A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

III. The Greatness of the Sin of Gluttony.

To know the greatness of the sin, is the chief part of the cure, with those that do but believe that there is a God: I shall therefore next tell you of its nature, effects, and accidents, which make it great, and therefore should make it odious to all.

1. Luxury and gluttony is a sin exceeding contrary to the love of God: it is idolatry: it hath the heart, which God should have; and therefore gluttons are commonly and well called belly-gods, and god-bellies, because that love, that care, that delight, that service and diligence which God should have, is given by the glutton to his belly and his throat.[404] He loveth the pleasing of his appetite better than the pleasing of God; his dishes are more delightful to him than any holy exercise is; his thoughts are more frequent and more sweet of his belly than of God or godliness; his care and labour are more that he may be pleased in meats and drinks, than that he may secure his salvation, and be justified and sanctified. And, indeed, the Scripture giveth them this name, Phil. iii. 19, "Whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, who glory in their shame, who mind earthly things," being enemies to the cross of Christ, that is, to bearing the cross for Christ, and to the crucifying of the flesh, and to the mortifying, suffering parts of religion. Nay, such a devouring idol is the belly, that it swalloweth up more by intemperance and excess than all other idols in the world do. And remember that the very life of the sin is in the appetite and heart: when a man's heart is set upon his belly, though he fare never so hardly through necessity, he is a glutton in heart. When you make a great matter of it, what you shall eat and drink as to the delight, and when you take it for a great loss or suffering if you fare hardly, and are troubled at it, and your thoughts and talk are of your belly, and you have not that indifferency whether your fare be coarse or pleasant, (so it be wholesome,) as all temperate persons have, this is the heart of gluttony, and is the heart's forsaking of God, and making the appetite its god.

2. Gluttony is self-murder; though it kill not suddenly, it killeth surely; like the dropsy, which killeth as it filleth, by degrees.[405] Very many of the wisest physicians do believe that of those who overlive their childhood, there is scarce one of twenty, yea, or of a hundred that dieth, but gluttony or excess in eating or drinking is a principal cause of their death, though not the most immediate cause. It is thought to kill a hundred to one of all that die at age. And it will not let them die easily and quickly, but tormenteth them first with manifold diseases while they live. You eat more than nature can perfectly concoct, and because you feel it not trouble you or make you sick, you think it hurts you not; whereas it doth by degrees first alter and vitiate the temperament of the blood and humours, making it a crude, unconcocted, unnatural thing, unfit for the due nutrition of the parts; turning the nourishing mass into a burdensome, excrementitious mixture, abounding with saline or tartareous matter, and consisting more of a pituitous slime, or redundant serosity, than of that sweet, nutrimental milk of nature, quickened with those spirits and well-proportioned heat, which should make it fit to be the oil of life. And our candle either sparkleth away with salt, or runs away because there is some thief in it, or goeth out because the oil is turned into water, or presently wasteth and runs about through the inconsistent softness of its oil: hence it is that one part is tainted with corruption, and another consumeth as destitute of fit nutriment; and the vessels secretly obstructed by the grossness or other unfitness of the blood to run its circle and perform its offices, is the cause of a multitude of lamentable diseases. The frigid distempers of the brain, the soporous and comatous effects, the lethargy, carus, and apoplexy, the palsy, convulsion, epilepsy, vertigo, catarrhs, the head-ache, and oft the phrensy and madness, come all from these effects of gluttony and excess, which are made upon the blood and humours. The asthma usually, and the phthisis or consumption, and the pleurisy and peripneumony, and the hemoptoic passion, often come from hence. Yea the very syncopes or swooning, palpitations of the heart, and faintings, which men think rather come from weakness, do usually come either from oppression of nature by these secret excrements or putrilaginous blood, or else from a weakness contracted by the inaptitude of the blood to nourish us, being vitiated by excess. The loathing of meat and want of appetite is ordinarily from the crudities or distempers caused by this excess; yea, the very canine appetite which would still have more, is caused by a viciousness in the humours thus contracted. The pains of the stomach, vomitings, the cholera, hiccoughs, inflammations, thirsts, are usually from this cause. The wind cholic, the iliac passion, looseness, and fluxes, the tenesmus and ulcers, the worms and other troubles in those parts, are usually from hence. The obstructions of the liver, the jaundice, inflammations, abscesses and ulcers, schirrus, and dropsy, are commonly from hence. Hence also usually are inflammations, pains, obstructions, and schirrus of the spleen. Hence commonly is the stone, nephritic torments, and stoppages of urine, and ulcers of the reins and bladder. Hence commonly is the scorbute and most of the fevers which are found in the world, and bring such multitudes to the grave. Even those that immediately are caused by colds, distempers of the air or infections, are oft caused principally by long excess, which vitiateth the humours, and prepareth them for the disease. Hence also are gouts and hysterical affects, and diseases of the eyes and other exterior parts. So that we may well say that gluttony enricheth landlords, filleth the churchyards, and hasteneth multitudes untimely to their ends.[406] Perhaps you will say that the most temperate have diseases: to which experience teacheth me to answer, that usually children are permitted to be voracious and gluttonous, either in quantity or in quality, eating raw fruits and things unwholesome; and so when gluttony hath bred the disease, or laid in the matter, then all the temperance that can be used is little enough to keep it under all their life after. And abundance that have been brought to the doors of death by excess, have been preserved after many years to a competent age by abstinence, and many totally freed from their diseases. Read Cornaro's Treatise of himself, and Lessius, and Sir William Vaughan, &c. (Though yet I persuade none without necessity to their exceeding strictness.) Judge now what a murderer gluttony is, and what an enemy to mankind.

3. Gluttony is also a deadly enemy to the mind, and to all the noble employments of reason, both religious, civil, and artificial.[407] It unfits men for any close and serious studies, and therefore tends to nourish ignorance, and keep men fools. It greatly unfits men for hearing God's word, or reading, or praying, or meditating, or any holy work, and makes them have more mind to sleep; or so undisposeth and dulleth them, that they have no life or fitness for their duty; but a clear head, not troubled with their drowsy vapours, will do more and get more in an hour, than a full-bellied beast will do in many. So that gluttony is as much an enemy to all religious and manly studies, as drunkenness is an enemy to a garrison, where the drunken soldiers are disabled to resist the enemy.

4. Gluttony is also an enemy to diligence, in every honest trade and calling; for it dulleth the body as well as the mind. It maketh men heavy, and drowsy, and slothful, and go about their business as if they carried a coat of lead, and were in fetters; they have no vivacity and alacrity, and are fitter to sleep or play than work.[408]

5. Gluttony is the immediate symptom of a carnal mind, and of the damnable sin of flesh-pleasing, before described; and a carnal mind is the very sum of iniquity, and the proper name of an unregenerate state; "It is enmity against God, and neither is nor can be subject to his law:" so that they that are thus "in the flesh cannot please God; and they that walk after the flesh shall die," Rom. viii. 6-8, 13. The filthiest sins of lechers, and misers, and thieves, are but to please the flesh: and who serveth it more than the glutton doth?

6. Gluttony is the breeder and feeder of all other lusts: sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus: it pampereth the flesh to feed it, and make it a sacrifice for lust. As dunging the ground doth make it fruitful, especially of weeds; so doth gluttony fill the mind with the weeds and vermin of filthy thoughts, and filthy desires, and words, and deeds.[409]

7. Gluttony is a base and beastly kind of sin. For a man to place his happiness in the pleasure of a swine, and to make his reason serve his throat, or sink into his guts; as if he were but a hogshead to be filled and emptied, or a sink for liquor to run through into the channel; or as if he were made only to carry meat from the table to the dunghill; how base a kind of life is this! yea, many beasts will not eat and drink excessively as the gluttonous epicure will do.[410]

8. Gluttony is a prodigal consumer and devourer of the creatures of God. What is he worthy of, that would take meat and drink and cast it away into the channel?[411] nay, that would be at a great deal of cost and curiosity to get the pleasantest meat he could procure, to cast away? The glutton doth worse. It were better of the two to throw all his excesses into the sink or ditch, for then they would not first hurt his body. And are the creatures of God of no more worth? Are they given you to do worse than cast them away? Would you have your children use their provisions thus?