Let us make a few commentaries on this verse of Horace.
We read, that “the sages of Portugal having undertaken to convert those of Melinda, gained as much upon them by wine as by reason, which, in the end, facilitated the conquest of the whole country[1].”
To draw a consequence from this, we say, That one must reasonably believe, that wine gave those sages an eloquence necessary to convert the people of Melinda, and them a necessary penetration to discover the truth through the thick veils of their ignorance.
Books of travels farther inform us, that “the priests of the kingdom of Tibet, whom they call Lamas, drink a good quantity of wine on their days of fasting and devotion, that they may have, to use their own words, the tongue prompt and ready to say their orisons[2].”
According to this doctrine, Palingenius was much in the wrong to say, that wine makes churchmen uncapable to perform the duties of their function.
Nec bene tractabit vinosus sacra sacerdos[3].
No priest, who tipples wine that’s good,
Will do his duty as he should.
Surely our author never conversed much with the religious. The friers would have told him, they never perform their office without taking a choir cup. Experto crede Roberto, as the saying is. There is no false Latin in this, says a good monk to me once upon a time, drawing from under his cassock a double flask. You are much in the right on’t, brother Peter, said I, I believe as the church believes, and so—my service to you, and here’s to the pious memory of St. Boniface. And indeed the vehicle proved capaciously orthodox.
In relation to what hath been said I shall add a remark of the famous M. Bayle. “It cannot be denied,” says he, “that the christians of Europe are subject to two great vices, drunkenness and lewdness. The first of these reigns in cold countries, the other in hot. Bacchus and Venus share these two climates between them. We find that the reformation having divided this portion of christianity, that part which was subject to Venus continues as it was, but the greatest part of what was subject to Bacchus has renounced popery[4].”