A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

5. Another cause is the wicked neglect of their duties to their own families; making no conscience of loving their own relations, and teaching them the fear of God; nor following their business: and so they take no pleasure to be at home; the company of wife, and children, and servants is no delight to them, but they must go to an alehouse or tavern for more suitable company. Thus one sin bringeth on another.

6. Another cause is the ill management of matters at home with their own consciences; when they have brought themselves into so terrible and sad a case, that they dare not be much alone, nor soberly think of their own condition, nor seriously look towards another world; but fly from themselves, and seek a place to hide them from their consciences, forgetting that sin will find them out. They run to an alehouse, as Saul to his music, to drink away melancholy, and drown the noise of a guilty, self-accusing mind; and to drive away all thoughts of God, and heaven, and sin, and hell, and death, and judgment, till it be too late. As if they were resolved to be damned, and therefore resolved not to think of their misery nor the remedy. But though they dare venture upon hell itself, the sots dare not venture upon the serious thoughts of it! Either there is a hell, or there is none: if there be none, why shouldst thou be afraid to think of it? If there be a hell, (as thou wilt find it if thou hold on but a little longer,) will not the feeling be more intolerable than the thoughts of it? And is not the fore-thinking on it a necessary and cheap prevention of the feeling? Oh how much wiser a course were it to retire yourselves in secret, and there look before you to eternity, and hear what conscience hath first to say to you concerning your life past, your sin and misery, and then what God hath to say to you of the remedy. You will one day find, that this is a more necessary work, than any that you had at the alehouse, and that you had greater business with God and conscience, than with your idle companions.

7. Another cause is the custom of pledging those that drink to you, and of drinking healths, by which the laws of the devil and the alehouse do impose upon them the measures of excess, and make it their duty to disregard their duty to God: so lamentable a thing it is, to be the tractable slaves of men, and intractable rebels against God! Plutarch mentions one that being invited to a feast, made a stop when he heard that they compelled men to drink after meat, and asked whether they compelled them to eat too? apprehending that he went in danger of his belly. And it seems to be but custom that maketh it appear less ridiculous or odious to constrain men to drinking than to eating.

8. Another great cause of excess is, the devil's way of drawing them on by degrees: he doth not tempt them directly to be drunk, but to drink one cup more, and then another and another, so that the worst that he seemeth to desire of them is, but to "drink a little more." And thus, as Solomon saith of the fornicator, they yield to the flatterer, and go on as the "ox to the slaughter, and as the fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life," Prov. vii. 21-23.

III. The greatness of this sin appeareth in what is said before of gluttony. More specially, 1. Think how base a master thou dost serve, being thus a slave to thy throat. What a beastly thing it is, and worse than beastly! for few beasts but a swine will be forced to drink more than doth them good. How low and poor is that man's reason that is not able to command his throat!

2. Think how thou consumest the creatures of God, that are given for service, and not for gulosity and luxury. The earth shall be a witness against thee, that it bore that fruit for better uses, which thou mispendest on thy sin. Thy servants and cattle that labour for it shall be witnesses against thee. Thou offerest the creatures of God as a sacrifice to the devil, for drunkenness and tippling is his service. It were less folly to do as Diogenes did, who, when they gave him a large cup of wine, threw it under the table that it might do him no harm. Thou makest thyself like caterpillars, and foxes, and wolves, and other destroying creatures, that live to do mischief, and consume that which should nourish man; and therefore are pursued as unfit to live. Thou art to the commonwealth as mice in the granary, or weeds in the corn. It is a great part of the work of faithful magistrates to weed out such as thou.

3. Thou robbest the poor, consuming that on thy throat which should maintain them. If thou have any thing to spare, it will comfort thee more at last, to have given it to the needy, than that a greedy throat devoured it. The covetous is much better in this than the drunkard and luxurious; for he is a gatherer, and the other is a scatterer.[435] The commonwealth maintaineth a double or treble charge in such as thou art. As the same pasture will keep many sheep which will keep but one horse; so the same country may keep many temperate persons, which will keep but a few gluttons and drunkards. The worldling makes provision cheaper by getting and sparing; but the drunkard and glutton make it dearer by wasting. The covetous man, that scrapeth together for himself, doth ofttimes gather for one that will pity the poor when he is dead, Prov. xxviii. 8; but the drunkard and riotous devour it while they are alive. One is like a hog that is good for something at last, though his feeding yield no profit while he liveth; the other is like devouring vermin, that leave nothing to pay for what they did consume. The one is like a pike among the fishes, who payeth when he is dead for that which he devoured alive; but the other is like the sink or channel, that repayeth you nothing but stink and dirt, for all that you cast into it.

4. Thou drawest poverty and ruin upon thyself. Besides the value which thou wastest, God usually joineth with the prodigal by his judgments, and scattereth as fast as he. Prov. xxi. 17, "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich." "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth," Prov. xi. 24. But this is not the issue of thy scattering. Prov. xxiii. 19-21, "Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thy heart in the way. Be not amongst wine-bibbers, amongst riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags."[436]

5. Thou art an enemy to thy family. Thou grievest thy friends. Thou impoverishest thy children, and robbest those whom thou art bound to make provision for. Thou fillest thy house with discontents and brawlings, and banishest all quietness and fear of God. A discontented or a brawling wife, and ragged, dissolute, untaught children, are often signs that a drunkard or riotous person is the master of the family.

6. Thou art a heinous consumer of thy precious time. This is far worse than the wasting of thy estate. Oh that thou didst but know, as thou shalt know at last, what those hours are worth, which thou wastest over thy pots! and how much greater work thou hadst to lay it out upon! How many thousands in hell are wishing now in vain, that they had those hours again to spend in prayer and repentance which they spent in the alehouse, and senselessly cast away with their companions in sin! Is the glass turned upon thee, and death posting towards thee, to put an end to all thy time, and lay thee where thou must dwell for ever; and yet canst thou sit tippling and prating away thy time, as if this were all that thou hadst to do with it? Oh what a wonder of sottishness and stupidity is a hardened sinner, that can live so much below his reason! The senses' neglect of thy soul's concernment, and greater matters, is the great part of thy sin, more than the drunkenness itself.