profaneness and blasphemy, that there may appear no want of deliberation and industry in the progress we have made towards hell and damnation.

It were very well for Christianity if there were half that reverence reserved for religion, that the philosopher was assured would be always paid to that science which indeed he looked upon as religion, and defined it to be wonderful like it; "Nunquam in tantum convalescet, nunquam sic contra virtutes conjurabitur, ut non philosophiæ nomen venerabile et sacrum maneat:" and indeed, this modesty and respect to, or for, our religion, was never so near rooted out of the hearts of men, since the name of religion was first heard of in the world, as it is in the present age and present practice in most nations. which call themselves Christians; when poetry itself doth not administer so frequent occasions of mirth as religion doth; nor are the sayings of the poets so often applied to the most scurrilous and profane exercises of wit, as the Scripture itself is; nor indeed is any wit so grateful and acceptable as that which is so polluted: so that it is no breach of charity, to believe that too many read the Scripture, and very industriously, only that they may be readier to apply not only the

phrase and expressions, but the highest mysteries contained in the whole body of the Scripture, to the most wicked, profane, and scurrilous and blasphemous subjects. Nor will they take it ill to have this believed of them, the number and quality of the offenders carrying before it an impunity for the offence; so that there may shortly be too much reason to fear that it may be daugerous to let the kingdom know "quanto plures mali sint;" since, as the same philopher observed, "pudorem rei tollit multitudo peccantium, et desinit esse probri loco, commune maledictum." It is high time for the sovereign power to be very vigilant and severe, when such conspiracies and combinations grow so strong; nor can there be a greater manifestation of the contempt of the government, than when great and notorious vices obtain credit and reputation.

V. OF DRUNKENNESS.

THAT drunkenness is a sin of very great antiquity, needs no other evidence, than that, for aught appears, it was the first sin that was committed after the flood; and it may

be, the first punishment that was inflicted upon it was the best proportioned to the crime; and if it had been ever prosecuted upon the continuance and propagation of it since, it is probable that vice had not flourished in so many ages to this time, when it remains more strong and vigorous, and in more credit and reputation, than it had in its beginning; because it hath not the same penalty inflicted upon it since, which was, a mockery and contempt. Not that mockery which is now so much applied to it, and by which it is cherished and propagated by mirth and laughter, and looking upon it as a commendable, at least a pardonable, effect of good-fellowship: it was another kind of mocking which God prescribed, by permitting, when he made the first drunken man (who had been so much in his favour) to become by it ridiculous to his own son, and permitted his own child unnaturally to contemn his father; as if it were but justice, that his own flesh and blood should withdraw the duty due to a parent, who had divested himself of his manhood to become a beast. It was the third part of the world that then manifested this contempt towards that excessive debauchery, and the other two parts did but conceal it: and though the

presumption in so near a relation as a son was not excusable, his piety cannot justify such a contempt; yet the contempt itself, as it was the first, so it is the best and most sovereign remedy that the wisdom of a state can prescribe for the suppressing and eradicating that enormity, that a dissolute and a drunken man be looked upon with scorn, and as unworthy to be received into the company or employment of honest and virtuous persons; that he who delights to degrade himself from being a reasonable creature, be degraded from the capacity of exercising any office, for the support whereof the use of reason is constantly necessary; and that he be exposed to a universal contempt, who exposes himself to discredit his creation, and to drive that reasonable soul from him that only distinguishes him from a beast. And till this peculiar penalty be, by a general consent of all worthy men as well as magistrates, applied to this race of impudent transgressors, this affected wickedness will never be extirpated, but involve whole nations in the infamy, though particular men may be free from the guilt of the excess.

The succeeding stages of the world never found so proper a remedy for this malady,

though something was always done to make it odious and terrible to those who affected it. By the Levitical law, if the father and the mother did bring their son before the elders of the city, and say, This our son is a glutton and a drunkard, all the men of the city shall stone him with stones that he die; yet this severity did not root out that vice from that people, excess of wine still wrought the same effects: and it is probable the severity of the law made men less solicitous for the execution of it; parents chose rather to keep a drunken son, than to have no son at all, to have him put to death; and an excess of rigour in the punishment rather makes faults to be carefully concealed, than not to be committed. And this may be the reason that in the time of Solomon, who, amongst his multitude of vices, we do not find was given to drunkenness, a less severe judgment was denounced against it, yet more like to reform it: The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty," says he, (Prov. xxiii. 21.) Let but that be made good, and the cure is wrought; no man ever affected a vice that he believed would inevitably make him a beggar; the gamester, who most naturally falls into it, is very solicitous to avoid it, and plays that he may be rich; and the

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