are committed in the body; but this against it, as well as in it. 4. The blaft and wafte of our eftates (which is the ufual confequence of uncleannefs) is prevented and avoided, by keeping within God's rules. The truth of what the fcripture tells us, Prov. x. 5. is often exemplified before your eyes; that, "by reason of a whorish woman, a man is brought to a morfel of bread." Adultery gives a man rags for his livery; it lodgeth his fubftance in the houfe of strangers, and entails wants and curfes on him and his. 5. In a word, continence, or lawful marriage, exposes not the foul to the eternal wrath of God, as uncleanness doth; 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. This fin does not only shut a man out of his own house, and the hearts of good men, but out of heaven itself, without thorough repentance and reformation. §4. The cafe ftanding thus: it is matter of juft admiration, how the fin of uncleannefs fhould grow fo epidemical and common as it doth, seeing fuch as live in this filthy course, muft needs counter-act and oppofe their own reafon and intereft together. For they forfake God's way, which gives them as much liberty as can be reasonably defired; and caft themselves into a course of life, clogged with all manner of temporal and eternal miferies, of foul and body, honour and estate. The plain rule and dictate of common reason, which I laid down before, being applied to this particular cafe, manifeftly condemns it. For feeing honesty and chastity comprize the true pleasure, profit, and honour of the whole man, are more congruous to human nature, and prefervative of it, it ought, therefore, to be preferred in the eftimation and choice of all men, to unlawful adulterous pleasures, which (for the reafons above) are inferior in themfelves to 'chafte, conjugal enjoyments; and befides that, are attended and followed with fuch a train of present and future miferies, destructive to the whole man. And yet for all this, to the amazement of all serious obfervers, never was any age more infamous for this fin, than the present age is; and that under the clear fhining light of the gospel. What the special caufes and inducements, to the overflowing and abounding of this fin, are in the prefent age, will be well worth the enquiring and fifting at this time. § 5. Inducement 1. It is highly probable, the influencing examples of great men, have had no fmall hand in the fpreading of this abominable and crying fin, amongst all inferior ranks and orders of men. Great men's ill examples, like a bag of poifon in the fountain, cor rupt and infect multitudes. The vulgar think they are privileged, or, at the leaft, very much excufed, when they do but follow the precedents and examples of great and eminent perfons. But this will be found a weak and foolish plea, for uncleanness, which will never be able to endure the teft of your own reason: For the inbred notions of a God, and of a future life of retribution, being fo firmly fealed and engraven upon human nature, they can never be utterly eradicated; your own reafon will argue from those inbred notions in this manner, and how you will be able to repel the argument, and efcape conviction and felf-condemnation, quite furmounts my imagination, whatever it do yours. And thus it will difpute, and dilemma you, do what you can. That God, before whom greater and leffer, honourable and bafer finners fhall appear in judgment, will be either partial or impartial, in his judgments upon them. There is, or there is not refpect of perfons with him. If there be, (which both his nature and word utterly deny); then thofe great and honourable adulterers, or forni cators, whofe examples you follow, may haply be excufed for their eminency and honour's fake; but you, that have no fuch eminency and honour in the world, as they have, muft be condemned, though you thought to escape as well as they. But if there be no partiality, or refpect of perfons with God, (as moft affuredly there is none), then both greater and leffer, honoura ble and bafer, adulterers, muft be condemned together, to the fame common and intolerable mifery. So that to take any (though the leaft) encouragement to fin, from the precedents and examples of great ones, is a moft fenfelefs and irrational thing, utterly unworthy of one that believes there is a juft and impartial God; and he is worse than a devil, that believes it not: For the devils themfelves believe and tremble. § 6, Inducement 2. But others would perfuade us, they are drawn into this fin by a kind of inevitable neceffity; they being neither able to contain, nor marry. They are not yet arrived to an estate fufficient to maintain a family with reputation: But when they have gotten enough by trade, or by the fall of their paternal eftates, to live in equal reputation with their neighbours; then they defign to alter their courfe of life, and abandon thefe follies. But, reader, if this be thy plea for uncleannefs, thou shalt have as fair a trial, for a foul fact, as thine own heart can defire: be ftill thine own judge; and let thine own reafon give a fair answer to these three pertinent questions. Queft. 1. Whether whoredom be as likely and promifing a way |
