How words are abused? Did the dish or the bottle ever make a real friend? Surely friendship can never be founded on any thing else, than a sweet and affectionate disposition, a likeness of temper, and true honesty of heart, on both sides. Will strong drink bestow these on us? Can mutual love and confidence be built on vice? On a vice, which, of all others, most effectually impairs the memory, and with it the sense of all obligations? On a vice, remarkable for blabbing and betraying secrets? On a vice, that unavoidably hurries those that are addicted to it, to a speedy ruin of that foundation, on which it raises the short-lived union of drunkards, by bringing them soon to an end, either of their fortunes, or their lives? What then is the friendship of drunkards? It is only the heat of strong liquor, smoking out either in wild unmeaning professions of love, with a mixture of nauseous kisses, and sour belches, or in loud oaths or unguarded expressions, usually ending in quarrels and broken heads; which I shall as readily allow to be the testimonies of true friendship, as the professions and kisses already mentioned.

And how doth drunkenness promote the gaiety of conversation? Does it not destroy all conversation; for what is conversation, but the communication of rational and agreeable thoughts? If conversation is to begin where thinking ends, may it be my lot to have no one to converse with. Surely it is better to live in a desart, than a bedlam, especially if I am to be as mad as the other lodgers. The man of sense and spirit needs not the assistance of strong liquors; and is never more gay and agreeable, than rising from a calm and natural night's rest. On the other hand, in vain doth the stupid blockhead hope, that strong drink will give wings to his heavy soul. It is impossible for him to find a moment's medium of sprightliness between his natural dulness, and his drunken madness. Such a one may be a fool or a madman; but he can never be a wit; even his ridiculous flashes, of which he is so vain, are not the issues of his own brain, but of a bottle; and are nothing better than the froth of what he hath drank. If he makes his company merry, do they not rather laugh at him, than with him? Do not silly people, like them, laugh at a natural fool, for no other reason, but because they are tickled with the sight of

one who is even sillier than themselves? And if they should at any time express their admiration by their mirth, certainly it is hard to say, whether the stupid and empty jest, or the senseless peal of laughter that roars in its applause, is the stronger proof of folly. To imagine that strong drink can help to pump wit out of a blockhead, is surely a strange opinion; buffoonry indeed, and impertinence, with wild flights and sallies, it may. He, who is so void of sense, as to seek for honour this way, knows not what honour is, and it is folly next his own, to spend time with him; and therefore I shall dismiss him with the words of the prophet, 'shameful spewing shall be on his glory.'

The next excuse for drinking to excess, is, that it stupifies the cares and troubles of the drunkard; which arise from three different quarters; his ill state of health, the unfortunate posture of his worldly affairs, or the stings of his guilty conscience.

As to his ill health, it must be owned indeed, that in some cases, a temperate use of generous liquors may be of considerable service; and accordingly, physicians often prescribe it, as St. Paul did to Timothy, for a strengthener of low spirited and feeble constitutions. But this hath nothing to do with the point we are handling, which is drunkenness, a vice we are not at liberty to practise, even to procure health, or prolong life, were it in any measure useful for those ends. But so far is it from being either, that poison cannot more surely, though it may more speedily, hurt us in both respects. The health of a man depends as absolutely on the right state of his brain, as his reason does; insomuch that it is impossible to hurt the one, without proportionably impairing the other. There is hardly a disease, of which intemperance, especially excess in drinking, is not the cause, or at least the fuel. Strong liquors, if taken in too great a quantity, corrupt and inflame the blood, burn and shrivel the nerves, dry up and thicken the spirits, and remarkably impair the brain, as may be seen by the immediate effect they have on it, which is as violent and manifest, as the stroke of a staff or stone; only with this difference, that if such an outward impression do not deprive us of life and reason, it soon ceases; whereas in the case of drunkenness, the cause of our disorder, being mixed with the blood,

the spirits, and the very substance of the brain, is not to be removed without more time, more difficulty, and more danger. We are by no means to imagine, that the ill effects of intemperance cease with the drunken fit, or with the sickness of stomach, and aching head, that succeed. The frequent repetition of such excesses cannot but greatly distress a body, the health and life of which depend on parts so extremely fine and delicate, that David, reflecting on it with just apprehensions, says, 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made.' Our experience confirms this reasoning two ways; both by the ill health, and short life, of great drinkers; and by the common practice of physic, which begins the cure of most disorders, by emptying the body of those foul sinks, with which intemperance had filled it. The physician and surgeon owe the greater part of their business to the cook and the vintner, who lay in, what they are feed to remove by pukes, purges, blistering, bleeding, and spitting; and to perfect the cure, a long course of low and cool feeding is generally prescribed. From hence may appear the absurdity of his excuse, who says, he gets drunk to comfort his spirits, and retrieve his sickly constitution.

Now his excuse, who drinks hard to stifle his concern for the unfortunate posture of his worldly affairs, is, if possible, still more senseless and desperate. The drunkard will not leave himself sense enough to consider, that his vice does not tend to the improvement of his fortune; the only remedy, humanly speaking, his cares admit of; and that it can do no more, than for a time make him forget he is in debt or distress. If thought, and the sense of his poverty, were never to return, this might be a complete cure for his grief. But to forget his distress, is the way to neglect his affairs, by no means to retrieve them; and to buy this short forgetfulness with such expenses, as drunkenness is always attended with, is the sure way to put his affairs on a more distressful footing, than mere neglect could have occasioned. But if he is already in distress, and cannot bear so much as to think of it, what will be his case, when neglect and extravagance shall have wasted all he has, so that his stupid remedy, and his ruined fortune, shall fail him both at once? Then, to which hand shall he turn him? He cannot work to beg he is ashamed.' Most unhappy man! his

misery admits of no change, but a jail; of no end, but a halter.

But great as the folly is of drinking to stupify a bodily disorder, or to drive away the cares arising from worldly distress; it is mere wisdom, if compared to that of drinking to stifle the stings of a guilty conscience. If one vice could furnish a cure, or make an atonement for another, we might, with some shew of reason, apologize for all our vices. It is true the drunkard may, for a time, drown his conscience in strong liquor, and silence its clamours with the noise of his roaring companions; but must he not sometimes be sober? And will not his conscience then have its revenge? Will not the violence he hath done to it by the new additional vice whet its stings, and drive them into his soul with double force and torture? Remorse and dread of eternal punishment were given him for a remedy against sin; and it is by them that God calls him to repentance and mercy. But because this voice of God is alarming and terrible, he flies to the devil for protection, although all he expects from that quarter, is the benefit of travelling some part of the road to eternal misery with his eyes covered. To act such a part as this, is to insult Almighty God, even under his rod, and to his face; is to give up heaven for ever; and, with the obstinacy, the terror, and despair of a devil, to plunge blindfold into that misery, in comparison of which, the most violent agonies of conscience are mere peace and pleasure.

The drunkard hath other more uncommon and accidental excuses for his vice; but they need not a particular refutation; for he rather pleads them to himself, as human infirmities, than avows them to others, as reasons, by which he would hope to prove he is neither altogether so foolish, or so wicked, as his neighbours might suppose him to be.

He says, he is so exposed to company and business, that it is impossible for him to avoid drinking to excess. Then he is of so easy and so flexible a temper, that he cannot resist the importunities of his friends, as he calls them. Thus he is for softening his vice into a sort of virtue, and calling that mere good-nature, which his creditor calls villany, and his wife and children cruelty. But he will never own, that so low an appetite as the love of liquor, or so shameful a weakness, as vanity, deserve any share of the blame, that he is a

drunkard. And yet, after all, here lies the stumbling-block, over which the habitual drunkard falls. He may have a great soul, but it is not quite so great, as to enable him to despise the pleasure he finds in gratifying this appetite, nor the censure of other drunkards, who would call him penurious, did he not run into the same extravagance with themselves. Nay, great as his soul is, it does not hinder him from being vain, that he can hold more liquor than other men, though in this, as the philosopher observed, the hogshead has still the advantage of him; nor from vaunting this superiority of his strength, in being able to sit and speak, after drinking the same quantity that hath laid the rest of the company on the floor, though for this he ought to thank his thick skull, and heavy spirits.

We will however, for once allow, that the temptations, which ensnare the drunkard, are great enough to prevent the imputation of his having less sense and soul, than the liar, the thief, or other sinners of that rank; and we will proceed to lay before him the woe denounced against him by Almighty God; or in other words, the miserable effects, as well temporal as spiritual, of his favourite vice, that he may compare those effects with his temptations, in order to see which is the greatest. After this he may judge for him-self, by his reforming, or continuing in the vice, whether he hath any remains of common sense, or any right to look on himself as a great and generous soul.

The first temporal ill effect of his drunkenness, which I shall take notice of, as contained in the woe, with which he is threatened, is poverty. This must certainly fall to his lot, though his fortune might at first have been very great; for such extravagance and neglect of his affairs, as must accompany the vice of drunkenness, cannot fail to put it out of his power to support himself and his family in that rank of living to which they are used, which they expected always to appear in, and from which therefore they cannot be brought down, without greater shame and anxiety, than people in lower life usually feel from absolute want of bread. Now this is poverty; and such poverty, as his wife and children will find means to make him feel a share of; although there is still so much left that he may drink on, and be the despicable slave of his worse than beastly appetite, as long as he