In short, temperance or a spare diet, void of dainties, never was injurious to the strongest constitution; and, without it, such as are weak and sickly cannot long subsist; for the more such persons eat and drink, the more weak and disordered they will still find themselves to be: so that if the strong despise temperance, yet the comfort of weak, sickly and pining people, does depend entirely upon their constantly observing it; which, when they are accustomed to it, will be easy to do: So that they will deny all intemperate desires with as great pleasure, as they before delighted in what is falsely stiled good eating and drinking; for nothing of that is good, which is injurious to health. It is custom only that makes men hanker after gluttony and drunkenness, and a contrary custom will make men abhor it as much: And therefore it is a wonder the rich do not strive to attain to it; for
A fatal error ’tis in men of wealth,
To feed so high as will destroy their health.
Temperance being that which will enable them to live most at ease, and enjoy their wealth the longest; this, and water-drinking, being the surest way to bring men to old age, tho’ it hath not power to make those young who are aged, yet it will make the aged more free from decripedness, and die with most ease, if the deathbed hath been well prepared for by a good life.
FINIS.
PRICE EIGHTPENCE.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Author of Ducatus Leodiensis, or Topography of Leeds, which the present learned Bishop of London, in his preface to the new edition of Cambden’s Britannia, stiles, An useful and accurate Treatise.